Nietzsche’s cutting quote, “If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you,” is by now a redundancy. And so, when I became a San Francisco probation officer, I prepared myself to keep company with the abyss. But I had not quite realized how extensive the abyss was. I saw it in the eyes of the senior probation officers, so exhausted by massive caseloads that they were counting the months to retirement. I saw it in the faces of deputy jailors, disaffected shift workers who were all but deaf to the human clamor of the cell ranges. And, of course, I saw it in my clientele: hollow-cheeked crack heads, asocial gang bangers, vagrants with thousand mile stares. But at least the abyss could be mellow where probationers were concerned. It was mellow in the case of Joseph Shepherd, a middle-age drug peddler on probation for choking his girlfriend. Entering my office for his intake interview, he glanced at the tower of case files on my desk and chuckled. “I know you have it rough,” he remarked in a voice that could be poured over waffles. “So I plan to make it easy on you, sir.” He smiled with the insular charm of a sociopath then shook my hand with a python grip. He seemed to be a man of elemental strength—a brawn with a life of its own—yet his broad open face and puppy dog eyes set me completely at ease.
September 24th, 2014 10.15am
We meet every morning in the coffee shop next door to the hotel. There’s Zia, with his three shots of espresso and who knows how many packets of sugar. Ali takes his coffee with plenty of cream. Aqmed orders one of those fancy drinks with an Italian name I wouldn’t dare try to pronounce. Every day something different. “What is it today?” Zia always asks Aqmed, as if there’s something a bit too girlish about Aqmed, a man who doesn’t drink his coffee black and strong. Then, of course, there is me. Omar. I am a tea man.
He was a tall sheepish gentleman in his late fifties. His eyes were gentle, his chin was weak, his shoulders were starting to stoop. His legs were thin and wobbly, his hair was thinning and gray. And he walked with the hesitant stride of a crane, his head bobbing forward with every step. Watching him amble along the street, one would never guess him to be an artist. A servant, perhaps, a beggar more likely, but not an artist: a soul unencumbered by earthly snares and committed to only the Muse. But an artist he was, and no mere artist at that. He was an artist in the most gallant of mediums: the daring realm of street performance.
literally stories 