Cars, carts, cats, dogs, dust, wrappers, feet, humans — living or dead — they all walk on it. Walk on that bridge. The bridge is worn, weathered, forgotten. It used to be of wood and rope at some point in its age, and was eventually promoted to concrete and road. But it is so old now that it has circled back to being as frail as the wooden slats it once replaced.
Mornings begin with the first crack of dawn, and the passersby cross it in a rhythm that has long become routine for them, and familiar, perhaps even intimate, for the bridge. At this point, it could very well recognize each of them by their footsteps alone.
The early morning laborers who set out just after dawn, heading to work before the day has fully decided to begin. The children whose school sits on the other side of the village, leaving as early as they do because the path ahead is long and entirely on foot. The women who step out from their homes with clay pots balanced on their heads, crossing to the other side to fetch water or find work. The polio workers in their long shawls and blue collars, who have been knocking on these doors for so long that they have stopped flinching each time someone scolds them for it. The tourist jeep that barely fits across the width of the bridge, creaking through every once in a while, its passengers gasping at the beauty folded into this landscape, never quite noticing the quiet ache living in the eyes of the residents beside them. People who have watched this region slowly shed one essential living standard after another. Who, each year, must cross this very bridge to reach the city for one more new need that didn’t exist the year before.
The bridge holds them all. The people, the cats, the carts, the weight and the weathering of every step; and allows those same people to return each evening, cross back over, and sleep beneath the stars.
It may never be entirely clear whether it is the oldest bridge clinging to life, or life clinging to the oldest bridge.
