Retreat

by Reem Hazboun Taşyakan illustrated by Allison Gable

Riding in silence my thoughts settle on something sweeter. Silhouettes of rising pines, fragrant Phoenician cedars sensed with tightened breath and strained glances.

Reaching the coastal city once enriched by foreign-bound timber and Tyrian purple. Its jacaranda-lined streets and sunlit stone buildings offer retreat from our lives in Damascus.

Walking along the shore, we see soothsayers and henna hawkers and a pelican chained to a tree stump. Clipped wings flap as you drop coins in the dish beside it.

Breathing in salty air at a café on a cliff, casual conversation eludes us. All words spoken are sharp. Looking over the edge into distant waves you say: Days like this end, so let’s keep things light.

Bargaining with locals for selected souvenirs, peeling clementines with fingernails in narrow alleyways, juice dripping, us laughing at the lack of street names, wandering, wondering how we got lost.

Avoiding the topic of marriage plans because we’re keeping things light and it’s to keep us going, as the day’s sun loses intensity.

Arriving at the ruins of Ugarit, we read time-worn descriptions of age-old inscriptions, climbing up hills along crumbling walls that formerly formed dwellings. We stop. And I reach for you. But you refuse me since we’re out in the open but no one is around for kilometers and still I can’t get you to get close to me despite the trees and waters and sacred lands laden with art and artifacts and temples and tombs and ghosts on ships of sailors who wrote letters to lovers in ancient alphabets.