With flushed cheeks and stirred minds, we moved to our next cup. Warm lemon water in heavy mugs. Tea-bags and sugar bags lying beside silently...all awaiting nemesis. The big cup of Aztec already gulped, our talk had now grown more direct, her company more life-like. I could see those hands move like a juggler's.
I answered her the way I mostly do while "opening up". Those very lines, with all the nonchalance, all the sanity. Again and again. Like a writer remembering his oft-quoted quotes, long after he has overcome the conviction that had gone into their making. Smart and sharp. Even intelligent. And generously aloof. Self-critical, sans self-pity.
Almost as a habit, I tried reading the effect my wise words were having on her, wishing she would feel the strength of my carefully-framed convictions. She smiled with twinkled eyes. Like older women usually do, having discovered the hollow in the souls of their younger companions. In a single moment I felt, she had metamorphosed into another. With a passionate adjustment of her veil she set herself up. And before I could decide whether she was agitated, offended or effervescent, words came tumbling out in that strangely powerful english...the way they had never before:
"You do not know my dear! All this talk, all this writing, this experience, your and all you see of others, become zero. You will think, "oh my god, what was I doing all my life? Before this? Where did I waste my breath and did not come to him sooner?" All this years without affection will look a waste. You will be transformed. Love has strange powers. And then you say to yourself- "I was such a fool!""
She took out a picture and sighed, remembering the one month and one week of marriage she had lived, before coming to India for seven years. His Kurdish poems by her side, the desire to translate them for the world, and the resolve of being together someday again. She had called it Love.
I sat there quietly, seeking the darkness of the streets outside...the brew had begun to melt the heart, freeze the mind.
I answered her the way I mostly do while "opening up". Those very lines, with all the nonchalance, all the sanity. Again and again. Like a writer remembering his oft-quoted quotes, long after he has overcome the conviction that had gone into their making. Smart and sharp. Even intelligent. And generously aloof. Self-critical, sans self-pity.
Almost as a habit, I tried reading the effect my wise words were having on her, wishing she would feel the strength of my carefully-framed convictions. She smiled with twinkled eyes. Like older women usually do, having discovered the hollow in the souls of their younger companions. In a single moment I felt, she had metamorphosed into another. With a passionate adjustment of her veil she set herself up. And before I could decide whether she was agitated, offended or effervescent, words came tumbling out in that strangely powerful english...the way they had never before:
"You do not know my dear! All this talk, all this writing, this experience, your and all you see of others, become zero. You will think, "oh my god, what was I doing all my life? Before this? Where did I waste my breath and did not come to him sooner?" All this years without affection will look a waste. You will be transformed. Love has strange powers. And then you say to yourself- "I was such a fool!""
She took out a picture and sighed, remembering the one month and one week of marriage she had lived, before coming to India for seven years. His Kurdish poems by her side, the desire to translate them for the world, and the resolve of being together someday again. She had called it Love.
I sat there quietly, seeking the darkness of the streets outside...the brew had begun to melt the heart, freeze the mind.
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