Across the Aisle and Out the Window

Metro vignette

In the crowded subway car we sit facing two men, fiftyish. Strangers, but unselfconscious that their legs are flush up against the other’s. 

The way they sit, so close together but so unconscious of the other, has a certain fragility that could be mistaken for tenderness. 

The one on the aisle leans away, balding and looking vaguely grave. 

The other, by the window, sits upright. His short-sleeved button-down shirt is thin enough to reveal English lettering on the T-shirt underneath. The word comes in and out of focus as the layers of his clothing brush into each other with the bobbing of the train. 

The train comes above ground and into a night that is just as dark as the tunnel was. Through the open window, in between the bars, slips a smell of cinnamon and exhaust.

Outside, the cinderblock apartment buildings multiply across the field of vision. The balconies carry the intimate air of their apartments into the night.  One balcony, ringed with green trim, is lit with a single bare light bulb under which a woman in a shapeless green gallabeya crosses in the opposite direction of the train. They look like dwellings carved into cliff walls. Caves. They rush back into the horizon. A window shows the inside of a kitchen: A young man looks in the refrigerator as his cigarette smoke spirals around him. (Is he having a good time tonight? Did he go out? Or was he content to stay in? Too late.  Moving on.  More humanity to consider.)

Outside the station at Dar el-Salaam, strings of white lights crisscross the square, intersect each other, and blur into the lights of the stores. Two dozen sofas are laid out on the street for display. Eighty sandals. The lights flicker and coalesce.

--November 2002