An Immigrant’s Palette
by Aggie Ebrahimi
Then there was some time in fuchsia. People kept telling me not to go to fuchsia – they said the weather is too calm and the people are far too happy, roses hanging from their noses all day long. “They even try to draw pictures from clouds,” they said.
“We can’t see clouds in umber.” Just blank black stretches of some overwrought tapestry.
In fuchsia, I’d wake up every morning at 7 AM, sharp. (The light was too bright for sleeping.) Grab my sneakers and head out the door, stand on the stoop, drink tea, and watch the running pilgrims exhaust the block. They may have been preparing for a fight.
“Who has time to run in umber? It’s hard enough just to stand up straight in this place!”
They begged me to join them, but a nomad the next block over argued against it. He predicted my feet would bend inwards and my ankles would crack. “Sit down! Drink your tea,” he said. “Eat feta cheese. Relax shoe-less. What really will all this running do…?”
Umber would always find me. Sometimes, I’d be at a water fountain, wondering what colored water could taste like. And sometimes through a troublesome traffic light, not in the mood to stop. Umber caught my collar as a child piggy-backed past the scent of sizzling onions. Once, I even saw umber talking to Jennifer Aniston, asking her how she stayed so trim and how she fared through the tsk-tsk bitter divorce, the poor thing. Words dissolved in her mouth like water-logged sugar cubes. I thought about running.
So I told them, in a letter I wrote to the umber kitchen, that I might plan to return one day, if I can ever find a way to construct an airplane from calligraphy and film cameras.
“Sure, sure, you’ll return. Umber feels no time. We’ll wait patiently by as you make up your mind.”
But what did rainbows do that humans can’t? What if I were to package umber, could I bring it here with me, to yellow canary or black peppered pink? Could I sprinkle umber shavings on coconut cake?
I know their reply: “Umber really doesn’t go well with coconuts or key lime pie. Try it with lamb shanks and anything that has honey.”
Can I find that in fuchsia? “Do you need any money?”
No, I don’t need money, dear saffron-singing, street sweeping grandmothers. I don’t need money or pistachios. I’d rather have you close by, caressing my runny head, or at least fulminating, warmly, on the ills of mixing American green with agate red.