The air of what once was is tingling. It shimmers through the fistfuls of iron clasped in the bus, the calls of the youth in their soccer teams, in the eyes of a distant lion.
I appear, now, as a traveller. On my first night, the street was like open arms. She displayed to me her lights like a mother’s ornaments — even through the window’s glass I knew the feel, I knew the scent.
There is some memory of our ancestors, still blurring in the hidden corners of our veins. If science states that at one time a girl with a different face from mine roamed this land — or one much like it — then I am inclined to believe it. Sometimes, when I visit quiet places, places where the air runs soft, hugging the edges of the stones like it is afraid to let go… I think I watch her walk before me. I think I find her footsteps in the sand, a mark that some things never change, a mark that this is less an introduction than it is reunion.
When I sit among the dusty paths and the wind whips around me, I think I can glimpse trails of those who are now gone. I feel as if, if only I could harness it, this feeling might let me gaze into the foundations of the earth. Perhaps it is in lands like this, where stories stretch out beyond Man, that our ancestors remain: in the shifting leaves, in the quiet moments between conversations, in the dust particles that float in the wind.
The cities are different. The people too — we have shed all recognition of each other, but sometimes children keep it. Sometimes, inside their eyes, I find my own.
Sometimes, the mountains stare back.
Why does it not feel like I’m a foreigner
but rather
that I have, at last, returned
and found within my home
a thousand years of change to mourn?
The Malfoy Case is at Chapter 26, now!
I finally posted my first work for the Mad Max fandom: Erosion (which is inspired by the erosion pillars in the picture above).
Nasim Mansuri 