Cairo Divorce Twice Told, and: Reflecting Absence

Cairo Divorce Twice Told

(1952 Nasser’s purge of foreigners, 2011 Arab Spring)  after Lucette Lagnado, daughter/author of Man in the Sharkskin Suit

Dreaming of manicured boulevards as yet unbarricaded,lined with mansions still pristine in their neoclassicism,I float above courtyards lush with trees of rose-gold apricots.

In senescent sun, I ascend effortlessly to the terraceof Shepheard’s Hotel. My father, shiny in his white sharkskinsuit, is busy dealmaking, post–World War II, but not too busy

to ask if he may dance with my mother. They waltzunder Orion’s winking belt at L’Auberge des Pyramids,King Farouk’s ballroom. At our apartment I hear my mother

discuss French classics she once studied at Bibliothèque Cattaouibefore marriage and children curtailed her curiosity.Her mother prepares the Shabbat meal. Hidden

behind the window’s silk drape I watch the sinuous streetsof Tahrir Square swell with men clutching velvet pouches,discreet holders for prayer shawls and skullcaps,

as they walk to Gates of Heaven, the corniced temple wheremy parents wed, and I spy the bronzed-umber boy I adore.At dinner the family chews cinnamon-spiced lamb

and braided challah glazed with the sweetness of apricotscooked into syrupy marmalade and sealed in tinssoon to conceal jewels and gold coins carried to Brooklyn

where I wake struggling for breath in an airless roomand mourn the dissipating aroma of apricots, a winey incense;the feel of their downy nap, conjoined hemispheres

cupped in my hand; and their flavor, honeyed muskof nascent love; so seductive to my senses as to enticea return sixty springs later to the Square where I search

for baskets of ripened apricots carried by young women,their cursive lips coated with commingled wordsof Christian, Muslim intellects. Instead I find men’s

flanks and shoulders pressed flesh to flesh, bruised rawto the pith. Crimson stains pavement and streaks banners.I struggle to break free, bow my head and recite Kaddish

for the second exile. I retell of apricots in absentia,the whisper of ferment, burst of juice, broken caressof cleft globe upon my palate, a description more finite

than what I want to express—sweetness, the taste I wantto last; sweetness, the lyric I want to hear; sweetness,the blessing I want to give and receive, a bite please.

Reflecting Absence

At the National September 11 Memorial, New York City

Bronzed parapets limn the grave of nearlythree thousand, their names stencil-cutinto panels. I lean close and listenfor a whisper.What reaches the ear isa cascadethat describes the perimeter of the voidsplit into recessed pools,

a squared pair of flattened feet. Twinnedsentries and their civilian denizensexploded into a nullity.The ultimate miscarriage, bloodemptied out, justice filteredthrough pulverized bone, mangled steelsunk deep beneath the groundof zero,

zero divided, an impossibility.I was not there. It was not me shoutingbut cries reverberate inside my headfrom bodies trapped across bodiesof water. How to distribute their discourse,document their words so as notto be blownaway? [End Page 313] [End Page 314]