short story

Prayer

Aug 18 2008 Published by viktoriya under short story


Ahmed put a sim­ple nar­row rug with embroi­dered green­ish leafs on the ground and turned west­ward. He kneeled, clasped his thin palms and started his usual rit­ual of pray­ing. The sun was set­ting down tak­ing away all the wor­ries of the busy work day with its loud bazaars, peo­ple in tur­bans in light muslin clothes rush­ing through the streets of an enor­mously hot city, women cov­ered with burqas pass­ing by with their small chil­dren, voices of thou­sands of peo­ple buzzing like a swarm of bees…

‘’Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,’’ Ahmed whis­pered with his eyes closed.  ‘’Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,’’ chanted thou­sands of voices in Kabul after mul­lah made his call from a mosque with dark blue stars and moons carved on its divine dome. It was still hot, and Ahmed could not con­cen­trate on prayer. The boil­ing heat was slowly leav­ing the city of Kabul, and although not sup­posed dur­ing the prayer, Ahmed could not help but to think what Najat has cooked for a din­ner. After the sacred time was over, he rolled his prayer rug, once again walked into the school build­ing, opened the door of the class­room, picked from his desk glasses, two books-one of Omar Khayyám and the other of Rumi, and quickly walked out into the cool­ing city toward his home.

Hold­ing to the warm cov­ers of the books, Ahmed whis­pered verses of his much-loved Khaaam : ‘’Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears today of past Regrets and future Fears…’’ He smiled. It was an opaque sum­mer evening that like a richly woven car­pet was entwined with the lus­cious smoke of freshly cooked kebab, green young cilantro, and ariog flow­ers grow­ing in the gar­dens sur­round­ing houses with flat roofs. Ahmed loved Kabul. It reminded him of a large fry­ing pen with the loud Gin sit­ting in the mid­dle of it in the sum­mer, the odd king­dom with white snowy mosques adorned with ten­der ici­cles reflect­ing crispy sil­ver moons in the win­ter, but mostly, when his city was like this, vibrant, with golden minarets reflect­ing the rays of the set­ting sun.

He turned into the nar­row street with cob­ble­stones cracked along the sunken pave­ment and his heart squeezed with unex­plain­able nos­tal­gic feel­ing of yearn­ing, sim­i­lar to what a child feels when he force­fully has to aban­don his home and fam­ily and live with the strangers. He stopped for a moment, try­ing to com­pre­hend this obnox­ious feel­ing of being for­lorn. Across the street he spot­ted his house-not big, with gray walls and flat roof where he and Najat would sleep dur­ing blis­ter­ing nights of Kabul’s sum­mer look­ing up the unbe­liev­ably close stars — one flick­er­ing, shak­ing web of bluish lights. The fence around the house was peel­ing with red paint and had to be fixed, and Ahmed promised to do it to him­self once again walk­ing through the front yard.  He stopped on the porch, his hand hold­ing to the door­knob, peek­ing into the dimly lit win­dow of his home. Najat was sit­ting in the mid­dle of the room fix­ing his old shirt,her thin pro­file framed in the yel­low square of the lighted room . Ahmed smiled.  He pulled the door but it would not open.

–Najat?, I can’t open the door,’’ Ahmed pulled harder. The door­knob made a squeaky sound.
–Najat jo , what is wrong with you, are you sleep­ing?’’ Ahmed pounded on the door.’’ Can you hear me?’’ the deep hoarse voice was too close. ‘’ What is wrong with you, are you sleep­ing?’’ The voice was roar­ing some­where above Ahmed’s head. He looked up, and down, at the sim­ple rug, ragged and nar­row, with the white pow­der of snow cov­er­ing green embroi­dered leafs. ‘’ Can you make it for me or not dammit?’’ The tall man wrapped in the gray coat scorn­fully looked around; at the rug where Ahmed was still kneel­ing not notic­ing the pierc­ingly cold wind of New York, at his light brown­ish jacket that was miss­ing a but­ton.
‘’ Yes, sir, two dol­lar sir,’’ Ahmed stepped to the cart and reached for the ketchup and slice open bread.

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Galatea Of The Dreams

May 27 2008 Published by admin under dreams, short story

SalvadorI can’t fall asleep tonight. The TV is bro­ken, and it is impos­si­ble to immerse into life behind the blue screen. What should I do? He fell asleep, self­ishly hid­ing on our bed, look­ing so con­tent. Where is he? Some place else…..dreaming. What about? Who comes to his dreams? Some­one does, and that some­one prob­a­bly is a woman. How does she look like? Is she is all about big dreamy eyes with long eye­lashes? She is sur­real. The ten­der square between her nude breasts looks like a win­dow through which the aqua­ma­rine sky and olive tree is clearly vis­i­ble. She takes his hand and they both walk through this square to the place sur­rounded by moun­tains, with orange sun behind the dead olive tree. He is look­ing at her with incomprehension.

-‘’Where are we?’’

She walks through the tawny mist slowly, until her long eye­lashes hang over his head like golden sus­pen­sion bridges lead­ing to eter­nity. He looks at her face that is so close, her eyes wide-open, and sud­denly he sees through them; the myr­iad of mol­e­cules, accu­rately lined up and run­ning to invis­i­ble point of the small­est, entwin­ing with oth­ers to form an inverted tri­an­gle –con­stantly mov­ing, falling apart into a com­plete chaos, a splash of mul­ti­col­ored par­ti­cles danc­ing in the whirlpool of mad­ness. Now he can see that she is much big­ger, look­ing at him from above. She is com­prised of these par­ti­cles and her face is the face of an angel with thin arched eye­brows and eyes filled with compassion.

–What time is it? Morning?

He is des­per­ately try­ing to find a clock, and sees that three of them are melt­ing, run­ning down as though they were made from the water reflect­ing the time of eternity…

–What time is it? The angel is sadly look­ing at him and sud­denly the roar­ing wind of pro­tons sweeps her pre­car­i­ous fea­tures, bounc­ing and cast­ing mil­lions of par­ti­cles, cre­at­ing a wind of chaos, try­ing to pull him into this meta­phys­i­cal mad­ness; deeper and deeper, he is almost blinded by the devour­ing wind, unable to see the way out. What time is it? White time?

He is escap­ing through the square shape win­dow back into the room. He looks at his night guest with hor­ror but she is noth­ing she was before. There is a ten­der boy with golden hair sit­ting in the mid­dle of the square hold­ing dark-blue egg. The woman lov­ingly looks at the boy pro­tect­ing him from the world. Her face is so familiar…She is me, and the boy– is our son. It is 12:36 am, my hus­band is sleep­ing soundly. The swede Cat­alon­ian twi­light at the other side of the square is dimly lit by the orange moon.

The tall slen­der man with mys­ti­cal Span­ish eyes is stand­ing up from the ground next to the olive tree. He is com­ing very close to the square,smiling con­de­scend­ingly .He curi­ously peeks into our room and shuts the window-door which now looks like a cover of the book with name writ­ten in Span­ish: ‘’Sal­vador Domingo Felipe Jac­into Dalí’’

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Hat ( From Warm and Salty Memoirs)

May 20 2008 Published by admin under short story

I was quickly pass­ing by the old ele­gant build­ings on the Upper West Side   in Man­hat­tan. It was a cold Feb­ru­ary evening and it seemed like the strong wind tried to pre­vent me from walk­ing, breath­ing and even look­ing good. My hat felt down and my hair was a mess; all tan­gled, fly­ing toward some unknown des­ti­na­tion ahead of me. I tried to keep it together and to chase my hat picked up by the waves of cold and unhelp­ful wind. I was almost fly­ing pushed by its strong arms. One moment I was close to catch my dark Chan­nel cre­ation but the wind pulled it up from the wet win­tery ground, twirled it in front of the lit up win­dow and cast it into the darkness.

I started cry­ing. I was dev­as­tated and over­whelmed with the feel­ing of pure mis­ery. Why every­thing I love in my life always goes away?  Am I des­tined to chase some­thing I can­not get? I help­lessly leaned against the wall of some build­ing. It felt like the hard shoul­der of the man who wants to use you: wide, cold and care­less. I was never used by a man in my life, at least I hope I was not, but I heard these sto­ries from Jisel’. And who said that being used by a man is not bet­ter than to be alone?

Lone­li­ness.…. I looked around. The street was empty and the wind came down. It became warmer and the sparkling snow started to fall on my hair cov­er­ing my coat with a sil­ver lace of tiny snowflakes. ‘’ Frozen tears,’’ I thought. You can’t hold them in your hand or they will turn to rain of tears. It is the nature’s way of deal­ing with the pain, to turn its rain into mas­ter­pieces of sil­ver crys­tals with ideal dimensions.

I slowly started walk­ing, with this new feel­ing of calm­ness and antic­i­pa­tion of some­thing good to hap­pen. Sud­denly I turned into cozy, win­ter­less street and real­ized that I’ve got really far from my home. It did not seem to bother me tough; there were times in my life when I was much fur­ther from the place I used to live. So far…

The rare snowflakes turned into the sparkling bliz­zard and I con­tin­ued to walk — smil­ing.
–Excuse me,’ strangely famil­iar cadence of the man’s voice woke me up from my win­ter dream.
– ‘‘Yes?” I turned around.
-” I’ve found this on the street, could it be yours?”
The man in a dark coat handed my run-away fedora. He stepped out from the shadow of the side­walk, and the light from the unfa­mil­iar win­dow lit up his so famil­iar face. I could not believe my eyes. We were stand­ing in front of each other try­ing to com­pre­hend the ever repeat­ing mir­a­cle of coin­ci­dences that bring peo­ple together . Ten years ago, I left Rus­sia for my new life in New York. It was my life out there that I aban­doned, my love.…..our love.

We con­tin­ued to stand in silence, afraid that the shad­ows of the past will take us away from each other. The bliz­zard became stronger and I put my hat on.
-”It’s snow­ing,’ I looked at the empty street lined up with dreamy lamps cast­ing golden lines through the lacy cur­tains of the white snow.
-”Yes, it is Feb­ru­ary.
– Feb­ru­ary 14th.

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Warm and Salty Memoirs

May 15 2008 Published by admin under short story

It is get­ting cooler. The ocean is not as turquoise and inno­cent as it was in the morn­ing. It became indigo, with red and yel­low flick­ers of light that look like some pas­sion­ate artist painted them on the water’s sur­face with thin brush. The hot sum­mer day is slowly turn­ing into serene evening.

There is this strong smell of the sea; warm sum­mer wind tan­gles my hair that flies toward the red set­ting sun. I wear  white dress, knee-high that looks like the white sails from the blue boat anchored at the far horizon.

He is sit­ting on the peach tinted sand eat­ing cher­ries. He likes these red beads of sweet­ness and imme­di­ately stains his hands with sweet bur­gundy juice. He smiles at me, stands up and runs to the blue water, plung­ing his hands into it, watch­ing how the lit­tle waves take the red away. I see him wav­ing at me.  His lean fig­ure of a swim­mer, with broad shoul­ders and long torso looks as though it was carved from dark-golden mar­ble. ‘’ Roman God,’’ I think quickly, and the blaze of warm blood slowly goes up to my head mak­ing me dizzy.

‘‘Let’s go, let’s go!” his voice echoes on the green rocks that sur­round our hid­den lagoon.
I stand up and run to him falling on my way through the dunes, catch­ing the sand in my pock­ets, stand­ing up and run­ning again until I hold his hand, warm and strong, and we both walk along the shore.

Every­thing is so tran­quil and peace­ful. We look at the water that flick­ers with the red­dish flames of the set­ting sun cast­ing the last rays before drown­ing its hot body into to the cool sea. I close my eyes.…. It hurts to look at this pull of hot flames, and I con­tinue to walk with my eyes closed hold­ing his hand. I still feel dizzy, as though I’ve drank two glasses of that deli­cious local wine.
-‘’What is it called?’’
–What are you talk­ing about?’ He looks at me qui­etly.
–The wine we drink at the ‘’Shoress’’. I for­got its name.
– It is called ‘’ The Sun in the flute’’
–The flute….yes, now I remem­ber and the feel­ing of hap­pi­ness fills me, lifts me up, and I feel like I am fly­ing, swim­ming in the ocean of uncon­di­tional love, peace and joy min­gled with the warm, salty air.

”Look,” he wakes me up from my dream. I open my eyes and see that the red sun is gone and enor­mous sil­ver moon is tak­ing over the realm of night. It is majes­tic. It looks like a big royal coin minted from pure sil­ver.
I stealth­ily look at his face. It looks thought­ful and dis­tant. I love him so much. I want to tell him that I am so happy to be with him and that this night and warm wind, and the hot sand together with blue Ocean, and the red dress he bought me yes­ter­day at the local mar­ket mean so much to me…,but I do not say any­thing. I know that he already knows every­thing I want to say. The way he is look­ing at me smil­ing, his face lit up by the moon­light I can feel, that the words will only dis­turb the mag­i­cal con­nec­tion between us.

We walk away from the seashore sur­rounded by Silence.  The moon has headed off from the water and became smaller and even brighter. We can see her ten­der face through the webs of the trees. The stars flit and fall into the crowns of the fruit trees where they prob­a­bly turn into col­or­ful lanterns that twin­kle at the elfish ban­quets that take place after all peo­ple fall asleep. The crick­ets are singing, the wind whis­pers some­thing about eter­nal love and far away we see the warm lights of the town.

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