Remaining tattoo

Number of pages: 176 Like a prophet whom his people deny, my grandmother was حمضة السَّحّاب. In one of those similar houses, attached to each other, there is a house, since the government built it in the late seventies, it remained as it was, even its yellow paint has peeled, and its iron door has many holes, and the newspaper boxes, most of which are no longer published, are fixed on its wall. And passersby nearby, even on hot summer nights, notice a thread of fire emanating from the space of its yard, and they smell a scent similar to fire, but slightly different, yet no one feels any danger, as everyone knows it is the house of Khalif Ajeel, my father, who takes care of his elderly mother; حمضة السَّحّاب; the one who has been seeking the arrival of spring for more than seventy years. Every morning, as if performing a daily ritual, she looks out from the house door. She gazes toward the sky. Her hands fiddle with the threads of the shawl; because on days when the temperature reaches, for us, fifty degrees Celsius, she wraps it around her shoulders. And when it drops below ten, and sometimes zero, the cold doubles in her body, and she covers herself with a wool coat that reaches her thighs. She takes several steps in the yard to understand the nature of the weather. And when a gentle breeze does not blow on her, nor does the heat scorch her, which always happens, she turns to us asking: "Is spring really not here yet?" and what comes after; because there is no spring, just as there is no summer.