The painter’s legs took over as his mind traveled far beyond the hustles and bustles teeming the raucous streets of Fez Souks. It was almost pitiful to think about it, that he was so ready to give, to spray lavishly onto the canvas his affection for the city, and that deep within there was an endless supply where said infatuation came. Just like a magician’s trick, with a single tug at the corner of the scarf, there would be a cascade of colors, a full range of brilliance human eyes can’t begin to capture. Suddenly, he was captured by the waving clothes dangling alongside the stands. The infinite motifs and variegated dye woven into the draping wool carpets struck him. He had so much to offer, so much more than all the threads the adroit marketer knitted into the Berber rugs, all the shades the practiced craftsman brushed onto the Zellij tiles, and all the hues the sinking sun cast onto the Marrakech soil. He could color a sprawling city etched in history a millennium ago, and still, it would not dry the paints brimming his heart.

But that would be too much, for the painting was not commissioned. For those thick strokes of linseed oil layered carefully to trace the flimsy transition of natural lights, the painter did it for nothing. He had so much to give.

Or it wasn’t all nonsensical. There was no pity in this, the failed transaction, on neither the buyer nor the painter. The painting would not depreciate just because fewer pairs of eyes were laid upon it. The painting would not hide the shapes and contours sketched upon it just because a customer turned their back. The painting would sit still somewhere in the market, buried under the kicked dust by thousands of tourists. The painting would not go anywhere but stay statically beautiful, stationary in time.