Sunday. 05.12.2019

The dawn broke and we failed to hear it. We gather our senses and give Said a call. “If you want to sleep, then you sleep. I do not wake you.” Again, not to be mistaken for kindness. A statement not to be mistaken for anything, really. Remove emotion from the voice in your head and repeat the quote above. Then, you will have read it properly with more accurate delivery of intent. With this at day’s beginning, we head to the center to shop for an open business. We find dry goods and a jalabiya shop. I purchase a keffiyeh to bade the shams rays. A man of no English and two travelers of no Arabic meet and exchange pounds for meat. Upon return, S—— tells us the meat is old, too frozen, and not of a good cut. He assures us to tell him if we are ever unsure of our footing here so that he may correct our stance. Besides, he takes the meat and cooks an iftar for us, salvaging our buy and praying on the strength of our stomachs. After which, we return to the marketplace for a shisha session. There’s a football game on. Liverpool does not play. Liverpool resounds. Egyptian Mohamed Salah’s forward cripples all support for anything other. I tire as the town, again, wakes. Ramadan flips time’s coin and plops it on its head. Doesn’t strike me here much like fasting as it does an urge to disobey the universal timekeeping that the ancestors of this very nation have so created, mastered. Now, obliterating the sundial and replacing it with the phases of the moon, the Egyptian man defies his transgenerational sense of the day, making rich the inheritance of his descendants. Still, a slave to time they remain, inevitably, dancing under the moonlight.