The Nakhal fort cleaner, broom like an automatic weapon, bucket, a water grenade. Posing against the sun-bleached wall he seems about to run, as we click and click, catching his faded trousers, his white shirt and grey beard, noble nose, cloth ragged round his head.
I thought he would recite passages of poetry Rumi and Firdawsi, I had a mind he could view my heart, what hid there. But he said nothing, and gazed into the lens like a cat.
With his broom and bucket, he was king of that place, sweeping stairs and rooms, the view to the mountains, a crenulation, as we stepped along the walls, debris from another country, and waited for his broom to sweep us home.