by Juanita Kama

     This morning she again sat across from me and as always I recognized her. She did not see me or any of us who watch her during the brief two station subway ride; all willing and uninvited conspirators to her project. As always, she sat at the corner seat, calmly crocheting her shawl, fingers and wrists seemingly moving to the rhythm of the sound of number 7, the fastest subway train; as if by some magic wand the cream and beige and light green thread weaving an eye soothing tie and dye pattern on the fast growing shawl. Or was it a coverlet or a chair throw; her demeanor cool and her poise upright, head bent with the concentration of twirling hypnotic fingers; all eyes in the train cabin drawn to a simple exercise of weaving wool, our uncommon minds commanded as one by a remote memory of a time old pattern of our grandmothers’ before; grasping an iota of sanity in a fast world gone supersonic; some hope for the day ahead —an inkling of normalcy in our frantic world.

     For all I know she could have been Madame de Farge in A Tale of Two Cities, I muse, mentally malingering, postponing any thought of my busy schedule of e-mails waiting to terrorize my eight hour day at work and shamelessly, eating up my lunch hour too. But no she cannot be that dual faced French classic, she seems much too nice and homely; and she is crocheting and not knitting as the two faced French villain Madame had done, I rationalize. But then, this is New York where you find all sorts. Or perhaps she could have been my mother or my aunt, sitting in the yard in front of her humble
homestead back on the farm on the sunny highlands of the great rift valley of Africa, crocheting away the late afternoon, waiting for the cows to return to their stall for the evening milking; and the goats and chickens to their pens for the night.

     And I close my eyes and dream of my home, far away, where the days are as endless as the sunny skies. The heady timeless scent of the wattle trees and the leaves of the gum trees, and the wind pulling at the yellowing ears of the wheat, forming a carpet of endless waves, drying the crop for the
harvest. Far away from the city underground and the endless race with time. And I open my eyes for there is not enough time to dream in the number seven.


Juanita Kama is a United Nations Staffer and rides the number seven daily from the Port Authority.