Mug
He turned down a permanent contract just to keep the right to say no to a job. This Arabian fox mug is for his best hour, the one with coffee at dawn: it carries Faiz facing forward, in his sand-colored cap, from my Animal Kinhood series.
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, at sixteen Faiz left school to become an apprentice at a repair shop, an hour's bus ride each way. Years later, a company offered him a permanent contract: good pay, insurance, a new van, seven-to-three hours. He drove out to a desert canyon, walked for three hours, came back, and said no. "I need to be able to say no to a job." Even he doesn't fully understand it himself.
When the noise overwhelms him — a hum, an alarm, a conversation that runs on too long — he pulls his hood up over his ears and turns the world down a notch; he hears too well, and sometimes he needs to switch it off. The dark, silent early morning is his version of that. I made it front-facing with a clean background: the mug carries his portrait, and the moment of calm is yours to add. His story is in his biography; there's a whole family of Animal Kinhood characters.
