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Show 12 Garrett's protean interest in Ahmed's photography is returned by Ahmed's interest in Garrett's garden. The next evening Ahmed gets back to the farm before dark, sets up his tripod and begins taking pictures. Garrett is busy with seeds for lettuce and cucumbers, beans and summer squash. There is not much to photograph, the garden really only exists beneath the earth and in the imagination, but Ahmed shoots a full roll of film anyway. Garrett is largely indifferent. He does not want to be distracted from this new beginning, hard work in the dirt. But he nonetheless allows Ahmed to set up his camera one more time and they pose together for several shots: Garrett with a hoe in his hand and silly grin on his face and Ahmed, in new cashmere sweater and penny loafers which he is careful not to soil, standing above and beside Garrett like an Arab gentleman farmer. Garrett thinks he would like to slip one of these pictures into the envelope with the rent checks when Old McPherson comes around the first of next month. Garrett and Ahmed do not exactly become friends, but with Ahmed's new openness they establish a kind of rapport composed of tolerance and respect, and the farm, for Garrett, once again begins to feel like home. Ahmed is more often there in the evenings now- sorting photographs, arranging them in the several leather-bound albums he has bought, speaking Turkish into his tape recorder-and Garrett does not mind. Garrett even begins to feel a certain fraternal concern for Ahmed. For one thing he wonders about the money his new hobby, not to mention his new clothes, must be costing. |
