stars, stars

I woke up early that day, years ago, when I believed a place that named itself "the city of drama" would prove to be my alternative salvation. The kind that comes not from steeples or spilled holy water, but from feet on gravel and mint tea. It was already hot before the sun rose, and my South African traveling partner was still cradling her pillow, a glass of rosewater and a book about an ideological continent on her hostel bedside table.
I slipped on the too-large orange slippers, bought in the 4 p.m. medina where the children beggers asked for coca and the store-owners drowned you in tea and "Insha'Allah" was a way of accepting life instead of religion.We had drank too many bottles of red wine and smoked too much hashish the night before, and I remembered to grab my last-ink-filled pen to write my own impromptu ode to the place where I would feel more lost and more at home than I ever would again.
After I climbed the stairs to the roof, where the man from the coast was dozing in the corner, I watched the world begin in shades of snapped-open blue shutters and old men in white robes selling mangoes. My face pressed to the rose-colored concrete, I took off my mask and promised the Everyday I would never forget this.