Chapter 3 3

He turns his face and asks her:"My wife...that woman, they say she used to bring a man into the house in secret...Is that true?"

I answered:"Yes, she was entering it, Daddy..."

muttering in rage:"I'm not your father, so stop calling me Papa!"

It is stated in patent:"Yes, Daddy..."

gets angry:" Oh world, huh , she still saysBaba ! ".

shouted in fear :"I won't say it again, Daddy!"

He grabbed her wrists tightly and contained her in his arms. His mouth smelled of bad wine and leftover food, he looked at her with strange looks, laughed, and murmured with words. Sarah was terrified."do not look at me like that... ".

His eyes twinkle with greed."How? ".

hesitating fearfully:"So. I'm afraid...".

He says in a strange tone: "What are you afraid of? Don't be afraid, I won't eat you. But your body has grown all of a sudden, girl... and your chest too... you... who will squeeze these two?"

It was night time.It was late at night. She could not let her wrists escape from the man's strong hands, but she understood his intent. She could fill the world with screams, and she could pound the earth violently. It seems that the man realized this, so he pushed her away from him, saying: "Why are you fighting like this, insect? Wouldn't you let the son of people do everything to you tomorrow?"

She was still thirteen years old. I left school a long time ago, with no mother, no stepmother. She cooks food, polishes utensils, washes clothes, and wipes wood in the house. And most of the nights, her father would bring home with him women of various kinds, young, slender-eyed, with lewd giggles. They weren't laughing when they looked at Sarah, and when they laughed they were mumbling and mumbling.I heard one of them speak scandalously to her father: "Why do you keep her in your house, as long as she is not your daughter of your own?" Her father laughed and replied:"You turn fifteen..."

Perplexed, she asked:"And what will happen then?"

He giggled with lust: "What doesn't happen? She's still rude now, and if she turns fifteen..."

The woman pursed her lips and said:"Pig. You only know the taste of your mouth!"

He laughed, "Is it my fault?"

She replied sarcastically: "Is it my fault?"

He did not understand and said:"Who's fault?"

She said, drawing with her hands the shape of Sarah's chubby chest:"You're raising him..."

When Sarah turned fifteen, she woke up one night to grooves on her thighs under the blanket. He's her father, her stepfather. He was shivering with his dirty red face that was worn down by the wine.whispered in glee:"But, Daddy!"

He cut her off sharply, "Shut up!"

She muttered, "Okay but I, I..."

"Don't you know that you're not really my daughter?" he said in a hoarse voice.

I murmured in fear, "But are you scaring me like that?"

He said bluntly: "Either you say yes, or you say no. If I say no, then leave my house... And if I say yes... I'm not a monster, don't be afraid. Just foreplay...".

Weeping and begging were of no use, and since he was very drunk, I pushed him with a strong thrust, and then, with her bare feet, her bare-footed cloak of her loose sleep, she climbed the stairs, to the upper floor, where the owners of the house lived, and they were an old couple, both of them old .

Were they awake? Or did they perform Tarawih prayers and just returned home?

I found them and they received (Sara) tenderly and tenderly. She told them she would like to be with them as of this night, so the two old men understood, for she is a mature, plump girl who is pleasing to the eye, and the man is not her real father, and then he is a drunk, so they said, "Okay, my daughter, stay here..."

She said, "I don't want to see that man's face!"

The two old men only exchanged looks, and they did not ask why until after that day, especially since her stepfather had gone into hiding with a playful woman of his mistresses.

One morning, the young husband she had been dreaming and imagining stood before her. He was coming from afar to work, a seasonal worker in one of the city's factories. His eyebrows, his eyes, his build.He quickly occupied Sarah's soul and invaded her very being. He also marveled at her. Sarah was going down to this big village-town, to work, so why not tie her destiny and destiny to that of this young man?And one day, by signing a large register in the marriage department in the city, and with the testimony of the owners of the house... they got married. But she could not travel with her husband right away.

They rented the basement house, which became empty with her stepfather's passing. The young husband placed in the womb of his young wife his son (Samir), who is now slumbering beside her, and he went to his new work, and came to her every week with full of boxes, and he stayed with her for a day or two and then returned to his work again.

Weeks and months passed like this. Sarah could not accompany her husband until after she gave birth to (Samir).They are now three on the face of the earth, Sarah, her young husband, and their newborn son!

Her young husband was eight years older than her, and he worked all day, and every night rushing back to his wife and son, there was no alcohol, nor strange, immoral women. And as soon as he holds his young wife in his arms at night, he takes her to the realm of legends, and tales colorful with joyful colors, that world that (Sara) missed for a very long time.

As for her, she would spend her day nursing and cleaning her child, cooking and preparing food for her husband, polishing utensils, and washing clothes, and she did all of this with ecstasy and happiness. Except that there is (Anwar) Al-Araj, the nephew of (Hashem Bey), the owner of the cotton ginning factory in which her husband works. And (Anwar) was claiming to be her husband's best friend, but the man's looks did not mean that. Sarah was not comfortable with his familiar looks from women, especially young women. She became afraid that he would seize any opportunity to cling to her and hear her say something.

The land bordering a city was filled with the sick with daydreams before closing an eye, and among the tall mountains that cut the thick clouds in the summer sky, at the chest of one of the wide beaches that spread along the eastern bank of the sea, where the edge of the sea widened, creating a vast space called by ancient sailors (the tongue of thirst who always slowed down their sailing boatsThen, begging for the blessing of (Sheikh Al-Gharib), a small trading town arose, a small rural port called Al-Shatt Al-Kabir! ! termed it (the tongue); or sea cityIt was also called by the women of the houses in the neighboring towns, where their husbands used to linger there for a while and frolic in the tavern on the days of trading, and two miles from that town there is a small hollow among the high hills that you can consider one of the quietest places in the world .A small creek crossed it, and this residing calm was shattered only by the whistling of sparrows or the chirping of frogs in the devilish grass at the edge of the sea and the inland marshes .

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valley was known as (Wadi Al-Shatt), as some say that this place was enchanted during the first days of the settlement of sailors in it, and others say that a skilled Sufi is the master of his clan who carried his followers there before the discovery of the townBecause of that, the place remained under the influence of some magical forces that control the perception of the healthy residents of the town, making them wander in continuous daydreams, strange thoughts, and multiple visions of strange scenes, and they hear music and voices resounding in the air. Everyone in the neighboring cities tells many local stories and tales about them. Talking about inhabited placesWith spirits and gables of dusk .

It is remarkable that this predictive tendency and illusions do not only affect childrenThe original town, but it catches up with everyone who settles there for some time, and who assure that they fall under the influence of those magical powers, as soon as they enter that area and inhale the enchanted air, their imagination begins to grow and drown inDaydream. In the arms of this beautiful nature, for nearly thirty yearsFamous House (Al Hamdan)Coming from Upper Egypt and his family, who were keen to provide the union with school administrators to teach the sons and good woodcutters for forest work, he presented(Ali Hamdan) to (Wadi al-Shatt) to teach his children, he was (Ali Hamdan) with a body resembling the Egyptian writer, sitting cross-legged with his round head and his strange sitting on the bench in front of the house as if he was watching the direction of the wind in the fields where he was tall and very fat with broad shoulders and his arms extending out His long shovel-like sleeves and paws, his little head flat on top, his long ears, his honey-glass eyes, and his long pointy nose, you see him walking on a windy day in his baggy clothes in which his body sinks, you think of him as a scarecrow fleeing from a field of reeds.

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