The Native Trees of Canada

Matthew Muhammad was dead at fifty-nine. Abandoned
at age five in the streets of the city, named after
a saint by the nuns who found him asleep on the steps of
the church. The newspaper said his life had been a rags-to-riches
-to-rags story. I was cooking eggs with gigante beans and harissa,
breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon, toasting the cumin
seeds. Their color reminded me of red mulberry leaves, which aren’t
red at all, more olive green. I had seen a picture of them in a book
abandoned on a seat in the subway coming home last night, called
The Native Trees of Canada. I transferred the eggs onto a dish and spread
the beans and warm harissa on top and sliced them into ribbons. I folded
the newspaper into a fan, to cool myself with abandon in the heat of
the kitchen and to take one more look at the picture of Matthew
Muhammad, who died at fifty-nine and, as it turns out, always trusted
the wrong people and could take a bruising punch.