Sunflowers
Khalid was born near the port. He spent a lot of time watching the ships bring merchandise and leave for an unknown horizon. His family owned a house next to a big field. His father was mostly gone out to sea. His grandfather took care of some sheep and goats that provided milk and cheese for the seven brothers and sisters. For many hours, he had to take the sheep and goats to the pastures around the hills. While the animals were grazing yellow grass he watched the movements of the ships in the bay. He started painting them, after his father brought oily colors and rolls of a creamy textiles that could not be used to make clothes. His grandfather took some of it for the cheese and Khalid used the cut out pieces for painting.
He liked to paint mostly sunsets and sunrises, with the ships spread out to sea, reflecting the changing colors of the sky. There was something about the infinite freedom of the view that fascinated him. There was something about the colors of the sea that inspired him. There was something about the ships that caught his attention. His eyes saw wonders and his soul wanted to make them last forever. The view was ever changing. A deep need to expand and preserve the unique beauty of those moments would make Khalid want to paint again and again. He kept painting until his father became worried that he wouldn't want to go in the commerce business or farming.
“You spend too much time with those smirched sheets of cloth! Instead of making cheese, you stain yourself with oily colors. That's for little children. There's no future in it for a grown man. You'll have to feed your family soon. How will you do it?”
“Let the boy paint. There's enough food in this house”, his mother would stand up to his father. “Maybe he'll go to the big city and paint for the caliph.”
“Foolish words, woman! Smearing colors won't get him in the palace with the caliph.”
However, Khalid started thinking he could actually do something more with his paintings. He realized he had the whole world ahead of him. He could search for his luck anywhere: he only needed to get on a boat. The horizon was waiting. He only had to stop dreaming about it take that first step towards it.
By the time he reached almost twenty years old, he had already started thinking intensely about it. The urge to get out of the childhood frames, to get away beyond the unknown, to discover the world, was making him restless. At night he would wake up to the solemn sound of the prayers from the mosque, interspersed with deep sirens of the ships from the port, announcing distance, mystery and mystic secrets. He listened in the dark, holding his breath, waiting for a signal to jump out of bed and follow the night toward the sunrise.
He had grown taller than his grandfather and his shadow mustache was getting darker and thicker with each day. He liked the invincible power he felt in his muscles when he lifted crates with cheese or jugs with oil. He enjoyed the rough patches of fuzzy beard when he passed his hand over his jaws. He noticed that the girls in the alleys carrying baskets of figs and oranges were glancing at him differently, with new interest and secret longing. He turned his head to see them walk by, trying to decipher something he couldn't understand. Something in their movements stirred his attention and sent tickling shivers under his skin. He basked in the sunlight and ran with the sea breeze fluttering his shirt, his bare feet leaping over the fields, as if life had no end in sight, as if the universe was entirely his to play with. The water was endless; the horizon was endless; the sky was immense; his dreams were as daring as the energy he felt lifting his spirit. Khalid was happy. He knew life was a miracle.
On that year, the land near his house was bought by a rich foreigner. The new neighbor planted sunflowers over the field and set up a small factory for oil and pastry. When the flowers bloomed, they covered the hills in joy and sunlight. Khalid was amazed at the view of thousands bright yellow petals and started painting the sunflowers. As he was standing in the field, he saw another unexpected miracle: a girl without veils, walking among the sunflowers, her hair shining in the summer light as intense as the sun. He had never seen such a girl in those lands. At first, he thought she was an apparition like a spirit of the field, a fairy of the sunflowers. He stopped painting and squinted in the sun, placing his hand before his eyes. A mirage? he wondered. It was not an illusion. She walked towards him, in a summer dress with orange and red poppies, the splash of colors making her seem a painting herself. She spoke to him. There was no one else in the field.
“Hello. You're standing on our land. My father would think you want to steal crops”, she said with a foreign accent.
“Who's your father?”
“He owns this field. We came from another continent a year ago. I'm just on vacation here, for the summer.”
He stared at her. So, she was the daughter of his neighbor. “What's your name?” she asked him.
She was daring and fearless.
“I am Khalid. That means the eternal one. What's yours?”
“Aurelie.”
“What does it mean?” She giggled.
“Do all names have to have a meaning?” He shrugged.
“Why not? What's the point in having a name if it doesn't mean anything? Just a sound, like a whistle for sheep? Names must mean something.”
“Aurelie means the golden one.”
“Like your hair?”
She smiled and her eyes as clear as the sky seemed to have infinite light in them.
“Yes, like my hair. Like this field too.”
He was convinced she was a goddess of the sunflowers. “I'm happy to meet you, Aurelie.”
“It's nice to meet you too, Khalid. You're a polite young man.”
“We're proud of our manners with foreigners.”
“What are you painting?” He showed her the canvas. She was impressed.
“Wow, so beautiful!”
Then she turned to look at him. “Will you paint me?”
“What is there to paint? You're a walking painting already. The supreme lord has painted a dream.”
She smiled again, with that warm light in her eyes that fascinated him. “You speak like a charm. I really want you to paint me. Please. I've never had a painting of my portrait before. My father has some sceneries of forests and rivers, but no portraits.”
In the beginning Khalid hardly dared to raise his glance at that creature, as he wasn't used to staring at unveiled women, but as their conversation continued he couldn't take his eyes off her anymore.
“Fine, if you insist... I'll add you to this picture. You belong with the sunflowers anyway. Your hair is like petals. I'll make the sun a sunflower too. The universe also.”
She laughed.
“Admit it, he said while moving the brush over the canvas. You're a spirit of the field.”
She played along.
“Yes, I'm supernatural. I wasn't born as a human being, I just exist since the universe appeared.”
“Such a beautiful goddess of summer...” Aurelie leaned over the canvas.
“Your words are like honey. Let's see if your painting is the same.”
“Wait until it's ready.”
“I want to see now”, she insisted and tried to peek, but his arm was keeping her away from the canvas.
She grabbed hold of him with both hands, tugging at his sleeve. “Let me see”
Her touch was so natural and warm. He hadn't met a girl that would initiate contact. It was new and unbelievable. He pretended to give in.
“Okay, here it is: just a smear of gold.”
“Is that what I look like?”
“It's just the beginning of you.”
It suddenly seemed so easy to both of them to interact with each other. And from that moment on, they were inseparable.
They would walk together over the fields, or watch the sunset in the port, while the ships were slowly moving to the horizon. He painted her in many places: near the lighthouse on the rocky hill, close to the waves on the sandy shores, picking fruits in the orange orchards, sitting near the boats of the fishermen. In each painting she brightened the view, surreal and inspiring.
He gave her the first painting with the sunflowers and she hung it in her room. She told him her father owned a transport company with a fleet of big ships. She mentioned she traveled a lot. She spoke of a big city with a tall metal tower where painters were appreciated. She told him he could make a living off his talent. And he believed her.
However, very soon their parents found out about them. Her father discovered the painting, while his grandfather heard people talking in the tea shop and didn't like the connection. Aurelie's father didn't want to let her talk to local young men. He didn't trust any man that looked at his daughter. Khalid's family wanted to see him settle down and have children with a girl who followed their customs and who didn't walk unveiled in the streets.
So they started meeting in secret and planning to go to the big city together, on a ship that left early in the morning.
When the hour came, they met at the bay. The sun hadn't risen yet and the boats were swaying on the waves, tied to the shore, in a pale blue light. Aurelie had something in her arms. Khalid thought it was luggage, but he immediately saw it wasn't. She seemed in a hurry. She placed the pack in his arms.
“I'm sorry, I can't come with you. Not right now anyway. My father wants me to go to university. I must do that, for my future. I'll be with you after I study, I promise. You go ahead and I'll join you wherever you are. I swear.”
He almost knew it had been too good to be true. He couldn't even show how he felt.
“So this is your final decision?”
“Yes, it is. I really want to go to university. It's important to me. But I also want to be with you.”
“You can't have both. You have to choose. It seems you already did.”
“I'll meet you after that.”
“Yeah...”
“Do you believe me? You must!”
“I want to believe. If it's written, it will happen.”
“That sounds right... it's written in the stars that we'll be together. I assure you.”
She was hopeful and certain.
He stared at the package in his arms. “What's this?”
“Some clothes. Put them on: it's a sailor uniform from my father's ships. It will help you mix with the crew and get away easier.”
And she threw her arms around his shoulders, holding him for a moment. “You go first and I'll come after you. I'll be there soon. Take care, Khalid.” Then she turned and disappeared into the dim light of the morning.
He stood there on the pier, listening to the shuffling of water against the shore. The seagulls were screaming above. The port seemed deserted. He thought about the land he was about to leave: the palm trees, the intense sun, the orange orchards irrigated by chopped bamboo trunks, the olive trees, the figs, the sunsets over the water, the fields and his home. He would no longer hear the prayers at midnight, the nostalgic sirens of ships and the lambs in the hay. Still, the horizon was calling for him. It was a stronger urge to discover what was beyond it.
He took off his shirt and put on the clothes Aurelie had brought.
Then he climbed on the rope to the deck of a big metal ship that was about to leave that day.