by Phyllis Carol Agins
She is on the way to the Sahara. Of ancient rivers and expanding dunes. Of oasis and caravans and myth. In the early mountains she witnesses a water source. Small bubbles force liquid from below the surface to push slowly toward the sheep that need water, the laundry that should be washed, the children who must bathe. Like a drain running in reverse.
At home—the empty house, children on their own. Husband fulfilling the cliché of doctor and secretary, destroying a forty-year marriage to prove something to himself. But she knows his secrets, and only a blue pill could offer that much courage. This trip is to prove that her life did not end. Yet, even in this group of travelers, she feels her solitude.
Across a dry stretch where the only growth is scrub-bare, fit for goats alone, she enters a sudden oasis. Palm trees miraculously appear, shifting toward the pool of water as if they, too, understand. She counts tadpoles and adult frogs that mouth the dry air, almost silenced by the heat until they jump back into the thin stream to find their voices. Young men arrive by truck and dip a rusty can into the soggy hole, retrieving a mouthful of water.
Before she leaves the last town where the pavement will dissolve to pounded dirt and the dirt to sketched trails across the sand, she admires the billowing fabric the women wear in cocoons of color bolder than this desert sun—cobalt, fuchsia and crimson. One laughing woman takes her by the wrist and leads her home, where straw pokes through bricks the color of their earth. The air smells of cinnamon.
She has left the group so easily, seduced by a necessity to make this visit more than a series of photos. Other women appear, laughing, welcoming, stretching six meters of fabric before her. Tied first around her waist, then twirled front to back, around her head—a chrysalis of flowers that swallow her form, leaving only her American face unveiled. She enters their world through fabric.
The freedom of her jeans is left behind in that other world. She moves slowly at first, steps hindered like bound feet, or as if caught in too-high heels. But there is grace in the billowing fabric that floats on the desert winds and protects from the sun. That transforms her to majestic—a statue of draped cloth, a caryatid trembling on the walls of a Greek temple. A deity within folds of marble. A never-ending well of women.
In that instant she is Berber, ancient, tribal, eloquent with history. They finally unwind her, revealing her other self. Almost naked now in her American clothes, she sits with the other women at their table, where she gratefully sips their mint tea.
Phyllis Carol Agins divided her time for many years between Philadelphia and Nice, France, adding Mediterranean rhythms to her sources of inspiration. She is the author of two novels, a children’s book and an architectural study. Recently, more than fifty short stories have appeared in literary magazines, including: Nova Literary-Arts Magazine, Lilith, and the Madison Review (EC). For more, visit: phylliscarolagins.com.
January House Literary Journal 
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