I
had taken him to one of my secret places. I walked the few wide steps to the
welcoming water and took off my leather white sandalled heels. I dipped my feet
into the dark blue harbour the water warm and cool in the night air.
I
gestured for him to do the same he was reluctant as he had laces to untie. I
told him to sit on the top step next to the water’s edge. I sat one step down
placing my heels on the step below me. He played an Arabic song by a woman named
Narwhal. Telling me it was a sad love song. He sang the first line in Arabic
before she began.
We
spoke of Arabic words. I was trying to pronounce his Middle Eastern sounds with
my lyrical French ear. The words summoned by breadth and the placement of my
tongue in ways unfamiliar to me. He would repeat the word several times. I
looked up at him focusing in on his mouth, studying his lips and the position
of his tongue and the movement of his mouth drawing breath to emit a word.
I
felt his lips grow shy with my gaze upon him, a slight smile of awkwardness and
a light crushing laugh. The ends of words almost silent to me pronounced and produced
with a breadth. The music played on, the sounds of the oud, the Lebanese woman
singing. My body facing towards him I turned my face away from him to the side
and upward to regard the Harbour Bridge and beyond it across to the Opera
House. The night sky lit up by these two profound monuments, then across to
Luna Park shining like a diamond in the night, the moon the only witness to our
scene. The water rippled towards the small jetty like ink spilling towards us,
the wash and fall of what I imagined was the inky blues.
That
dark cobalt blue ink that rose from the mixture of ancient wine and iron salt over a fire to make the final bluish-black wash. The
black India ink rising from the other lamp shade black of the skyline and that
diamond winked out of the darkness with the effigy of Old King Cole’s face, with
his ghostly mouth broad and wide smiling at us across the water. The sky raised
above it turning into the inky blacks, the rise and fall of the water’s edge
splashing like champagne then drawing back, slinking away, withdrawing and
sinking into the night.
My
eyes fixed on the scene. My face in profile towards him I felt his gaze upon
me. My mother would have caught his gaze in moment such as this and fixed her
eyes upon him not lowering her eyes piercing the moment. I felt myself shy and
timid in such a candid moment. I then felt myself a woman the gaze I long for
from a man. I lowered my eyes and passing my fingers across my soft mouth and
lips to awaken a feeling I keep hidden. I felt my lips blossoming making the
moment linger. I turned slowly to look at the moon behind him playing witness
to the scene. I turned my face towards him. Charmed by his big eyes, his slim
soft lines, the way he crosses his legs. He is delicate like picking saffron
from the mauve coloured plant yet I am simmering with a slow colour that
permeates from the stem of the crocus flower.
Or
is it rose water with slivers of almonds, crushed pistachio and amber glass caramel.
Is it a metal oil burner swinging or musk incense, powdered with jasmine petals
splayed with dates and oranges peppered with cloves?
I
revealed one of the few charms of this city to this young man and as we walked
back making our way under the bridge, the train rattled above reassuringly. The
views of the night making me feel him far from home far from Riyadh and the warm
air of a summer’s night in Sydney. Of the inky blues fading into the inky
blacks the gentle stroke of the water’s edge caressing the jetty in the
midnight hour. The night lit up, illuminated by the sails of the Opera House
and the sturdy dark iron bridge, tinted pastel, the romantic tones and hues of
love. We parted ways at the railway station. I greeted him kissing him twice,
once on each side of his face. I am charmed.
A
moment later turning to see him, he had disappeared into the street, into the
night. He is my Arab June, my muse never to be Henry. I decided to never see
him alone again. I am ten years his senior and I do not wish to deflower him in
the many Western ways I know how. I want to enclose him in his innocence,
preserving him, prolonging his youthful charm. He has given me back my
tenderness, my gentle swerve. How a new soul can remake an older soul and now
knowing that there are many types of love. I am certain of this now.
