Piles

The only good sidewalk on the way to the bus stop this morning was piled at intervals with manure. The smell reminded me of home. 

On the side of the road, men in green and orange work-suits use straw brooms to collect mounds of sand and dirt, and these, too, are placed at intervals that periodically get trampled or run over or blow away. 

At a gas station by the university, a giant pit waits for a building to fill it. In the meantime, it's a dump for the gas station. 

When Al-Azhar Park (one of the only continuously green spaces in a city where there isn't enough green to fill each inhabitant's foot) was built, it replaced a centuries-old trash heap. Embedded in the heap was a forgotten relic - an ancient wall now celebrated and restored.

A paleontologist told me that the layers of rock representing our era will be nothing but plastic bags. 

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