Candle in the Other Window

SOMEWHERE AROUND THE WORLD, a little boy was playing in the yard close to the front door in reach of his mother’s voice. “Ala! don’t go near the street … don’t leave the doorway! Your uncle will be coming soon!” Alert as any ten year old and equally inquisitive as any other boy, Ala checked his activity and stepped back a few paces closer to the door. He looked at his clothing and brushed briefly where the dirt he had collected near his cuff and sandals before returning to his passion! The scorpion, raked back toward the door with the stick in his hand, was going to lose this battle regardless of his mother’s intervention. He was not one to give up easily. As he stirred at the crustacean in the sandy soil, he kept watch on the hustle of those around him, in the plaza and beyond. It was a thing he had learned to do at a young age. Only months before there had been a man gutted in the square. Even from the doorway, he could see enough to see what was happening. An angry mob had strung him up on a scaffold, poked and prodded until one angry man swung a blade. With one slice through air flesh and red gore sprung forth and the man was gone. He was killed in an instant. The people in the square had run around, some screaming, others jeering; but he’d stood still… feet planted for lack of emotion and on command by his mother not to move. She came to him then, and brought him inside before he could think to digest his vision. Now he stood, obedient, but aloof; in their wait for Ali to arrive. It was the kind of playground Ala lived in. It was one where the playing doorway could bring instant death. Arrival of the uncle would be his mother’s way out. They were seeking the only out known to anyone for generations. They were going to leave. She hoped to convince him to take her… take them with him on his next trip out of the country. She would talk to him, as they had talked when they were younger. In their teen years they toyed with the ideal of being tied to each other as man and wife. It was not uncommon to marry a family member or friend of the family to keep relations and interests close to heart. They had been close in their preteen years and both born on the family farmlands and vineyard in Tyre where the men of the family farmed, harvested and worked to make money from products made by family. Now, in Beirut, things were different. They were still family, but dependent on a different source of existence. Reliant on a different stage of society.

An unexpected cloud of dust and car doors startled Ala. He jerked to alertness so suddenly that the stick held in his hand gored the scorpion. The insect was skewered just as it had been created to do to its own unsuspecting victims of nature. Barely looking at it or the stick, the boy tossed both aside in his excitement. As the remnants of boredom bounced off the wall of his mother’s home, he dashed across the short distance to the vehicle and men inside. It was his uncle Ali. Ali tumbled from the car with bags of gifts in his arms nearly stumbling over his nephew and barely avoiding the heels of his friend and driver, Akram. Akram had come to the airport to pick him up from his most recent business trip to America and Dubai. A brief stopover to check business at Al Balhaga Printing and Binding on Chia al-Jiwar Street held the men’s attention only long enough to make note of any supplies necessary and to get details of any important news detrimental to success. The bags of gifts included items picked up for his mother and father, as well as a trinket for Ala’s mother and a special gift… a jointed brown teddy bear, for Ala’s baby sister. They were popular someplace else in the world. They were popular in places where teddy bears could bring restful sleep and peaceful nights to children left in a darkened room alone. The darkened rooms where imaginary visions of “boogey men” could keep them and a parent up climbing the wall. The jointed brown teddy bear had reached this destination as a result of being hand picked by a woman in the other world, at the last minute request brought on by sudden recall of a new infant born by someone “back at home.” His wife had sifted thru the pile of children’s new stuffed animals and after much deliberation ad cooing, come up with the bear in his bag. The both of them agreed it was the more endearing of the toys available. They had rushed thru the line, paid for the bear, a few underwear and an international power converter for his electric razor… it had an adapter plug for the power outlet in his destination country, and the device was rated for the same voltage as the power supply in that country. because voltage is different, he would need a voltage converter or transformer. A call from this homeland had put he and his wife into spontaneous motion for a rushed trip back to Beirut for supervision of damages to the building that housed his business… Al Balhaga.

Kadija stood in the shower letting the water jettison thru her hair and caress her naked back brooding on the last words said by the man she'd met and married, "You're gonna love me." It hadn’t been long ago that her husband had played that role... the caressing in the shower. The running of his fingers thru her hair and kissing, not provided here and now, of her neck and breasts. He’d only been gone a few months and already there was distention in the air. The president had started DESERT STORM… a war that straddled airspace between the safety of her homeland and the constant dis ease in his. Beirut, Lebanon sat in the middle of a world’s angst for social and religious ills. Although it was well above the tell tale prize of what most consider to be the “proper” HOLY LAND, attitudes and anxiety surrounding the race and ethnicities of populations that dwelled in the region for all history kept it a hot seat for sudden drama. She had married him on the fantasy borne in her mind as a child of one day being an important part of that world; the HOLY LAND… the land traveled by Jesus of the KING JAMES BIBLE on her grandmother’s dresser. She had married it. Married it and had title to it in the marriage license presented her by the Imam and county record in Dearborn, Michigan. Her somewhat secret identity as Kadija Muhammad was no secret to her husband. He also knew the origin of her name and the rationale of it’s application to her being. His birthplace was the favorite of her childhood Bible stories from MATTHEW 15… the woman with the daughter possessed. Not only did he represent her meager title to the history of religion, he was from the cradle of society which indoctrinated merchant trade. Tyre was infamous for it’s dyes and wine as was for it’s cedar wood. It was small issue that the little nation to the south was overrun with problems that caused undue stress on the neighboring Lebanon; but the fallible skills of the Israeli army and erroneous calculations for war strikes was a deed fit for trial by the world authorities at United Nations. Theirs was a civil struggle that should not spill into nations outside their borders. Killing, mangling and destruction of property belonging to those outside their own land was a heinous crime so described by all world authorities. For them, it was simply to have found someone with balls enough to speak up.

The water absorbed her totally, washing away emotions and stresses brought on by days of work and studying. In another eight months she would have a double bachelors degree and the stress she endured now would be worth having made the effort. Environmental Planning was a worldwide concern and a bachelor’s degree supported by Civil Engineering would draw attention of private corporations and government agencies anywhere in the world. For now, a haphazard income with the real estate license she’d earned only a year before finding him, brought her portion to their household. His business had been inherited from family lines extending from his father’s father. Before they took up the intricate practice of compiling and covering of books considered precious in his hemisphere and her own. His family held property in the wine regions of the south. They were a good portion of what remained of the family …or “kou” from “by” Tyre (whichever city/state/region they were from), and everyone knew them. Clouds of steam that lingered in the air about her suspended themselves as thickly as her ides of their future together. Despite what seemed to have been the good fortune of marrying a claim to her spot on Mediterranean beaches, she could no more for see her role in existence in that world than could the woman of Canaan demise the demons what possessed her child. They placed their hopes for success in GOD as the Canaan woman had in Jesus.

to be completed

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