BODY Chapter 11

Walking is forgotten dancing.

Do you want to go to lunch with me? Jack asked Noor. She said yes.

Walking, in its usual shape, is prose and dancing is more poem than prose, more dwelling than telling a story that stretches. Walking stretches. It moves and while it moves it blurs the scene, the world, the things you pass. Nothing can be set in stone; nothing is stable and focused on, but rather you focus on the movement itself. Like time. Some walking however is like the flitting of a butterfly, a movement that seems to be an accident of the up currents of air and the fragility of the creature which seems to be at the mercy of the air, like those people who jump from cliffs and fly on human made wings in canyons. They have to move with whatever air they are given. But they do have a direction. Don’t be fooled. Even a butterfly can have a very secret purpose, even when it seems to have no apparent purpose at all. It can be a kind of traveling along the road with a sense of directionlessness in the overt attitude. But we know that nothing is ever without its purposes. No one moves without a purpose of some kind without a direction of some kind. There is not casual and unmotivated action. It is only hard to establish its reasons, to know why.

            So to make a walk into a dance is to transform what would otherwise be, well, pedestrian and practical and efficient. To make it feckless and reckless. It becomes a dwelling though it is disguised as motion in a certain direction, a kind of clever ruse. Jack knew this. Oh let me go for a walk with you, when in fact I want to dance with you. It is meant to be duplicitous or it has so often been a kind of deception that it has that power. And it calms everyone nerves. They will walk with you when it would be unheard of, it would be impossible, it would be a violation of all that is proper and correct—to dance.

            Jack could crisscross the slumbering dreaming city, which has many organs, and find in the potholes polka dotting the streets and the scaffolding wrapping the buildings some energy as well as a sense of anger and intimidation. He could see the expulsion of disgust from the smokestacks of the human factories that sleep in all of the bedrooms. He understood the trash of the streets. What threatened and what might be a victim. He had spent many hours deciphering who was whom and what was what, who was innocent and who was guilty. It was his obsession and his practice, a kind of walking meditation that consumed him.

He looked at her: Everyday I walk this way for hours in the city, always in a new direction. Well, not always a different direction, but it is a different walk everyday nevertheless, even if it is the same direction. I want to crisscross the city, to map it completely with my feet and my mind, and to see everything that you are not supposed to see … even the things that are in the side streets and the alleys. Jack was speaking to her. She was silent and nodding. It was akind of listening that was really a holding breath. But Jack continued inhis best formal toneif voice, the carefully designed to be thought safe voice: If I walk three hours a day at 3 ½ miles per hour, then it is easy to see that I do 10 and ½ miles a day … he looked at her and smiled … but for the sake of argument we will call it 10. That means I do 300 miles a month. Take off some days for laziness, illness, or forgetfulness. So let’s call it 250 miles a month. In 12 months that means I might do around 3000 miles of walking in the city and what has it gotten me? I use it as my meditation.

            Walking alone is like dancing alone. It can be liberating and at the same time seem a little pointless. There is no memory of it that moves outside of your own mind. The sidewalk makes no record of it. The sky makes no record of it. It is as if you were to walk and leave no mark on the earth. But when you are with someone, then it is a different story. It has connection and something is expected of you, something true must be there because it will be kept.

            Could I usher her into this corridor that moves around the city. Jack tried to make his navigation as seamless as possible. Then we can let this or that building tree or dockside be the backdrop as we walk? It will be a slow crawl. That was what they called them a crawl, the staggering between bars and pubs. Jack felt the absence of her hand. It was not in his. He used his fingertips to scratch his palms nervously. He knew that her hands would be in his eventually, but first the adventure of moving up third street across Market and then not stopping and she would not stop I thought that this was going to be the first demarcation, a dividing line in our relationship which I had already began to call it. 

Somehow we got to Bush Street and the gate to Chinatown and began moving toward Broadway up Grant. The muddle of shops were enough to cast a fog. It can be poisonous on ordinary days, when you are not well. Cities can be full of unchastity and infused with morphine and sodden by alcohol. When you are alone, it can be tuneless as the worst pornographic reality. Oh how music saves us by fooling us that we are not the squeaky and grunting flesh machines of desire. But this same walk can be a gauzy romance when you are with someone. Jack thought. I have found this to be true. I was lost but now I am found. I was blind but now I see. Everything changes when the faces change. It can be the same street and the same shops and the same weather and the same noise and the smells don’t forget the smells of Chinatown they saturate my skin, but not in the usual bad way, but in a good way.

A city is made of trash and flesh, more than it is made of stones or steel or stucco or pavement or bricks. Look, the tourist is finding his way by pointing his smart phone like a weapon in the air. He will never get lost. Somewhere above us satellites are flying and mapping our every desire or every move. What is the use of a city if you never get lost?

Can you see Nob Hill that looms above us as you look up California Street and there’s Grace Cathedral. Somehow without noticing we have crossed the imaginary line into North Beach, like lost tourists at the unmarked borders of Iran or North Korea. La Folie blurts out its warning to anyone who wants to enter the otherwise dark alleys where the Le Fleurs perfume of prostitutes is carried on the wind in broad daylight. Suddenly upon us ancient women and men blossoming, twist toward the sun like slow flowers bursting into Tai Chi on the lawns of Washington Square up Columbus Ave past Telegraph Hill on the Right and past Russian Hill on the left, then we turned at Bay to get back to the Embarcadero to wind our way back to South Beach and to South Park hours late.

            But Noor said No. I can’t. I have to be back by 2. So I unthought that journey and created the next one. It might take us to China Basin at first. Then I looked up 3^rd to where the Museum was going to be wrapped in a green net package and of course covered by scaffolds, and rebuilt with a white box for years pretty soon—a love letter to the future, but just another scaffolding for us, for the present; everything is being built; nothing is finished. I cannot find anything that is finished. It is better to go to where the streets were quieter and to wrap ourselves in the Bay shore line along the Embarcadero. Perhaps it would be blustery and the wind would cause my arm to wrap around her shoulder as if it were high school.

After getting lunch at the waffle cart, they moved up third to the Buena Vista Plaza across from the museum. The sun told a lie. It made the day seem warm and sunny, like summer, like it should be. But summer was betrayed by a piercing wind. The wind came roaring up third from off the Bay.  The wind would crash into Market street and swirl just enough to pick up the loose wrappers and the trash from the gutters all along Third. The couple walked in some kind of innocence or ignorance, not thinking about what was happening. without verbal conversation for three blocks. After the freeway passed over their heads, they moved thoughtlessly through the long and distressed blocks in the south of Market, populated by people who stood for no good reason on the sidewalks watching the stream of traffic. Some cars would stop and throw the rest of the street into a panic as the arteries became clogged in seconds and frustrated drivers did what they could to evade the blockages. It was midday and the busyness of the street was at it capacity. Then as they walked in a sheepish silence a truck suddenly pulled into a place reserved for buses. The truck was nothing special until it sounded its horn and Noor looked at it. She saw a man. He was staring at her with a kind of dead look. For an eternal second it was the man who was hunting for her. The sight made her suddenly grab Jack’s arm. The truck squealed as it pulled away from the curb. We need to get out of here! Noor said. Jack was puzzled but felt the urgency in her voice. He led her into the plaza off the street. They found a quiet place near the Metreon. What was that? Jack said. I need to tell you the truth. Noor sat for a while and thought about what she was going to say.

Do you know who Malala is? Noor asked him. They sat in the center of the Buena Vista Plaza in front of the wall where the fountain with the quote from Martin Luther King’s speech carved in stone.  Jack awkwardly ate a waffle with fruit on it, while she delicately held a crepe with Nutella balanced on her thin fingers, not trying to eat while she spoke. In reality she was too terrified to eat anything. Do you know who Malala is? She said again. He did not answer. Malala is a girl. She is 16, from Pakistan, from Swat. She was shot in the head by the Taliban while she rode on a bus to school. She wanted every girl to go to school in the Swat, near where my family comes from, where they used to live. She wanted all girls to go to school. Now Malala lives in England. She was in the hospital for a long timed. She was in critical condition for a long time. I can still see her injury in my sleep even though her head was always covered by a scarf in the pictures. I know what it means to be injured.

It was  … her injury … her bravery … She was an inspiration to me to think for myself. Half my age and she was my hero. I decided to make my life different, but I was already doing that. I had begun to act for myself, to wake up. Malala did it in a place of great danger. I had the advantages of education and of living in a free country, in Canada. I was a not a complete slave to the desires of others. But I was being treated like I was nothing. I was nothing but a servant working for someone else. It was sad because it was my family. I don’t think they knew any better. They were just caught in a bind to keep the money coming and to keep the business going. It did not matter that they could not pay me. My work … I was essential for the survival of the family. I had to decide to leave that. I could see that it would never end. I had to get away.

            I made a mistake. I believed a man who told me I could be free if I went with him. He enslaved me more. I had to get away from him and then my family would not take me back. They couldn’t. And it was not long that I came here. I have fallen into the same place, the same hole. Only this time it is just the unraveling of my life that has create the trap. My own   I am hunted. That is the truth. She looked directly into Jack’s eyes.  You are not safe. No one around me is safe. I am hunted and the hunter already found me in Vancouver. And now he will find me here.

I have tried to hide, to become invisible. Do you know? That is not what Malala would do. I know that. She would not become invisible she would stand up and say that she deserves to be free and to be safe and to be happy. Even if she is a woman and even if she is an immigrant and even if she is hunted. She should not be afraid. No one should be hunted.  You need to know these things if you are going to be around me. I will not put anyone in danger because I am in danger. I will only tell the truth to them. Do you understand?

I understand. Where do you want to go now? Jack said. I need to go back to my job. They began to go back in the direction of South Park.

Jack looked directly in front of him. I was in Afghanistan. I was there for two tours. I was stationed at the air base, Baghram. I was in trouble once and the Captain told me to walk the perimeter. That means I had to walk around the airbase sort of on guard duty with my backpack. But it was a punishment. It is miles and miles of walking and it is dangerous. I was inside the fence. I had to carry a weapon. It was not what I usually did. Usually I worked on computers and things like that. Well, I walked the perimeter and everything went okay for a long time. Then it got late and I was still a long way from the barracks. I was getting kind of cold. It can get really hot, then really cold in the country. I got cold. Then I saw someone in the dark, or maybe I heard him first then I saw something move. So I pointed my gun in the general direction of what I saw. It was dark and there were some bushes nearby so I thought well maybe it was some kind of animal. I wasn’t too scared. But I was looking really hard like I was trying to see through the leaves of the bush or something. I wanted to see what it was and I crouched down. Then a man came up to the fence. He was very casual, like he was only taking a walk. But it was forbidden for anyone to be in that area. I knew that. Still, I did not say anything. I just watched and he came to fence with a tool of some kind in his hands. I thought, Oh shit, he’s going to cut the wire on the fence and come through. And then I thought and he probably has a lot of friends with him. I am up shit creek. So I thought I had to get the out of there. But I was surprised because he came to the place on the fence that was closest to me and stood there looking in. It was strange. He had his fingers in the fence just staring. So I stood up and shot him.

            Jack stopped walking and looked at her for a long time. Noor also stopped. She was stunned. I need to ask you something. Jack finally said. I need to ask you because you are from that country. Did I do the right thing?

            Noor looked at him. I’m from Canada.