8 July 2020

Dearest Fazal,

Why I feel compelled to open this letter to you with a peculiar observation, I cannot say, but in many of these photographs there is a rug or mat or blanket set on the ground for a person to sit. In this image, the rug is striped, woven with wool or cotton. Here in the desert, we sit on the sand, usually in shade. I want to adopt this practice. Maybe it’s because I feel the need to have a buffer between the world and me at this moment in time. Little feels safe. Or maybe it’s the severity of scorching heat saturating midsummer days that begs for cover of any kind, not just the covering of one’s body, but the covering of the land. I know just the rug I will take down to the river, woven by my friend Teresa Cavasos Cohn from Montana. Wool shorn and spun from local sheep, the rug she gave us as a gift is also striped, but in colors of gray and maroon.

I imagine myself falling asleep on the soft rug holding down the loose sand beneath a cottonwood tree. Deep dry relentless heat sustains dreamtime in the desert. A siesta is more than a nap snatched midday to escape the sun. Siestas allow us to escape from a melting mind. I wear heat like a heavy cloak unable to move. Only the smell of sage snaps me back to an enlivened state of being—until the silky evenings that come awaken me like a lover.

The gesture of raising one’s foot as a punctuation to a query is familiar and makes me smile as I see the little girl’s foot lifted ever so slightly as she contemplates the rose in her hand, while holding petals in the other. The companion rose that sits next to her is lovely. Did you place it there? Or was it an amusement left by her mother? That is something I would do. I remember when my nieces would come spend the night with us, I would draw them a warm bath before bed and sprinkle the water with rose petals. My grandmother did this for me, her quiet gesture to honor the beauty of women’s bodies and the sensual pleasures we seek in solitude. I was young when this ritual began, perhaps the age of this girl sitting on the rug.

Grandmothers, mothers, daughters, women—we live and dream in circles. By this I mean, we have minds that twirl and arms that spin as we dance together, turning in the seasons of our births. The Moon conducts our moods and cycles, pulling and releasing the inner, outer tides within our bodies as we come to know we are water, we are fire, we are blood. Always, Earth.

Circles surround this pensive child beginning with the small solid dot in between her sweep of eyebrows appearing like an owl in flight. There are the circles decorating her pants to the circles of beads that adorn her neck and wrist to the unfolding circle of petals she holds in her hand that bears the fragrance of all that is fragile and strong. On the back of this photograph you wrote down an Afghan proverb: A rose can come from a thorn, a thorn can come from a rose—I would argue this is what every girl learns and what every woman knows. It is hard not to see the free wisps of this child’s hair as a protest against the stonewall already crumbling behind her. Above her, leaves; below her, sand; the rug becomes a flying carpet steady enough to hold a rose in place.

With love,
Terry