A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words | | Wedding In The Desert

What do you see:
A Woman I guess, I can tell by her clothing. Her wrinkled skin depicts old age. Trees without leaves. An empty land filled with sand and no green vegetation. The sky, an emerald green.

What do you feel:
Perseverance. One can only stay in such a place through it. The blurriness on the other side of the picture sends a sensation of heat. A blazing heat. There is an intense desire to survive even in the midst of these harsh conditions.

Source

A Short Story:

Samir was still in the farm when the lightening lit the earth with it's flash. The ensuing thunder was delayed by seconds but when it broke silence it still startled everyone including the goats as they scampered for safety. Samir gathered the little corn she had plucked and left with her cousin. They had been inseparable since Samir lost her parents and came over to stay with her aunt.

Samir's cousin Ayesha was a noisy fellow. As they left the farm together, she kept talking about how she would dance in her wedding and how herds of goats would be slain before the ceremony would even begin.
"You know it doesn't matter how many goats are killed" Samir said in that tiny voice of hers.
" As long as both you and your husband to be are happy" she added as she adjusted her hijab.
"I want mine to be the biggest in the village"
Ayesha said as she added some of her corn to the one in Samir's basket.
" It is too heavy for me" , she said,
"My mother does not know that too much work reduces my beauty" She added.
Samir smiled a little. As they crossed the threshold into their compound.

Samir was the only one at home that evening when a young man who was working with her aunt's husband visited.
"I am coming" she had said from the kitchen as she washed her hands and covered her hair. And there he was so handsome and innocent. She simply smiled as she told him that her uncle wasn't around.

This picture remained in Samir's mind 40 years after they had been married, when she visited the village again. Turned out her grand son was marrying a damsel from the village. As she passed through the dry desert with it's blazing heat. She remembered the love she had shared with her dear Kazim. The trees had no leaves as it had been nine months since the rains. The soil was white and the sky an emerald green. "What a lovely scenery, if not for the heat" she thought.

Kazim who was in the trading business as her aunt's husband was always coming to visit them with gifts just like the ones her aunt's husband bought for Ayesha. And so when he told her aunt's husband of his intention it wasn't long before a marriage was set. It was bigger than that of Ayesha who had married hastily to a man from the nearby village.

Samir bore three children all boys and that made Kazim very happy as he was the only child of his mother. He promised Samir that he will not take another wife. When he died, it brought so much pain for Samir. But she found something to smile for as she approached the gates of the village. With her sons behind her and the sun on her forehead.