When we arrive at noon,
Imbard offers us tea.  
He brings small glasses, pours water 
from a kettle, and turns 
to the machine before him 
while people gather in the square.
I watch his fingers guiding the cloth
as he tells us in his one-volume voice
about the winds of Mogador, 
and the massacres he escaped up North 
that never made it into print.
Fragments are uttered like confessions 
as his foot leaves the pedal:
half a lifetime spent in Europe
assembling car parts,
praying to Allah between shifts.
I want to praise him now
for having come full circle
from the factories and the riots 
to find himself upright 
facing the marketplace,
but I observe in silence 
the fabrics cut to size, 
torn parts pieced together.
He wears the same fine threadbare suit each day —
Imbard, master of mending.