Page 57 - My Creative Writing Portfolio

57

as if endurance were an old companion
from desert lands.

When he falls into stillness,
I imagine his mind traveling—
following the patient flow of the Nile,
his eyes widening
to hold the pyramids once more,
though he stands confined
to a narrow corner
of Sydney’s concrete world.

(I always saw this old man standing with the support of a pillar in the fence bar, next to the house
where I was staying, his head resting on the pillar and watching people walk by in the street. I was
a new person here. I started raising my hands when I saw him, and asked him ‘how are you’. He
started giving good responses, and I thought he might want people to talk to him. One day, I asked
him where he was from. ‘Cairo, Egypt’, he said. I told him he must have seen Nile and the pyramids.
Yes, of course – he said in his usual manner as if these were not so important for him. I told him
that I wanted to go to Egypt and would ask him about the place and whom to contact if I made a
plan. ‘Sure’ he said. His sight always gives me an impression of the isolated life of elderly people. I
sometimes see him talking in phone to someone, and from the answers he gives, I guess she could
be his daughter. Otherwise, he is alone and isolated. I fear this situation as I am also growing old.
Like me, he seemed to have lost both worlds – here, he does not have close contact and a warm
social circle, which is still alien to him. He also cannot go back. This, I find as a dilemma of the
migrants – at least first-generation migrants.

Greenacre 2190, NSW, Australia

28 September 2021