It’s half-past-six on a crowded Sunday evening;
the city of light embraces the first autumn breeze.
A decade-and-a-half has passed by, nothing
has changed, even at the close of this day.
I stride along Avenue des Champs-élysées
vivid with scents pure and sublime.
I stroll along Avenue de Suffren ready
to welcome footsteps, strange and calm.
The light that follows from the night lamps
cut across the half-paved cobbled sidewalks,
there she sits on an old worn out rug, like
cold fish, two children and a man by her side.
Clad in a neatly sewn gray-green burqa,
covered in a bright ivory hijab,
her face so blanched, eyes so stark, blue-tinged,
adorned with youthfulness under the veil.
I lean to give alms as I catch her attention;
her glance mars every moment, widening our distance.
Beneath the blue-tinged eyes lie untold stories of
battles fought by her faction in a divided world.
War smears, war debilitates,
war wreaks, war haunts —
a collective folly
repeated time and again.
Is it fair to walk by,
pretending things will be fine,
or is it that we tread under
the shadow of ignorance?
Once she belonged to a home and
a land surrounded by the blue sea; now
she’s a pariah among the Bohémien, staring
at a tormented past, facing an uncertain future.
I ponder at my life,
piece by piece,
as the years go by
testing times only increase.
He was never there for me,
loneliness was my friend;
a sense of nothingness creeping in,
I long for home in faraway land.
I sit under the majestic Pont D Lena,
with a glass of cheap wine;
I see her again selling drinks, something
she would detest for a lifetime.
The air is filled with the sweet melody
of that great song, la Bohème,
la Bohème, which doesn’t
mean anything anymore.
