sitty, as you would have it, i remember the land of figs and olives

i remember your fragile hands, ravaged by the passing of time.with your eyes alone, you told a tale of the past. a past wrapped in deep guttural sounds -sounds as exotic as the curves of my almond shaped eyes and my sun- kissed skin. This past, you told me, belonged to me just as the olive and fig trees belong to you. i inherited this past in my name and on my shoulder it rests. That land. This land, you told me, is my home. a home i only visited once. a home far away from home.

i was received as a  a passing traveler.

i touched the soil of that land. tasted its fruits of figs and olives. men clad in uncontrollable emotion greeted me with puffs of cigarette smoke . women scoffed at my ungraceful movement. they associated me with blue jeans and loud music. a foreigner. grains of coffee formed a prediction of my awful future, marred by the reality of my foreign existence.