Paloma Negra.






She lifted up the hem of her veil and wiped a tear of his cheek. He looked up at her and felt like dissolving in the copious drapes of the black muslin niqab she always wears outside the house. He remembered them: warm, welcoming, smelling of fresh lavender, faint perfume… a home to any lost soul. He buried his face in her drapes, and took in her womanly fragrance… a thousand little scents telling the story of a nation… the history, the culture, the eloquence of a civilization that never faded in his heart.
She lifted up the white drape covering her face below the eyes, the only white in her whole attire, and gave him a gentle kiss on his lips…
He rested his head on her lap. She caressed his hair so tenderly as if her child’s. She moved her hand down his neck… his side… his waist… She slid her hand under his pants, and then in one swift motion, as if practiced all her life, drew his knife and plunged it in his throat. She didn’t slit his throat, just plunged the knife in it… he pulled away. tried to stand, but instead he dropped to his knees… in this kneeling position in front of her, he stared at her in pain, in shock, in disgust, and in grief…
She gathered the folds of her skirts… and flew away through the park, like the black dove she is… leaving him by some bench gasping for air, folded on himself, like the fetus he is… covered with blood… with mud… convulsing by the last spasms of life… of death.
By the gate of the park, perched on the high metal grills, she looked down toward that bench, uncovered her mouth, blew him a kiss and flew away…

“Paloma negra…” he uttered in his distinct sevillanos southern accent, in choking staccato she barely heard in her flight “¿paloma negra, dónde, dónde andarás?”

She replied in her clear translucent Arabic “Touhyee iza katalatte…”


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