Gray
By Seif Labib
I’m sitting on a gray ledge in between four palm trees. The sky is a bright blue and the clouds are a milky white. The sun hides behind the clouds, which look like they are moving, but in reality the globe is moving and the skies are still.
Then why does it feel like the middle of the night? Colors are bland. Maybe I have acquired dog vision, because I can only see in shades of gray.
The world around me is moving frantically and here I am, sitting still. People are walking hastily, but with purpose. They are all dressed with the same Westernised fashion: jeans and leather jackets. It feels like I’ve been sucked into the movie Grease.
Time goes by me the way a train goes by a standing tree. I’m wearing a black hoodie, black pants and black shoes. The building in front of me is predominantly stone-gray. It is pronounced with a towering arc. The words ‘Campus Centre’ are plastered at the top of the arc’s crescent. In its core is a smaller arc that is painted orange.
Something about this structure appeals to me on a personal level. I am like this building: immobile and tall, but within my core I am overwhelmed with orange within my innards.
ANXIETY
I am overshadowing the bustle and hustle of the campus streets, but I am taking no part in it.
To the left of the Campus Centre is the library building that is encircled with a beige architectural illusion.
There are square holes in the wall that seem to serve as mirages distorting the uniformly sturdy structure within; a soul that is ripped apart, deformed, but is still awe-inspiringly beautiful.
A student wearing a leather jacket is sitting in one of the holes. A few meters before him, under a green and white sign that reads “Assembly point”, stood a woman consoling her friend.
Her friend’s makeup seemed to be running under tears and forming black tracks across her pale face. The dark trails met at the edges of her wine-red lips. It seems that I was spit out of Grease and thrown into a gritty grayscale, 1930’s horror movie. I can see the colors, but they are tinted with unmistakeable grayness.
A few metres to the left of the girl with makeup running down her face, a red booth, with white stripes painted on it, stood deserted. The booth is an entrenched onlooker onto the campus centre street, people pass by it every day like it didn’t even exist: lovers, loners, mothers and sons, friends and class- mates all in a hurry.
I wonder if they even take a minute to register their surroundings. The trees are standing formidably, forming two rows that inbound those passersby.
The songs are seeping their way into my ears, the way a snake slithers its way through the grass. The breeze is fluttering my hair and rattling my train of thought. I catch myself staring at the shadows of four palm trees, and realise that I’m still, unaffectedly, rooted to my place.
