The air is scorched, fetid, used. Falling asleep sweating no longer brings on any discomfort. Nor do the perpetual cries from the neighborhood’s crazed man which ricochet through the skinny alleys and off cracked medina walls.
Many days I wander out. Some days I try to avoid the beast. Those days I fail. One of her thousand outstretched tentacles inevitably catches me like a fly in web and pulls me in until I’m hopelessly lost in her maze, her gaze, again.
There’s a snake charmer with drugged cobras baking in front of him as he switches between playing his pipe hard to beckoning you in harder. Men with chained monkeys and clipped desert hawks do the same. Wrinkled women wrapped in ragged cloth snatch at the naked hands of nervous girls and finish a henna tattoo, sometimes even with glitter, before the stunned face can yank away. Musicians cloaked in sun-bleached blue Berber dress compete for your ear with dozens of speakers booming prayers to Allah from towers above. Keen-eyed shopkeepers drape you in scarves and satchels at the slightest detection of interest. Jars of spice promised to prolong life and boners are pushed under your nose by merchants sporting stained doctor coats. Motorbikes balancing mounds of camel leather and bread force sidesteps into an alley where the dark eyes of a beggar seem to be weighing the worth of your soul. A group of laughing boys slam against as they bolt by with a single friend in close pursuit. They are playing tag, perhaps in the world’s best place for the game. Others see this and clench their purse tighter.
It’s overwhelming most the time. Maybe all the time for most. But some of the time, if you pay close attention, you’ll catch a glimpse at the pattern. A key to the labyrinth. It all becomes so simple, so vulnerable.
Could this maddening complexity just be a way for her to protect herself? A shield from the onslaught of ravenous tourists who brutally scour her intimate streets in desperate desire to fulfill some bizarre fantasy? Am I one of the those tourists?
Many days I think not. Some days I know I am. Those days I can’t see her at all.
