An ordinary faceless man

"A very long boring story"

Waking up 20 minutes late, I didn’t have much time to put my washings in or even having my law-fat "Yukky" cereals, I just took a quick shower, had very little time which I chose to dedicate for my holly coffee 10 minutes rather than brushing my teeth.
I picked up my backbag, made sure I have got my essential sacred items: my MP3 player, pocket book, keys, camera, cellphone, and the meeting stuff.
Slammed the door behind me, and pressed the bottom for the elevator, it took ages so I ran down the stairs, I tripped down in the 2nd floor and it looked like I hurt my ankle but what the heck, I am late on the first meeting..
I walked down the street to reach the bus stop, it was crowded that day and my ankle really hurt , with no time the bus came and I went up, I was fortune to sit next to the window cause I wanted to avoid any visual or any other kind of contact with people in the bus, like usual… I put the headphones on and played some Coldplay to fix my mood.
I took my book out of my bag "the kite runner" page 39, I started reading and I took a look at the window each now and then so I don’t miss my stop.
When I look through the window, all I see is just ordinary people doing ordinary stuff, buying some homos from the homosatie (homos shop), a woman holding her baby who is sucking a pink lollipop with sticky hands begging his mother to give him the freedom to move… all these kind of ordinary stuff…
I was flipping the page when I looked out of the window and there it was, a man with a black suit staring at an ordinary tree…
"Crazy people…!" I thought.
I looked closer; the man did not have a face!! A faceless man…!
I thought I was hallucinating; I asked the driver to stop and went down… I froze there for few minutes and then I thought… should I approach him? Is he dangerous? Is he infectious??? But my curiosity fraction of my brain stopped all these programmed electric movements that were moving crazily in my brain and send orders to my healthy leg and the one with injured ankle to move toward him, I obeyed and poked the man…

He turned to me and said: "what do you want you crazy girl?"

I answered with a petrified smile on my face: "I know that is a bit rude but I can't stop myself from asking you, why…"

And before I finished my question he side "am I staring at an ordinary tree?"
"Well, why you don’t have a face? I know this is none of my business but it is just …"
He answered with fragile, shaky voice: "for the same reason that you have red blood on your ankle missy, an accident… I just grew up"

"So you were born with a face?" I asked with poise
"yes, every one does" he answered and then he explained " I remember my face in the eyes of my mother when she used to kiss me, when her face was moving closer I used to see details of my face, my eyes… they were brown, and my nose.. my cheeks were as red as an apple.. she believed in me, she used to sing to me something about birds and she used to look to me while she sang to me night after night… but I grew up… poor as a stray cat, and days passed by and I kept loosing face features… one detail after an other, I went to the doctor to see what's wrong with me but he couldn’t figure this thing out…"

I interrupted him and said with all the excitement in the world "I know a cosmetic doctor who can do wonders, the best in Syria… no in the whole Middle East!!"

He laughed in a sarcastic way and said "as I was walking away from the doctor office, I lost even more features and so on.
I used to walk every day in these very streets, trying to see my reflections in the eyes of people but I couldn’t see but the judgment, blackness… they looked through my eyes while they were looking at me, I didn’t see me, I wasn’t there, some perspectives were there.. and so I became faceless"

He picked one leaf of the tree and gave it to me saying "smell it… touch it… feel it"
I took it from him and smelled it, it smelled like a something I knew but couldn’t recognize, for some reason the smell awaken my senses and I felt …sensi-tive

He took my hand and asked me to come closer to the tree, I took two steps forward and he said " look at the color of the wood, look at those ants climbing it, look at those yellow leafs moving under the sun giving them the good bye kiss… can you sense the character of this tree?

I looked at the tree, from every angle and touched the wood… out of sudden, that ordinary tree looked so interesting… it was "the" tree, not a tree.
I looked at the faceless man and I swear I could see him smiling… I could see some features, sparkling eyes…
"Thank you for listening" in a deep warm voice, and he walked away…
I wanted to say something, but he just disappeared among the crowd.

I spent that day walking aimlessly, looking at the people in the eyes and making sure that they can see their reflections in my eyes. And I could see, not ordinary… every one has different experiences every minute.

The sky was raining colors…

At the end of the day it hit me:
"It was a lemon tree… "the” tree was a lemon tree"