Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

In Transit

The summer heat stabs the skin with needles. The usually assertive acacia tree, sky-gazing with its leafy symmetries, looks resigned. A man’s hand glistens with sweat-beads as he scrolls up and down on his tablet. A little boy dressed in tennis clothes practices rotating-the-ball movements with his racket.

“When will the bus come?” the boy says. “It will,” the father says.

The boy rises on his toes, swipes the racket over his head and with a swift swing cuts through the thick air. “Do you like my serve?” “Very much so, son.” The man takes away his hand and eyes from the tablet, wipes the sweat trickling down his temples, and feverishly returns to his device. The boy makes interchangeable spinning and clipping movements with his racket and starts singing: “This land is my land, this land is your land…. So I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

“Daddy, do you like my music?”

63