West of the Jordan [antikvár]

MAKE IT DELICIOUS are late today. Please do not be angry that I have taken so long, you write. Don't rush. Tell your news the way they tell their stories: slow and tasty no rushing. Make it delicious like the olives, black and bursting with sweetness and sourness. Remember the bottles of olive oil Um Saud gave you, and how you could drink a cup like a shot of whiskey, only without the burn, the white balls of cheese, sour with the bitterness of another land spread on bread so thick you could sleep under it. Remember coming back from school, kicking dirt and passing dusty children up up up a road to the house where a meal and a family waited for you with loud kisses and steaming plates and many stories that you gobbled up or packed in your suitcases. Stillness in dusty streets comes back when the sun shines, oceans and miles away.