Tamader Karim (Prepared Angela Kosta)
Moderator 
Tamader Karim - Iraq
BLOOD PAINTING
On the roads adjacent to the Nahda garage, there are many used goods displayed every morning, things I saw that might not cross your mind, small kitchen supplies, plates, spoons and pots, worn-out shoes and mats, faded clothes, work tools, screwdrivers, hammers, drills, and other large things, broken fan frames and electrical appliances, oil heaters, and other small hair irons and shavers, all scattered on the ground, while the poor gathered around those stalls to bargain over prices. I almost left this scene behind and continued on my way to where my workplace is located, but something strange happened, there was a painting with faded colors at one of the vendors, whose features were not clearly visible.
But the sparkle of those eyes never faded, among the bundle of colors in the painting, and the layer of dust on its surface. Amidst the shouting of vendors, the chaos of stalls, the constant movement of passersby, and the noise of car horns, and in a moment that seemed to have escaped from another time, the painting became the only thing I saw, appearing before my eyes like an old tattoo on the page of that morning that seemed ordinary for a moment.
The painting did not seem to attract anyone's attention except me, which made the transaction of buying it easy, as the seller asked for an amount that I found very appropriate, and within minutes the painting became mine.
I carried the painting to my home, after a busy day at work, and its medium size helped hide it under my desk, keeping it away from questioning eyes.
As I was about to open the door of my house, my wife's face and her strange features came to my mind, but her simple spirit that tends to believe everything, and some naivety in her, reassured me that our conversation would be short about my damaged painting.
In my room, I stood facing her directly. I took out my small tools that I bought on my way back, tools for cleaning oil paintings, after I closed the door of the room tightly, I started to remove the layer of dust, very gently.
Then slowly, I sprayed the painting with a substance that someone who knows about painting advised me to use, and with a medium-sized soft brush, I began to extract the features of the painting, searching for something that I think I found after a long wait, like workers in mines searching for precious stones among the distant mountains.
Some colors began to clear, and some features began to appear, oh my! I was not disappointed, it was her, with her abundant locks of hair, emerging from the dust of the years, and the sparkle of her eyes drowned in kohl, and her hidden sadness, and the features of her charming face, noisy with mystery and magic.
Oh my God! Things really know their way to their lovers! This is how they yearn for them without warning.
I could not take my eyes off her face, I almost saw it in that tremendous moment!
How could this beauty that resembles a homeland be killed?! I thought if she had found the time to think, about her paintings perhaps! About herself! About anything but departure!
On her neck at the bottom of the painting, there is a small red spot! No..it is not possible! It might be a color, accidentally dropped by the brush... I moved closer to it, examined it with the cleaning brush, oh my! This painting survived that massacre, it is a spot of her blood, the painter's blood that was shed, just as the blood of birds is shed, in the vast fields.
My wife's knocks on the door were pulling me in,
Fast and successive knocks, it seemed as if time was chasing me and the place was closing in on me, and the blood stain there was whispering to me what had happened,
As darkness descended, huge and dense like a swarm of locusts, and the fire spread, to devour everything with lust, but her soul escaped from the cell of the body, to flee to the nearest painting on the wall, the wall that remained intact, there are things that always survive, that is the will of fate. Things survive and things are killed!
I did not understand why my wife insisted on knocking on the door, she should understand my desire to see everything that had happened, and if I drowned, I drowned completely in the stain of her blood, and in her kohl-lined eyes.
Prepared Angela Kosta
