I am walking up a hill, a sunlit morning with an old market day feel. I pass by stalls with a variety of wares laid out when I am I stopped by a seller with brown leather hat and neck strap, auburn hair waved across wide shoulders, a hardy weather beaten face. She wears a thick white shirt with sleeves rolled up to her elbows revealing sunburnt arms, faded blue tattoos.
She admires my watch. Can I see that? she asks, and I take it off so that she can get a closer look.
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She removes her own larger man’s watch with its complex dials and functions then she wraps mine over a brown leather strap on her right wrist.
It looks good against her sunburn brown complexion and her other adornments. Its black simple design against the wide leather strap is framed by heavy yellow bracelets either side.
As I lean forward, I get a closer view of her tattoos. They feel familiar to me; each is a few inches wide or long: a sailors emblem, then three faded blue lines, amongst them, reveal a life lived. I feel she is flirting.
Thanks, she says, before taking my watch off and handing it back with the leather strap still attached. I slide off the strap but before I can return it, another woman calls out, she wants to show me something.
The woman sits some three or four yards further up the hill, off to the left.
I walk over to her table, it’s inset in a opened garage and lit by the sun that shines through the wooden slats of the walls. The dust lights up in the warm sunlight. And the woman is blonder, slightly thinner, in a worn blue denim shirt. She has the same weather beaten look but is sat down and tucked neatly behind her table.
She holds a pocket knife close to my face, but the knife is small, three inches at most; a tortoise shell handle pokes out from the maroon cloth bag and the pattern includes a red rose on the bag.
I am about to unbutton the clasp to take out the knife.
Are you also part of the market here? I ask.
Oh yes! she retorts.
Market photo via Piqsels, woman via PxHere
