Poor words

About the book I am from a distant village … Every time someone dies in it, a word disappears forever from its conversations at first, good words disappeared … Once … a girl died from drought: so the word river disappeared and when her mother died from grief for her, the word rain disappeared and once a displaced person died from cold: so the word fire disappeared and once a child died from hunger: so the word food disappeared and an old man died in his loneliness: and the word family disappeared … the last good word we had was: Allah but it disappeared when one of the children fell in the street funeral after funeral: until all the good words disappeared and we started using complicated ways of speaking … I heard someone shouting: Oh the child who died in the explosion … and he meant: Oh Allah and I saw them in the shops: asking the vendors for a little one who died from hunger … and the vendors understood that they wanted food and in winter nights we say the displaced person who died from cold instead of the word fire and so on … now there are only bad words in the village and people who have not died yet I still live there and every day I try to survive: like a good word. Publishing house: Midan Publications Author: Muthim Raddi Publication year: 2020 Number of pages: 72