I walk to work through the park, a beautiful day, the flowering fruit trees full blown in pink and white. I cross through a grove, and there, pass near a young foreign couple. They have their picnic spread under a flowering tree that has something bright in it.
It is a flag: the flag of Iraq. Their boy, perhaps five years old, has climbed up and spread it across the interior branches. They let him play and pay him no mind. He is standing in the tree, arms free, gripping four straddled branches with his bare feet and knees.
And there, in shorts, he fixes his calm cold eyes on me. His hand is already raised in the cupped, regal, automatic wave used by beauty queens on parade and tyrants in the reviewing stand. One of his eyebrows arches in permissive disdain as I pass by, and his intense, juvenile fantasy becomes perfect and obvious. He is at play being the dictator.
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