it's 9.30 am, on September 12, 2001 - commuting by rail, post-knowing.
~
I take the train to school. This is what I wrote this morning.
~*~
In some ways, it was better not to know.
Carolyn is a woman who knows vey little about the Middle east; she knows very little about Islam at all. She is sitting, drinking coffee on a westbound train in what many people -- who aren't american, her mind adds quietly -- is the best nation in the world. She is young. She is relatively sucessful; Carolyn's hair has streaks of gray and she knows that.
There is a chemical compound in the bleach that expensive salons use to color hair; it turns the follicles from brown to blond. Carolyn, age forty-three, has no idea how it works.
This, she has decided, is a good thing.
~*~
West-bound has a sense of surreality about it, no matter what anyone says. Going west, in Egypt, used to symbolize the journey made by the soul as it continued on its trek from this life to the next. The setting sun, golden as the treasures inside those temples of sand, symbolized something, something important for egyptians. It does so, still.
In California, western means coastal, relaxation. The sun is a symbol of youth and tanning, muscles bronzed and peacock bodies showing off. The west coast of North America is a stasis field; those from the rest of the country make the journey there, beginning their lifetime trek, and get caught by false hollywoods, palm trees, and sand -- which could be used to build pyramids, except too many children are playing with it.
~*~
Carolyn is talking to an Egyptian.
He is telling her about his job; he is a data entry specialist for a firm downtown. He is a second-generation immigrant; he is a practising Muslim, and this immediately sets her radar off. No explanation why.
He carries a brown leather briefcase and a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup. Styrofoam is very bad for the environment, she tells him uncertainly. He agress, but points out her going to throw away a whole newspaper instead of recycling it.
They both laugh nervously and agree that the train is a better alternative to the cars their spouses are driving.
~*~
Riding a train in the morning is something like a pilgrimage. The cars are very quiet; the rails squeak a little and there is a constant soft rumble. The other passengers tend to be quiet, immersed in avoiding each other. In some cities, they are surley and unfriendly; here they simply do no wish to be impolite.
Every so often, someone will glance up, and get a surprised look in their eyes, as if unaware until that very moment that anyone else is present in the seats surrounding them. They take stock of the situation, and go back to that exhausting habit of being polite enough to forget people exist.
Their hands do various tasks; flip pages, write memos, stay clasped, folded, serenely in their laps. Their clothing is unremarkable, upper class. They are making a journey for which they share space with others just like them and yet, are solitary, without companionship -- focusing on the constantly changing scenery outside the plastic windows, as if the faces around them are insubstantial and the whole experience is one warm body among a train of ghosts.
~*~
Carolyn does not understand.
Her and her Egyptian have fallen into a quiet; no more do they exchange pleasantries. He went to read his own newspaper, printed in a language she cannot read or even pronounce. It is written in Arabic, and the lines dart unfamiliar across his pages. She finds herself squinting at them, then out the window where the passing trees make her dizzy. She thinks about re-reading her own paper, immersing herself within a language which is familiar, but she reads the same sentence three times before putting it away.
Her eyes stray from the window to his reading material. The newsprint is coarse, the ink is dark. She finds the contrast unnerving.
He sees her looking at it, smiles politely. "Woul you like to read it?"
His question makes her jump. "Oh, thank you-- but I don't know Arabic." Her eyes go back to the window.
~*~
Travelling west in the morning means travelling away from the sun, running to catch whatever elusive thing one finds in the shadows of twilight. It never works, of course, and by the time everyone is off the commuter rail and downtown, it is full daylight and another working day has begun.
People spend entire mornings, pitch black to bright day, getting to work. Their styrofoam cups litter the inside of train cars and their newspapers are discarded -- yesterday's news -- like the morning sunrise.
~*~
At one point, Carolyn decides that the train on its rails sounds a bit like morse code beeping away, because of the rhythm of the grinding sounds. Other times it sounds like a child in pain.
They arrive downtown, and once she is in her office she realizes she does not know her Egyptian's name. She calls her secretary, tells the woman to book her a hair appointment, a bleaching. Something new for summer.
~
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