The Urchin

My senses were suppressed by unintended sleep but I still felt the movement subliminally of something near my feet. The effort of moving my sedentary eyelids wasn't as considerable as comprehending what forms my sticky sweet and lethargy drugged brain was fed. The desert and the sea were there; as they had been when I succumbed to the inadvertent siesta. They looked... strange, like someone had painted half a sheet the paper blue and then folded along the divide but the paper splayed back out to a semi open state that elevated the blue higher than the white. From my vantage it looked as if the sea was rising above me and the next swell would sweep away me and my book and the... It was the dog. I instantly felt gratitude it wasn't the girl again, then... what? Shame? Pity? No not pity. That was earlier. The mutt was the sort of skinny that comes from eating to little and moving to much. I had tossed him scraps of my chicken the day before and he was the cautious melody of grateful that comes from being abused by shopkeepers and pitied by tourists. He had first approached me a step or two at a time. Just to be sure I wouldn't produce a broom and strike the instant he was in range.
Not quite like the girl. She was about six or seven and trying to peddle bracelets made of thread twisted like the coil of a whip. She had approached me with more gusto than the dog. Maybe that's why I had the first pangs of apprehension when I felt the dog near me; not because I found her company distasteful, but because of what vile things Jiminy Cricket whispered in my ear after.
"You buy one?" she in the staccato English of someone not quite sure of their words but sure their time is limited.
"Bee kem?"
"Ohhh you spoke arabee. What color you want?"
"Laa laa. Bee kem?"
"Pay what you think is fair."
"Black and red if you have them."
The perfectly pronounced and complete sentence stunned me into submission for a few tempos. In that time the girl had started pulling string off the spools in her bag.
Her bag. The first time I noticed anything about her was her bag. It had the flare and cut of something expensively European but was several years old as evidenced by splotches of black and gray on the handle which snaked round to cover the bottom.
"Whats that?" pointing to my upper lip which was iced in droplets of sweat.
"Sweat. Water" I said though my hand as I wiped the accumulation off.
"I don't get that." She quipped. "I'm brown." Too true.
The rest of her wasn't in much better shape than the bag. Her pink shirt had morphed into a Nantucket red. Her hair and feet were the sort of dusty gray that too much salt and sand produce over time. She had finish unwinding thread off her spools.
"Hold this" she said as she forced my index finder into loop of thread that needed a bit of coaxing to fit low enough so I could hold it.
After carefully selecting several threads of different colors from the tangle she started winding them around the lace stretched between her hand and mine. It was mesmerizing. She moved with the precision of a craftsman who is so practiced she just moves. No thinking. No planning. Just swift exact movements. Wind, wind, wind, wind, twist a loop and pull tight. She must have been left handed because she was holding the cord with her right hand and doing all of the precision work with her left.
"Where you from?"
"America. And you?"
"I'm Bedouin." I had noted that the instant came into my sight but I didn't feel like pursuing the topic so I let a silence settle.
"What State are you from?"
"New Hampshire"
She made a clucking noise between her tongue and palate which is the Bedouin thinking noise.
"The capitol of New Hampshire is Concord." I must have shown surprise somehow because she laughed the high pitched laugh of a child who is positively thrilled and excited.
"I have a map. The man down the street trys teach me English. He reads map to point."
She made a flourish with the end of the loose threads that had been wound about a third of the way down the remaining threads. Her thin fingers selected a few more white than black this time and started winding again.
"New Hamsheer have snow?"
"Lots and lots."
"Twenty meters?" I chuckled and she stopped winding to look into my eyes. Then she went back to winding.
"No, where I live we get one or two meters per year." The shoulder slump was so subtle I almost didn't see it in the sun. Disappointment maybe?
"But north of me they get three to five meters." Her sagged frame rebounded instantly.
"Who are they?"
"The people that live north my home."
"Whats north?"
"Above my home."
"In the sky?" I chuckled again but this time she didn't droop. Then I registered that she had been smiling since she spoke. A joke?
"Silly silly" she managed to get through a giggle. "I know people can't live in the sky."
The thread had almost run out so she stopped talking for a second to tie off the threads.
"Do you have...?" and she made a motion I didn't catch.
"I'm sorry?"
"You know..." then she made the gesture again. It was sort of a twist of the left hand so the palm was facing down which she then crossed her right over so she could rub her fourth finger on her left hand between her right thumb and index finger.
"Am I married?" Bingo.
"Yes! Are you married? With a... with a... waf, wif..."
"Wife?" I volunteered.
"Yes! Are you married with wife?" She paused her work to look up for the second time since she started.
"No. I'm not married." The dejection in her transparent childish face was devastating.
"No wife?" She had asked hoping to cling onto the one last chance allowed by her vocabulary.
"Nope." She sighed then went back to the winding. I started to fidget because the string was cutting off the blood to my finger.
"Stop! Stop!" She grabbed my finger and the cord in her minute hand. Then she slid down to a kneeling position like a mechanic trying to get a better view of an auto's suspension as she adjusted the loop.
"There. All better" she said like she had saved me from a horrible fate. She gave the half finished bracelet two subtle tugs to make sure her mechanic's eye was correct.
"A Russian woman told yesterday that her finger would" she cleared her throat as if to make sure she didn't mix up words then she said something in Russian.
"Do you know what that means in English?"
"I think it means 'my finger will fall off' but that can't happen," she looked into my eyes again, "Can it?" There was something urgent in the look she gave me, like I was the only person who could assuage her fear of losing a finger.
"Not if you keep moving the thread a little bit." Her apprehension instantly dissolved into her normal bright demeanor.
Another pause to tie off the threads.
"All done! Where do you have it?" I extended my right wrist to her. She gave a slight smile; the sort you give yourself after you think something is going to happen, then it happens just the way you knew it would.
"How tight? Good?" I placed two fingers under the band to space the bracelet away from my skin. She tied off the loose end then snipped the spare threads with a pair of scissors that looked to be of the same origin as her bag and just as worn.
"Thank you."
"You are welcome, sir."
I pulled out three pounds from my pocket and gave the crumpled brown bills to her.
"No five?"
"Too much."
"Okay. Thank you."
She bounced up and waltzed between my book and the low table.
"Have a nice day."
"You too." She disappeared.
The guilt came swiftly. Then the shame; who combined with the first assailant to make a biting synergy that was enough to distract me from my paperback and look across the sea towards Saudi Arabia. Three pounds? I could see she was dirty, likely hungry, and probably without a real home to go back to. Three pounds? It wasn't the bracelet that made me ashamed. It wasn't completely the fact I gave her 53 American Cents. What was it then? I stared across the rough blue to the distant shore. That was it. It wasn't that I regretted my position in life or resented hers. The epiphany had come when I sipped my coke. That was it wasn't it either. Not the coke; the external form of which is know world round as is the product inside. The physic of the coke was immaterial. The essence not the external form was what made me conscious-stricken.
Was I regretting my position in life when compared to hers? Not exactly but it could be that I regret her seemingly limited potential. What could she do? Hawking bracelets on the beach will only get you so far and then... So what do I do? I could accept my moral turpitude and do nothing. I could raise money and help the street children.
On my way out of the restaurant I gave the attendant ten pounds and asked him to buy the girl lunch when she came by again. He was shocked. After asking me several times if I was sure before he finally conceded and took the bill while giving me an incredulous look. So that is what I do. Pray solipsism won't kill me and write bad literature in the vain hope that it will emancipate my soul.