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Qasidat al-Qahira
by Elie Losleben

Entering the flat with your keys in my pocket,
the room like Cairo before a sandstorm:
heavy with the weight of North Africa
and bare. Your map of Siwa
lies silent on the table, forgotten.

I open the veranda,
see the bazaar for the last time
wafting musk and pipe smoke sticky
with apple and hashish, the maze of glass
and silver, silk and hungry-eyed men.  
In the old city, women in shadowed windows
lower baskets to the vendors below,
anxious at a flash of hand or naked wrist.  
Everywhere rise minarets and voices,  
past carts that sell hot yams,
chestnuts, tamarind juice from copper cups. 
You take your leave without knowing it:
a touch in a dark taxi racing
through the City of the Dead,
a whisper as we tiptoe up the stairs
past the sleeping doorman.

A splinter of moon rises over the city,
dividing trees into shadow and silver.
I did not realize until now
how fully you had left me.

*

Riding to Saqara at midday
searing sun bleaches my memory
and I try to forget you.

My stallion descends from the line
that belonged to the poet al-Shanfara
who roamed the desert for the sake of a woman
beaded and betrothed, dishonored.

I ride fast to the steps of a pyramid
Whose passage has long closed with secrets,
through the empty frontier graveyards,
tombs that are houses without rooftops,
painted green, the color of heaven and rain. 
Wild dogs madden at the sight of my stallion
thick-necked and frothing with sweat.
White teeth the color of the sun
clip his heels and he runs
forgetting stables and pasture
for love of the sand.

I will ride like this until nightfall,
racing over nameless ravines and nothingness,
wet with exertion and longing.

I pass skeletons of horses,
Remains of campsites: charcoal
and broken clay.

When the moon’s eyelashes brush the horizon
I turn towards Cairo
with thoughts of other loves.

*

Cairo, your strength is without will
and you have drunk too deep the blood of your own conquest.
Do not yearn for me.
I am no daughter of your streets. This is no
place to rest, your stones
would betray my footfalls,
should the sultan cry for blood
one moonless night.

When the time comes you will find me
deep within the city streets, seated in an ahwa
among mirrors hung by the Ottomans, against walls
that drip glass to the bottom of their frames.
Distorted memories. Here
I recount old battles against invisible enemies. 
I hold a sword gilded with opal
and moon sapphires from Yemen,  
smuggled into the cold city under a worn cloak.

Deep in the desert a gazelle runs from her predator 
but when he confronts her, 
she learns to fight.