Adam at the White Heat

by Eric J. Steere

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"[Prophet], when your Lord told the angels, 'I am putting a successor on earth,' they said, "Will

you put someone there who will cause damage and bloodshed?", Sūrah al-Baqarah

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That's me I think. Painted tiles, leaden windows, the sweeping curves of the hall reflect the oil

lamp as he leads me outside. There's something else in the air,​ have you ever been in the desert

at night?

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"These," he says, opening his hand like the earth itself. He's rolling a dozen frothy white pods in

his palms and brings the lamp between us. I think he is expecting something.

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i’m not expecting anything. time is unrolling always like a carpet. would you like to buy one?

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The road to Agadir is steep and winding, and I'm wondering where you came from and how we

got on this bus at all. You squeeze my arm at the spot a bus overturned. "Is that blood?"​ not this

bus. another bus. can't you see it's another bus with other people?

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A man in a long djeballa next to you pulls something out of a paper bag and eats it--a locust. It

sounds like potato chips. Through un-American teeth he smiles and tells us, "All of you are

priceless gems / aboard a rotting ship at sea". We sleep in separate beds at night.

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Things get harder then, or they become easy. It's a big little world. Trouble moves even if you

stop. ​like tree branches swinging in the breeze at night--, what does it matter?

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It's like a tree branch swinging in the breeze at night--, the way these men of the Berber seem to

move without moving. They tell me the locusts sweep up from the dry lands south of the

mountains. Here, on the edge of the desert, the air pulses in agitation and oil lamps burn all night

long.