Bitter Orange Tree

by Jokha Alharthi

Her life was like a paper kite. She would lift her head to watch as it went bobbing by, the breeze taking it farther and farther away. In the beginning, she believed that she had a firm hold on the cord that tethered that kite, and that she could control its movements. But the kite didn’t respond to her tugs. It flew away, eluding the pull of that thin and frail thread, which was really no more than an imaginary line. It was a kite far in the distance, hovering, circling, now ramming into a lamppost, now getting caught on an antenna, and finally, likely to be ripped to tatters as it chafed against a length of barbed wire. Or it might careen back to earth, but then it would surely plunge straight into the dirt.

You have to sit and swing your legs over the short branch of the bitter orange tree. You have to see the way the clouds fuse together and cling to the gray mountain peaks, and to call out my name, so that the peculiar echo resounds tens of times, as if strange, hidden creatures are holding your shout in their embrace, magnifying it. And you will know, then, that you seek to shout out the name of what is yours, and what must be there with you.

The two of them led lives in which imagination occupied a very narrow margin.