PARTISAN REVIEW
449
on eagles wings? I am too late. They are at the Tel Aviv Beach. And
even Ishmael, our brother is putting off to his tents on a matorscooter,
his camel forgotten.
It
is I, with my picture on the back of my book,
who is the magical creature. How passionate they are for details of the
world outside. Walking across the red desert in Rissani with Abu look–
ing for an Alouite tomb, I repeat Thoreau's line, trying to qualify his
political enLhusiasm, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet despera–
tion." He makes me write it down for him, wants more. I try to recall
fragments I have by heart of Thoreau, Emerson, Alfred North White–
head. In his letter he says, "I wanL that the correspondence would con–
tinue between us as lessons."
Rising out of the pool, dripping, Abu is sated with water. Not me,
I could stay there all afternoon. I see the French girls through my
friend's eyes, their nakedness ou'trageous coming from the world of
veiled, hidden females. His black body crackles with electricity from
all this revealed white breast and thigh. We grin together as they pass.
Hours later
wh~n
we say goodbye in Rissani by the lorry that will
carry him off, the girls from his village who are at the market, cluster
around him. They lift cloth veils from across their mouths as they
recognize him; shyly they peek at me almost ready to draw back behind
the curtain, but seeing I am a friend of Abu's they let it drop. There are
blue tattoos on their chins, coins of silver shining on their temples,
colored threads run through their black shawls, beautiful sisters, and I
want
to
run off with them.
