Cattle basin, authored by Mansour Hamdan

My mother took me on Friday to my paternal grandmother's house in Ajyad Alley, which was bustling with guests from relatives and neighborhood residents, and she began to express in the women's gathering her longing for her old neighborhood, the neighborhood of the Haram, the crowd of the market, and the old alleys. She started to mockingly tease the "Cow Pond" neighborhood, which she used to call only "Hawdh Al-Hawd" before. When we were in our house's salon, sometimes the sound of musical instruments and singing coming from Rabiha's house would seep into our ears, and my mother would get up to close the windows and the balcony door. If a song appeared on TV, she would turn it off. Once, my father entered carrying a colorful bag full of small animal statues from the jungle; I would scatter them on the floor of the corridor and play with them. When I finished, my mother would gather them and hide them in the toy room, forbidding me from playing with them in my room or even taking them upstairs. I wasn't fond of playing alone; I played with that electric car for a week then abandoned it. My greatest passion was stories, songs, people's tales, and sprawling on the sofa for hours watching TV. In the morning, I would sit on the balcony watching the neighborhood and listening to the conversations of passersby and children’s quarrels. Sometimes I would see Hassan waving at me from the street or at his house door, and I would wave back or ignore him.