Free Write: Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

She’s just cut her hair. The thick mane used to reach the small of her back. She was a hair model and blames it on a bad dye job. But the truth is women cut their hair in crisis and she was glad for change, the possibility of rebirth. Now when she tucks her chin in, you can see a woven scar at the base of her skull—a surgeon’s handiwork from seven years ago.

She chooses her men based on their problems. The more incapable they are the more attractive her challenge. People born in a crucible can be addicted to dysfunction. Friends wonder if she enjoys being torn down for the sheer satisfaction of building herself back up.

But when he hit her it felt like her head would split open at the seam. And when he cheated on her she thought with shame and embarrassment about staying. “You see,” she says, “nothing happens in a vacuum.”

Sometimes we lose our freedom. We roam around with our throats closed up. The sun is hard to look at because it reminds us of our own darkness. Our brains hiccup over and over the same events.

            Everyone plays out their parents’ marriages or non-marriages.  I’ve seen women drawn to men like their fathers—self-righteous, neglectful, or abusive.  I’ve seen men push women away so as not to suffer the same pain as their mothers, and in the process, become their fathers.

The narrative flows ad infinitum.

            Who will you refuse to forgive?

The Imam and his Wife

      The Imam and his wife sit as a king and queen in folding metal chairs. The young leader has long slender fingers that open and flick as he speaks. He makes an L-shape with his thumb and pointer-finger that twists by his head to express an idea. In between questions, he reaches for his wife's hand. The woman is draped in a black robe, bird-like and still. But her stillness makes the entire room fidget. Her skin is white as the walls and her painted down-cast eyes belong in an illuminated manuscript

       The audience is not used to this kind of beauty. They’re unsure whether to regard this woman as princess or slave. The California boys stare at her intently, waiting for her to move, for small signs of suffering and oppression. They are lost in exotic mystery and their ears close up as if underwater. Suddenly the wife’s laughter crashes in. She crosses her legs and the hem of her robe rises to reveal a pair of blue jeans and white socks with red hearts on them. And with this flash of red, white, and blue the boys chuckle and breathe easy.

Two Twenty Minute Writing Exercises

 #1. Description of Abraham from Jordan:

     Abraham is one of five local Bedouins allowed entrance into the touristy “Cave Bar” located right outside the gates of Petra. His dress is part gangster, part Bedouin. His jeans are slung low on his thick hips and his head is wrapped with a thin white cloth. This man constantly moves. When he sits and talks, he rocks back and forth. He acts out his stories, occasionally gripping the armchair to show someone’s surprise. He lets his words gain momentum as he swings and the tourists glare when he laughs with his tongue stuck out. His dark arms are not inked with a tribal roadmap like the rest of the Bedouins that pinpoints their site-specific heritage, their blood tie to the land. His movements are Western. He mimes out gestures from movies and magazines, but he tells me he will never visit America and he tells me he is stilling waiting to be allowed back into Jerusalem.

 #2. S.Y Agnon was the author of “Fable of the Goat,” a symbolic short story that describes the connection between Jews living in the diaspora and in Israel. In the story, a son travels and finds the Land of Israel. He sends for his father by tucking a note inside a goat’s ear and directing him back home. When the father fails to find the note, he slaughters the animal and thinks his son is lost forever. The goat represents many things, including the “easy” pathway to Israel, which has been destroyed. Below is an imagined dialogue between S.Y. Agnon, who came to Israel in the early 1900s and Abraham about the story. (Btw, the goat is magical and its milk tastes like Eden.)

           “It was stupid to kill the goat with milk and honey flowing from the udders,” Abraham puts his hands up to his chest, pats, and gestures milking his nipples.

            Agnon smirks and nods, shifting in his seat.

            “I think this goat was my brother actually.” Abraham lifts a glass of frothy beer to his lips. “The son killed my brother, sent him to his death. My goat brother, used to live in the mountains, caves—a happy life.” Abraham sets the glass down and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “The Bedouin have a saying: strong as the desert, soft as the sand, move like the wind, always free. Now his blood is spilled all over,” Abraham claps his hands and spreads them out in the air. “The old man killed the messenger.”

            “It is not your messenger,” Agnon says and takes a sip of tea.

“You see honey and milk, I see blood and sand. I cannot visit where my family has been buried. My blood,” Abraham extends his arms to show his tree-root veins.

“Yes but every Jew is tied to Israel. Deep in the ground, every Jew that has ever or will ever exist, is connected. The internal Israel and the physical Israel. All their ghost souls, all the people, belong in Israel.”

“It is my home too. Rocks, sky, water,” Abraham shakes his opened hand.

“ I am talking of a promise.”

Abraham sits back, raises his eyebrows, and cocks his head to the side. He shrugs and looks away, drumming his fingers against the armchair. “Strong as the desert, soft as the sand, move like the wind, always free,” he murmurs in a sing-song voice.

            

The City of Lions

  Tonight there is a Medieval festival in the Christian quarter of the Old City. Dancers attached to pulleys run up and down one of the ancient walls at a ninety degree angle. Dressed up as knights, they mime out a literal war-dance in spotlight.  They kick off the wall and spin, entangled.  Below, two men fight, striking each other's shields with swinging balls of fire. Deeper into the quarter, a crowd gathers around a fire breather. The man is dressed in peasant rags and spins a torch lit at opposite ends. His dark face is slick with moisture as he blows out flames. Everything suddenly becomes alive--a scene straight out of 1,001 Arabian Nights.  The peasant drops his torch to climb a suspended rope that extends into the night sky. He twists the cord around his body, folding, spinning, balancing. As he dances above us, rain suddenly breaks and I'm forced to wrap my scarf around my head like a Muslim. The rain pours down harder and harder and I cannot help but throw my head back and smile with all my heart: I'm here, I'm here.