I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling,
the ceiling floats away with a sigh.
– Rita Dove, Geometry

There once was a regal white tiger, Mohini, who lived at the national zoo in Washington D.C., a gift from the Maharaja of Rewa to President Eisenhower in 1960.

White Bengal tigers are rare; a recessive gene. The last wild one had been hunted two years earlier. And before Mohini, none had ever left India. Her name comes from the root moha: “enchant, perplex, disillusion,” and literally means a “personified delusion.”

Delusion. Tigers are orange. With black stripes. Not white, regal, crossing oceans, continents, proving its own vastness to the world. Mohini arrived,

and was placed in a 3×3 meter cage, concrete and iron bars.

Not purposely cruel, just the texture of that world; iron, concrete, orange with black stripes, three by three square meters. Resources by circumstance, experience by fear, a fixed perimeter: reality.

Mohini paced that cell for years, and when, finally, the zoo had raised enough funds to make a 5,000 square meter dream of trees and grass, rolling hills, vegetation, a pond, rippling streams…

Mohini froze, then ran to a corner, and began pacing. She died in a browned patch of grass, 3×3, twenty years later. People have fit offices, homes, whole lives, into smaller spaces.

There once was a girl who lived in Washington D.C. Who burst, one day, out of a cubicle, smaller than 3×3. Not cruel, just the size, texture, colour of one world. Not the world, wild, rare, and vast, enchanting, deslusional, for her.

There was once, also, a boy in Abu Dhabi, who emptied his bank account and went backpacking, crossing oceans, continents, to a Mexican beach…

I prove a theorem and the house expands:
the windows jerk free—

A trader who now plays on pianos in London streets. In Paris, a salesman-turned-chef who reconciled me with curry. In Beirut, on Thursdays, a mechanical engineer moonlighting in a bar, singing Florence and the Machine. A pharma-rep-slash-walking-tour-guide: hidden neighbourhood gems. Another who makes greeting cards. A data scientist who ran away with… the opera. A Boston balloonist. A flâneur in Saint Louis, faute de Paris. Speaking of Paris,

that girl in D.C. went to Paris, where she found, in a room the size of a closet, without a closet, with a bed the size of a doll’s, a view of chimneys and zinc rooftops,

a world as real, rare, enchanting, as it was enormous. Containing maps, poetry, lemon trees, dictionaries – French to Spanish, Italian, bird calls, Japanese – music sheets and paints and silver Baci chocolate wrappings, Moleskine notebooks and a scent: red apples and jasmine… and

proof, living, of the absolute necessity of freedom, beauty,
and that concrete and iron bars don’t exist, really.