the sorcerer

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it's been a month since i've used my physical voice for anything except mumbling "thanks" or using the simplest possible strings of words slow motion to speak with hassan. for the rest i use sign language. i feel like that if i do not successfully make an english friend my voice will shrivel up and be lost.

i waited there on the ledge, now it became dark, and the stars came out slowly, the big dipper upside down and a bunch of other stuff i don't recall ever seeing. the upside down big dipper pulled up from the horizon and made its way into the center of my view, very late now, still on the ledge... keeping busy with thought. i waited, a little puff of orange cloud passed low over the city, lit by the city, from right to left, until it cleared my view.

the stairwell is open from the top to the bottom, strapped to the side of the little brick building, i was sitting on the outer hand rail, which was more of a ledge, so that by looking down past my feet i could see into the stairwell of each floor right to the ground and across an old basketball court with rotting hoops, over a tall rusted iron fence, through a weird hollow building in construction and out over the whole city under the upside down big dipper.

i put my boots back on and gathered up my supplies on the ledge into a bundle. an old white crazy man came tottering out into the basketball court dragging a plastic chair behind him, carrying a fresh beer, not his first. he always drags that chair out around this time, but from up on the ledge, overlooking the entire court, his long shadow slumped in that chair in the middle of an empty space was altogether a very holy sight. he sat like he was waiting for someone to sit crosslegged infront of him and be told the story of his life.

i swung my feet back over onto the stairwell and hopped down to the court and made a right at the crazy man out by the hoops. crossed over to him very slowly and sat down crosslegged square in front of his feet. i asked politely if he minded my sitting, he asked me why i was in africa, without any other sentence first, i responded that i was not sure, i was looking for something... nothing, everything. he became cross and told me to go back to my student friends, we were all the same, did i even know what i wanted? i asked him why he was in africa, he gave me a terrible look and swore not to talk to me until firstly i answered his question, am i a student, a tourist or a business man, i must be one of these three and until i was he would not speak.

i confessed to be neither and yet all three in some way and at this he smiled, and i asked him if he moved, or if this was his place. he said that this was his place and that he did not move. he shuffled in his chair and drank half his beer in one sip, his long gray beard and deep set watery eyes, wavy hair, at least sixty years old. from nowhere he shouted, if i did not resign to choose one of the three categories for myself, student, tourist or business, then he would leave or i would leave. i began "you were here first" but before i could say another word he rose from the chair and swore and wobbled back across the courtyard into the darkness. i continued to sit at the foot of the chair for quite some time, hoping he would come back, the mystery, clearly really a mad wandering old sorcerer, shrivelled up and hating everyone who wears a collared shirt and knows nothing about anything and is too young to know it anyways.

i got up from the spot and went to my room and slept like an idiot and thought about how i would translate the night into words.

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