Now I have my tickets I head towards the big top tent of the circus. The tent has a maroon covered canvas and in one corner and on a platform there is a group of Thai dancers in long maroon tunics, colors matching the tent. There are both boys and girls there and they dance in a steadily rotating circle and wave their arms above their heads.
Read moreThe platform is surrounded by a red and brown painted picket fence which protects them from falling and a ladder leads up to their platform. At the top of the ladder two stacks of hardback books guard the entrance either side.
I am standing on a separate platform the same height as them but a few yards away, and decide to take a picture.
I step down to ground level and walk over to the ladder going up to their platform and from the bottom, I hold up my iPhone and aim it between the two stacks of books.
The face of a Thai dancer comes into view in the entrance as she circles the platform and though my iPhone is almost out of charge I take the picture and it captures the partial profile of the dancer’s face between the books.
Another woman with same maroon tunic sees me capturing the picturing.
“Hey!” she calls out accusingly as I look down at the picture on my camera.
I need to escape to the canteen.
Although only the front of the dancer’s face and her nose was visible through the entrance (her hair and the back of her head being hidden behind the left hand column of books), and although the ledge of the platform hid her body, her face is visible in its entirety, visible square on, in the reflection from the books.
Her face is lit in a silvery light. It is flat and slightly square and is framed with short straight black hair. It’s as if the books were acting as a mirror.
I am standing at the doorway leading into the food hall when the woman who called me out catches up with me.
I show her the photo, show her dancer’s face fully visible in the reflection from the books and the woman holds up her phone.
“Air transfer it!” She says but my phone’s battery charge shows red.
The woman is taller than the dancer whose photo I took and I suspect she is the leader of the group.
I hold the phone up and at first the transfer will not go through. I check my bluetooth and try again.
But this time the woman brings her phone flat against mine so that they are face to face and touching. This time the photo transfers.
The woman turns away from the doorway and the food hall tables and calls back to the dancers, “Hey, I got a picture from Bethesda!”
Did I reflect the real picture of Anyamanee in my story about her?
Blossom photo by Brett Sayles via Pexels, saturated for effect.
Thai dancer photo by Neo Siam via Pexels.