My Grandmother Never Dies
With her two walking sticks, she creeps towards an end in her head which her steps reveal slowly and gradually, and a bundle of things, the generous hands have given her, adds more burden to the burden of years on her back. The walking sticks are not only to support her tired feet which couldn't underpin her weight, but also to make up for the lost eye which had left its pair struggling against the canniness of time. These tiny details around her face and her broad-mindedness contradict her age. She is aged; however, her hope for living exceeds the hope of youth for tomorrow. Moving like gentle winds and soft breeze, her words are eloquent and reflect her spacious heart as sandy coasts and clean waters, with an intention to live in peacefulness.
Thus could be your feeling when she uses her affectionate hands to complete the meaning of her words trying to extricate them from the clamp of the sticks. Her nod and dialect has reminded me of my grandmother; she's my mum who didn't give birth to me, and I'm the son she didn't carry in her womb. Her words are so sweet, and as much influence time has had on her memory, as many events she's undergone show what she's experienced in more than one hundred and twenty years in a crossing conversation with a girl accompanied by a young man. The girl appeared crossing the street as if she were waiting for the old woman. She, the girl, was carrying a plastic bag of orange and looking at the woman with a gaze wrapped up in affection and tranquility since this has raked up the scene of her gone grandmother. The old woman stressed to the girl who was listening as if she were receiving a heavy verbal will and must not miss a single letter of it, she listens with a fineness of feelings and sensitivity of attitude that provokes motherly sensation. The old woman confirmed to the girl that she doesn't interfere in the life of the boy she had adopted and the one she thought would fade away the blazing longing of having a boy out of her own womb. But after all these years, the thirty-four-year old boy goes away along with his wife leaving her behind sweeping streets with her feet which she could barely lift from on the ground, thinking that he has done better having left the woman who has melted her health for him so as not to spoil his ‘beautiful’ life. If he is lucky enough to be a father, surely he would be asked by his son or daughter about their grandmother because they want to see her and touch her affectionate hands, but he finds only regret which stays with him as long and persistently as the persistence of an innocent child who knows nothing but love.
By Tarik El Kassimi