I am invariably of the politics
of the people at whose table I sit,
or beneath whose roof I sleep.
~ George Borrow
COFFEE AND WATER
A hundred times a day, he says,
“I’ll have to return. Here, there is no mercy.
There, there is kindness and warmth and …”
Then he falls silent.
I ask him, “There?
Where is that?”
He points somewhere.
His face is expressionless,
and he does not say anything anymore.
I take his hand.
We go to a café
and sit down at a quiet corner table.
I order coffee for him
and water for me.
I speak to him in Arabic
and mix water into the coffee.
He is annoyed, “Are you crazy?”
He tries to remove the water
from the coffee.
He tries to.
He tries to get the water back
into the water.
— Tarek Eltayeb
Vienna, Café Griensteidl, June 27th, 1997
(translated from the German by Wolfgang Astelbauer;
from “Ein mit Tauben und Gurren gefüllter Koffer,” edition selene, Vienna 1999)
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