After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.

Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be.  (via oliviacirce)

When I lose hope in the world, I remember this poem.

(via bookoisseur)

I’m really glad I read that.

(via selfesteampunk)

why did this make me cry? I feel sparkly inside.

(via faedreamer)

glumshoe:

congruentepitheton:

writernotwaiting:

congruentepitheton:

Noir subgenres

– Fantasy noir: Pour another one, Joe. My dragon left me for some clean-shaven cape-wearing foreign hero with an accent so thick you can hear the fake passport in his voice.

– Existential noir: these are mean streets to have an empty life in, kid. Thinkers nurse a hangover from their disgust of life for fifty years then roll over and die. This is how we run things in our city. Play it again, will you.

– Southern Gothic Noir: look at yourself, boy. They’ve got names for people who carry the Bible like that. They’ve got names for everything around here. And if you don’t get it the first time the walls will whisper it back to you.

– Noir Mythology: She was a priestess at some local temple. One of those temple only people who pray for a pint of bourbon and a life insurance go to. And she had a face that meant trouble, make no mistake. But not after Zeus turned her into a cow. Not after Zeus turned her into a cow.

– Noir meta-Shakespeare: Characters like us, Horatio. We weren’t born to grow old and mean. We faff around, we mix a stiff one, and then we die. But when we die, we die hard and we make sure we bring the whole damn city down with us.

– Noir Milton: Heaven looked high class from fifty feet away but from five feet away it looked like the kind of place meant to be seen from fifty feet away. Stay there long enough you get a double pint of Hell’s Bells. Real hell is my business now. Real hell is how I make my nickel.

– Noir William Blake: She was the sort of tiger a bishop would paint crosses on his front door against. You can’t tell anything from tigers like that. She could have had the sheriff in the back room. She could have been making millions. But you could tell she burned bright in all the right places. Oh, dhe burned bright all right.

– Noir Dylan Thomas: Alright, old man. Amateur hour is over. You go down kicking and screaming or you don’t go down at all, you get my meaning?

– Noir Keats: Outside, the Autumn smelled of politics: it asked only for the highest types of men and had nothing to offer them but bleating lambs and the song of crickets. The sort of autumn that shares his smokes and his wife with the maturing sun. “I don’t like Spring,” the kid said. “That’s all right, sonny boy. I ain’t selling it.”

– Noir Edgar Allan Poe: You could tell from the way he sauntered in the bird meant business. He had the kind of beak that could drive a nail through your forehead. Didn’t string more than two words together but he knew all the right ones all the same. He knew which ones stung. “I don’t want no birds in my room,” I said, loud enough for hell to hear. But birds like that don’t just scram. Birds like that stick to you like a bad divorce from a Hollywood diva.

I will apologize in advance for this comment, because I LOVE THIS POST and I do not wish to profane it, but when I read the Dylan Thomas noir, my brain first read “you go down dicking and screaming,” and I really think that, considering Thomas’s life, it still feels perfectly appropriate.

I BITTERLY REGRET NOT HAVING WRITTEN THAT.

hey OP this a fucking good post