Her hands are soft and fragile, and at the same time calloused and strong. Her skin is light brown leather tinged with hints of bronze, and still taut despite her age. Her hands are those of a both a warrior and a woman, in no particular order. With them, she builds up and holds together people constantly falling apart. She never married or had kids of her own to put together, so she made do with others. Carrying others’ burdens is a task she does best; she bears her own upon no one.
She is stranded in a moral desert, void of all emotion in the cacophony of merchantsmerchantsmerchants and traffictraffictraffic. Everybody is trying to sell you something in this city, she says. They come through the alleys through the wrought iron gates with their wares carefully cradled in a basket on their heads or on their backs or on their rickety carts. You can buy a tiger’s eye if you wanted, she says, but the one thing you need most no one ever carries. Peace.
I try to reach out to those hands, to both the warrior and the woman at once. I ask: “How long can you possibly go on like this?” She does not hear me. She asks, instead, hands busily sorting through vegetables from the bazaar, “Did you eat your breakfast this morning?”