A Seller of Luxury Hair Products in a Texas Shopping Mall Recounts the Wealth of Natural Springs in His Home Country

My mother’s favorite spring has water that reflects her beauty more honestly than a front-facing camera.

One spring flows with Coca-Cola. Next to it flows one with cold, fresh cream.

Another spring is said to run with water sweeter than Coca-Cola itself and more nourishing than milk.

There is also a spring there flowing with a nectar so cold it freezes other waters solid. Though this nectar remains fluid in the bottom of the pail as you have drawn it up, just a drop will solidify a lake. Many children have died on summer days having frozen their blood attempting to take a cooling drink.

I am making my fortune from a stream I discovered in a cave carved into remote limestone cliffs. There, I discovered waters that cleanse the hair without stripping it of delicate natural oils. I have bottled this water from the source and offer it at a fraction of its actual value.

But the water here, in your country, is always harsh. It leaves hair brittle as stale straw.

There is a well, deep in the Western mountains, that is bottomless, filled with a solution of platinum and rose gold. If a coin is dropped into a dipper of this solution, it is gilt in whorls of gleaming white and pink. Those brave enough to drink from it will never have need of the UV Teeth Whitening kiosk outside Nordstrom’s. Each time these bold drinkers smile, they shine a million dollars on the world. The location of this well is a closely guarded secret.

There is a well, deep in the Western mountains, that is bottomless. Those brave enough to drink from it will never have need of the UV Teeth Whitening kiosk outside Nordstrom’s.

My mother’s favorite spring has water that reflects her beauty more honestly than a front-facing camera. There, she bends down to admire the length of her own strong hair. She is nothing like the women here, whose hair litters the floor of the Great Clips like bedding upon the floor of a chicken coop. They shuffle out, preening their chunky-highlighted hen’s-combs with acrylic nails. Their beauty but a desiccated memory.

Somewhere lies the spring of this popular parable: A husband and wife, who were making pilgrimage through the swirling dust of the plains became lost during the dry season. The wife knew the first pilgrims had found water between the roots of the few thorny acacia that grow there. So, when they found one of the trees, she begged her husband to dig. He had no spade, but took his staff and stabbed at the soil with all his strength. A thin puddle of water pooled. At first they were distraught at this meager discovery. They drank what few drops had surfaced—less than a thimbleful—and continued walking, hoping that they would soon find another tree. But after several miles, they discovered they were no longer thirsty. The scant water from the acacia’s roots kept them for several more days, until they found their way into the holy city.

One well I remember as a child. Its water we would wear as shimmering paint, whose colors flickered like opal on our bodies.

I have witnessed the angry children here. They run screaming out of the Laser Tag arena, fed with bright syrups, arguing with one another and badgering their parents until they are escorted to the Build-A-Bear Workshop. In that emporium of privilege and indulgence, the clerks play the role of servant to the tiny despots, placating their every whim in the creation of lurid gewgaws. It is no wonder that people here cling so desperately to youth. Who in this country does not cower before the young?

I also remember from childhood when my mother first fell ill. It was an ailment of the joints, and we spent holidays sampling the healing waters in the foothills. None were powerful enough to relieve her pain. Soon, she was unable to work. Today, she leans on two canes, but still she searches for the waters that will deliver her health. I, too, am searching.

A well in the war-torn forests of the north is filled with water red as blood. When a soldier has bled too much, he returns there and drinks until pink warms into his cheeks. There is no such well or spring in this country. When one of your soldiers bleeds, he goes mad gagging on sulfurous water. This is why you have never found victory in our land.

I drank many times from a spring-fed bubbling stream that stunned me asleep with marvelous dreams. In one dream, I traveled to a strange country and found a beautiful wife who tilted delicious cups to my lips. This dream turned out to be a false prophecy—here I am in this land of so few cold streams and so many cold women.

All day, the boys of this place wander in and out of Abercrombie & Fitch, reeking of a fragrance branded “Fierce.” Among themselves, they are boastful and crass, yet as a pack of frappuccino-sipping girls approaches them on the benches outside the Multiplex, they become timid creatures, retreating to the screens of their phones like browsing goats shying from tigresses approaching the waterhole.

One spring popular with the boys of my city makes those who drink of it potent lovers. You may guess how often I visited there myself.

You must be careful when you are told that such-and-such a well will bring you strength, or wealth, or fame. One such fountain ran not far from where I was raised. If you were not a welcome visitor, the local people would tell you that it would make you live for a hundred and twenty years. If you were foolish enough to believe, and went there to drink, you would become paralyzed (except for your eyes), and the neighbors would come rob you of everything, even your clothes, while you watched in terror. I cannot say if it is true, but my older brother claimed some of these fools remained stricken for years, dragged into a thicket and left to lie like warm statues watching each other’s darting pupils.

You cannot buy a liquor so powerful here. Still, you guzzle Tito’s vodka in the attempt to become stupefied. The sale of each bottle is a theft.

There are many ways to die by drinking from the most dangerous sources. There are streams that flow with poisons that stop the heart, that cause the brain to leak through the nose, that fill the lungs with sand. You must take caution when stealing water from a neighbor’s well, as the owners may have developed immunity, having drunk from it all their lives.

My mother’s favorite spring has water that reflects her beauty more honestly than a front-facing camera.

A man who works at the food court Chick-fil-A, whom I had trusted as a friend, took me to the National Park, not far from here. I told him the story of my mother, and he promised he would show me a local spring for many years believed to be curative by the rheumy bumpkins of this country. But when we arrived at the pool, I discovered it to be arsenical and fouled by a scum of algae. I should not have put faith in a man with such coarse and thinning hair.

There is a simple stream where, I remember, my mother took our laundry every Thursday. The water there was more cleansing than soap. On Fridays, we wore crisp clothes and felt ourselves worthy to stand as mirrors to God.

When I have made enough money to build a large house for my mother, I will return to my country and settle down beside my favorite stream. It is fed by a spring that slows time until it does not seem to pass at all. The stream appears to flow in torrents, but the drinker knows that its water is as still as a lake on a windless day.

I have been here in this desolate place so long that I have begun to forget the names of all the springs, and so I recite them as the shoppers approach my kiosk, wandering from Foot Locker or Victoria’s Secret. “The Spring of Supple Voices,” I say. “The Cat Catcher’s Spring, The Longest Summer’s Spring, The Hopeless Spring, The Stone Thawing Spring, The Half-Dry Spring that Shivers Under the Moon, The Spring of Misplaced Memories,” and so on. Then, when these wanderers are close enough, I turn, smile, and say: “Excuse me, beautiful Miss, let me tell you about the enchanted waters of my country.”