Luisa Giugliano, p.3
VII.
It took some time to decipher the traffic patterns. Women walked east and men west, they would stop and talk, at stretches that occasionally lasted for years. Unfurling their straw mats and making love on a corner, raising children, continuing on, fatherless boys picked up and carried by strange men they would call uncle.
Some of the members of the hajj gave their stories and identities away.
They were my brothers, who had crawled through the alcoves, they had wives
who had vanished...
The women were temporarily alive, able to keep their frontal lobes churning,
but were not
dyed-in-the-intention-vats
enough.
Were not fabricated as fruits of a harvest, were not active, entirely.
They explained their stories and the grave situation of half-lives by the
side of the road.
They showed me their knee pads and baby paputzes.
It took some time to decipher the traffic patterns. Women walked east and men west, they would stop and talk, at stretches that occasionally lasted for years. Unfurling their straw mats and making love on a corner, raising children, continuing on, fatherless boys picked up and carried by strange men they would call uncle.
Some of the members of the hajj gave their stories and identities away.
They were my brothers, who had crawled through the alcoves, they had wives
who had vanished...
The women were temporarily alive, able to keep their frontal lobes churning,
but were not
dyed-in-the-intention-vats
enough.
Were not fabricated as fruits of a harvest, were not active, entirely.
They explained their stories and the grave situation of half-lives by the
side of the road.
They showed me their knee pads and baby paputzes.