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Elephant in the City


by Nora Nadjarian


It happened as I was crossing over and I saw it, him, right in the middle of the street, blocking the traffic

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A woman stood in front, and everyone watched in horror at first, because she might get trampled, the elephant might stampede and she might die. But none of that happened in the next few minutes. The woman touched his thick skin with her hands, and she wept and wept, as if she'd found the one precious thing in life which she'd lost, and more traffic stopped and people stared.  No beeping of horns, just complete silence. No panic, just calmness. There's this one word: serendipity. If she hadn't gone shopping that day, they wouldn't have met. If he hadn't escaped, she would never have found him. If the cars hadn't stopped, I wouldn't have looked. If the woman hadn't wept this story might not have been written. Think of it as a kind of sequence, luck in slow motion, people escaping their lives for a few minutes in order to find what they're looking for.

 

The woman would not move, and neither did the elephant. I wrote a love story. It happened.

 

 




© Nora Nadjarian

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