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The Camel and the Cantaloupe H MICHELLE KOUKHAB As high as the humps on its back, as thick as the hair that warms it, and as difficult as it is to see in the middle of the night, my grandfather’s camel is moving, quickly, its feet spreading the sand for distance, escape, without knowledge of morning’s beginnings and travel’s endings. The camel carries my grandfather past boundaries, stops only when papers are requested, guides changed, or for his sudden desire to hold on to what he is leaving. Iran’s mountains becoming low hills in the distance. As smooth as the skin on the surface, as bright as the sun that makes it, a light orange, sweet to taste, the cantaloupe captures my grandfather’s country. He meets a roadside man, and shares the fruits of his homeland on a sofreh in the desert. Slicing the cold skin of the melon in half, they forget about leaving. For the last time he gathers in the Kavir desert until dusk, and the cut of the cantaloupe is bursting like the sunrise. Even when it’s dark, THE CAMEL AND THE CANTALOUPE 135 he will remember this sofreh spread out against the market of a fading light. In another place, at another time, I stumble into a store of jewels, photographs of woven carpets, miniature women with hair of gold, turquoise finger-bands, and camel hair. I sit for amber tea and cookies and speak Farsi, slightly broken and weightless with forgotten words. The owner knows my grandfather. I open the window to change the air. They shared an October afternoon in the desert, as the sun evaporated and the mountains disappeared, two camels and a cantaloupe. 136 MICHELLE KOUKHAB ...

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