Think of something that has stuck in youur mind for not obvious reason. Don't think of anything special; just something small.
Write about that thing precisely using details. Begin with the phrase, "I don't know wy I remember."
Don't explain. Just describe.
I don't why I always remember that nightmare I had, it was a A very scary one, I don't remember my age when I saw it, but it is from a long time but that doesn't change the fact that I didn't forget the horrifying details of that nightmare, the fearful masks, blood, thunder, and people that resembled vampires. It was creepy but the thing is that when I remember it now I am not afraid at all
ReplyDeleteI know how that feels. Dreams that we have as children can live with us for such a long, long time. The images can stay so vivid.
DeleteMy mother and I sit on the balcony of the house filled with flowers every day.. I bring cold lemonade while she sews our pierced dresses. My mother suffers from poor eyesight. She makes a great effort to insert the thread into the needle hole.. My mother inserts the thread very carefully, and with each new thread she puts A dose of love and tenderness...
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ReplyDeleteI don’t know why I remember the way that mother slapped her child on his face while taking the eid photo. He was refusing to take a photo so she raised her hand and with all her effort she slapped him. He started crying loudly and his skin color turned from white to red. What shocked me the most that within his crying face he was obliged to take the photo.
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ReplyDeleteHe was directly behind me, I saw him staring with his bloody eyes, grinded his teeth as his eyebrows lowered and pulled closer together to draw a face that embraced no intimacy and intended not to. Who was he? I didn't know him, or maybe I did!
I stopped at the bakery as my father ordered, bought him two brown loafs of bread, and four white ones for my brothers and me, as usual.
That unknown shadow was still chasing me, quicker steps now, as if he knew I was approaching home, he didn't turn his head to see people as they passed by him. A few seconds later and my body started trembling, my knees weakened and the loafs seemed too heavy to sustain, I leaned to catch them and once I lifted my head I found his hulk body facing mine, he smiled but the muscle that orbited his eyes didn't move, when he said: "and finally, you are alone!"
As I ran he ran behind, panting, as if chased by devilish fiends, I didn't notice my house was that distant until that day, oh, how I desperately wished my father could be standing on our balcony, waiting for me to come back and take that stranger down by one of his famous gazes; those which usually thickened the blood in our veins and disturbed any ambition to live till the next moment! No, he was not there, he was never there. But, where were my brothers who used to play outside at that timing of the day? I had an insane idea, bornt at that very moment; "I will give up playing the doctor's role and I will give up the fan's wire which we used to consider as the doctor's stethoscope while playing with my brothers and cousins", yes, I will give it up, only for one of them to be in the sight of my eyes on that day, I saw no one of them, none.
My body moved on sluggishly, until I found it in the hands of that stranger, he put his hand on my shoulder; it weighed a ton. All of a sudden, a picturesque came in front of my eyes; I saw myself falling from a skyscraper and my face smashing, oh, how many surgeries will I need to repair it, to bring every feature of my face back to its place? How can that be done with me being the only doctor in our family? How can I escape my father's torture if I die before becoming a doctor as he commanded?
My body quivered to find myself standing in a room where only darkness lived, no guests ever visited, I couldn't hear any sound but my brothers' breath coming out of their half dead bodies; sleeping. Why did you close the door, mom? You know I fear the dark!
I faltered and trampled on the limbs of the sleeping bodies around me, carelessly, rushed to the door, out of the fear and the pain of that fall and that stranger. I arrived, after I fumbled the coldness of the wall separating our room from our parents' to their door, knocking it with all the strength left in me and calling after my mom with every throat I had. I looked both sides into that prolonged corridor; I smelled the odor of that ocean's spray, the ocean of darkness as its waves hit the rocks of my shore; rudely, harshly. What sticked its head in between two consecutive burning breaths was my dead grandmother's eyes in a picture hanged at the living room's wall, they were perfectly alive, staring, wandering everywhere but nowhere; they mesmerized the brown out of my eyes, the flames of fire burning at my throat bowed, froze. How can a mere picture with a dusty scratched old wooden frame as its only guardian have such a horrifying awe upon the soul? Those eyes, eyes that fixed me in a formulated phrase, as if sprawling on a pin and wriggling on a wall. Those eyes, refusing to die, staring, restlessly, were the parents of my father's eyes; they both hated to live, they both spread death in the atmosphere!
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ReplyDeleteI knocked on that door, it was an abandoned orphan, its parents were love and serenity; tragically died. Doors have souls, how could a door witnessing the fear in a trembling little girl not lean? What kind of cruelty was that? What parents were those?
I woke up the next day filled of a hidden pain, heavy eyelids, why didn't my mother ask me what had happened the night before? How didn't she show herself to me in the heart of those nightmares? How did she reconcile with my fear of sleeping? Why didn't she close the living room's door while she knew how much horror it raised inside of me? How could I open a heart for her which she didn't open her arms for it?!
The unfortunate, the unforgettable, are the years!
How unbelievably powerful childhood memories are; when they are almost dying, there they come back, squally, burning everything we rebuilt by time and hard work of neglecting and adapting, of forgetting and forgiving; as if those memories keep on jumping over our walls after they silence the barking of our wild gaurd dogs, by throwing them a piece of rotten meat!
That power amazes me, how it wins every game by its own rules, how life fails at beautifying its edges, how we vainly attempt at cutting its withered endings, for better growth, it grows back, climbs our face, disguising as wrinkles, and again, hits where we hurt the most; careless of how much pain it is embracing, those ruins, those scars, this fire, burn.
Fatima Kurdi