Fifty-seven across and five
down. I count cold bricks under my knees. To my left, fifteen bricks form
the low wall. To my right, eighteen. Was the side near the entrance meant
for flowerpot, maybe a statue of a lion? This building used to be a bank,
maybe a government office. It remains stern, graying, empty, windows nailed
with wood, seven stories. I am across from the mosque, where the fourth
wall, the unacknowledged audience, stands, sits, kneels, spits and sleeps.
A thin woman sitting next
to me furiously scratches her ankles, rubs out blue lines, varicose veins
florescent against incandescent skin. Her wrists and ankles creak, like
the thin plank floors of the building across the street. The smell of urine
grouts together sidewalk and structures. There is no sun on this side.
The building becomes a tree. Three men in heavy jackets cover their faces,
read newspapers, in the shade, backs flat against cracked concrete.
A taxi pulls up to the fifth
parking meter. Cabs exchange places all afternoon, like dabke dancers costumed
in yellow, swirling each other in and out of line. The door swings open,
letting out the stale air settled between the torn leather steering wheel
and a dusty dashboard with a Koran small enough for a porcelain doll. A
car heading for the freeway, almost swipes the loosely hinged door from
its shell. The cabby calmly rubs his freshly shaved jaw and drops a dime
through the slots of a meter painted to look like metal, flashing “expired”,
keeping time in the low fog.
Around the corner, last week,
there was an anti-war march. Thousands with placards handed out like parting
prizes. Today cars roll by antique shops, and a payphone missing its black
receiver. Fast food forms the cub with the smell of vegetable oil and bread,
colored like wax. All along, five liquor stores, three check cashing joints,
four Chinese restaurants and twelve cars fighting for one hour parking,
uphill. A line shapes the sidewalk, scattered but linear, a constellation.
It’s dotted with street- rappers- artists-musicians-sleepers- beggars-hustlers-dealers-walkers-vendors-workers.
Music fills the spaces where
wind would have howled between a group of boys and too-tall buildings.
Old Arabic rhythms sneak up under the rhymes of hip-hop. How did Jay Z
ever find the beats of Abdel Halim? I feel like I’m squeezing through
the streets of Egypt. Except here, sour beer smells replace the stench
of taamiye and incense. An empty green bottle flies towards dirty
white shoes hung in the air from a telephone wire, judged killable. The
bottle lands in a river of cigarette butts floating on fermented bits of
soup kitchen styrofoam. The make-shift boats get tossed against the low
curb and tire marks.
A woman walks out of the
MUNI station, slips a bus pass into her purse, and pulls out a polyester
black hijab. Ties the back, a bow behind her neck. Crossing the street,
she receives four nods and one Salaam-aleykum. Men’s eyes avoid hers.
She looks up, waiting for the light to change.
A younger woman lingers outside.
She slowly moves black curls across her forehead and straightens her long
green skirt, elongating the lines. A young guy, zipped up in Addidas like
it’s the eighties, catches her eye from across the street. He looks her
up and down, wiping his hands along his sweats. He notices imprints of
gravel on his palms, a second set of lifelines. She smiles soft and he
jumps across cars, like an old-school Frogger game and follows her inside.
The pear-tinted doors swing closed.
I keep looking for turquoise
tiles and gold domes. Instead, streaks of black paint, Arabic letter on
glass, name the structure, Masjed. Three arched windows face the
street, like thick eyebrows. It’s impossible to see inside. The rooms are
guarded by the long angles and flattened walls. Below, doors open and close,
a bow of the head, a handshake. Two men in leather jackets, one in a white
galabya, a woman with a paper-bag, baguettes peeking out like pillars;
two taxi drivers sipping on coffee, an old man talking on a cell phone,
a girl with tied up hair, silver hoops and sparkling eye-shadow.
Above the doors, the second
floor, an empty hall. It used to be a factory. I imagine silk skirts, fuchsia
and burgundy. A sweatshop of ain’t getting’ paid nothin’ spinsters. Now,
some sneak in to sleep on clean floors. Windows you can’t see through.
I get up, noticing for the
first time that my legs are longer than five bricks in length. I adjust
my scarf and walk through the doors. I turn left towards the women’s entrance.
A guy drops his smoke outside the door and turns right.
Winter 2004
