I was still standing in their hotel courtyard when it was getting late. “I need to find a hotel,” I told them. I looked across the yard, through to a covered souk, I could ask in there. “We should swap numbers before I leave.” I said… “It is typical for travelers”. Sure thing, they said. One of them pulls out her phone. I type her number into my own phone but my screen is hazy with moisture, and the numbers are difficult to type.
Later, in the same hotel we are trying to lay out the design of a tennis court. One room is ill-shaped with angular walls like a tetrahedron instead of your typical rectangular room. The other is regular but long and thin. The rooms are airy, white, ready for our plan.
We will fit a doubles tennis court and a singles tennis court in the angular room. In the other room, we can only fit a singles court, I suggest.
There is a debate over which way the two courts will face, and whether we can squeeze two doubles in the larger room, but in the end everyone concurs and we stick to one doubles, two singles.
The painters start first with the doubles court, using bright blue for the court’s area, painted directly onto the white floor. Looks good. But when it comes to the singles court, they instead start painting the outline of a rowing boat, with three concentric stripes in thick gold braid.
No! No! No! that should be a tennis court, I exclaim. Perhaps we can paint the tennis court over it.
Or perhaps the boat can look good to embellish the court?
Image by Everton Marcelino
