Hejab

In a Kuwait shopping mall

Some women wear the hejab like grey days

some like sentences.

Some like weights and some like knickknacks.

Some wear the hejab as if it is not there.

Some like only the hejab is there.

But some

(and they are always Kuwaitis in black)

some

(and they always go around in threes)

some

(they will have a shoulder bag on one arm and a handbag in the other)

some

- between the covered head and the ground sweeping hem -

with youth and beauty

and oil at 60 dollars a barrel

and black American soldiers in desert camps

to secure borders

with Gucci and Prada in town

and shopping the national hobby

some

with a cousin to marry next year and,

despite the wedding date and the black gloves,

a boy from computer class, who she has slipped her mobile number

these girl-women, they wear the hejab as a frame for eyes

the colour of desert thunderstorms.

DowelHarbour

Kuwait

Everywhere has a spot like this one. Places which are not forgotten, but which

there is simply no reason to go to anymore. A place for ships to sit when there is no

journey left in them. Here time moves within it’s own relativity. It works at the pace

of wooden ships turning into salt water. It is a world chronologically out of tilt

with the skyline of towers and banks you can see across the bay.

You will not notice this difference in time passing. It is a nothing part of a nanosecond

and the fact that the sliver planes climbing into the sky make no sound

you put down to the direction of the wind. No, do not turn off your phone, nobody will call you here.

And of the Indian watchman, with the silver rings and golden teeth you say, what

a great guy, he could be a hundred years old and never consider, that he might be just that.

Kingfishers, hawks and grey herons birds you have forgotten you have not

seen for – how long is it? Still fly their fish stalking lives; unaware there is no point.

The tropical forests have gone.

 The seas are empty.

The African plains

these bird’s ancestors once migrated to and from

have turned to desert.

How many times would you have to come here to notice that the old dowels are

not rotting into the mud but rising out of it. This world is finished. The time of wooden boats is coming around again. No. do not turn your phone off. Nobody can ring you here.

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