Camel ring, 2000

This ring is something to see, she likes it.

 She is admiring it on her right hand, glinting gold in the unfailing sun and why not? it’s a string of camels.  She is in Khobar.  She talked the seller down from his special American price in riyals and she has dollars.  They barter everything here even toothpaste and hair gel in the drug stores.

 Right now she is heading deep into the gold souks, the shopping district.  The hotel van leaves her in the middle of everything, but she’s unprepared for this view, the remains of the towers. 

 She can’t really look but there it is, concrete constructed, bombed out but still standing, ripped open, exposed with fire escape stairways on every floor that lead nowhere safe.

 She counts the floors.  That’s steadying.  Eight, a good number, but it’s a scrim, the front wall peeled back and gone, shucked.  

 She recalls it, conjures her whole life as it once was, as if she never left.  But she is very much a tourist today, an alien.

 Later, on King’s Road, she sees what was once her house.

 Few cars on the roads today and they slow for her to pass.  Kindly.  It is very hot to be walking anywhere, too hot to move. 

 She says it is the one, it was her house and she runs now, funny to see that, up to the door and rings the bell and waits to see who comes.