Where Love Is Found 24 Tales of Connection

Christopher Bundy MORNING PRAYERS Somewhere in the middle with the hazeand the sky like a bruise Prayers in Arabic floated to the domed ceiling as a small crowd of men knelt on simple rugs and straw mats in front of a young white man. In blue jeans and a T-shirt stained with Val's blood, and his own, the same black cherry, the young man had wandered into the remote mosque after police had taken his unconscious wife away in a taxi. Clumsy old ambulances like fat cartoon vans overflowed with wailing Chinese, traumatized Malay, and a family of Indians that spoke only in terrified gazes. The police had not allowed the young man to go with them no matter how he pleaded and shouted, no matter how well he cursed them. Men in ill-fitting blue uniforms stuffed the young man's wife into the backseat of a dirty yellow taxi, folding her legs, still bleeding from the glass that cut them, into the tired Fiat as if she were a tattered mannequin on her way to the scrap yard. The crushed bus below appeared to the young man as if through frosted glass, a gauzy gray spot below him. Women cried and men yelled hasty instructions as headlights broke through the morning fog and cars began to arrive at the scene of the accident. The ceaseless squeal of police sirens pushed the young man to bang his fists furiously on the hood of another taxi -- this one a dented and dusty red, unmarked and anonymous -- bringing automatic frowns from two men left standing by the car, watching and wondering at the white man with blood on his shirt and a bandage around his head. With the departure of the ambulances and police, the scene was quiet and the young man was left alone. He pounded again on the hood, his fists hurling into the air and back down again, a windmill of fury and frustration. The taxi driver, a young Malay in dirty brown trousers and a dress shirt opened to his navel, rubber thongs, and a baseball cap, grabbed the young man by the arms, using his feet as leverage against the bigger man. "Let me go! Where's Val?"The white man struggled against the small Malay. "Sorry, sir. Please come." The taxi driver pointed to the inside of his taxi. In the hysteria of the crash scene, and with so many others injured, dying, and dead, they had forgotten the young man, a hasty bandage placed over his forehead, his wounds minor in comparison with the others. As the sun began to rise behind the haze and the sky lightened into purples and yellows like the bruises that would soon rise on his arms and legs and neck, the young man surrendered and slid into the backseat of the old taxi. As they drove east toward the brightening sky, his head hurt, like a rope tightening around his skull by degrees, and he heard the echo of song, a rhyme and rhythm that he did not understand, growing louder, over and over, the same stanza chanted through loudspeakers across the Malay morning. Morning prayers had begun and their melody rang over the flat land around him. The Caretaker greeted the young man without surprise, directing him to sit down on one of the prayer rugs inside the remote mosque. Everywhere men bent in prayer. The taxi driver and his friend guardedly watched the tall stranger, bandage around his head, dried blood on his face and T-shirt. He clutched a dirty day bag with the strength of panic in trembling hands. Birds perched in the open windows and a blend of prayer and birdsong reverberated through the breezy mosque. In a matter of seconds the young man had gathered himself up onto a frayed and faded rug in a fetal ball, tired, his head foggy, a knot of fear and bewilderment in his throat. He felt a hand on his shoulder and a fever swept over him with the rhythm of morning prayers. Itinerary Berdy never liked the bus rides: the highways so lightless and somber,Burmeister-Brown, Susan is the author of 'Where Love Is Found 24 Tales of Connection' with ISBN 9780743488792 and ISBN 0743488792.