I recently met someone in Brooklyn who was a leading participant in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. He told me his story, which I’ve tried to remember as accurately as possible.

When I was a little boy, I used to ride the subway with my mother and her boyfriend Ali. Ali was an organ-grinder and he also an played accordion. He carried it from one end of the car to the other while my mother led me, felt hat in my hands, back and forth. People threw in dimes and quarters and the whole time Ali played the same song. Even when I went to sleep at night that song played, duh-dun-duh-dun-duh-dun-dundundun-duhdun…

On and off the subway cars we’d ride for hours every day. Some days were good and some were bad. Still it wasn’t enough for us to live in an apartment. We drifted, and when we scrapped up enough money for a week at a boarding house, we were soon back in the subways.

When I was maybe four or five we were staying in the Amtrak tracks on the Upper West Side. It was midwinter and I woke up one shivering morning between Ali and my mother. They were not shivering. They were not moving at all. The accordion was there. I left it.

I wound my way to the street. I walked through the park. The whole time I kept hearing Ali’s song, duh-dun-duhdun…An older woman found me. She asked me where my parents were; was I lost? I said we were all sleeping together and they didn’t wake up.

After that I spent some time in a foster home. I dropped out of school. I traveled, got a gig on a shipping tanker, saw a lot of the world.

Last year I was in Lebanon, in a seedy part of Beirut, at a peep show. And as the dancer started to take off her top, Ali’s song started to play.