قصة الرحيل لفيصل الزوايدي
ترجمها الى الانقليزية : عبد اللطيف غسري
Departure
By Façal Zouaydi
Translated By Abdellatif Rhesri
O those who endure troubles patiently… My wishes have begun to dwindle as I am growing older, and I have probed the taste of calamities.
Departure was carried out from the South, one cold day. However, my face was being scorched with a certain flame, and various kinds of winds were blowing away the shreds of my soul. My mother was standing at the threshold holding a water container, intending to see me off by sprinkling some water so that I could come back to her ; her eyes glittering with another kind of water. She did not utter a single word though her lips were mumbling something which I guessed were some prayers for me so that I might go away and return in complete safety. My little brother was standing beside her in his shabby, loose shirt, rubbing his nose with his finger and staring astonishedly at us ; for he did not grasp the meaning of departure yet. From the blue wooden window, my sister was looking out, glancing back from time to time at the inside of the room. There, my father was lying in bed due to an illness that had affected him and forced him to lie down. His state had grown better two days earlier, so I had informed him of the date of my departure. He did not say anything, but I felt from his gloomy silence as if he had been imploring me to stay ; and from his eyes, shaded with his eyebrows, I had nearly heard a thunderous high-pitched voice bidding me not to go. But, how could I stay after so much pain I had endured to get that travel opportunity which I might not be able to get again if I tried. Also, getting the visa to the country I was heading for was not always easy. Blood failed to run smoothly through my veins and I realised that a total earthquake was not the worst of disasters anyway.
There came the sound of the car, parked in front of the house, being started off ; for the driver pressed the accelerator pedal as if to bid me to hurry. The car door was wide open calling me for a new life drawn by dreams and illusions ; calling me to travel faraway, to the land of fair-skinned faces, abundant money and different endless pleasures. Suddenly, the door of a neighbouring house was opened and there came out a girl whom two families had agreed to marry off to me ; for she was my cousin. The girl was not too ugly for me to abstain from getting married to her. On the contrary, she was somewhat pretty, especially when she smiled so naively that she reminded me of her kind father’s smile. Notwithstanding, I rejected that engagement fearing it would have made me bound to a miserable life there forever. My mother wiped her nose with the tip of her dress, and I noticed my sister’s disappearance from the window. It became harder and harder for me to breathe. I recalled my father’s plenty and emphatic talks about my being the man of the house after him. I used to reply by praying that he would live longer, but he would retort : It’s the same if I live longer or shorter. At the end, I will inevitably kick the bucket.
Images started to get blurred in front of my eyes ; from the image of a brown kid playing around in an almost desert area to those of fair-skinned faces in snow lands. Colours got strangely blended, too. I missed so many words I could say in such a situation, so I kept silent. Time had but one single meaning known only to watch-makers. I was afraid my inside would burst somehow, so I dropped the bag on the back seat and was about to get onto the car but…
A water container fell on the ground dropped by my little son, exactly as my mother had done that day when the voice of my sister had come loud from the wooden window announcing that the disaster had befallen at last. My wife bowed down picking up the the fragments of the container giving a naive smile that reminded me of her kind uncle.
Morocco
9/8/2009
عبد اللطيف غسري
المغرب
الرحيل لفيصل الزوايدي الى الانقليزية
رد مع اقتباس
المشاركة الأصلية كتبت بواسطة ربيحة الرفاعي
