Chapter 5 5

I looked at him , and straightened his pillow. There will come a day when this child will grow up, and the worst will be that he will become a man like his father, and when he begins to become aware, will he not ask about his father? Won't he ask her for information about his father?You will answer:"So-and-so, he went to get his share of his mother's estate, and he never came back!" Would she be satisfied if she told him that? He can extend the topic and ask: "Why didn't he come back?"

Which one in his place will lengthen the subject, insist, search, scrutinize, and divide the hair into forty parts, and when her son begins to cut the hair into forty pieces - indeed he has already begun to do so from now on - how will she reassure him?You might say: "I don't know, so he went and went!" And he asks:"Why? ".She answers:"To sell his share of his mother's inheritance..." He asks:"Good, did he sell his share?" She answers: "I don't know." He asks:"Did he not write a single letter? " She answers:"He did not write." He asks:"Has there been an argument between you, or prolonged verbal abuse?" She answers:"Nothing at all."

He will ask doubtfully:"Well, how is it possible that he does not ask with even one letter?"

This was the great calamity. As dark thoughts will circulate in the heart of her son, and he will ask an oath and turn away. And he will work to receive the definitive answer, so that people were asking, "Why did he not ask about her?"... Could he never ask about her, if he was satisfied with her? her forever!"This was another concern. If no one heard what she said to (Anwar), and did not know that she repelled and expelled him, then God in heaven knows!

With her tearful eyes, she looked again at her child.

He fell asleep in the sweet, meek children's sleep. He was pure as the angels, and pure as the angels. This good and clean son, who is very attached to his mother, will he ever hate her for such a reason?She flinched at him, and then felt that she hated herself, and began to caress his brown hair, while her hot tears streamed out of her eyes against her will.

She whispered to him without hearing her: "...my soul it is me. My honey it is me. Can't you not doubt your mother? You are still a small child. Why didn't I marry again if I didn't love your father more than my own soul? I suffered Too much from the stepfather. And I did not want you to be at the mercy of a vile bastard stepfather, I pity you, for the stepfather beats you, forces you to work, and exhausts you. Understand your mother , and always trust that she has not smelled a rose after your father!" Suddenly the features of tenderness and tenderness changed in me He turned her into a grimace and aversion, as she (Anwar), the lame, remembered my nephew (Hashem Bey), Ahwa, the richest industrialist in the town, and her husband's friend, he says... When her husband left, he might have heard it in the tongue of one of those close to him, if not in his: "That woman is not worthy of you, man..." And when her husband asks why, he must have answered him, saying: "This has something to do with my nephew (Hashem Bey)!"

He had been chasing her for years.On one occasion, the night had closed its curtains while she was on the journey back to the house, after she had distributed the clothes she had washed to the homes of her owners, and at the borders of the forest, Anwar the lame appeared before her!

It got stuck in place.Do you scream?, do you shout?, do you establish the world and make it sit?... Yes, you might do, but what will happen then? People will gather and ask, "What is there? What exactly is going on?" And (Anwar) the lame is rich and powerful, and his uncle is very influential in the town, and they will stand by him at once.So I refrained from the idea of yelling and scandal.

Well, what do you do then?

-4-

You must run away. Good idea. (Anwar), the lame, was starting to rush when she jumped and crossed the trench to the other end, and she was gone.Well, but, when her son grows up tomorrow and asks her about his father, how will she understand this incident and similar stories? And if you understand him, how will you convince him?movement next to it.I turned.Her son calls out to her with a cheerful smile on a bright, radiant face:"my mom ! "

She replied, forgetting everything."My heart?""(Samir) ! "

asked her:"yes? "

She smiled, "Guess who I saw in my dream!"

Without any thought, the boy replied, "Papa..."

Then, with fiery eyes, he asked eagerly, "Was he coming?"

She nodded , "Yes, he was."

His eagerness increased: "What did he bring me with him?"

"Good food," she answered cheerfully.

His eyes flashed, "And a gun?"

She laughed and replied, "And a gun."

He asked again: "And a three-wheeled bicycle?"

And she answered:"And a three-wheeled bike."

With frenzy, he clapped his hands and shouted:

= "Long live Dad!"

Then suddenly stop. And every time he asked her:

"When will he really come?"

And every time the mother answered him:

"When he finishes his work."

The child raised his pupils, and looked first at the ceiling, then at the bare walls of the room. Years ago, his mother reassured him in the same way: "When he finishes his work..." What is this work that never ends and has no end? He asks her: "Why does his work never end?"

She answers: "Because it is a lot of work."

He asks her: "If it is a lot... will he earn a lot of money?"

She says confidently, "Of course."

His eyes shine and he asks, "More than anyone in this town?"

She assures him: "More."

He stopped a second time, looked again at the ceiling, in the walls of the room, and in the white window blind stained with the yellow stain of the sun, and finally he stopped with his eyes on his mother's face, and asked her: "And more than the family of Ali?"

"And from the family of Ali..."

He got excited, and with great pleasure clapped his little hands: "Ya ya ya!"

" Why?"

"Then no one would dare to look at me from the side, would they?"

"Don't you dare."

-........

-........

The conversation of the mother and her child would stretch and lengthen, as every morning. But the child's preoccupation with his imagination of colorful planes flying high in the sky, and battery-powered toys such as the car, train, jeep, and mini-motorcycle, and the types of chewing gum with its colorful balloons, soon forgot his mother and everything else, even the long, useless talk. The mother took advantage of the opportunity presented by the boy's dreamy fantasies and got up to prepare breakfast.

The child did not notice it.

His father will come one day anyway, he will surely come and let whoever he wants say what he wants.He will come one night carrying all kinds of colorful toys, and if his son is in a deep sleep then he will caress his head and wake him from his sleep and sit him on his knee and hug him and kiss him.

All the neighbors' sons had fathers who would go home every evening, and the sons would wait on the road every evening for their fathers' return, and then rush to them shouting: "Daddy, Dad!" Like a little hero, heading home. Except for Samir who stays alone until late. And when he's left like this, he puts his hands behind his back and leans his shoulders against the wall, and thinks why he doesn't have a father either, and he wants to cry.Rather, the child would cry sometimes with hot tears, when the night came and watched his friends with whom he played various games from morning until evening, and they withdrew one by one with their parents to their homes, and found himself left alone. Oh if he had a father he too, oh if he went to his house he too, like the others, oh if the moon rises. He does not find (Samir) in the darkness of the night!

And it happened that on one occasion he carefully watched Ali, the son of the neighbors opposite them. On that day, Abu Ali was late in returning to the fathers of the rest of the children, so anxiety and fear overcame the boy, and he said to (Samir) in anxiety and doubt: "Isn't it possible that he appeared to my father who worked, and that he also would not return after today, like your father?" At that very moment, "Ali" rushed to him like a madman, taking the necessities from his hand, then Ataqa towards the house under the faint blue starlight. And when (Samir) was going to be alone like every evening, he walked carefully behind "Ali" and his father, then crossed their courtyard without glimpsing him, and he went from one corner watching the love of the father and son, and hearing what they had to say.

Ali's mother received the father and son at the door, then they entered together into the room, and the mother took bread from her son's hand, and the father and son sat on the sofa in front of the window. Ali's father was tired and sweating, but he still sat his son on his lap, stroked his hair, and kissed his cheek.

(Samir) almost broke down in tears, but he held on, as he should not cry. His mother would always say to him: "My love, you are my father, and I am both your father and your mother. Do not look at the other children, those are a spoiled bunch. You have grown up. Without a father, you are wiser than them all!"

So he didn't cry.