Call and response

The late-morning sun is pale, like the paint I spread over a canvas propped on a chair in my dining room. Beeya, beeya … the words of a passing street vendor set a meditative rhythm for my brush. Shari’a, zenqa … syllables of words inscribed into other paintings come to mind, quieting the traffic din from the open window. ¹ I paint lines as though I might begin to write them down, then rub them out with my hand. I lose myself in the sweep of air coming up from the Bou Regreg River that meets the ocean in a briny gap between Rabat, the capital, and Sale, her sister city to the north.