The tenth of October, the sky overcast, sultry with the storms that leave
the palm-lined street strewn with huge fronds, the pale green Mediterranean
roaring almost like a proper ocean, its usual gentle swell lost in the winds
that stir these nights with thunderless heat lightning. Everywhere, the
fall's the time for raking. Only here it's unripe dates and fat fig leaves,
brown and curled like fists--not the red and golden blaze of maples,
sycamore. The rake looks strange beside my swim suit, flesh I cover when I
haul stuffed bags outside the gates, careful not to shock the families
headed for the beach, girls with their hair wrapped in Muslim scarves, the
maids from the richer houses with their white safsaris draped on heads,
knotted across a work dress. Some herder's descending Byrsa Hill with his
sheep and goats cropping whatever grows outside the walls surrounding
villas, in suburban Carthage, where the ruins of Dido's city and the Romans
who sowed her streets with salt still sprout between the Arab homes. I see
lambs with the ewes, new-born size, still suckling. Lamps in October, the
seasons confusing as Arabic books printed back to front, in this country I
have never learned to read.
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The Prose Poem