A Chorus of One

It is a cloudy Friday morning and right on cue Caiaphas the chief high priest climbed up the scaffolding and knocked on my window.

He was a bearded man of possibly Iranian origin maybe in his late 20’s just about the age of the Caiaphas in the Norman Jewison film, with a similar build and look. At first I thought I might ignore them as I was not yet out of bed, but he knocked again and I realized that the time for my old cracked window had finally arrived.

We conversed briefly and he didn’t seem to mind that I was standing in my undershorts. He asked if he could come in through the window and told me he would be using the electrical outlet inside.

He came in briefly and exited my apartment through the apartment door.

When he appeared back at my window on the scaffolding I explained that I was going to be saying my prayers and doing my exercises but to ignore me.

He replied in a Middle Eastern accent…”Cool, I do the same.”

I would not have been too surprised if echoing my Jesus Christ Superstar comment in yesterday’s blog, he had added, “…Mohammad is Cool!”

I proceeded through my prayers and exercises although the heavy mallet blows as he was knocking the old window frame out of position were a bit jarring. I am used to morning peace and quiet.

In between hammer blows he began singing in a very melodic voice and whistling. His presence was very harmonious once I was used to him being there. I can’t say that I recognized the tunes, but the spirit was obvious and totally recognizable.

I then prepared coffee and checked email, in full view of the window with this kindly stranger looking in and hammering away with a modicum of decorum I might add. It was as though he was holding back some force out of respect for the old man inside the apartment.

I prepared my morning cereal and when I sat back down at my keyboard we started to talk again. He told me he was Kurdish from Northern Iraq…and that he was the oldest of 6 children. He talked about how his brothers and sisters now lived in many different countries and when I asked if they communicated by letter, he smiled and said, “We talk to each other all the time on web cam!” Ah yes, it is a different world than the one I knew at his age.

As I ate my breakfast he proceeded to slowly dismantle the window. He told me that it was probably 50 years old as he extracted the original screws one by one. “They built in wood in those days”, he commented. They are trying to take out the old windows but keep the frame intact to hold the new ones.

The old windows were swing-out windows, and the new ones will have sliding panels so that they can be opened without having to secure them in a strong wind. It looks like the new ones will also have screens that can be used in summer.

He stepped back through the window into my apartment explaining that he now had to work from inside and very respectfully exited through my apartment door again.

So my intuition about the workmen was in the ballpark but so far it's a chorus of one.