About the writer:

Bothayna al-Essa is a Kuwaiti writer, born on 3 September, 1982. She obtained her degree in Finance from the
College of Business Administration at the University of Kuwait in 2005 and later received her Masters in 2007.

She has published five novels and one collection of essays, with the first novel, Irtitam la yusma lahu dawii (A
Soundless Collision), appearing in 2004. She has been awarded many national and international prizes for her
work, including being longlisted for the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award. She is a wife and mother and government
employee.

Source: http://www.banipal.co.uk/contributors/960/bothayna--al-essa/

About the translator:

Bahaa Fadhil is an Iraqi translator, born on 16 June, 1990. He graduated college of languages/
University of Baghdad in 2013.

Contact: bebobaghdad@gmail.com +964 7708160803

First Edition, 2013

You cannot stay here longer than you should. Stay as distant as they cannot find you; catch you to form
you or to mold you. Be very far away, like mountains or unpolluted air. Be as distant as you can have no
parents, no family, no relations, and no homeland. Be as distant as you cannot figure out where you are.
Never let them find you. Do not be in-a more than you should-contact with them. Stay way too far that
even you cannot find yourself.

Krishnamurti
They say do not go away while they are burying me

Nowhere is far away but where I am

Malik Ibnul-Rayib
I got older

They have always told me: you will forget as you get older.

When I fell and got my eyebrow scarred

When my math teacher forced me to stand facing the wall

Because I forgot that 6x7=42

When my bike broken down and they did not buy me a new one

So that I do not break it

When my souls glass got broken

When my parents died

When I did not die

When the world was many and I was alone

When my brother beheaded my doll because Dolls are haram*

And removed Spacetoon TV channel because Pokemon is haram

When he took off my parents photo off the album and hid it in the drawers

So that it does not expels the angels*

When the walls cracks were filled with demons

When I were forced to join females college

In order to maintain my chastity

When I tore the covers of my books to protect them from getting burned

When I wrote my first poem under the tissue box trembling out of fear

When he pulled me from my heads cover out of my first poetry session

When he slapped me at last

The problem is that I got older, yet I could not forget

I got older. Yet, forgot how to forget

*Haram: Arabic word means (Religiously prohibited). *extremists think that pictures prevent angels
from getting into the house.
Apple eater:

Oh my mirror

Who is the ugliest lady in the whole country?

-You, apple eater

You, bad worm of books

You

I did not get up, I were thrown into awakening

The mirror is in front of me, the fear is in my pores

Who am I?

The dream threw me out. Even though it wasnt a good one, yet I preferred staying in it than
confronting my place. In that very moment I wondered: what is this place? Where am I? Then I figured
out, or I remembered: it is where I am hiding. I am at the hotel. I ran away. The time is yet not 3:30 am.
What am I going to do with myself awake? I folded my knees toward my stomach. I cuddled myself. I am
a ball on the form of a woman looks like a ball and far from looking like a woman and looking like an o
circled and tied to my own wrists.

I covered my head under the blanket and closed my eyes. Oh Fatima, sleep. Tomorrow we will arrange
your ideas. Tomorrow you will laundry your shirt, comb your hair and arrange your thoughts. That is the
plan and all you have to do now is to sleep. Oh Fatima, the night is not standing by your side, you know
that and yet you wake up so bad.

I wrap around myself like a snail knows what to do.

Sleep, baby, sleep

Your father tends the sheep

Your mother shakes the dreamland tree

And from it fall sweet dreams for thee

I sing for myself as if Im my mother, my own little baby. As if Im the only person remained for me
because Im the only one remained for me. My fingers rebel, my body is a revolution. My horrible reality
attacks me like an eternal horror that overwhelms the soul confronting the question. I have really
escaped. Have you?

The reflection of my face in the mirror mocks me: Oh Archimedes, cheer more for your genius
invention. Awaken the world. I say you sleep quickly before that the idea wakes up and before you get
to see its vice and harlotry, before you get to see its power over you. Before that it sucks you and drinks
your juice and throws you out dry and helpless.

I cannot help thinking. I got to shut this wicked machine called the brain. I jump out of the bed with my
fingers shaking while opening my bags. My fingers are, like me, crazy, weak, sweaty and heartbroken. I
open the bags one at a time, I exhume the stuff out of them and throw them away keeping exhuming
and grapping stuff out hard. I dig my fingers deep, deep inside the pockets and corners of the bags
looking for my salvation, looking for the damn box that would take me out of my reality. Alprazolam, the
magical hypnotic, the defeater of anxiety and depression, my best friend and my worst enemy whos
undertaking the project of destroying me with my own blessings.

Where are you devil? Come over honey, come over little baby, come over before I go out running to
surrender to the first policeman or even a tissue vendor I meet in the street. I find the box under my
cotton pajamas. I open it with trembling fingers and swallow a bill while comforting the crazy being
inside me that things are under control: Oh Fatima! Calm down, you have taken the medicine.

Im laid on the bed. The bed is a hole and I am falling in. The hole is endless like the shedding blood,
like the hungry folks, the dead ones, the poems of Al-Saiaab*.My God, your gifts are accepted. Give it,
give it. Am I piffling? Im shaking and this is not about love or inspiration. Alprazolam overwhelms me. A
wide drought in my mouth. Im a forsaken well.

I close my eyes and see Faris looking for me in the many streets roaming around the sidewalks and turn
his face looking for me behind the trees and under the gravel. I smile to him and murmur with my-
heavy-as a sand sack-tongue: sleep my love! Sleep. The numbness sneaks to me from my fingers and
reduces my borders. Slowly, Im being eaten and downsized. Now, I can be passive while looking at Faris
with my hearts eye. I pity him and, with my bad throat and weak voice, I sang to him so that he sleeps.

*Al-Saiiab: an Iraqi poet

A prayer

I cuddle my ruins to write

I am broken in the inside

God, heal me

Teach me how to prey

My own prey

Grant me my language

Grant me my language, oh God of language

Grant me my language so I supplicate you

Glory to be to you

Grant me it so that I think

So that I exist

So that I get to know me and know you

Oh God of speech and the creator of humans! Be with me in my loneliness. Because I feel scared in the
basements and I want a word that I can light and that can lights me. That I revive and that revives me. A
word with which, I can warm myself and illuminate my inside.

The word that existed in the beginning. The word that changed the sperm of nothingness into the
worlds ball, and the word that brought me here in this place feeling my supplications with my fingertips
and seeing the letters with my hearts eyes. Grant me the word, the secret word, the secret behind the
reality, the reality of wisdom. Grant me the wisdom to forgive this destruction. Grant me my language.
Grant me the A of answer to understand the filthiness of the world, to reason the bad that happened so
I can forgive. Grant me the L so that I can love, contain and pity, because life is dry and water is rare and
Im dry and my feminism is far away. Grant me the H so that I can heal, so that recovering becomes
possible. Grant me the D so that I depart and travel so that I can be a soul and relief at last. Grant me
the I J K L M. Grant me the language so that I revive the infertile thing named My life. To illuminate the
basement this is haunted with ghosts and demons. The basement that lies deep in the memories? Grant
me the e to entertain and grant me the f to feel, to come out all green like a tree. Grant me the
language, oh God of the language. The glory and pride is for you in the skies and on earth. Im small,
passive and silly while this whole universe is yours eventually.

Grant me my language.
A dried old woman

It is a perfect place for one to be invisible,

For a woman to be invisible

A room for 25 dinar per night in a cheap hotel celebrating its ugliness as if it was a victory. In the
hybrid crowding of Al-Salimia*, and among a group of lazy cafs that stand shoulder to shoulder as if
they are leaning over each other. Their visitors are spread over the sidewalks with the red heads of
Narigilas* overwhelmed by the smell of grilling and shaded by a cloud of smoke.

-Im melting in the crowd and getting vanished.

I have no smell and no shadow

Im no one

Im in the right place, not only because no one expects me to be here, but also because this place looks
like me. Its unforgivable disorder, its visible aging despite its young age, the empty fishbowl, the blue
curtains, the brown sofas, the scandalous absence of the harmony between its parts. Everything here is
me.

I feel that I lost a lot of organs while traveling my miles, and that I am stained with spots of emptiness. I
have died a lot and buried myself a lot and now there is no one green and alive place in me. Im an
elderly woman but 25 years old, a dried old woman.

I need to be convincing when I talk about the reasons of my escape, to not only look like an old crazy
woman. One whos a medicine addict and a poet protesting against the drought of things. Im so
convictable and I need to make things clear, measurable, limited and as simple as a percentage. The
answer is the escape, the details are endless, the story is not a straight line but I will try.

I want Faris to understand that I cannot, anymore, stay in that world, the world of basements and
coffins. the world of the shoes that are treading my face. I want to get rid of any kind of a linkage to the
regular way of living. I want the mess. I want to sleep when I want and eat when I want and get silent
when I want. I want to want. My hunger to my own will, my hunger to myself, my hunger to feel, for
once in my life, that Im fortified against desecration and no one would rip, with his claw, the veils of my
weakness.

Now I know it is useless to look back at our marriage, and our divorce project, without regarding my
seven years I spent in that basement. That what I was trying to say to Faris, but failed to: you have got
married into an old woman on her second decade. They have stolen my many years that I was supposed
to live all young and bright. I cannot be your wife, I cannot be greened.

In room 28, second floor, in my hotel flat that brags about its three stars and celebrates its eternal
deficiency and enjoys its reality. With two boxes of Alprazolam, socks, bottles full of drafts and a
computer, I will hide myself all my life, I will crouch and write.

Al-Salmia: a town in Kuwait. Narigilas: type of smoking pipes more used in the Arabic world
The Basement

In my first funeral I did not cry

It was the first time

I escaped home for the first time when I was nineteen. It happened without planning. Life had gone
impossible so I went out of the house and named that an escape. And I named my escape a salvation,
and called my salvation a death. I said I will not comeback unless I am a corpse.

I drove the black Soparu to the nearest Burger king branch I knew and got a Super Size Double
Whopper meal and I made sure that everything is huge fatty and excessive. I paid and caught the paper
bag in one hand and the Pepsi bottle in the other and crossed the street to the females high school on
the other side from which I had graduated two year ago. I sat in front of the door and started to eat.

In this place, specifically, I used to stand at the end of each school day waiting for my old brother while
I was starving and dying to a meal of that burger. I used to inhale the smell of the fried oil and think of
the potato sticks.

It seemed like reaching the other side of the road was impossible due to the strict guarding imposed
by the school as the social specialist used to wait for the last student to leave so that she leaves,
peacefully, to her house and she had made her lifes goal to make sure we do not cross the few meters
to the restaurant on the other side without the approval of our male guardians .

Those girls who had been more daring than I had, those who had done the prohibited and had broken
the taboos for buying Whopper meal or Chicken Royal. Those brave girls, who had been in harmony
with their desires, were undergone a disciplinary session the other day and had to stand in the middle of
the school field along the queue time. Then we witnessed what I called Three minutes of continuous
screech because the voices the Principal was making were more than a shouting. The whole thing was
offensive enough to make a Story from which we take A Moral lesson about the destiny of the guilty
female student who were involved in having a desire.

So, why didnt we wait for the male guardians then? Because the driver was not considered as a
guardian because a guardian would not allow his daughter to have a lunch out of the house that the
table there was full of rice and broth dishes and because the prohibited things have their own ecstasy.

I did not fear the public punishment session and I wouldnt had minded the voice massacre of the
principal neither the scandal of public punishment in the queue, rather, I feared that my brother knows
about it and his Octopus arms punish me along the way from school to home. Along those years, I used
to be convinced that the one guilt equals ten, but a one good does not count.
 I did not express anything in four years. I never fought for my desire. I disappointed the call going out
of my guts and just stood there with the sun drilling my head and tasted the Whopper just in my
imagination, held it in my hands, its juice would melt, warm, down my mouth.

In that day, when I escaped for the first time, I bought my prohibited fruit and sat at the gate of the
school. I faced the school with my back and ate as a spite toward the principal, teachers and my old
brother. I took the revenge for myself.

In minutes, I have eaten a mountain of American plastic food to put down my fear with it. I became
heavier and calmer. I walked back to my car that is parked in front of the restaurant wondering: now
what? In that very moment, what I had eaten trembled inside of me like a fire. My forehead was on fire
and my eyes were full of tears. I dried my mouth with the paper tissues I held in my hands while still
crying. Why did the prohibited fruit, I dreamt about my whole life, spit me?

A year had passed after I got my drivers license, yet I dont know the streets. The Soparu is the
drivers car and they will discover its absence at any moment. I feared getting lost but, what I feared
more was that my unsuccessful escape attempt would turn into a scandal. If I was serious about leaving,
it wouldnt have happened so randomly, with no bag, no money and even without a passport.

The worlds horizons reduced in front of me. I kept driving forward, always forward but I was weeping.
I realized that I was cheating myself. But, going back to that place, that house, to that basement!. For a
moment, I wish I get beaten by a car to kill me and everything is over, and at that very moment, I found
the solution.

If I actually die, my whole problems end. If I would surrender to death, the upcoming days of my life
would not be so hard. I will deal with everything the way corpses do. My death would be so thick that
the world cannot breach.

I drove on the Forth circular road until I arrived to Al-Jabria. Then, I turned to the right and drove for a
little distant inside the territory until I arrived at a flowers store. Having no more than three dinars,
after the Super Size scum meal that I had eaten and vomited in half an hour, I bought the cheapest
flowers; White, simple-shape, bad-smelled daisy. Then, I moved with my car until I arrived at Al-Jabria
public garden which was empty, except for some Asians and a Syrian family sitting on the grass and
eating sandwiches. I walked straightly as if I was undergoing an invisible, occult call.

I searched for a suitable grave for me, suitable for my metaphorical death. And, while walking, I cursed
my uncomfortable shoes and my thoughtless decisions. In the space of sand between two cactus
flowers, I dug a hole and buried the white daisy flowers. I named that spot My grave and made a
decision to die. I died and its over.

In my first funeral, I did not cry as I thought: if they would know that I have died, they would not cry as
well. I finished the rituals of burying myself with a strange feeling of comfort; I will not feel pain
anymore because Im dead already.

I came back home, no one had yet known about my escape, neither my return nor my death. To them,
nothing had happened, but I knew that a part of me had died and buried under two cactuses without
tears or a sensation and it was something I cannot get back any more.
The hole

The car turned over and the entire world turned over with it

The story can begin here. From the moment of the accident, when reality started to have more
canines while I was watching TV and dipping the potato chips in the hot sauce wearing a pink pajamas, I
was thirteen years old and death has forgot me.

Things were alright. Then the seniors started whispering to each other drying their tears with their
sleeves and hugging each other. They were, with the least possible amount of noise, exchanging the
news of my parents death. Until that moment, I was dipping my forefinger in the hot sauce and suck it
as if no disaster had happened.

Whats wrong with the seniors? Why are they coming to the house crying? And why do they whisper
like that? I went there to overhear. I went there sneaking behind the door, I listened and learnt new
words: Corpse, the deads washer, fast death, Arar road. I heard a lot of sorry and sobbing and sounds
of taking off the tissues out of the box. I didnt know, until that moment, that the calamity relates to me
more than them.

My uncles wife sobbed when she realized that I was behind the door as she was coming to close it.
For a moment, I thought she was going to scold me for my bad habit of overhearing. Instead, when she
saw me, she covered her mouth with her hand and cried: Oh little Fatima, my darling! Like that and
without a reason? I stayed in my place without moving looking at them and hearing meaningless things:
Did you know? No. What are you waiting for? We are waiting for Sakar to come. May god help you! One
of the relative women asked me to come upstairs with her. Why? I want to see the seniors crying and
losing their power. Lets go play little Fatima, do you have toys you can show me? She was a crazy
woman. Does she think Im five?

Then, Sakar arrived, my step brother, my elder one, with sixteen years gap. Wide bodied with huge
hands, red face and bushy beard. Number 11 is between his eyes and three waving lines on his
forehead. The uncles hugged him.. May God bless you and mercy your father. I asked.. Daddy died?
Their faces squeezed with crying, Sakar leaned with his body towards me and looked at me with his red
eyes.. Your father and mother. Just pray for them. Mom also?.. May God mercy them. Father and
mother?.. May God mercy them.. May God mercy them?

I fell in the hole. The hole I fell in is inside of me, the hole is me, the fall is me, the fall is endless.. I
kicked. I hit with my fist, he hugged me tight and said, Hush! Calm down,

Calm down, I will not leave you, you are coming with me, I will take care of you

Yes, someone is going to take care of me so much, I will be his only interest. He will take care of me to
the extent of making me falling apart in the inside.
The pajamas of the honey night

In my wedding night, I slept wearing silly cotton pajamas, blue trousers with white spots and a white
blouse having a yellow Tulip flower in the middle smiling and winking. Confortable, silly pajamas, yet
expressive enough to say do not think of touching me.

I didnt have the will to get to know the one who had become my husband neither did I want to know
the fear he felt about the way the wedding had gone. When I was pushed toward him by my elder
brothers big hand barely saying: congrats.

When the line of cars stopped outside, the guests thought that they had missed the right house and
they were wondering: Where are the drums and where are the guests? Where are the cheers and where
is the joy and where are the ornamental lamps? The Sri Lankan servant opened the door for them
pointing to the reception room. Faris sat there together with his mom, his two sisters, his two aunts
from the mother side and three aunts from the father side and several cousins of his, waiting for the
Party to start. His mother wanted to make sure, she asked: Is it not the wedding day? All the
attendants started to check the date in their heads and their cellphones. The two sisters felt
uncomfortable because of the big hair styles that touch the sky, the exaggeration of preparations from
their side that is received with super carelessness showed by the hosts. Minutes later, Wadhha came
downstairs to tell them that the bride was still preparing. Several more minutes, Badria entered
wrapped with her cloak and asked Faris to sit in the Diwan* room because Sakar will meet him there in
minutes.

They were not merely minutes. Faris had to wait for about an hour when the door opened and Sakar
came in to lay his back against the wall-pillow and started sucking the acid sunflower seeds avoiding any
talk about me. Im the week sheep of the wedding.

Diwan: it is an Arabic style of rooms (Mainly for mens sessions) with a setting made of mattresses all around it on
the ground and billows standing against the wall around the walls.
 Another half an hour, I showed up like a dead reviving from her grave whose body have melted in the
soil a lot. Bardia had bought me a White chiffon, the closest thing to a wedding dress in light of the
barefaced absence of all forms of joy. The guests murmured with denouncement as I showed without
cheers or songs carrying my barely-heavy bag of clothes. Chandra hurried and took it off my hand. I
looked around wondering where is the man who had become my husband?.

Badria took my hand to the Diwan room to see the groom. I wasnt thinking about Faris, I was thinking
about Sakar, what would he say if he sees me in the see-through chiffon dress? I felt my bodys heat.
The women started to cheer, Badria joined them. Wadhha looked away and just walked in the end of
the procession. At the door of the Diwan room, Badria pushed me in, I didnt look at Faris, and Sakar did
not look at me either. Congratulations he said looking downward at the carpet.

So, these are my wedding details, with its suspicious quietness and funeral-like silence. I got into the
limousine beside Faris. Our hands touched mistakenly so I pulled my hand off toward me, i tucked it in
my pocket. He looked at me with a stun, I looked away. To the Hilton he said to the driver. Along the
way, he was looking at me, at my colored nails hiding behind the sleeves of calamity.

We got into the suite. It was very beautiful. The sofa wraps around itself in the corner with its beige
color with its red, brown and oil color pillows. The bed sheet was White and made of cotton looking like
a floating cloud, a 22 ounces TV and a black polished kitchen. The windows extend to the infinity. I felt
dizzy; I closed the curtains and looked toward him while he was sitting on the edge of the bed
overwhelmed by a non-understanding. He tried hard to neglect his feeling of unfairness. With effort, he
gave a little smile. In that smile, I discovered his handsomeness. I should have smiled.

-Are you hungry?

- No

- I ordered a dinner for us.

- I feel ill a little bit.

- What illness?

I hesitated at first then I said it;

- I am on my period.

He blushed a little bit and answered with politeness: I wish you be fine. We dont have to go out, lets
eat here.

He picked the phone to order the dinner. I was in the bathroom contemplating with a lot of inability to
believe the legendary size of Jacuzzi after seven years of showering on my feet. I locked the bathrooms
door and sat on the cold marble edge. The mirror in front of me was smiling: what a devil you are
Fatima! You like the Jacuzzi more than you husband out there! I laughed while wiping the wonderful
polished surface of this white thing with its perfect beauty which will take me into its depth in a minute.
I turned on the tap, the hot waterfall started to run, the place became full of steam and lavender scent. I
poured all of the soap bottles in the basin and made a lot and a lot of bubbles. I dipped myself there for
an hour. For an hour, I was playing. I was the child that I used to be.

When I got out of the bathroom drying my hair with the towel, he was sitting there on the sofa in
front of the television looking for a movie to watch. When he saw me looking nothing like a bride
wearing my silly pajamas and hardly smiling, he nodded with his head that he fully understands the
message.

The dinner got cold! he said, blaming me and pointing toward the dinner table with its covered
metal plates. I sat on the facing chair, I ate some potato sticks. I looked at the Lasagna but did not dare
to eat. The presence of this man, who had become my husband, worries my stomach. I barely ate, and
was barely eating. Both of us were not happy by each other. The silence was the master of the place.

-I am tired, I will go sleep.

I said that while I am burying myself under the blanket. For more protection, I wrapped myself with
the blanket, I turned off my body and blocked my pores and escaped toward me. I am an earthworm.

- Are you cold?

- You can find another blanket in the closet, have a good night.

The silence dominated, and then he answered:

- You too.
The third days night

His hands surround my neck, almost break it. He stands behind me like a hard-to-break wall. He
takes me down to the basement.
The funeral had ended and the crowd had left. I left sleeping in my uncles house and moved with
him, far away to here, dropping to the underground of reality. Fourteen stairs was the whole
distance between me and the world.

My heart was beating with horror with each stair taking me down as I was seeing the spots of
moisture getting wider on the wall and the green mold shows from the cracks threatening me. It
was very dark. The smell reveals the slow decaying of a place that had died long time ago and still
decaying slowly. Sakar pushed the light button; the blue light trembled in the long neon tubes.
There were some wires fixed on the wall with a tape and the place seemed like it had thrown out its
intestines. In front of me, the desert-like creepy thing that he named as My room widened, while
he was pushing me slightly to the place that has opened its mouth to swallow me.
He told me From now on, you will live with us. You will be my daughter rather than my sister.
You are too young to be my sister anyway. You can be my kids sister.
My heart got full of frustration and my eye got blackout. Is this basement my room? I fear
basements! He said we cannot help it; we do not have an extra room. He had an extra room but he
thought of filling it with sport devices.

I started to look. The carpet was black green. It scratches the soul from the feet.
Above my head, on the ceiling, there were yellow spots widening in the whiteness of the nonentity.
Air conditioner was whirring insistently, you turn it off and the room will decay in five minutes.
Because it was a basement, it had no windows. It does not have a view but its internal ugliness. The
air was burdened with the naphthalene smell and the white balls were spread here and there which
means that I wasnt alone, I was a comer to the Utopia of rats, generations after generations of
cockroaches and mice had founded many civilizations before I come with my shoes hits and my
fears cramps to share the place with them.

This was the place where I had to spend seven years of my live time. Compared to my pink room
in my parents house, the basement looked like a stable and I cried for long days cuddling my
parents picture, not because of their death, but also because of the death of my rooms carpet, my
little chandeliers, my wall papers with trees, the smell of strawberries in my room and many other
things. I dont know why I should lose all of these things together with losing my parents.

Where are my toys? He nodded with his head to a small pile of what remained of them meaning
they are most of them. I did not ask him why. Because, until that time, I was fearing his paunch and
his red skin, but he was generous enough to explain to me the reason. He elaborated in details,
telling me about the taboo of possessing dolls because they are Pictures that prevent angels from
getting into the house, and specially the Bawdy Barbie which plants indecent thoughts in the girls
minds. Thus, I added to my dictionary two more words Bawdry & Indecency.
Except for my bed and my clothes, I had not been allowed to keep my life. All the beautiful things
had gone just at once. My father, mother, my toys and room, my little cotton bear and the wooden
dolls big house. Everything had died everything but me. The hole of orphanhood sucks my soul
carefully. Dont worry, you will get used to the place he said and put his hand on my shoulder. His
hand was heavy, just like the hole that was taking me downward.
The picture

No, Im not fine.

This was what I said to my parents picture that was taken out of its frame, the creased picture, the
yellowish one., the one that was twenty years older than me, the one that had been taken in the
wedding night of my parents among the palms trunks loaded with ornamental lamps in the wide yard of
my grandfathers house in a time seemed simple and free of trouble-minding matters.

My father was smiling with every part of his body as he had got a beautiful wife who was twenty two
years younger than him and who seemed lively enough. She looked fresh virgin and suitable to be a wife
the whole life, after that his first wife had died and left him with two sons that he hadnt known how to
rise. Because raising kids is womens job as he had thought. His Iqal* was a little bit tilt to the right side,
but who would notice that with all that joy on his face while my mom had cut her hair and beautified it
with a collar of pearls?. She had always told me that it was real pearl where no one pearl looks like
another. Every one of which bears its own creases and bends. She used to say that I would not be able
to get a similar collar but in Bahrain where she came from like a crazy mermaid who had decided to
marry into a widowed as an adventure.

Editors Note: If you want me to continue translating this novel, if you think it is interesting to
you, contact me on my e-mail: bebobaghdad@gmail.com and I will translate the rest of it.