My Heart Is a Thousand Years Old

The living always say that best things about the future, and the past, mainly because they still have the chance too. One thing for sure is one will not see a dead man, or woman, getting the last word. It was a Fall day for Aiza and she was shining her shoes, not literally, on a new subject. She thought if the obvious was the obvious there was only one thing she didn’t get, why didn’t she get the obvious.

She sat and looked at her petite feet she hid with shoes that were bigger than her size. One thing for sure, fashion was fun and she was on her way to being a fashionable person.

She entered the bus. She looked around. She lived in a city that was pretty big, for sure, but it could be a lot bigger. She was use to being, kind of, cultured. There were days where she could comprehend living in Chicago or New York but when she thought more about it she knew she was small town. The public transportation system was always a quick way to center oneself, in a quick fashion, about the world around them. One would, and could and will see all examples of peoples, nations, and situations that drive the human condition. And the funny thing is they are squished, coveted, and take place in a tiny little area.

This day would be no different. There were several Muslim families emerging in the new area of the world taking their young kids to school. They had learned the accepted values of the nation that included the idea after the horrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the world was different and everybody had healed and moved on together. The new immersion of this budding religion shaped schools, and the nation, the way that other religious sects had swept across America in previous centuries and decades. That was not it though. Atheist basketball players talked with young medics about their weekend trip to the ballet and old people sunk in their eyes secrets about what they thought about the folks they observed speaking.

Old people always kept the best secrets and sage advice, like obvious rhetoric states, and their wise eyes, and minds, would look on and peer in at the on-going bustle of the bus. They often will, only lightly, smile and show their fine lines, and selves, through hidden consent, disgust, or utter disregard of others. They had been the able minded of other generations who poured blood on people at proms in tales and raced them out of the country and bombed them for looking different. They had remembered their deeds and known what they did it for and too. The folks around never knew the difference. And the remarkable children, so remarkable and fresh, nearly, even, one would think, passed their tests even with their sins and deeds of the past.

Little Aiza looked up at her passenger sitting by her. He was old, he was white, and he was holding a cane that held secrets little girls didn’t need to know. He ignored her gazing eyes and moved his cane back and forth. He stared at her for a minute. “Little girl I do not want to greet you about your grades and school work. Have we met before?” He stared at her.

“I am learning so much at my new school. Why don’t you want to know how I am doing?” Aiza looked at him. Her classmates that were gathered in her section of the bus looked at the two of them. They stared at the old man who seemed silly to them. His odd response did not match the rhetoric they heard, over and over again, in school, at home, and on tv and other social networking opportunities.

“You must be lying sir. I always tell people about my homework and they always want to know what I am up to. You must desire to know what I am up to today.” Aiza smiled at him. She was sure he was just misunderstanding things and that he would see what he had been missing. She was the apple of people’s eyes and this was the first person she had met so odd.

He spoke. “A long time ago I had times I wanted to tell other people and I could not and here you and I sit and I still don’t have anyone to tell. You know what, I don’t think that is fair. Plus, me and you, we just don’t have much in common.”

Aiza started to giggle and looked at him. The passenger looked at her, in all seriousness, beyond what the little creature of God could predict, or comprehend, and spoke. “What?”

“I surely think that you must have an understanding of Muslims in America. You must get what my mom and dad do and where they live and you must for certain understand why they like to educate me here. We enjoy America and its opportunities.” Aiza looked a little bit panicked, and nearly let out a small yelp, in surprise considering his notion that she was running at the mouth.

“Child,” he began as his gazed pierced through her young gaze and best intentions at education. “my heart is a thousand years old I am not like other people. You must understand I do not have time for you today. In years to come you will be lucky we are sitting here on a bus in this dear moment. Tell others someday what you have been told. The winds of the past do leave things, obvious, to find when you will, or if you do, let me know when my day comes back. That being the case, I must leave now. “

Aiza stared at him. “You sure about that sir.”

He looked at her dryly. “Yes.” And with that he got up and left the bus. Quickly, quietly, and alone.

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Aiza would be in her thirties and still tell the story of the odd man on the bus that day. She had not quite felt threatened, although when she told her parents they had nearly bought the bus to see the recording of the incident to make sure a network could not be formed to sue for damages in her name. She had become a well adult though and sometimes pondered the notion he had been a super natural occurrence of some sort or another.

She would wander, every once in a while, through odd historical districts of town and chuckle at all of the monuments, all of the old literature, and all of the out of date everything that had been laid to rest in the name of her people. She had not experienced anything, nearly, for the most part, since a very young age in America, kindness, and comfort, and the ways and means of the community.

She did not know why he haunted her so bad. He was a very strange occurrence. He would come up in the oddest ways whether she was in bed with a lover telling odd tales of stories you wouldn’t believe or at a girl weekend where one could quickly explain something that seemed supernatural or out of touch.

She sighed. Never quite understanding who exactly the presence was or what role he thought he had played in making that day on the bus available to her. She smiled. Who knows. And with that she closed the latest journal she was writing for a small magazine published out of Connecticut. Another year and another reason to shout “thank heavens” for remarkable change and progress for many causes and people. She sighed, closed her eyes, and thanked the graces of all people for her blessings and went to bed.