Mora, All The Time

We sat playing Mora and drinking wine until the quiet hours and then, after clapping each other on the back, we headed for home. I lost all night.
"Not surprising." he said to me, "I can read you like a book."
I don't buy it. It's a game of chance. He claims that he knows what I'm going to throw before I do.
"You like the number three and throw it more than anything else. That alone gives me enough of an advantage to win the point."

The Romans called it micare digitis and the Chinese chai mei, and took it pretty seriously but Med plays it because it reminds him of his father and watching as the old men sat for hours, telling stories, drinking wine and laughing long after he'd been put to bed. He says it was even outlawed for a time because it encouraged arguments and fighting over points.

Sometimes we sit, at the cafe, for hours at a time and Med nods to people he knows as they walk by. He is at home there, with an esspresso and a smile. He crosses his legs in a way that my father would call 'queer' but not even my father would say something like that to Med. He says little to me, as we sit and watch the world go by; his wisdom seems to come from the meditative wash of people going about their business. I sometimes get restless, waiting for something to happen, but Med says this is because I'm Irish and need distractions to feel alive. I don't exactly understand this but I think it may be an insult.

"Sit down and shut up." he said to me once, after I'd asked him why he comes here every day. My anger spread quickly and I was about to leave when he added, "If you don't sit down and shut up you'll miss what's going on. Look, she's going home to cook dinner. Look at the way she keeps looking up at the tower clock. She's late and there's going to be an argument. And him, he's forgotten what his wife asked him to pick up. There's Lucy. She's working at the noodle house. She's early today. That means they'll be busy tonight. Don't go to the noodle house before nine." I told him I didn't care about these people and he sat forward on his chair and said, "These are your people. Whether you care about them or not, they're your people. That's what you forget."

Mora is a game of wiggling fingers, shouting and drinking. But Med thinks it's a game in which we put down our weapons and face each other, like men, with nothing but our wits to guide us. He claims he can see into a man's soul when he plays. He thinks it brings us closer together and that we can learn from each other the secrets that make each of us strong in the face of adversity. He thinks it's a philosophy, a way of life and a tonic. I think he's crazy.

He does win all the time, though. He says it's because he knows me better than I know myself. He's probably right.