III.
The next day I was almost the only one out on the sand in the morning, except for a familiar head bobbing far out
near the sea horizon. I saw him when I held still, my toes absently combing the biting sand. His head was ghost-
like, a zinc plaster of sunscreen and salt, and it was only his head there that moved. To my left the sounds of
strangers, a couple of boys, arrived at my senses. They were playing war in the dunes, and their cries echoed from
farther up the bay. I saw one of them roll out from the dunes in soldier-like fashion, only to race back in again. I was
so tired. I noticed one umbrella, tucked into the nearest dune of the bay. I shaded my eyes to the sea and bit into
the flesh of a lemon, rubbing sand from my eyebrows as I watched the ocean lap several meters before me. Within
a few minutes I went down to test it. I crashed into a new wave which carried what looked like a small disc up onto
the shore amongst the shell grit. It was red and smooth. I picked it up and turned it over in my palm. The old man
began to float quietly on his back toward the shore.
Before the sea had dried from either of our bodies, I wandered over to where the woman sat under the umbrella.
She had a backgammon board on a trestle table beside her, and poured tea from a ceramic pot, mumbling or
humming as I walked closer, I couldnʼt work out which. I had no idea what on earth I was going to say, but had a
feeling this token was theirs and it wasnʼt a coincidence I had found it.
ʻWould you like to play with us?' she asked before I could speak. I smiled. ʻI found this by the shore. It came up out
of the ocean just nowʼ.
She set a glass down into the sand and said gently, ʻI saw you asleep that day...ʼ She paused looking up at me, and
added, ʻYou can share our shade if you like next timeʼ. Her eyes matched the liquidity of the tea in the sand.
ʻI see you like lemons!!ʼ came a sudden voice from the sun behind me. ʻGood thing you do... I have a tree and
believe you can never put too many lemons to good useʼ. I turned and smiled wider at the man who approached.
The zinc coating his skin was now fading roughly from his face with the salt, and he met me with a strong fistful
handshake. The disc dropped to the sand. ʻSo, you found it!ʼ, he said, as he noticed it between us. I picked it up
and gave it to him. ʻCome, Iʼll show you how the world looks, now that we have thisʼ he said, moving slowly toward
the table.
He hovered over his wooden board, unwary of how appealing I found their curious manner. His grey hair and brick
skin seemed more luminous in the shade. They didnʼt offer any explanation for their being there at first, nor did they
ask my name nor give theirs. Instead, the man motioned for me to sit down. The woman made more tea. I sat down
on a metal esky and hooked my leg up to my chest, placing my foot down upon it with steady and careful attention.
It was only after this that he asked if I would like to join them. I watched him gather things together as he whistled
for the dog which the two boys were now entertaining. I asked her if he knew them. The woman said no. I looked at
her carefully, and told her Iʼd love to share their shade, noticing the underside of the umbrella was glued with paper
clippings. I might have been getting madder, but it was something of the instability of all this that I liked, hidden
under the apparent banality of what should have been normal. The dog raced from the frontier as the woman
sipped her sandy glass and hummed. ʻShall we?ʼ he beamed.
That day he sat me down and showed me the rules of backgammon. Over time he explained to me that heʼd lived
in Oman by the Arabian sea and that the game was an important part of life there; that all of the world had some
relation to this board. I was infected with images of languid Arabian women dancing in the orchards. 'They eat
lemons the size of grapefruit', he said. I smiled. 'While the men play, anywhere', he added. When I asked why he
was here, he told me heʼd moved to retire. Apparently seven years ago he'd won the Nobel Economics prize for
using game theory to explain conflict resolution. The woman pointed to a clipping of his achievement near the mast
of the umbrella. He added humbly that he was skeptical of the busy worlds people find time to get lost in. 'There is
nothing else in the world but information and what you make of it'. He made tea. It made him feel younger.
The sun started setting as I told him about the clock I wanted. He peered from under his wiry eyebrows, and said
he might be able to find one for me. He looked serious, as he glanced down to move a checker about the board. I
noticed the sand between his knuckles.
The days disconnected themselves from time in waves. The heat did that.
I remember feeling like I was sailing in the boat in my dream. 'The aim here is to act in groups', he said. 'The
isolated are vulnerable'. ʻThe world is a familyʼ he'd say loudly, while the woman added, ʻthe same performance is
expected of everyone in the gameʼ, smoothing her leathery wrinkles with coconut oil. Another day they taught me
words in Arabic. He called our gathering quabila - the tribe, and we were shabab. I liked his words. Shabab was a
category of youth and included everyone between the age of six and sixty. Other days heʼd call me from the ocean
to give me weighty bags of lemons or boxes of tea his friend made. I sat with their words for hours, and weʼd talk
about things I never remember talking about. I left the beach every evening with my bones fast emitting heat
absorbed from the day, and the taste of salt and sour lemon on my tongue. I drank in the flood of their eccentricities
and was so interested in the pulse of their life, I never wanted to take my finger from it. I knew theyʼd always be
watching the horizon of the ocean and the land, waiting for me to return and watch them. Their world cracked open
mine and we saw eternity laid within it.
I came home one night and flipped through an old portrait book, wondering what their faces might have looked like
at my age, the intonations of cheek and brow and eye. Boys chests dove into the softness of grey photographic
water. A brick, some blood. Young babies too thin to have beating hearts still. The light began to dissipate into the
flowery night as I read, and tears ached from my eyes. Beyond my window the red disc of sun tagged the moon as
it went by on its opposite way. I swayed along the pages of a rotating globe deep into the night, toward places
rushing fast towards me. How beautiful it must be to see a man weep for his religion, a face washed with ink. A
mother dancing to the sound of her own drumming heart in the nighttime, while her languid children sleep like I did.
II.
The pavement tripped me up as I walked down it to town the next morning. I passed the street market, a woman's
eye, and found a slightly worn camera in amidst the effluvia of her discarded life. She sold it to me, adding sheʼd
bought it before going to Egypt, the pyramids, the river Nile. My old friend at the beach had once said he'd never
had a camera in Oman... Since I had recently decided I wanted to give something back to them, not only the disc
they had lost, I knew I wanted to give them with some new contraptions, mysteries. I remembered the man saying
something about the soul and that memory was the strongest way to take photos of it, nevertheless the only way
they'd known how.
I found an old bolt of fabric which I wrapped the camera up in, and began to walk my track to the beach. Maybe
there was still film in the camera. I couldnʼt see their umbrella yet. My mind raced, blossoming with the idea that
there could be photos of Oman on the film, if the photographer had wandered far enough from her track. I arrived
to cloud smitten sand and looked up and down the beach, but they werenʼt here today. That was odd. They always
waved me off each time we parted with the promise of returning the next day. Heʼd call out 'tal umrak! May your life
be prolonged!' as I walked away every time. She would have told me if they werenʼt going to be here, even if he had
forgotten to. I tilted my head aslant, squinting at the sky simmering thinly above me. My fingers picked harder at the
camera and a thousand maybes ran through my mind. I could only think that most plausibly, they were just late and
leaving the lemon tree shack now with the dog. So, that day, for the first time, I began to walk to the west.
I.
I wandered all over the town that day. Soon I realised that I would not find you. You were never destined for a
photograph. I smiled at your ingenuity. I couldn't find the lemon tree, or hear the dog bark or see a lone drift of
coconut oil on the watery setting sun. And yet as I wandered alone I felt suddenly and tacitly freed, as a fish might
feel, released from its bowl into the river or the sea. I remembered you telling me that after the Big Bang and
because of it, 'everything is entropic and wanders away from what it was'. The universe keeps expanding. And
because things are changing, if not incrementally all the time, it became as if there is nothing ever definite in the
world: Not even the sun, or Oman or the woman or any man. I realised this was the very nature Iʼd been born with,
and it grabbed me right now, the guttural quaver of your lingering sentence. Life was infinite and non-definite. Youʼd
spun this all over in my mind and it was frightening and exciting all at once, as though I could write my life how I
wanted to and walk in my own shoes, with my own soles and shoelaces now.
I knew youʼd begun your words elsewhere. Iʼd become a different version of the same soul with every step along
that shore and knowing this sent the pressures of gravity bubbling upwards through my veins and synapse.
Wherever you were, you did that. I was one part of the immediate universe and connected and distinct all at once.
A boy dove into the grey softness of the ocean beneath me. My eyes went to meet his. Perhaps Iʼd talk with you
again someday about how the water rippled fast toward us at the shore, like a bed being made. I knew there was
something that called me, and still does today, against the direction of that water. I think you felt it too. A pull away
toward other places, and other people who shared this sea we all lay on. I went down to the water as hymn-like
words came to step with me. Boats drift to deserts, and words toward mouths, shadows peel off, and the salt
washes on. What you did then was to tell me your story. What Iʼll do now is begin to tell mine.
S.C.W.
possibly a repost..hope not.
