Prompt 151: Tested in Fire
Prompt 151: Tested in Fire
Ashley C. Ford on snakes and searing memories
Hi friend,
As a kid, I often spent summers in Tunisia. My family and I stayed in the desert outside of Gabès, the town where my father grew up. The landscape was breathtaking—cracked golden earth scattered with olive trees, the Mediterranean Sea only a few minutes’ walk away. The water was thick with seaweed; still I insisted on a daily swim.
We lived in a rustic house, two stories with a domed roof but no electricity, no washer or dryer. Every few days, the women and girls would gather outside and wash our clothes by hand in big basins. It quickly became my favorite chore. I liked the tactile nature of it, my hands in the water, the satisfaction of wringing out the garment and hanging it on the line. I liked being with my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, and my cousins. With our hands busy, we could be silent, or make idle chitchat, or if we wanted, tell stories. It felt like we were alone in the world.
Besides water, the other inescapable element was fire. Summer in Tunisia was broiling hot—so hot we only went out and about in the early hours of the morning and after the sun went down. Otherwise we would escape the heat by lying on the cool tile floor. Inevitably some uninvited guests from the natural world made their way in to escape the heat, including scorpions. My cousin showed me how if you surrounded the creature with lighter fluid, then set it aflame, the scorpion would prick itself to death rather than die by fire.
It’s a strange memory, and dark, but also poignant. As humans, fire is deeply woven into our psyches—for its beauty and its usefulness, for its power to destroy, to reveal, to renew. Long before I understood what metaphor was, this moment felt like it held some lesson, one I’m still unpacking.
I was reminded of this a few days ago, when I was reading Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford. In it, she tells a story that reads like myth—with a tangle of snakes and a blazing fire. We’ve excerpted the scene and have a prompt inspired by it on the power of fire and the things it can reveal.
Sending love,
Suleika
151. From Somebody’s Daughter, by Ashley C. Ford
I leaned over the hole and saw a garden snake. No. Two, three, four… They were in some sort of a knot, though not stuck together. They moved quickly and deliberately over and around one another. They were not fighting, and they did not seem to be trying to get away from us or anything else.
“What are they doing, Grandma?”
My grandmother stared into the hole.
“They’re loving each other, baby.”
She reached into the bag, poured lighter fluid into the hole, then lit a match. The grass in and around the hole burned, and then, so did the snakes. My first instinct was to reach in and throw them as far as I could, to safety, but I hesitated when I remembered their bite; I waited too long to do them any good.
The snakes did not slither away or thrash around as they burned. They held each other tighter. Even as the scales melted from their bodies, their inclination was to squeeze closer to the other snakes wrapped around them. Their green lengths blackened and bubbled… They did not panic, they did not run. I started to cry.
“You’ll have to go back. We’ll both go back home. Your mama misses you.” My grandmother reached over and grabbed my hand, both of us still staring into the hole. “These things catch fire without letting each other go. We don’t give up on our people. We don’t stop loving them.”
She looked into my face, her eyes watering at the bottoms.
“Not even when we’re burning alive.”
Your prompt for this week:
Think of a memory related to fire. How did it impact you then? What meaning do you forge from it now?
A Conversation About Finding Your Voice
We’re excited to be hosting Ashley C. Ford for a Studio Visit on June 27 at 1:00 PM ET. Ashley is joyful, bold, and a top-notch literary citizen. She has forged her own path, crafting both her life and her career on her own terms by asking for what she wants.
Ashley is constantly reinventing herself in the most inspiring ways‚ hosted podcasts and TV shows, writing feature stories for major publications, and recently publishing her debut memoir, Somebody’s Daughter.
We can’t wait for this conversation about finding your voice—and what to do with it when you do.
The images in these two prompts are stunning. I am particularly struck by the many interpretations of the scorpion preferring its own poison, its unique tool of survival and prosperity, to the ring of fire. It seems to me that both stories honor facing hostility and death with autonomy and grace. And, that this is available to every living being, regardless of their place in the human power structure.
I'd love to read what others have written on this one, although unfortunately I can't join the book club meeting. Here is my response, as well.
"When I was young, and we lived in the house where I grew up, where I think we were happy before we were broken, we had a silver candle snuffer. And at most dinners, no matter how casual, my mother dimmed the lights and lit candles. No matter the season, candlelight would draw us close and invite our calm, considerate attention and respect for ourselves, for our food, and for each other. It also showed us new things about the room and the faces we knew so well - light revealed the shadows, drew them into a dance of mounting intensity as night settled outside our windows.
Many nights, as dishes were cleared and allowances for play time were given out, I would remember the candle snuffer. A rarely-polished silver baton with a cap like Robin Hood’s on one end to gently swallow up the light and spit out only a vanishing trail of thick smoke. When I was allowed to use the snuffer, I snuffed the candles with great solemnity. Handling a silver snuffer made me feel like I was time-traveling to carry out a rare and elegant ritual. Bringing it down over the bright, mysterious light was like the closing prayer for the day, honoring the fire for what it held between us and releasing it so that tomorrow, we could light it again.
At that age, I think I was honestly most interested in holding silver things that served a purpose and watching candle light change the colors and moods of a room. At this age, I believe more was being formed in my forward memory than I could know. I wonder whether the other members of my family remember candlelit dinners with affection and comfort. We lit candles in our next homes, but in those places and at our increasingly complicated ages the candlelight stopped pulling us out of ourselves and into each other. Maybe we stopped looking up from our plates to notice the changing light and shadows on each other’s faces. Maybe we stopped showing our real faces, trusting the dark instead. I know that it takes many things, many cracks in the foundation and the paint, to break up a family. Still, when I look inside my memory of family dinner, in my childhood and early youth candles glow like a womb, but in later years, in other homes, their reach is short and weak, no match for the shadows creeping over us like a shroud.
Today, I enjoy candles, more and more, for the meditative and fundamentally loving state they elicit. I enjoy bonfires for the togetherness that they stimulate in a group, but also for the stirring feeling I get when I look just beyond their glow and know that while I am safe in this light, the fire is as wild as the dark at my back. In this memory, I recall that decoration and devices are meaningful for bringing people close, but that they are also temporary and impersonal. We must find and bring forward our own inner light to stay in closeness."