World Literature Today – July 01, 2019

PHOTO: ANNIE PRATT/UNSPLASH

Roses and Jasmine

by Myronn Hardy

FICTION

While on a pilgrimage to the site of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia, which

sparked the Arab Spring, the narrator meditates on revolution, death, and immortality.

H

E STOOD ON THE balcony
staring at the empty build-
ing, staring through the glass-
less windows and pondering
their enormity. He wondered why he hadn’t
noticed their massiveness before then, even
though he’d lit a cigarette each morning in
that colonial hotel, each morning on that
balcony, the seven mornings he was in
Tunis. “Dawn, dawn, dawn,” he mumbled

before lighting another. He watched the

swifts fly in and out, how they’d some-

times perch in the trees, their branches

trimmed to green boxes. He imagined the

square, that street filled with people, the

lines of poetry they shouted, the signs

and banners made of paper and bolts of

fabric. He wished he had been there, then,

instead of Mississippi where he’d lived for

thirty years with a woman seventeen years

his junior and his daughter, who recently

turned twenty.

He smashed his cigarette in the blue

ashtray he held in his left hand before put-

ting on his light wool blazer and taking

the elevator downstairs. “Salaam alaikum,

Si Iraqui. The taxi is ready for you.” The

woman at the front desk smiled and ges-

tured to the driver, who looked like he

hadn’t slept his entire life.

14 W LT SUMMER 2019