| Play, Or, Watching A Film about Muslim Boys Even when they do not move, there is a different stillness to bodies when they are together. The writer tells us about the boys he spoke to, wrote about, who abseiled from him in every conversation. But the boys in his film are thin. If you turn off the sound, you see their arms flail in unison. I want to slow them down. I am not looking for one face, or one human voice. I want to stand close to their sameness, listen for the turns in their words, learn what voluminous anguish they have pitted their certainty against. I want to look at their forearms when they are not raised, and stare at the skin that escapes their white robes. Does it give at the touch? Prayer is a ligament on which their skin hangs. Yet, strung tautly between two posts, every cord, despite itself, has a curve of play. The writer flinches from his pale, intimate crowd, makes a home for love in the sweet agility of sex. I know such love. It makes you grab one hand from the crowd and run. I watch the writer talk. In the curve of fabric at his wrist his skin is silken as a boy’s. |
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