The Un-ortolan

The other day I made a noise in the house - it was a high-pitched but gutteral cry of some kind. My gentleman friend, Siyavash, happened to be there. He told me I sounded like a baby crow, jujeh-kaelah in his language. "You sound like a jujeh-kaelah. Have you ever seen jujeh-kaelah?" He wrapped me in his arms and I closed my eyes. A sticky brown nest came to mind, held together with moss and saliva, in which several black heads with tiny, gaping-beaked mouths squeaking frantically. This memory was not one from the Uni, but from my childhood. I shivered. Can a child here ever see a nest of jujeh-kaelah? "They are ugly," he said with such tenderness, remembering his own other country. We are bits of floating sea-foam here, between masses of fertile ground.