I had a dream, in the early grey morning, that I was standing on a rocky hillside in the desert sun, with the smell of sage in my head. There was nowhere I had to go, and nothing I had to do, and I have always wanted to see Damascus, so I started walking north. In my dream, it was 30 miles, through stones and the wind-twisted trees that grow along the cliffs, past goats with their considering eyes and their secrets, and past the boys who watch them, who called out to me, laughing, asking for American cigarettes.
Finally, I stopped at the crest of a hill, in the ruins of a fort built before the Crusades, and sitting in the shade of its crumbled columns I looked across the valley into Damascus. It was a maze, a city of negotiations and promises and unspoken agreements, a Gordian knot of alleyways and market awnings, bright with airing carpets and bedding, crowded with stone-colored blocks of houses leaning shoulder to shoulder, the better to whisper. I watched the white towers of the minarets and the golden domes of their mosques flare in the noon sun and fade to the ghosts of themselves in the distance of twilight. I walked back to my hillside through the long silence of the desert at night, under an impossibly wide sky brilliant with stars. The silence soaked into my skin until I, too, was full of silence.
As I approached my hillside at last, I saw a small fire burning. The desert at night is cold, and the color of the fire after so much night and silence woke a longing I didn't know I had. I went to the fire, past a man who sat at the edge of its light, and reached to catch its warmth in my chilled fingers. I heard him walk toward me, felt him touch my hair. When I turned, he kissed me. He smelled like the smoke of the fire, he tasted like cardamom and honey, his arms around me closed out the high, wild loneliness of the night, and I wanted the kiss never to end.
And so I stepped back. "I am a woman who can walk to Damascus," I told him, "and I don't need love."
Finally, I stopped at the crest of a hill, in the ruins of a fort built before the Crusades, and sitting in the shade of its crumbled columns I looked across the valley into Damascus. It was a maze, a city of negotiations and promises and unspoken agreements, a Gordian knot of alleyways and market awnings, bright with airing carpets and bedding, crowded with stone-colored blocks of houses leaning shoulder to shoulder, the better to whisper. I watched the white towers of the minarets and the golden domes of their mosques flare in the noon sun and fade to the ghosts of themselves in the distance of twilight. I walked back to my hillside through the long silence of the desert at night, under an impossibly wide sky brilliant with stars. The silence soaked into my skin until I, too, was full of silence.
As I approached my hillside at last, I saw a small fire burning. The desert at night is cold, and the color of the fire after so much night and silence woke a longing I didn't know I had. I went to the fire, past a man who sat at the edge of its light, and reached to catch its warmth in my chilled fingers. I heard him walk toward me, felt him touch my hair. When I turned, he kissed me. He smelled like the smoke of the fire, he tasted like cardamom and honey, his arms around me closed out the high, wild loneliness of the night, and I wanted the kiss never to end.
And so I stepped back. "I am a woman who can walk to Damascus," I told him, "and I don't need love."
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