Fire

It must have been a celebration of fire because all over the fairground the air was glowing orange and there was smoke, flames, crackling sounds, screams, laughter, cars without tops, children, grown-ups, cigarets, cotton candy, dark hills, red earth and the sundown.

We were there, babies that no one had to explain things to, sitting on the back seat of a topless car. One cousin had firecrackers, one had a cigaret. Soon it would be cold and after that it would be dark. It happened that way, always, whether or not they were celebrating fire.

At dark most of the people left the fairground and went back to their streets which were dark and narrow, cobbled or paved and full of bonfires. People walked around in the dark sucking clear liquid from long bottles that reflected the orange flames on the street. There was screaming. Boys poured some of the liquid from the bottles on the bonfires and the flames jumped like sleeping zoo lions being pestered by children. At the celebration of fire, the flames, like lions, were kings and never succumbed to anything, even liquids. People whistled like boiling teapots. Old wrinkled ladies wearing silk paisleyed chadors made music with spoons, slapping them against the moist palms of their boney hands, against their narrow thighs. There was hard rhythm, clapping like tongues snapping inside mouths, teeth tapped by fingernails. Clop, clop, sang the spoons.

The celebration of fire was only on the fourth day of the week, once a year. That was the only thing they explained to the children as they watched the flames jump and dance when the wild boys poured the liquid. Some boys and girls had black leather bags so shiny that they too reflected the orange flames in the dark narrow streets. They slapped the bags against the cobblestones or asphalt and the sounds were explosions, like fire crackling, like awakened lions roaring, like the tired sun blazing in the sky past the dark hills. They hit the ground easily with their black leather bags, but if the children got hold of one and slapped the ground, even with all their might, there were never explosions. If the children clapped the spoons against their tight pink palms, there were never beats or sounds. If the children filled bottles with water from the faucet on the street corner and poured it on the flames, there was only a small noise. A hiss. A lion that was bored, not pestered. We watched the grownups jump over the flames, control the fire, celebrate.

No one explained the magic celebration to the children. So the children came up with their own myths to explain it: Flames were magic in the hands of men; water was magic in the hands of boys; silver spoons were magic in the hands of old ladies. In the large hands of big people, in the large eyes of small children, the leather bags made magic explosions, the sparkling streets, the orange sky, the dark hills . . .