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{jason hardung} faces on the ceiling It's been three weeks since Severine died I've been watching movies of my past playing across the ceiling of Hotel Insomnia. All these faces I once knew, cameos passing through the exit of a film some in black and white, some in color piano keys and minor chords banging out the soundtrack and I wonder where they are now-- Malik and I worked at a cabinet factory together. I never understood his Muslim faith, the way he dressed, the things he ate, they way he got on his knees religiously as shadows lengthened in the sun. We became good friends he invited me over for dinner he told me his story-- he was a child drawing circles in the sands of Libya while vultures blocked out desert light his father went to work one morning, and never came home. The family searched four years for him. Finally, they found out Gaddafi's men arrested him for something he wrote years earlier. Malik never showed the pain on his face but I could see it resting behind his eyes- a sedated tiger waiting for the next circus. Malik has his faith here now, a couple Middle Eastern grocery stores, his wife and children, his father still standing behind bars in Africa. I can't even imagine how that would feel, I said to Severine one day, forgetting that her father never came home when she was 19, not from a political kidnapping, but because he didn't want to live without her mother who had just passed. It's not a good feeling when someone you love never comes back, she said without hesitation. I want to touch the faces on the ceiling. Tell them, I know pain, I know uncertainty and I know how a certain breeze can bring something pure or it can leave a ghost. We are angry at things we can't see. Sometimes it's easier that way. |
