Sewn from the Feminine

I was about twenty years old, half-walking, half-trotting past the old municipality in Tripoli. I rushed ahead, my gaze intent—and I heard my name. For the first time, I was hearing a friend call my name as I walked alone in this city. I was startled: an old schoolmate was right there beside me on that narrow sidewalk across from the church, and I had only realized they were there when they called my name. Before that, I’d been moving straight ahead as if there were a knife held to the back of my neck. When they called me, and we chatted, I experienced feeling safe in the street, a feeling that had, until then, been unknown to me–and I understood that my relationship to the city, and all of space therefrom, was a relationship of deep love experienced through a body afraid.