taarradhin
“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”
The stalls of fish were too pungent for the girl to pass, so she walked the long way around the Medina to her home. A man with a red hat spouting feathers followed her, banging his drum. As-aalaam alaikum, as-aalaam alaikum, he chanted with each step. He followed the girl's cadence of movement and the symmetry annoyed her.
Irritation peeped out of her pores on dreary days. A sky holding rain provoked the girl's temper, which bloated at the corners of her periphery. She couldn’t see beyond the fury and clenched her fists until the nails dug into each palm.
There was never any blood; she wasn’t that deep.
Unable to locate the source of her angst, she sought ways to purge her vexation that didn't involve thinking. She took up boxing for a week until the wrath on the punching bag split her nails and the skin across her knuckles.
Sitting at the river three miles from her house with a cigarette and the birds for company proved a more sustainable relief for her appearance and pocketbook. A pack of smokes was more than a month at the gym, though she'd developed a system to make one cigarette last more than a few days. She took three short drags before wetting the tip and placing it in a metallic case intended for business cards.
Stacatto and sensitive; she was adept and making things last longer than they needed to.
Birds clung to the boughs and concealed themselves by the foliage. Comforted by sound, the girl didn't press to see the yellow and blue-breasted beasts. They whistled with her and listened to her cry without admonishing advice or judgment.
The girl spoke in a monotone voice when she discussed how she felt and stuck her prettily painted feet in the stream. Rolling up her pant cuffs, she'd wade out to the spot at the center of the thicket where the water licked her shins and the stones were flat and smooth.
Her emotions were like that riverbed, flush after a storm and rushing in a direction carved by carelessness and noncommitment. Gravity pulled the rain down from the hill, where it seeped into the earth and pooled, creating the runoff between rocks and roots.
The girl sought the river's end once after it had rained for six days. She could not locate it. It just kept going and going.
In the dry season, the ground lacked moisture and dried up like an apricot. The girl would wander through the trees and spy garbage where there was once water. Plastic chip bags, bottle caps, cigarette butts (never hers), Q-tips, cheese rinds, plastic bottles filled to the rim with a dark yellow liquid, popsicle sticks, and grape juice boxes.
Sometimes stray dogs appeared, their muzzles greasy with rotting food they'd dug out of plastic bags deposited in the city's alleyways. They'd follow the girl and stick their noses into her palms if she left her hands to dangle by her sides. The bitches stank and the girl threw sticks at them until they stopped following her, their heads cocked quizzically as she pushed deeper into the woods.
Secreting disgust was a belabored pastime for the girl. It was more important to stay hidden than to reveal. Relationships lasted longer if they were framed with sharp corners; definition was the only way through desire.
The girl expressed ardor by painting her nails ibis rose and sucking on honey candies, so her breath was tainted with sweets. She only wore pastel shades, especially in the wintering months, and combed her long dark hair sixty-six times before taking it off her face with a clip shaped like a seashell. She pinched her nipples, so they perked up under tight sweaters. She'd read that some women put ice cubes into each bra cup before dashing out the door.
That thing leaped up from her navel and squeezed her heart so hard she felt faint; it filled the girl with a dreaded excitement, like going swimming on a cloudy day.
Her Teta said this sensation was passion. What are you doing when you feel this, love?
The girl couldn't tell her Teta that sometimes, she'd be laying in bed with one hand between her legs stroking the soft dark fur with the same fury she brushed her hair in the morning.
They're random, she'd stated.
She couldn't tell her Teta about her recent excursion to the beach with her girlfriends. They'd worn matching one-piece swimsuits and stood in the water with their hands on their hips until a group of boys from France arrived and asked them in French if they wanted to join their fire.
They walked the strip of beach towards a small mound of rocks where a group of fifteen or so travelers had set up a makeshift camp. Three tents were covered by a long navy tarp held up by wooden stakes driven deep into the sand. The girl discovered that the party had just arrived from Isreal, hitchhiking from one desert to another.
The French boys were also backpackers, though they planned on staying up all night with the fire to wait for sunrise.
Two older women appeared from the mouth of a tent with a blue and white tarp blanket enough for the entire group to recline as the sun slipped into the water and the stars freckled the sky.
They'd prepared a large fire and let the long strips of wood burn down to embers that glowed so red the girl felt her shins and cheeks burning. As she moved away from the heat, one boy shifted a few of the stones, creating a ring around the fire, so they were atop the embers on the outer circle. He placed Moroccan bread on the rocks to get warm. People set their pots in the center of the pit, where the wood spit and hissed. There was room for three medium-sized tagines in the center.
A boy, who the girl had not seen amongst the backpackers, entered the circle with his hands bearing a pot with a glass lid.
There's no room, one of the girls said. You'll have to wait. She gestured at the fire.
The boy hissed. Make room!
He sat beside the girl, putting his pot of food at the lip of the embers close to the rocks with the bread. He had been wearing a red sweater with long tassels with gold and orange beads. A pair of dark sunglasses hung around his neck, and his beard was blond.
Whose is this? He asked without waiting for an answer and deftly moved the six slices of bread from the stones to a stack on a blanket; he placed his pot where the bread had been and sat back.
The girl looked around for the boy who'd placed the bread, though it was so dark she could not see a few feet past where she was sitting. She shifted in her seat, moving a few millimeters away from the blond-bearded boy who'd edged a bit closer when he'd set his pot down on the stones. The bread toppled over into the sand.
That isn't your food. It's pretty rude what you've just done.
The boy looked at her.
He leaned forward off of his seat, so he was squatting on all fours. He moved, so his hands hovered over the three tajines in the pit. His eyes were on the girl; he pulled off the lid and stuck his fingers into the pot. Plucking an olive into his mouth, he licked his lips and put the top back on the tajine. Without breaking eye contact, he repeated the gesture with the other two pans in the embers, taking a carrot from one and a slice of potato from the final pot.
As the girl watched the boy lick his fingers clean of the sauce and swallow the vegetables, she felt a knot growing warm below her navel and spark between her legs. Her heart lurched up to her throat and she gasped- the boy's audacity!
Her body vibrated with arousal. The entitlement, the sheer arrogance of a person who so calmly stuck his hands out and took what he felt was his, moved the girl into a state of desperation. No one was watching, yet everyone was there. Not one person paid the boy attention. He was smaller and thinner than the boys from France and men from Isreal, yet his directive was so much greater.
The girl wanted him immediately. The alacrity ripped through her body and she stood up as if scorched by one of the spitting embers.
The boy laughed. A proud laugh. A laugh of malice and charm. A laugh without kindness. A laugh of irony and shame.
Without saying goodbye to her friends, the girl walked home in the dark and relished the feral wetness between her legs.
Once home, she stripped her clothes and sat on the tiles in the bathroom to remove her nail polish. She poured the liquid from a small bottle onto a cotton swab and rubbed each toe and fingernail until she was dizzy from the scent of acetone. She pulled a polish from the cupboard she shared with her mother- a green she associated with vomit that had never been opened.
She chewed her tongue as she used the small brush to paint each nail, moving from the cuticle to the tip until her breathing slowed and her body shuddered from the chill and not her erratic fervor.
Teta commented on the color the next morning, at breakfast, over poached eggs and sour cream with hot coffee.
The ache of the soul reveals all sorts of colors, she'd said, stirring sugar into her drink.
The girl kept her eyes on her hands as she plunged bits of torn bread into the runny eggs. She could feel his eyes on her the entire time.
Photo source.
