Backpack
Eleven old radios on the shelf, seven of them still work, and every Friday he switches them all on at once. This Arabian fox backpack carries Faiz facing forward, wearing his sand-colored cap, from my Animal Kinhood series, so you can carry your day on your back with your hands free.
Vulpes vulpes arabica
Man's rubbish sustains the fox who scatters dates fifteen kilometers further on.
Arabian Peninsula: Hajar and Dhofar mountains (Oman), United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar. Occupies rock and sand deserts, coastal dunes, wadis, agricultural zones and peri-urban neighborhoods.
In his story, one Friday Faiz turned on, all at once, out of curiosity, the eleven radios he'd repaired. He expected noise and got something else: static, an Omani station, one from India, something in Korean, music and voices with no order, all together, exactly three minutes. The closest thing to calm he knows. Since then, every Friday at seven in the morning, the same ritual: switch on, listen, switch off.
Seven thousand kilometers away, in Tromsø, there's an arctic fox named Otto who also repairs cooling machines, who also had a father who left, and who also keeps too much of everything; they met while searching for the same part for a discontinued model. A backpack inherits that way of moving through the world: you carry what matters and keep going, hands free. Front-facing, with a clear background: who Faiz is and what he keeps is in his biography, written by me, Yago Partal.
