Christmas in its absence.

I walk, tee-shirted and jeaned, open toed in dark leather, toward a conversation I have had before. "Are you not cold..?" she will say, as I buy milk and bread. Matriarchal, grandiosely ugly, shapless in a dress of volcanic orange, lava-flows of fat boiling beneath. All bustle and muscle: I've seen her hoist tubs of rice as big as a barrel off the delivery truck single handed. Hair you could put an oil-field on she will sit behind the till, her eyes glowing like gimlets above wrinkled cheeks she will smile at the under-dressed Englishman in her shop. I will shrug, lop-sided and make her laugh. I will say I am a man cooked in a stone-oven, foreign words playing easy idiom on my lips.

I used to try to explain in halting Turkish what they (for I am I and they are they and that is that) count as cold - a dry and dusty absence of Summer heat, tainted as it is wiith the fumes of fuel-oil from leaky boilers and coal burned in open stoves - is not the cold my body is used to; the crisp, clear-skied chill of Autumnal mornings in the place of my birth; the heavy, snow-laden air of Mid-Winter turning breath to billow. I miss my breath, I haven't seen it in ten years.

We will pause a moment, as she ponders the prices of the things I buy every day, summoning figures uneasily. She will pass me the calculator, its keys worn blank by countless transactions of minor concern. And I will tap upon it, to humour her, though I have already totalled, and worked out what change she will give me from the note in my pocket. She cannot read, nor write, nor add. She is a woman, born of a generation too early for anything but marriage.

As I leave I stop and exchange greetings with the mad Kurd who dwells in the derilict building around the corner with his garden furniture stolen from dumpsters and his dogs, stray no longer. Orphan of the last earthquake a year ago. A rich man. All his money sunk into a fine apartment building that now leans ten degrees off true, its foundations undermined by the ripples that ran through the earth that night and sent me and my family hurtling out of the house in our underwear, baby clutched awkwardly, gold and credit cards in our teeth. He does not understand me, nor I him, but we kiss, his stubbled, swarthy cheeks batting against mine. Don't know what he sees in me save perhaps a fellow displaced soul. It can't last.

Rituals over I walk back to the house, past trees the boughs of which are unsheathed in snow, past windows the panes of which are unlit by fairy lights, past people whose faces are set against what cold there is, their eyes dull. I walk past nothing in fact, that would betray that today...

...Is Christmas Day.

Here no sad homeless Santas clog the corners, tolling their bells for small change. The streets are not hung with Christmas stars nor crowded by last-minute shoppers. The air-waves do not vibrate with the sound of sleigh-bells nor the television screens convulse with the turgid dramas of Christmases past. The Sound of Music does not echo across the hills and there are no escapes, great or otherwise. No knocks on the door. No carols sung badly to the beat of stamped feet in thin soles. No hot toddies simmering on the stove. Santa's grotto undiscovered, his elves and pixies slain by the djinns and their little heads whirled upon poles in dervish dreams.

The rooftops are not scarred by the tracks of sleighs, the clouds are unlit by Rudolph's nose. Stockings are not hung and puddings do not soak in rum, for alcohol is forbidden in the households of the faithful. Stuffing is unstuffed, presents unbought require no wrapping.

No turkeys in Turkey.

No Christmas, save that which the father who knows Christmas brings.

My son sits up in his bed. This is the first Christmas he will remember, all those past have been but rehersals for this big day. He believes.

There are no mysteries to my Christmas: no infants are born today in mangers and no men, however wise, follow stars. I bring the mundanities of wishes granted by a fat red man somehow squeezed down a chimney and snippets of songs sung together beneath a tree - It becomes fun to ride in an open sleigh, and for a few half-remembered bars Good King Wenslas looks out upon snow, deep and white and even.

I look at my son and see the little life I have given him, his clean limbs and impish smile. So beautiful and so clever, only three years old and speaking two tongues with equal fluency. My little bastard mongrel child, son of the messiah and the prophet. I look and see the children who will taunt him, the friends who will turn on him, the colleagues who when push comes to shove will distrust him for being too much of one to ever be wholly the other. My fingers curl into claws and I want to rip out all their throats for the pain they will cause him.

And I fear the day when he will stand grown before me, his dark eyes hooded in judgement, and ask me why I fought no battles for him, why I did not punish those who wronged him and the words of Nietzche that I will have practiced so long will dry in my mouth and I will walk meekly toward the gallows he has errected.

I look into his eyes and in this Christmas without mystery, I find mystery enough.

Hours have passed. Presents have been ripped and torn at by excited little hands with touseled smiles haloed in bright paper. Toys examined, givers logged; DVDs played, hats worn. My children sleep, and I am at peace. The spuds are peeled, the bird is cooking, sprouts have been crossed and puddings have risen. All is well.

All is well.

...Continued...