A bevy of dancers known as Ishiololo belted out, song after song, and left the audience in a trance craving for more. In line with the theme of the day, they mimicked drawing battle lines, unsheathed wooden swords and sang war songs to the crowd that had thronged the local stadium, which had seen many bulls lock horns.

This was Chemasisi, the village known more for non-performance than achievement. It was sandwiched between Ukololo hills, the home of the great god of thunder Umeme, and the habitation of Eshakala, the great god of wrath. It was well served with the great river Olmoloti, which served as the lifeline to the people: water to drink, bathing, swimming and watering points for the animals.

Chemasisi was also a battlefield and the river Olmoloti was a bone of contention between the two antagonistic gods, Umeme and Eshakala. Thunder always struck and wrath would follow in their battle for supremacy. Even the people at times would go for one another’s jugulars. (more…)

Long white robes
sarees, shalwars
steaming Indian food
incense, flowers
heavily perfumed roses
white bindis
between eyes
blue, green or gray
tears
glistening or
coursing down
music
dulcet, sweet, soft
reaching high (more…)

fit my clothes
if you would fit my clothes
and take on a different
face
would we be more the same
when i was smiling too?

Mona inhaled the fairly fresh crisp air as she took big strides. She had taken up walking lately as one of her favorite pastimes. It was not that she enjoyed the physical exercise even though she did immensely, but her solitary walks and ramblings had become a metaphor for something else, for her need to “get out”, her way of coping with the unbearable bouts of restlessness that visited her. Walking helped vent her frustration, her disappointment at the way life had turned out, at how nothing had lived up to her illusory expectations, a viable even if a temporary release from the shackles and limitations that she felt encumbered her on a daily basis. Focusing on her feet, she often felt that she was trying to out stride time and place, at the same time trying to incorporate them within her whole being. What was she running away from? However far she walked she seemed always to return to the same place as if she were on a treadmill, walking on the spot. Mona shuddered as she zipped up her jacket feeling a strong gust of wind rattle through her; she had crossed over to the Cornice and could now view the sea with all its fury at close range.

There was something so beautiful yet so disconcerting most of the time about Alexandria in the winter. Today, it seemed that the whole of the city had been tinted or veiled with a thin film of murky gray. Mona blinked twice wondering if that grayness was within or without? Looking at where sky met sea, where water embraced air in a foreboding lock, where the ephemeral connected with the eternal, fantasy with reality, the mundane with the surreal …………the distinctive line that separated these two domains was smudged, bleary, making it difficult to discern, making it resemble an expansive grave of uncertainty. (more…)