🏷️ العلامة: cities of contrast

You don’t walk in Mesa. You squint, you scurry, you shimmer — mirage-style — from air-conditioned shade to air-conditioned shade.

But one morning, I did walk. Not just across parking lots, but through neighborhoods where the houses crouch low to the ground, like they’re bracing for something. Heat? Time? Memory?

The stucco here is the color of toasted almonds. The streets are wide — wide like they were built for tanks, not people. Yet on the margins: turquoise fences, blooming bougainvillea, and murals whispering we’ve been here a long time.

There’s adobe influence everywhere, even in new builds — though sometimes it feels more like a costume than a conviction. I stood in front of one apartment complex with faux-wooden vigas jutting out like stage props. A cactus had grown up beside them. It looked more authentic than the building.

I stopped for a raspa at a roadside stand. The owner had lived in the area since 1962. He said, “Mesa used to be sleepy. Now it just sweats louder.”

He wasn’t wrong. But there’s music in it.

You just have to slow down enough to hear it.

And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the dissonance too — a city shaped by indigenous forms and Latin rhythm, but one that once voted for a sheriff known for racial profiling and making inmates wear pink underwear. I sketched a mural of Quetzalcoatl across the street from a campaign billboard, sun-bleached and flaking. It made me wonder: can a place sing two songs at once?