“The Peach” represents one of my first forays into literary fiction. I wrote the piece approximately twelve years ago after giving up trying to write science fiction. The story shows my early influences: Paul Bowles, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver and certainly attempts to follow their minimalist example. Like Bowles and Hemingway, I chose an exotic setting — in this case Morocco, a place I’d visited two years before and fallen in love with. My first few stories were all set in either Morocco or Spain. I think at the time the distant locales helped me feel I was writing something with heft. Besides exhibiting some of the problems I now see in my own creative writing students, such as a passive main character and reliance on exposition, I was never comfortable in either the minimalist or narrative realist mode. As a result, most of my early stories feel forced, as if I were trying to cram a round peg in a square hole. I didn’t find my own voice until I started reading the Latin American magical realists a couple years later. Since then, I’ve found more in common with international writers not just from Latin America but from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe than I have from the American literary canon. I hope you enjoy the story. I do think the piece has moments of real merit despite the fact that in the end I consider it a “failed” story.

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The tent was made from goatskins stretched from a wooden center pole and was large enough to house a family and guests. Alongside the tent stood a smaller, modern, two-man tent of blue and yellow. Old cans and plastic bags lay strewn around it. Chickens picked their way through the garbage. Behind the tent, the pine covered middle-Atlas cut the sky.

A man emerged from the main tent, squinting. I extended my hand. His expression didn’t change. Tugging at the rope that held up his well-worn pants, the man pulled back the tent flap and gestured me in. A faint smell of orange blossoms hung in the air.

His wife stood in the corner, by the fire pit. Fleshier than her husband, with smooth, dark skin, she seemed to glow in the dim light. She rolled out an intricate carpet of blue and green. Moroccans believe that blue drives away evil spirits.

There were also two chickens in the tent and a young girl, perhaps eight years old, peeking out from behind a pile of sacks. Her fiery, auburn hair stuck straight up from her head. She stared unblinkingly at me.

I’d watched Road to Morocco over and over as a kid. I even faked sickness when the TV Guide showed it was on. Bob and Bing made me laugh. When I booked the flight to Marrakech, I’d felt almost giddy, as if I were once again sprawled on the couch, and the show about to start.

The first few nights I lay awake in the tourist hotels unable to sleep. The only Blue Men I’d seen sold ceramics in the hotel gift shop, the only warriors performed at horse and gun shows for tourists.

The man sat down against the center pole, bringing one leg up close to his chest, sticking the other out straight. His foot was calloused and dirty. The girl darted to him and wrapped her arms around his bent leg. It was then a calf poked its head through the back of the tent. The girl called to it, and the calf meandered behind her. The man gestured for me to sit beside him. I knelt a few paces away. The tent was cool, in spite of the August heat.

The man’s wife said something, then pushed back the scarf that covered her hair and started cleaning the glasses with her red wool skirt. So far, I’d been careful not to drink the local water. My Uncle Paul had caught Typhus drinking water from a well and nearly died.

I tried to tell him I had a water bottle in the car. I could give it to them. I mimed drinking from the bottle.

The man smiled at me, pleasantly.

I stood, but the man didn’t understand. He took my hand and returned me to my spot.

He sat again by the post. This time, the girl climbed in his lap. He wrapped his arms around her.

I don’t know why I’d stopped the car. I’d been on my way to Aït Benhaddou because I’d heard they’d filmed many movies there: Lawrence of Arabia, The Jewel of the Nile, The Sheltering Sky. But I kept passing the black tents dotting the mountainside. I remembered the scene where Bob and Bing try to escape from the desert sultan’s tent by camel, and they bring the whole thing crashing down.

The wife squatted over a dented black pot that sat on a small metal stand over the fire pit. She placed a silver tray on the only piece of furniture in the tent, a table about three feet square and six inches off the ground. Three glasses sat on top of the tray.

The wife heated water from a ceramic jug and put a small handful of mint leaves in each glass. She served me first, then her husband. I took a little sip and nodded. It was good; the mint made my lips tingle. The man lowered his head and drank his tea as well. His wife took her tea to the corner near the fire. We all smiled at each other, saying nothing.

I took another sip, filtering the tea with my teeth.

The girl’s gold-flecked eyes fixed me, studying my movements as if I’d stepped out of my rented Fiat Uno from some alien world. I sipped in earnest, but it didn’t lessen the intensity of her gaze.

It was then I remembered the peach in my pocket. I’d brought it as a snack since I didn’t know how long the trip would take. I took it out and handed it to the young girl, who still sat protected in her father’s lap. She stared at it for a long minute, as if she would eat it with her eyes. But, then, ever so carefully, she reached out, and once she touched the peach, she grabbed it and snapped it to her chest.

Before she had a chance to savor her prize, the calf reached its head over the little girl’s shoulder, stuck out its long, thick tongue and snatched the peach out of the girl’s hand. She screamed, a look of shock and betrayal on her face. I expected to see the pretence of a cry, some hint at the injustice of the world. Instead, she hit the calf, hard on the snout so that it dropped the pieces onto the blue carpet.

There was a moment of silence and then the woman burst into laughter. A raucous laugh more like a shriek. And when that laugh died out, she inhaled an enormous gulp of air and started again in short staccato bursts, “Ha…Ha…Ha…” As she laughed, she rocked back and forth on the ground, her face glowing. The man was also laughing hard, but no sound emerged from his mouth. I realized then that he was mute. His skinny body shook all over. I saw the girl staring wide eyed at the calf standing on their beautiful carpet, chewing on the peach, spreading it everywhere, and I laughed.

The man and his daughter followed me out of the tent. Outside, the girl held onto her father’s leg. His hand rested atop her head, lost in her fiery hair. He didn’t wave or nod goodbye. The girl studied me as she had before.

I sat quietly in the car, trying to picture the girl’s face just after she’d grabbed the peach, the expectation of joy. It was then I wondered what would happen to the girl, what her life would be.