the forest in the city

Yesterday I met two people who knew my hometown. To be fair, more people than I would expect have heard of my hometown, and—I say it without comic intention—I’ve met a lot of people whose cars have broken down in attempt to drive through to somewhere else. But more often people say, Where?, and have a little laugh at Effingham, Illinois. Say it out loud in all its obscene fervor.

On the agenda was a long wandering trek around Manhattan and back across the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn. Some day I will walk the whole earth.

On my way out, a clown said hello to me. On my way in three young women wearing large rain hats and old-lady dresses, speed-walking across the bridge to Manhattan, passed me blindly and briskly. I have no idea what time period they fell in from.

But first—a trip to Najeeb’s. (This is all I can find online for now.) Najeeb’s is in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, on Graham Ave between Skillman and Consylea. (Note: I may have the cross streets wrong, but it’s around there.) Anybody in the area must visit this restaurant.

Several times I walked passed this place and wondered about it. Finally, one day when I was bored with my other options, I stopped in. Nobody was there but Najeeb, another man, and several stringed instruments hanging on the wall. I ordered a falafel sandwich with hummus. In the words of Agent Cooper, it was a damn fine sandwich.

Yesterday I stopped in and when Najeeb saw me he gave me a big wave of the hand, oddly similar to the way I wave at people and have on occasion received ridicule for. I waved back and walked up to the counter. Najeeb looked at my neck where an ivory-colored elephant was hanging from a brown strap. Looking me in the eyes he inquired what he already seemed to know, "Do you have a collection of elephants at home?"

I felt like I’d dropped into that magical place, a mix of Wonderland, Oz, and all enchanted forests combined that I’d always wanted to find—where things are known and normal boundaries do not exist.

"I do," I told him. "How many?" he asked. I really had no idea. "Not many—10, 12." He told me, "I have a friend in San Francisco who has a collection of over 500 elephants in her apartment."

He asked if the elephant on my neck was a stone. I didn’t know, so I let him touch it. He said he thought it was bone and pulled a small box off a shelf behind the counter. He said he used bone to make some of his instruments and placed a few pieces on the glass. After comparing weight and feel, we decided my elephant was made of bone.

He went to make my sandwich and I sat down. When he brought it out I told him this was my new favorite place to eat. "This is the best place to eat," he said with a bold smile, "because I care." Perhaps it is. Because he certainly does.

After I finished and went up to the counter to pay, Najeeb asked me where I was from. Turns out he’d played music at a festival that took place, oddly, in a museum in the middle of a forest somewhere between Effingham, St. Louis and Carbondale (where I went to college; the three towns form a nearly equilateral triangle).

As we were talking, a guy came in and mentioned he had just come back from visiting family in Indiana. My ears perked up and I told him I was from Illinois. Turns out his best friend had married someone from Effingham. There you have it.

The bedrooms highlighted on bad reality TV aren't where the magic happens. Magic happens at Najeeb’s. Intersecting geography and elephants made of bones.