97

Tar sands

From Republic Street, first Faisal

Between Sharif and Saudi Al-Sanadili Streets

Corona time, fireworks and firecrackers

and drugs

Tar sands

A spot in the sub-Saharan desert is colored with tar, so Haniyeh, the grandmother of Roma Asfis, does not pay any attention to it. She sits in front of her stove behind the tent in Al-Rahba, surrounded by the children of the neighborhood, waiting for a false porridge casserole every morning before the grandmother’s main meal for each child left by his mother, who sets out to the neighboring urban area in search of livelihood. She left her husband sleeping in his tent in the year of the gypsy children, and if they woke up, they lit the fires of smoke dipped in black honey, so that they could go back to sleep again until their wives returned from urban areas.

Grandma Haniyeh volunteered to catch a wild animal every day that fell into one of his nets that she had set up, covered with sand and grass for eighty-five years.

A wild rabbit, fox, wolf, desert rat, or even a tiger usually falls into the grandmother’s net, so the grandmother rushes to slaughter it, skin it, and straighten it. All the neighborhood kids help her in her daily work, so that they eat their main meal before they go to sleep and their mothers return.

Some of the youngsters go away to play away from the fire of the grandmother's stove until she finishes cooking the meat of the day's game. Their feet slide in the heart of the tar sand bearing the smell of the fuel of the tent clubs, so they float on their robes. The youngsters are about to suffocate. The little ones before they breathe their last, and she takes them back to sit around her after she stops them from approaching the edge of the tar sand spot, which may swallow them to the severity of her wife.

  Grandma Haniyeh increases the lighting of her stove, so Awf Walad Sondos and Mahran Al-Rakh hold a stick of burning wood and play with Abbad Walad Zain and Bahjieh, who in turn brandishes another burning stick in his face. The flames in the patch of tar sand extend their tongues, burning the tents and roasting the men sleeping inside them.

Grandma Haniyeh's feet are heavy.. they are embedded in the sand.. the kids are uprooting them away from the flames that eat everything they meet.. they are running up to the slope of the desert at the only spring of water in the area, and the fire destroyed their main meal, which took a whole day of work for the grandmother with the kids.

The gypsy women return from their daily journey to the urban area.. they gather what is left of their tents and the men whose skins are roasted.. the young and the grandmother Haniyeh.. carry what is left on the backs of camels.. looking for a new neighborhood for fear that they will be swallowed up by the tar flowing abundantly from the patch that is expanding every moment until it is dyed Large areas of the Lesser Desert disappeared, so the Raheel neighborhood of Asfais al-Ghajar disappeared, so that the area was named after him the Oasis of the Tar Sands.

    A short story by / Mahmoud Hassan Farghaly

Member of the Writers Union

Member of the Syndicate of Film Professions

mahmoudhassanfarghaly@gmail.com

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