Salma Kaichouh

Salma Kaichouh

The Little Black Box

The little black box had been sitting on his desk for weeks now, it had arrived last month inside a handcrafted package with a blue envelope and a picture of the sea. He had opened the letter instantly, climbing the stairs two by two and running like he was on fire to his one bedroom flat on the second floor. His brown eyes had quickly scanned the handwritten words before his heart sank as a reaction to what they meant. There was no waiting anymore, only emptiness; and he realized that it hurt more than anything else did.

Days had gone by, the letter and the photo on his night stand, the box on his desk and him lying awake for hours in his mattress alone. His thoughts were getting louder than the world outside and more dangerous every time his gaze landed on any of the pieces of their story spread in his room. He was scared, so scared and afraid that he had not been able to feel anything else ever since he had read the letter the first time; he was alone now and forever.

The words in the perfectly black ink did not say that she was leaving, they only implied it, and he hated himself for being able to read between her lines. He knew she was gone, never coming back, but he had hoped and his hopes had been crushed. He was alone, and now he was sure of it.

Why a picture of the sea though? Why a letter that only confirmed his worst fears? Why a box? Was it all he deserved? An empty home and heart? Did he end when she ended?

And then one day, as he came back from work, he found his window wide open and everything already messed up by the hard blowing wind. Different pairs of socks and clothes were spread on the floor, and he entered right in time to catch one of her favorite vases from falling and shattering on the ground. However, the blow had not missed the little black box and had uncovered its contents on the recently washed rug. He was surprised at first, he had spent so many hours imagining the treasures that it could be holding, but never in a million years could he have guessed what it was truly hiding.

Letters and photos. Not letters like the one he had just gone over again last night and photos that were taken by a camera. Letters like the alphabet and photos of paintings. Paintings that his hands had drawn and small pieces of paper were cut around dozens, no, hundreds of letters. He stood right there, frozen, on the same spot looking around at the mess in front of

him. Es, Ds, Ms and even a Z. A Z? That is when it hit him, it was not random. He fell to the

floor, his knees weakened by a strong feeling of relief and reassurance.

“Mama, I am giving up.”

He closed his eyes, remembering when these five words had left his dry throat and reached her ears. She had not said anything at first, encouraging him with her silence to keep talking. But his eyes had spoken for him, he did not want to hear anything, he did not want her to tell him that he could do it. They sat there for a few minutes, or maybe hours before he finally stood up and put a kiss on her shaking hands. That was the last time he had seen her alive, and his biggest regret was not telling her more.

He looked at the letters spread around him and moved them almost unconsciously to finally assemble them in one sentence, a quote more precisely; a quote that she had hung in his childhood bedroom when they had first discovered his talent together. It was taken from one the books she used to read when he was painting in the living room. She knew how much he hated being alone and always made sure to be there for him everywhere; exactly like she was doing right now. This quote, these words that he had looked at for years, were somehow her.

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” Emile Zola