It's got a kick at the end

'Be careful! It's got a real kick at the end!' shouted our red haired, Yorkshire born, home counties bred hostess. It was the evening before I was flying out to Istanbul and I was at the grounds of a country mansion, and this was happening in the interval of the open-air play that our hosts were hosting for charity- for the new Ashmolean.
Just before the play had started, I had noticed a face I knew and could not think who it could be that I knew among la belle monde. But before I could push the brain cells further the play had started and I, as usual, totally played along with Wilde. In the interval the hostess, my friend's friend, took us into what her father had called 'Africa' before the revels had started ('For the gentlemen, if the port-a-loo queue is too long, there's always Africa', and when we were introduced and he realized he could not kiss me- the octogenarian- he had said 'Ah, local customs and all that') and then there we had it, the slinging rope, down you went from the tree house and just before you thought you'd hit a big tree, it would stop, right after a big kick.
And when my turn came, I did not even hesitate- my hands hurt and the kick almost threw me to the ground. And then I remembered. The face was that of our late warden's wife, who'd served us lunch in her kitchen.

Mannequin, Jean Rhys

'The English boys are nice,' said Babette, winking one divinely candid eye. 'I had a chic type who used to take me to dinner at the Empire Palace. Oh, a pretty boy . . .'

Aleppo, Nov. 2010

You will never walk alone
in an Ottoman han in Aleppo old town
you will come across a fridge magnet
of Krak de Chevalier
you will never, ever
walk alone

You will never walk alone
there will be Germans and Brits
going around with their Baedekers and Rough Guides
they will be one step ahead of you
ordering lemon and mint,
eating their humus and kibbeh

You will never walk alone
when a badly planned soujourn
has you switch hotels, lose friends
you will end up in a place
right across from the hotel Baron,
no, you will never walk alone.

You will never walk, or enter or exit alone
coming out of a mosque you will lead other women
saying
'Fawk'
and they'll ask you
'Wa min wayn ant?'

*

The pigeons drawing
co-centric circles over the roofless roof tops
the pigeons whose names I still don't know how to spell
dance
to the tune of the young man who's fed and bred them
whistling from the district of al Jdayda

Passing archways in the district of older faiths
I come upon familiar faces saying
words like 'inch' and those 'ha's
you only hear Anatolian throats utter
and I know I owe to them
this feeling of being at ease,
being at home

the ladies who've done up their hair for Sunday
and wear skirts that fall down
just below the knee-

*

In the morning
it is of course to the tune of Fayrouz
that the bakers bake their hubz,
and the goat-gutters gut their goats
it is to her voice
that the cleaners at the Baron Hotel
wash the veranda
and two Turks
find themselves taking a photograph
of a map of Syria
(not quite) decided, by L of Arabia
with a little legend of a castle
for Krak de Chevalier
(no, no R, you will never walk alone)

*

I love the women of Haleb
in the mosques, in the souq
with their 'argile in the cafes,
they smile and guide me

the persistent smell of jasmine
finds ingenious ways to reach me
walking towards the 'ala
I ask for directions, surprised at my own voice
that now sounds so Levantine