Qurabat Notebooks - Khaled Khalifa

I stand at the threshold and watch the painted wall with white chalk. My grandmother wakes up from her sleep, cloaked in that awe I see in others' eyes, so I approach her. Aisha protests and tries to hold my hand to keep me away from her. She says: "Get up, for my grandmother wants to have breakfast," indicating for her to leave me be, and Aisha winks at me to get up, but I don't. I love the colors of her clothes and the smell of her hands as she holds my hair, and her eyes as she tells my father to stop his bad habits and grow up to become a formidable man like my grandfather or at least like my uncles who have gone. My father sits on the threshold and stares into space. My grandmother speaks very little. She only leaves her room to visit the date palm grove that everyone believes is the great father who settled on this land and granted this lineage legitimacy of existence. My grandmother tells stories to those gathered around her. I love the light emanating from her hands and listen to the fairy tales she tells, enjoying myself. I was that boy who swayed with his masculinity, carrying this great legacy that began to bind me while I forgot the scent of the plains that waft from my pores.