Breakfast

If I look up, just over the top of my fresh mulberries and pineapple, I can see the world and it is alive.

There are two ladies hanging up washing on the top floors of their apartment blocks. On one line, there are some brightly coloured shirts and much stuff that once was white but has long been grey. The line sagged before the washing was hung and now it sways precariously in the wind, threatening to set its hangers on, free. The other lady has filled her line with linen. Perhaps today is washing day. If I look closely there are lots of lines and lots of washing. All of it lapping up the heat and the warm sea breeze that seems to caress this land every day.

Down on my right, just past the mulberry that fell off my bowl and onto the counter are two Muslim boys. They are both wearing their white fes’ and full white body robes. Just like any kids, they are running around in their courtyard playing a game. I try and imagine what it may be, but just end up thinking about my own boys, far away.

While I dribble honey onto my croissant, I notice the yard way below. It is now half filled with building materials. Obviously its time as a dusty parking lot is coming to an end and bright plans are in its future. A child squeezes through a gap in the corrugated iron fencing and darts between the mounds of sand and stone, intent on a shortcut to the adjacent street. An old truck loaded with material and coughing with effort, tries to find a way to park its rear in the right place without its rear parking on one of the cars still parking there. It looks to be a complicated manoeuvre and highly unlikely to be complete by the time my honey is a memory.

I try counting all of the bustling construction sites and give up at six. This is a very big number for me, but not the reason I only take two boiled eggs. Buildings are built differently here and nothing seems to ever get finished. Somehow, even though this is not remotely possible, it seems that they build every floor at the same time. Or at least that is how it looks, every floor unfinished to the same degree. New floors are held up by stalactites or are they stalagmites, so it seems as hundreds of skew, warped poles are wedged under the shuttering to keep the next floor up. Men stand around and chat. They tap their feet on the edges of the floor on which they are standing, oblivious to all the other floors of air that separate them from a very bloody nose.

Well who eats mulberries for breakfast, you may be asking. Well in Dar, they seem to be here every morning. And eating them, certainly makes me feel like a kid all over again!