FICTION ROSES AND JASMINE
“There is no revolution. Bouazizi wasn’t
a hero. He was cheating people. His scale
was rigged.”
“What?” Amine asked.
“Their family is earning money from
his death,” Ahmad said.
“But he started something,” Amine said.
“You can’t take that away from him.”
“It started long before him,” the officer
said.
“But he was the spark,” Amine said.
“He didn’t mean to burn himself. It was
an accident,” Ahmad said.
Amine stopped listening to them and
stared through the windshield and rested
his hat in his lap.
“It’s still difficult for us. I want to move
to Europe or maybe to Morocco,” Ahmad
said.
AMINE HAD MARRIED CYNTHIA in
- She was twenty years old. He had
sold her a used 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass.
She looked like a doll to him. Her hair was
short and she was stunningly dark and
thin with full breasts that triggered almost
a sea of saliva in his mouth when he imag-
ined or looked at them. She was kind and
wore strings of pearls or amethyst around
her thin neck. He loved her. That’s all he
knew when he looked at her, when he ran
his fingers over her ears, down her back.
Their wedding was simple, and no one but
Ibrahim, Cynthia, and Amine approved of,
were happy for it. In 1995 they had their
daughter, Zineb. Amine’s father came a
month after her birth to see his grand-
daughter. After he’d kissed her, he kissed
his son and wept without sound.
WHEN THEY’D GOTTEN to the round-
about, the officer traveling with them got
out of the car with Ahmad. Amine watched
as they both spoke to the officer who had
issued the ticket. There was a lot of nod-
ding and shaking hands, a few smiles even.
They returned to the car and Ahmad told
Amine that the ticket fee had been cut in
half. He was happy or at least less annoyed.
Ten minutes later, they dropped the
friend, who happened to have been a
policeman, at his home. Amine didn’t see
a house where he was left, only a mother
veiled in purple and a barking dog and a
series of clouds that looked like a wall of
bricks held together with pale blue and
copper mortar. They waved goodbye as
they continued toward the main road.
On the two-lane highway, there was a
Mack truck loaded with several large cedar
trunks. “That’s a big truck,” Amine said.
“I know.”
As the truck got closer to them, Amine
felt the road shake. He closed his eyes as
the vibration intensified, then yanked the
steering wheel in the opposite lane. Lines
of sparks, lines of fire burned the road, shot
from the asphalt as the steel car collapsed
against the steel truck. Amine walked as
white blossoms and green jasmine leaves
fell from the sky. The raffia hat he’d had
in his lap, had worn to shade the Tunisian
sun, turned and turned in the wind until it
landed in Amine’s hands. He placed it on
his head and kept walking in that rain of
petals, rain of jasmine, rain of sunbeams.
He carried a bottle of red wine in his left
hand and sometimes spilled it into his
mouth and swallowed. He saw Cynthia
standing in the distance. He kissed thenlifted her from the road to spin her around
and around. “I’m sorry,” he said. Her mouth
was tight but it was as if she understood
him, understood his irrationality. Perhaps
she’d anticipated it as she pointed to the
young woman who wouldn’t look at him,
her curls swaying in that peculiar air. He
walked to her and placed his hand on her
shoulder. His palm burned, leaving it with
red and brown lines that blistered. She was
crying. She wouldn’t turn to him, no face
for him to see.
Ahmad’s hands were raised. “Why?” he
yelled as the white blossoms piled about
his shoulders then fell to the ground. He
wasn’t entirely unhappy, but he thought of
his mother who would be, who would get
the news and fall to the floor.Amine walked as white
blossoms and green
jasmine leaves fell from
the sky.20 W LT SUMMER 2019