now fading memories

(let the dead bury their dead)

Following Arabic language training
I took a job in Cairo. Cairo morphed
into Baghdad. And Baghdad into Damascus.
Sacred seats of ancient caliphates. (“Caliphate”
by the way, gave us the word “California”
via the Islamic conquest of Spain.)

“Cairo writes, Beirut publishes,
Baghdad reads.” Or so they say.
And Beirut Is close enough to Damascus
for government work. So they say.
I experienced the entire Islamic civilization
knowledge trifecta in four brief years.

I wondered how, after all my foreign exploits
ended (they couldn’t go on forever!),
I would survive without hearing
the call to prayer throughout the day!

Finally, I am back in DC, retired
from travel’s stresses and strains.
There is no audible call to prayer here,
no mosques with loudspeakers
near my neighborhood.

But beyond the normal city sounds –
the subway passing through underneath,
the occasional sound of ambulance sirens
heading to the nearby hospital –
I can often detect the low frequency rumbling
of the federal bureaucracy at work,
grinding compliant human souls
into inanimate dust.