Flying an Ancient Rug from Tangier

What if finding manna is the prelude
to losing everything else?
Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha—
morning, midday, afternoon, sunset, nighttime.
Five times through the hours, my father prays.
His back is bad, yet still, he kneels on his sajjāda toward Mecca.
Q. Any religious preferences, Sir?—the visiting nurse asks my father.
A. I could eat anything—the leg, the goat, the whole thing.
From my cousin, Mesalik, I borrow a hijab, or is it an hijab?—because
Mesalik looks like me, how could she not? We sit here dreaming of animals.
And we share our granny’s name, Mesalik, and gambol
in tempo to Granny’s woodchucks chomping for baba ghanoush.
The tall grasses we name for our handsome country neighbors,
but we curious—could farmer boys have smooth hands?
Those Western lessons, we root and rhubarb, drawing in circles—
tilting, spinning, planets dissolving into our ears and eyes.
Still, five times through the hours our foreheads touch ground
buzz such futz from our brains. Five times, even the history
of libraries, of museums—their golly gee willikers work
vanishes in fog. Or maybe the entire galaxy deserts us, including ourselves.
But what if the prelude is just a prelude? Anything lost simply becomes
anything else—manna lifting us as light can do, rivers even. Or maybe Granny
tempts sun, sky, teases beehive hair and we rev-up—the three Mesaliks
on Granny’s ancient rug from Tangier. We like saying Tangier, or is it Tangiers?
Photo by Juli Kosolapova