But they were darker, like smudges in watercolor. They floated far beyond the concrete buildings jutting out above me like rocks from an ocean. Looking up at the blue, I walked crooked on the sidewalk, practicing my Arabic but thinking of endless sky. I recited words from my lesson, rolling them around on my tongue, interchanging verb forms. I passed a man sitting in a doorway with mounds of raw cotton spilling out around him. He was stuffing the inside of a mufraj cushion, packing it with the hilt of his curved jambiya [dagger]. “Where you from?” The man’s r’s were heavily rolled. I flipped mentally through my vocabulary, searching for the words he had spoken. I had not heard them before and could not place their meaning. I was two blocks away before I realized the words he had spoken were English. I kept walking. I entered the street next to mine and was startled by a loud noise coming from two streets away. People were shouting amid the sound of breaking glass, metal clangs and thuds.
What do You think about Behind The Veils Of Yemen?
