the man who introduced himself
the man who introduced himself to me at a party in London
my first day in England after an absence of a decade
the greater part of my life
who, over smoking hash
told me he studied Turkish literature
and agreed to translate my police report
my statement to the Istanbul police
of being unconscious for twelve hours
drugged
while a new acquaintance
relieved me of $300 cash, my camera, passport, and possessions
and waking to push an old man away
and run through the streets to my otelyou remade those impossible words
Ingilizce’ni en guvenilir kaynagi…
back into my story
to what I could remember
but written down for me
like the truth
you can then ignorewhere are you now?
February 26th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
[…] Like the last “vignettes on regret” posting this is something I wrote some time ago but have the unhealthy urge to share now. Today my granddad came to Canada. More than fifty years earlier, his father had come to Montreal for farm work and couldn’t return to Tecumshun, Ireland. No pay, no way back to his wife, to his daughter or three young sons. My nan came today too. She has Parkinsons—none of us know—and she’ll die in eight years. Fairies will come first, but she’ll still die. And he’ll regret coming. But today, he’s just nervous. Antsy. Hasn’t seen us grandchildren since we left three years ago. Asks me, eleven, to come walk with him. He walks us away from the house and the people over to the grass fields he sees by the school, then up on top of one of those big, round, fake hills. Maybe that big mound was the highest he could get away from the ground he’d just landed on. We laid on the grass, on our backs, side by side. Our backs curved with the round of the soft hill. Looking into the too bright sky, summer sun. He smelled to me of sweat, shirt undone, his white chest hair coming out, all curled over his white undershirt. He asked me if I minded being there, on the hill with him. I hadn’t seen him for three years. He put his arm over my head and around my shoulders. No, not at all. Not at all, Granddad. […]