Dune Song by Anissa M. Bouziane

Author:Anissa M. Bouziane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Interlink Publishing Group Inc
Published: 2020-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

42

New York

Just prior to Rizzy’s departure for Sierra Leone, Ali had moved in as my roommate, occupying the couch in the living room. Undoubtedly, it was unusual for Moroccan men and women, even the most unconventional, to room together if they were not romantically involved or planning to be engaged. That we had chosen to do so could be read as a prelude to something, though Ali and I chose not to speak of it. Rizzy had warned me rooming with Ali would be a bad idea. I refused to listen. Had he been American, I would have set down rules about how to split the rent, the groceries, the phone bill, and the utilities. We were modern in all the wrong ways. I assumed he would volunteer to help, because I was certain our understanding went beyond words, transcended past disagreements. More than that, I’d assumed he would save me. Maybe he hoped I would do the same. Instead I got mad at him for drinking bourbon and watching TV till three in the morning, and he was upset that I never had the time to sit and discuss politics with him over breakfast.

Ali and I had been sharing the apartment for several weeks, when we found ourselves down near Ground Zero for the first time since my asthma attack on Vesey Street. This time I was mad at him for not having paid his share of the Chinese restaurant bill, so had been walking behind him, dragging my feet, trying not to inhale too deeply, for the ghostly dust of Ground Zero still hung about us.

“Ma chere, what has happened to you? When I first met you in Morocco, you were a woman of spirit and air—a woman like no other! And now, look at you! You’re a woman …” Ali hesitated for an instant. “A woman of stone!” He smiled his infuriatingly beguiling smile.

“Woman of stone?” I repeated, indignant, blind to how it might be funny to call a historian of the ancient world a woman of stone.

“Do you think this is the first city in the world to suffer?” Ali retorted. “How many other places on the planet have been bombed out and destroyed? Dresden, Hiroshima, Stalingrad, Grozny …History is littered with tragedies.”

“That has nothing to do with it!” I tried to explain in a French suddenly become halting: “You can’t … can’t compare my feelings with … places I’ve never been.”

“You’re not the only one who’s sorry this thing happened. I’ve been working here for months, I feel the pain too,” Ali replied.

“Well try feeling my pain first!” I yelled. How could I have thought this man was in any way similar to me? I stomped away from Trinity Church and down towards the large planks of plywood that concealed direct access to the site where the Towers had once stood. A few television cameras covered in plastic tarps stood alone out in the rain. The journalists that they belonged to were probably huddled in the TV trucks parked a couple of yards away.

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