Dilli

I have not slept for quite some time.  My mind has started to play with the edges of reality.  I am not tired.  The sun is rising. Instead of watching it I sit on the top of our hotel’s roof and allow it to silhouette me.  I stand at the edge of the roof;  lift my arms and cast a long shadow onto Dilli.

The place is a ghost town.  Everyone has left.  There is no movement that I can see, even the roosters are dulled in their cries.  It is too early in the morning, and too late by far.

I once sat near the Ministry Of  Education in the cracked center of this city.  I reached for a handful of dust to wipe my hands, a poor man’s sanitizer.  There was ash in the dust.  And I thought, “This is a city that knows how to burn.”

And the colors of dust and trash and stone slip like poetry in my head and I know what I want to say but have never had the words.  I came here to experience a simpler, more authentic life and instead found this.  This city.

Dilli, the garish gem in a discarded crown.  A homely girl missing her two front teeth standing in too large spiked heels and trying not to be a child, afraid to smile, but never afraid to dance.  And I’ve never liked cities.  Born on a farm raised in the burbs I like the feel of air around me I like the space and the trees. But this place.

And though I am only two stories up, I have been awake long enough to dream the city, to see it all stretching before me.  And there is where the urchins found me disconsolate and sang me a song.  And there is where I saw a pig as large as a buffalo.  There is the bar with the prettiest girls and there is the hostel with the books.  And there is my office and there is the ministry and the training hall and the art commune.  And will they all burn again?

I try to imagine it, Dilli in flames, burning, empty and alone.   My mind puts the fire out.  My mind fills the city with spring and flowers.  I’m not sure if this is before, or after. Never?  I see paved roads and sidewalks free of dust and trash.  I see trees and flowers and well groomed dogs.  People stop and chat under colored awnings and the urchins have school uniforms and notebooks.  They are buying Dosi, with the ease of someone who knows there will be another nickel.  And they are all, they are all Timorese.  And I can’t look anymore.  I open my eyes.

My colleagues are awake now. I can hear them packing and preparing to go.  And I am lost.  Ripped, rift and bereft.  Raise a glass, raise a glass to the only city I have ever loved.  To Dilli, may she never burn again.