Basata

It's an early rise on the coast of El Aqaba gulf. The wind is urging the sea to brush against the feet of those who were careless enough to sleep on the beach, away from their shelters. Bamboo huts were never meant to be as tempting as a blanket of stars. The sun will make sure that sleep is not king today, because this is a place where dreams take place in the waking hours, and not the other way around.

Someone is playing the flute somewhere. It strips today off the calendar and throws it where time is only a triviality. There are no snakes here to be teased, but if a snake were to exist, it wouldn't have danced much differently from this bronze eternity, who commanded the attention of every male under the blazing sun. Rumor goes that her dance brings the waves curling back to shore, and without her, there would be no ebb, nor tide. No one can hope to see more of her legs than what she has allowed through the fragile linen she's folded herself twice within. It is her way of mourning the crimson moon, which drowned deep under many years ago. It happened when Moses decided to leave Egypt, and negligently split the sea apart without paying much attention to the repercussions. The old moon's color seeped through the fabric of earth, and into the sea bed. She made sure that everyone would call it the Red Sea, and share her mourning while she kept the Earth turning, uninterrupted by the loss of one of its two original satellites.

(written March 2008)