it’s a mist. It gets in your glasses, fogs your vision, until it’s white-out from how dense the humidity is in the air. You don’t see it falling, just suspended in front of you—trillions of particles diffusing, until you’re breathing in the taste of it. The weather systems change over time; the mist ebbs and flows. If you know you’re breathing it, you start becoming grateful that it isn’t a downpour instead of wondering what it was ever like when the skies were sunny and clear.

The weather channels forecast it. The forecasters narrate its temperament. Weather vane makers calibrate direction. Someone writes the almanacs. Someone manufactures your raincoat. The radio host tells you about places in the world where it’s supposedly always sunny or where there’s perpetual storm. The mist becomes atmosphere. Atmosphere becomes normal. You adjust. You wipe your lenses. You stop asking when it began, and start measuring relief in degrees of density.

And still, we make time to keep each other dry.

There’s a burning hearth. Coltrane spinning in the background on your father’s old turntable. Forks scratching against worn plates, your chef friend eating the leftovers out of the pot. We’re slow dancing in the candlelight, in the middle of the living room, curtains drawn to keep the white outside from leaking in. I close my eyes and lean my head by your neck. We’re rocking. It feels like a ballroom.

We meet in the rain. We reach through the mist for one another. We prepare for it together. Someone fixes the dehumidifier when it breaks. Someone scrubs at the mold that persists through the wood. We huddle around the radio for the first word of sun, not because the forecast will save us, but because the sound of each other’s breathing reminds us that the room may still outlast us.

Outside, the white remains suspended.

Inside, we keep each other dry.

on sarajevo (24 may)

from the accretion diaries

24 may

luka, the boy i met at the history museum, has faint eyes, framed by almost-blonde eyebrows, and a darker head of hair, unstyled and easy. while looking at his friend, also croat, he tells me about the school they attend in skenderija, and how there’s a small corrugated fence that lines the courtyard. across the fence is where the muslim kids play, and they would exchange quick glances through the metal mesh. he’s preparing to attend university soon, and they’d installed small metal poles that reinforce the gate—halfway to a wall. he looks down at the uneven ground between our feet. 

i had been reading about the bosnian government since the war, and how they’d kept the yugoslavia-era ethnicity-based segregation in public education—a similar structure to what i had observed in malaysia between malay-malays and chinese ones. luka mentions how he’d love to visit new york. i nod with a half-smile, stepping the cigarette between the stone on the floor—and we’re quiet again. 

i stand, shake his hand, and wish them a good day over my shoulder. the murmur continues behind me, and the city continues.

down sniper alley, the energoinvest building stands quietly, cloaked in charcoal grey paint and mirrored glass windows. across the street is an abandoned building, with a lone dilapidated mitsubishi, rusted beyond recognition of its original coloring. the bullet holes in the facade of the building have been so gracefully filled that from a distance, the plasterwork is nearly indiscernible.

on the other side of the road, the windows have been blown out of a former car dealership—mitsubishi motors. its facade, an empty grid of steel window panes, has corroded into an orange patina. only one window is left in its original pane, and the bullet had gone cleanly through the glass—twisting fractures, a lightning strike. spiraling, centrifugal—an afterimage of the bullet’s force. 

the end of the alley leads into new sarajevo, which is under construction. i can only see the new facades of the builds, cut-outs for where the windows would be installed in new complexes. today, sunday, the cranes are silent and still; and yet i can still hear the echo of them whirring—when they start up again in the morning. 

it’s my last night at the bed and breakfast, and i’m lounging alone looking at the vista from the balcony again. there’s a dartboard that is facing me, surface punctured with small holes—stars. i hear birds chirping from the chimney on top of our house, and the cries of children from the top of the hill, and its reverb, a shadow chasing after it. the landscape in the northeast is dotted with limestone tombstones—pinpricks against the diagonals of the red tiled roofs that bleed into one another. most of the homes are bright white or beige, and some newer builds with more colorful facades—pinks, greens, and an orange one that has scaffolding still around it—waiting to be unveiled. 

from my balcony, the maqam is recited and doubled, a sorrowful response reverbs from the massifs. another mosque lights up a few streets behind my balcony, out of view—i can see its glow from here. the maqam joins in, a different recitation. unintelligible now, the mountain resounds with the exact song. 

aida, my host, had prepared a binder for my stay in her space. among the tourist brochures she’d annotated for me is a research study on the benefits of smiling at strangers for a healthy society. upon checking in, i laugh incredulously at the addition. she furrows her brows and looks at me, speaking in a low voice—this is a fact that people in sarajevo often can’t remember.

iii. The kitchen

from the essay “dad, the physics of lifetime,” an(other) grammar

dad was an italian and chinese chef, and a fabulous home cook because of his sheer talent. growing up, i remember when he’d experiment with new sauces or tweak his cooking techniques on familiar dishes. i could always taste the change—and i’d tell him what worked and what didn’t. he never replied, but i knew he was listening; the next iteration always reflected some quiet adjustment. those dishes are perfect now, to my palate, at least. his signature recipes have become reliquaries of our relationship, vessels of an unspoken conversation carried through taste.

i order in all the time now, excusing myself from learning to cook because my palate was trained too carefully by my father to tolerate my own mistakes.

sometimes, i wonder if my refusal is a kind of mourning—to preserve him, untouched, from my clumsy.

i can taste the smoke of the cutting board in each of my dad’s dishes, and feel the finger-shaped ridges that sealed every rouyan closed.

i don’t cook, and yet i’ve inherited his physics. i am ruthlessly clean as i move, simmering, sautéing, slicing, and savoring each part of the meal as it assembles itself from memory.

my love for my dad unfurls—denatures—when i cook. the apparatus reveals itself through inherited habit: the flick of the spatula, the wave-dance of the wok, the gurgle of the rice cooker, food slowly percolating beneath the hum of the vent.

dad’s kitchen is a stainless-steel machine. at the end of each week, after that day’s cooking has been done, he disassembles the stovetop and gently folds each component into the vinegary soak. the microfiber cloth rubs, and rubs, across the steel in circles until the surface gleams.

in his steel kitchen, he still stands tall—shoulders back, spatula singing through the wok with a kept, ghostly smile that reminds me of my own.

i’ve seen my dad through lifetimes: i’ve studied him so closely.