Flights of Fancy

Flights of Fancy — by Samira Azzam

After the marriage of the writer Samira Azzam and her settling in Baghdad at the beginning of this year, our readers missed her graceful, sweet "flights of fancy"... And here she is today, despite her fruitful journalistic output, returning to write in her literary, poetic style... Welcome, Samira!

When he dug a foot deep into the soil of his garden and set the green seedling firm in the good earth, he never dreamed that it would burst forth in bounty and become a white canopy hung with a thousand stars, called — in other than the language of poetry — an apricot tree.

And one spring his apricot tree put forth leaves and filled with promising stars, each star rounding into a yellow fruit.

But his mouth never knew their sweetness, for he saw in his garden and its canopies no more than these white stars.

And he was driven from the land, and deprived of its bounty, and nothing remained to him but the clinging image, and the fragrance that intoxicates his senses every season, when the apricot trees blossom and the gardens become a dancing-floor for spring.

And today, ten years after, he still feels his cause — the cause of a tree that he planted and another ate; of a white canopy in whose shade strangers take their ease.

O you who feel what is in his soul, and know the secret of the two tears that swim in his eyes when, on his evening walks, he comes to an orchard where the white blossoms have lit up on the apricot trees.

If you see her in the morning knocking gently at your door, to greet you with a smile charged with all the optimism of her ten years, and then hand you a bottle of the best her cow gives — know that she is Bashira.

And if you see her an hour later, do not fail to know her by her black school smock, her shod feet, and her satchel bulging with books — for Bashira is a schoolgirl too.

Once she stood waiting for me while I emptied her bottle of milk; she leaned against the wall and began reckoning something on her fingers. When I came back to her with the empty bottle she said: Isn't nine times seven sixty-three? I am going over the table of nines... And I stroked her head gently, and she took up the bottle and skipped from our house to our neighbors' house, with "nine times seven" still dancing on her lips.

I asked her once, as she wiped from her feet the dew of the garden grass at the door of our house: Are you doing well at school, Bashira?

She handed me the bottle and said, like one who scorns the question: Ask my teacher — I am first in my class... Yes, Bashira the milk-seller, first in her class.

She said this and slipped away with her bottle, light as a nimble goat; for she has no time to waste, and before her is a set of bottles awaiting distribution, and a set of houses that receive their morning to the knocking of Bashira, standing at doors still shut against the threads of dawn.

And I gaze after her a little and say: and why should she not be first? Did she not learn, before all the others, that life does not give without taking?

How wonderful is what a gentle touch can do! A lesson I learned from three dogs that surrounded me one night.

I was coming out of one of the shops on my way home.

And the night was blind, without a moon; as for the street lamps, they were too weak to scatter the desolation of the evening with its thickening gray clouds.

Suddenly the rain began to fall, lightly at first, then hard; and I looked about me, wanting some place to take refuge in, or a car to ride — and found none.

I tried to run — and behold, a dog, and a second, and a third, appearing before me all at once from I know not where.
Each one the size of a savage wolf.
And I do not deny that a great fear came over me.

The street long, the night dark, the rain washing my head and my face, and three wolfish dogs surrounding me and not letting me move — my slightest motion stirred their barking and set their fangs ready for work.
And something had to be done.

I thought quickly, then found myself stretching out a hand to the nearest of the dogs, stroking his wet head with it.

And I repeated the stroke once, and twice, and again — and behold, he bowed his head, then rubbed himself against my feet. Yes, he responded — and with such speed.
And he was the biggest of the three, and the strongest.

I found that the operation of taming him had succeeded, so I dared to move a step, and he did not oppose me; he let me go on — indeed, he stood up to the other two when they tried to follow me. And I reached home and breathed a deep sigh of relief, dripping with water.

What a night it was! The important thing is that the dog became my friend, and I hardly pass along the street before he comes toward me, wagging his tail, to remind me of the gentle touch.
O miracle of love!

He opened his eyes upon this friend — a rooster he loved; he stroked its colored feathers with his small hand, and fed into its red beak whatever his hand could reach of sweets and grain.
A rooster and a child: a charming pair, a speaking proof of the life of childhood and its triumph over differences of kind for the sake of a great affection, and a beautiful symbol of innocent childish fellow-feeling.

And one day the little one opened his eyes, and in the rooster's place — emptiness.
He missed its crowing, and could not believe the sun, or trust that the day, without the rooster's voice, had truly risen.

And he kept turning two sweet black eyes about, searching for the vanished friend; but he did not know — until noon came — that the cook's knife had made of the rooster a feast. He did not eat, of course, for he was too occupied with the anguish of loss to feel his hunger.

And the strange thing is that his family kept wondering how the child could go hungry, and forbid himself thereafter the taste of meat, for fear it might be the flesh of a rooster.
Their minds refuse to believe that a rooster could be, to a small human being, anything other than a thing to be eaten.