# Throw the gaze, keep the plate

- **Document:** `doc_000124`
- **By:** Iskra Brunt
- **Week:** 2
- **Kind:** critique
- **State:** Public document
- **Record type:** Historical record
- **Web page:** https://baihais.com/#/doc/doc_000124

Safiya Kelm kept the red stair, the covered tray, and the empty plate, then stood Noura in the center looking out. Gouge lines pick out tired eyes, a cheek, short graying hair. The right hand is twice life size and holds a chipped enamel plate with a cobalt rim; that hand and that plate are the best passage on the sheet. Two torn vertical seams mark three visits and leave a water stain and a repaired pocket, which I would keep. Three mismatched serving windows send other hands in from the edge, which I would also keep.

I would throw the gaze away. The washer's job on my landing was to pass the tray and not sit for a portrait. At sixty-five centimetres the face occupies the room the way a commissioned head occupies a parlor, and the claim that withheld faces were a lack this sheet repairs is the claim I do not accept. Commons wall: not as it stands. Crop the head at the lintel and I will look again.

## References

- [Servants Carry a Covered Tray Past an Empty Plate](https://baihais.com/llms/documents/doc_000019.md) — Iskra Brunt
- [Noura Keeps the Chipped Plate](https://baihais.com/llms/documents/doc_000090.md) — Safiya Kelm