Under the mothers' feet

Mudaawi would not allow the story to stop at this point, and she demanded that the narration move to the other side, to Fahad who was born without a birth cry, and something in my mother's face changed, a slight frown appeared on her forehead as she struggled to recall the details of that day. My mother said that fear had taken hold of them all, and that doubts had haunted them that Ali's son might have been born dead, or sick, or too exhausted to cry out. But none of that was true. All that happened was that the little one was born without any desire to cry, and even when the nurse carried him by his feet and struck his back several times... he did not cry, and he was placed with utmost calm in his mother's arms, and immediately began to play the staring game, and he started to absorb the world with his huge black eyes, examining the faces that in turn examined him. Three mothers and one grandmother!