Open Market

In The OpenMarket

This story is about the sadness felt over the inability of a mother, when she wants to buy a nice cloths to her daughter.

When Noa, my daughter, was a little girl we didn't have much money... but Noa was very fond of new dresses. She liked dresses with detailed floral prints on white backgrounds and a lots of tiered ruffles. And I have to say: I liked to see my beautiful creature clad in those creations. We would go on a make believe shopping trip to a shop on the main street, that would happily serve people who came in to just browse. On entering the shop I would head to one of the cozy armchairs upholstered with bright colored materials and sit down. Noa, would go straight to the racks and wait patiently. She knew that within some minutes one of the shop’s assistants would appear and offer her dresses.

Noa would gracefully take a dress from the assistant, put on, and run to pose in front of the shop’s fancy mirror. She would repeatedly turn her head right and left, to catch a better view of herself. After each little pose, she would flash her smile at the mirror, knowing I was looking at the mirror, basking in those reflected images. And I would smile back at her, telling her with my eyes, how much I liked the dress she was wearing. While smiling, my heart was heavy with bitterness. How much I wanted to say: take the dress Noa, we are going to buy it. But I would push away those thoughts and just enjoy those special moments I shared with Noa.

After an hour or so, Noa and I would decide on the dresses she liked, thanked the shopkeepers, and left the shop without buying a thing. We wouldn’t leave the shop until we would memorize the look of the dresses, and then we would go to the Open-Market to find similar looking dresses.

The Open-Market had a multitude of tents packed with children’s dresses at affordable prices. Those dresses weren't made from good quality material, but their pattern was similar to the dresses at the main street shop. There were no fancy mirrors either. So Noa couldn't see herself in the dress that she wanted to buy. In order to see if the dress was for her—after putting the dress on—she would start a little ritual dance, its choreography only known to her. When she started to dance, people paused from the shopping and clustered around Noa. If Noa saw that the people enjoyed what they saw, she would ask me to buy the dress she was wearing, as she danced.