asleep and that the room’s door was locked, he crept to the edge of the balcony. The ground was about twenty feet below, and the beat of his heart quickened as he eyed a nearby branch, which was almost an arm’s length away and as thick as his thigh. Certain that the branch would support him, that the old tree wouldn’t fail him, Ian tucked his letter into his pocket. He climbed over the railing and stood on the edge of the balcony, holding the metal behind him.
After taking several deep breaths and studying the branch, he leapt for it, his arms wrapping around it, his skin pierced and torn in several places, but his mind unyielding. Grunting, he pulled himself up, swinging his leg over the branch, twisting so that he was atop it. Scooting forward, he reached the trunk of the tree and began to climb. He took pleasure in the task, as if he were drawing closer to Kate. And he went up, higher and higher, until the tree swayed beneath him, and distant lights on the Red Sea shined like fireflies.
A breeze arose, causing leaves to move and chatter, the tree to come alive. He watched the stars, the gathering of worlds. He thought of Mattie sleeping below, of how they would explore more peaks and valleys, seas and sketches. His life wasn’t over, he knew, though not long ago he had feared that it was. In so many ways, he was like the tree, whose ancestors might have shaded Moses. The tree had been wounded in places, with stumps where branches had been, with cracks in once-smooth wood. Yet the tree was unquestionably alive, and supported life. Insects crawled about it. A bird’s nest was near. The tree still knew how to sing in the wind.
Ian found a crevice in the trunk, which held old leaves and a fine layer of sand. The sand must have arrived before the hotel was built, when storms carried the desert toward the Red Sea. Careful not to disturb the sand, Ian tucked his note into the crevice. The act of seeing the ancient sand, of leaving Kate a note, felt holy. At no point since her death had Ian felt closer to Kate than he did now. He believed in the wishing tree. He believed that she could see him on it, and that she would read or hear or somehow sense the words that he had written. She had spoken to him from the dead—leading him here, to a place where he could rise anew, where the Nile flowed, millennium after millennium, carrying silt and moisture to soil that brought life to the desert, to a place of memories, of histories, of dynasties that would continue to be discovered and celebrated.
The river still flowed, its waters not yet gone, its stories not yet fully told.
HONG KONG
The Smiles of Strangers
“A BIRD DOES NOT SING BECAUSE IT HAS AN ANSWER. A BIRD SINGS BECAUSE IT HAS A SONG.”
—CHINESE SAYING
An old man removed his thick glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and then settled back on the bench. He had been coming to the park since childhood, and though the city below it had changed, the park hadn’t. The boulders were the same, as were the wide stretch of grass, the laugher of children, the way the sun felt on his skin.
As he had many times over the past year and a half, the old man watched a family of Westerners, their words incomprehensible to him, but their faces familiar and welcome. The family sat on a picnic blanket and savored the day. A girl with light brown hair lay on her belly, drawing in a sketch pad. Another girl, about the same age, laughed with a dark-skinned boy who had only recently begun arriving with them.
The old man didn’t understand the appearance of the boy, who looked so different from the girls and the man and woman, who often held hands. The boy always sat near the girls and played with them as if they were his siblings, even though they did not have the same flesh and blood.
As the sun climbed higher, the old man continued to watch the family, savoring their joy, reminded of his own brothers and sisters.
The father removed a soccer ball from a backpack, and soon he and the woman were chasing the ball, and the children ran and laughed, kicking and falling and giggling and making the old man smile so many times.