Page 67 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #5

Still dressed in his suit, Jabir then swept the flat’s liv- ing room floor. I offered to take the rubbish out, but he was already halfway through the front door and head- ing for the chute.
“He turns to look at me as if he’s just remembered I’m
there. He apologizes profusely and uncharacteristically, for something else.”
Back inside, he changed into a t-shirt and shorts, even though it was mid-December. He asked me what I’d like to watch, even though I knew Top Gear was on next. He killed the lights and laughed whenever I did at Frozen Planet, at the lone elephant seal fighting three to four other males for the sole right to approxi- mately one hundred females. TV light kissed his face and highlighted his worry lines. His grief, perhaps.
He turned the lights back on and retrieved the wash- ing from the machine that had been left to spin dry when we went to work. He stepped outside into the cold of his our concrete garden. I watched him as he hung it on the line through the window.
barely looks at it. His thoughts are in his feet, leading us in different directions, until we stumble upon the Palacio de Generalife: resplendent gardens filled with stone water features and flowers from other worlds.
Indoors, he powered on the laptop and showed me a YouTube music video his dad had sent him long ago – one of a young musician from their village back in Tu- nis. He sang along and laughed when I told him he had a terrible voice. His dad had played the guitar. I didn’t tell him that he’d shown me the video before.
We get stuck behind slow, sweat-drenched tourists hoisting camera lenses the size of Hubble telescopes. To our left, I spot a dilapidated brick bridge connected to a look-out structure, in conjunction with another intricate structure. I prod Jabir and point at it usefully.
Jabir holds the map we were given for free from the enthusiastic guide at Alhambra’s entrance, but he
His eyes dart left and right, trying to absorb every- thing at once, the manicured lawns hosting beautiful wild flowers; trellises leading to a maze of natural, complicated woven vines; the face of a fortress staring back at us, holes in its walls where cannons used to
“So that’s what dad was on about,” he says, quiet- ly.
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