Itinerant

near Aqaba, Jordan. 23 December. 14:57:07. 

I crossed a highway road outside of Wadi Rum in sweet ignorance of the legality. I read the Psalms staring at the mountains afar off, using the given break of our commuting to weep before the Lord.

Short tears fall heavy… they force a man to conclude:
too long have I denied my soul what it wants.
Cry out and dance, ye man — your soul likes for company on the hills of Yahweh’s work.

Yet unsure, and a way off, bare skin on sand plodded quietly against the noise of the day. Black soles earned on red sand.

Something of childhood, and something, truly, at that. They will regard it later.

How to thank the LORD of the expanse…? More numerous than the grains I can take up in my hand… more countless than all that on which I cut my feet.

Two feet call in English. Two of them home outside their brother’s shadow. I called back my hello in their tongue as both stopped and awaited resonant footfall. On my approach, the younger (not more than seven, and more likely five or six) is thinking loudly on where this odd man has come from, and so thought he plainly unafraid.

Garment of peace, blown in the wind… suffer the little children to come to me.

I stand with them, each in awe of our separate things. One of us, the mountains behind their stay off the main drag. Another two consider this course taken by a clear foreigner, and his strange words in another tongue.

I never was able to make clear to them my purpose. I crouched down to converse with them, and they smiled. I smiled too. 
We each in awe of our separate things.
It did not miss me to see their dear childhood. Flagrantly common are the moments that remind me of profundity.

It seemed that I could read their mullings, parse their script as they excitedly pointed to their house and slapped my hands repeatedly. I prayed and we spoke back and forth the common language of play for a few dear moments. 

I left off… I thought time near ended. A parting gift of the few words of theirs I knew, another high-five, and I turned to go. At what is well-more than a reasonable distance away, the twelve year-old shouted after me unmistakably.

“Ee-sahhk…!”
The Arabic pronunciation by which I introduced myself. A sweet gesture to store for a long time.

For however long, I stay with them. They insist on bringing out a bearded brother of twenty-three or more, who talks with me in another few words, and lets the kids show me the tomatoes they sell in a small box on the roadside. In Arabic they gesture and gesticulate, in Arabic they smile and laugh. Abed and Abdulraman hand me a tomato each. Ahmed gives me leave with kind words, and help came to allow me know them. This eldest one admits me pray, laying a hand on the head of each of his brothers.

Who is this God you seek in the wilderness?

The family watches as I go back across the street toward the bus. The littlest waves and watches as I away from them and their little town.

Plainly common. Cloak me in that profanity, and that of mercy.

Suffer the little children come to me.

**Sensitive information, including and not limited to the names of the people with whom we interact may be changed for their privacy and safety.