THE OASIS IS CALLING US

"I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too!"

 ― William Wordsworth

 

On the left side, there was a middle-aged man, sitting next to some reddish sacks filled to the brim with pyramids of dried apricots. He was clicking a silver coin near a magnificent fountain that used to play with energetic cadences and wonderful rhythms. It used to be the symbol of the souk. It was a pillar from the glorious past and an emblem of prosperity but now numbness found its way all over it while the torrid heat circled around its marble floor, getting yellowish. The seller's swollen tongue was mixed with an insatiable thirst. He felt lost as if he was in a scorched-brown desert that sowed a pan of emptiness, a coliseum of death. The grilled and blasted smell of the sun tiptoed so closely to his face. His lungs were huffing and as he averted his eyes to the oasis to recall the awe-inspiring images of the past, lamentations seemed to feast on his brain cells. The oasis looked like an arena of mummified corpses.

The oasis was smacked by a shimmering heat haze as a ghoul’s soul, somehow like a trance-like mirage in the left corner of his eyes. Only the dust sparkled in the oasis. It was simmered by the searing heat swelters; it was somehow bereft of life and reckless in its movements. It was adamantine as a desert god. It seemed to flog everything that moved around and everyone that gazed with disgrace; it grilled everyone and everything under the remorseless golden rays of the sun. This seething bone-dry basin sea of draught was difficult to explain. The harshness of it inflamed the seller's brain and barbecued his thoughts, his family's next meal flashed to his mind with no sign of mercy as the unbearable tiredness salted his feelings. At the back of his throat, he felt as if the scanty scrub-bushes found a place to rest and escape from the scalding waves. The taste of the last sweet apricot was like a standing cancerous cactus in his mouth. So venomous and acidic. Everything around the oasis was nothing more than a theatre of death and agony.

I remember the oasis when I was a kid. I still recall the days where I used to roam and ramble there, whisper to all the plants and greet them with the most sweet-scented words of poetry, eye the green color erupting from the earth and marring each yellow spot. The palm tree fronds spilled ribbons of light during the sunset like a host of manicured fingernails and the water was lurching under it, somehow dreamy, bliss-blue. The oasis was like a nymph with melon sweet lips. Even the morning dew was like a call, a promise with a soothing voice. Now it is like a cellar plunged into darkness, a swamp of yellowness birthed from the earth. Nothing resists. Nothing combats. Nothing glints any more. I still recall every detail of it...