Portraits (01)

Silhouetted against a whitish cloudy sky and the grey floor of his seventh floor balcony, a dark figure, clad in black sits on an office chair of similar color. Even his face is covered with a generous growth of black beard; as if it were his intention to completely stand out like that. But it wasn't.

In his hand, one of those long sandwich wraps called “saj” is halfway through its unfortunate fate while another waits in agony on his lap. He chews mechanically, with every sense of taste entirely absent from his consciousness. It is a tedious and uneventful process that he would gladly resign but for his diminishing figure and his need to survive. As his teeth grind bread, chicken and onion into tasteless paste, something strikes him as familiar. He sighs as he realizes that his days these days are just as mechanical, tedious and uneventful as his lunch.

Those who know him can recognize him from afar because of the way he walks. He tends to walk only on his toes, like one walking barefoot on a cold floor, his heels never touch the ground. He gets up from his chair and takes two of those apprehensive steps and leans on the steel handrail that has long stood between balcony-goers and their thoughts of suicide. His eyes restlessly roam the distorted skyline of a city that he calls his own. He longingly recognizes every street and café where his feet have trodden and still tread in their most unusual manner. But his thoughts wander to a warmer place where the lazy ocean hugs the shore and tickles their feet as they stroll together on the sand. He and she, together under the stars. Icy, eye-watering wind jolts his mind back to the seventh floor where the dreams that seemed so real are just out of reach.

His lonely lunch hour is over now; he drags the swivel chair back into its natural atmosphere of desks and computers and dreams dissolve into monotonous keyboard taps and mouse-clicks. Perhaps enough taps and clicks can one day bring his dreams of Saabs, sweet-smelling summer nights under the stars and beach-strolls on soft sand a little closer. But they seem just out of reach.