Annie Q Syed

No. 10 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

One part of the authentic self wanders light years out in the interstellar spaces,

in exile from us.

The other part is buried so deep within us that to resurrect it would be another return from exile.

~ Harold Bloom

More than 3,500 years ago, 100 miles west of Luxor and 300 miles south of Cairo, there was  a road next to the ancient Girga Road known as Bin Abas. It was one of the many roads which led to nowhere. Sometimes it brought the pedestrians back where they began and other times some of these small pathways led onto others and no traveler returned back quite the same when they did finally make their way around.

Thais was one such passerby.

Tableau of scenes and symbols can be found on the walls surrounding Bin Abas to four sides of her story.

One story holds that she came looking for Goddess Maat, the Ancient Egyptian principle of truth, order and justice.

Another story states that she was in love with Sinuhe, who holds life of Sycamore trees.

The third story reveals that her name wasn’t even Thais and she was in fact a young man who often got lost.

The fourth story is the most complex. The carvings reveal a disturbing tale which many from the area still regard as a possibility.

Thais met a seventeen year old boy one afternoon who asked her directions to Girga Road because he didn’t know how to get there on his own. Thais, quite older and more experienced than him, told the boy a shorter route was possible through Bin Abas. The boy had short brown hair, darker brown eyes, and wore a long white linen shirt with a blue scarf wrapped around the middle. The light colors made his skin appear darker than it really was.

They say it was the bone dehydrating heat of the desert and the boy never made it to Girga Road.

It was shortly after that when Thais began speaking in fours. She had four names and four stories for all her selves.

It would have scared the townspeople but she was usually accurate in her four perspectives of herself.

Thais lived like this for a long time. No one knows her age.

That was a long time ago.

Eventually someone who was scared of her many selves brutally murdered Thais.

Now the world has many unauthentic four sides striving to be one which is not possible.

Research for this story provided by links shared on Twitter by @WaltPascoe and @Taabie . Thank you for generating serendipity. : )

inspiration |ˌinspəˈrā sh ən|

noun

c.1300, “immediate influence of God or a god,” especially that under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiration, from Latin inspiratus: “inspire, inflame, blow into,” from in-“in” + spirare “to breathe.”

“in you everything sank!” ~ Pablo Neruda

More dangerous than an affair is the idea of one. Affairs end; ideas live on once delivered to the imagination, Sogah.

I wake up in the middle of the night, Sogah—where is the middle when you never fall asleep?  I dig through the wind’s skin and scratch scratch scratch at nothing. I look for Vega, Lyra, Altair and million, million, stars, Sogah, to give me something, anything to ignite what was once there.

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No. 8 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

Children often grow up to forget that their parents—regardless of their intentions—were unreliable narrators for the facts of life.

Aix-en-Provence, a small town in southern France, was built around the dual identity: a town of water, a town of art. A visitor to France felt he or she had somehow ended up in Aix, as it is often referred by the local residents, even if he or she had prepared for a trip to ensure not missing out on this sun-drenched and easygoing hometown of Paul Cézanne.

Cours Mirabeau, one of the most famous streets in town, lined with green trees and cafes hosts a flea market on Sundays. On either side of the road built in the 17th century, in the place of the former ramparts, the leading families of the nobility built elegant homes to show off their success, sometimes ostentatiously. With richly decorated frontages on the Cours side, and shared hidden gardens opening on to a parallel street, this architectural style created remarkable urban unity.

Composed of the Saint-Sauveur market town and the City of the Counts is the oldest part of the center of Aix known as Old Town. Some of the smaller streets in Old Town have kept their evocative names, such as the rue Esquicho-coudo, a narrow passage dating from the middle ages. Ruins of the old medieval ramparts may also be seen right at the top of the rue Gaston de Saporta.  On Mondays the local residents take advantage of the missing crowd from Sundays.

It was on one such small street in Old Town where Lucas, who carried his mother’s features well and at the age of nine had yet to show any similarities to the father, accompanied his father for a stroll on Monday afternoons.

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No. 6 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

This photograph is bigger than the story which follows, which definitely can expand to a proper short story.

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation. ~Rilke

Faizel met Daisy, a woman who would eventually agree to marry him, on the train from Rome to La Spezia. Daisy was headed to Cinque Terre, located off the picturesque western Italian Rivera near La Spezia, and Faizel decided to join her.

He mistook her traveling alone through Italy for passion to explore, whereas Daisy had a checklist of things to do before getting married one day soon. Through pure coincident, which Faizel didn’t believe in, Daisy was staying in the first village town, Monterossa, of the five towns which comprised Cinque Terre, a town he wished to see during his stay with friends in La Spezia.

Daisy, as he would later learn was a name she had chosen for herself, had a domineering air and a mouth that held a life of its own. At times her mouth coordinated well with the sentiments reflected in her eyes; other times, most of the time, the mouth was aloof and projected a huge, hallow grin. But her mouth was an artist’s dream or at least the artist Faizel was at that age where you believe a spark of love in Italy can carry a relationship through a lifetime.

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No. 5 in the series Tuesday’s Torrent.

Photograph courtesy of Tim Corbeel.

I love this photograph.

engram |’engram|
noun
a hypothetical permanent change in the brain accounting for the existence of memory; a memory trace

The darkness belongs to no one between the hours of three and four.  A suspension of  theories, feelings, conclusions, that adhere neither to the night nor to the day.  It is a podium wreathed with dreams, memories, and thoughts that are not quite yours to claim. What can’t be deciphered in those hours is invented for coherence.

Winds carry stories in them.

Some nights I like to think the stories in the wind that come with the darkness belong to me. I wish all stories were love stories. I don’t know why I wish that since most love stories never manifest the way anyone wants, and if they do it is because we don’t know the whole story, clinging to the parts we don’t know.

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