HABITS
There are some tasks or things we do mindlessly everyday. We do these things so often that they have become a part of our subconscious, things like opening your car door, lacing up your shoes, sitting on your favourite couch. They are easy,they take no mental effort at all,infact you can literally do them in your sleep but sadly sometimes mighty disasters can result from these things.
Something similar happened in this story we are telling today. We will tell it exactly how a ten year old witnessed it. In this ten year old's description.
A couple. The man was fierce and was always frowning like my dad frowned,but his wife was always smiling. They moved in to the apartment next to ours. I don't know if she worked because anytime I get home from school she would always be home. I knew she was home because I usually heard songs playing at her apartment and she would always come out to welcome me immediately she heard I was at the door and invite me to come have lunch with her if I liked. I agreed sometimes. She was always smiling and laughed easily and she was always asking me questions about how my day at school went,soon whenever I got home I went straight to her apartment. My siblings didn't care and my parents didn't mind.
Later her stomach grew and she told me often that I would soon have someone to play with when I come to her flat and one weekend her husband walked into their house with a big boy. Later that evening she told me the big boy was her nephew and would help her around the house when the baby came. The boy didn't like to talk much he preffered to be at the balcony,leaning against the railings, and watch everything going on in the barracks. Some times she asked me to join them at the balcony and we would stand and watch. The children playing in the brown sand,the boys playing football far off,near the mosque,the cars driving in and out,and women that sat on the porch or balcony of their houses busy with different chores,the dogs strolling around, chasing each other and rolling on the sand,they usually would yap and bark and jump to catch papers and nylons flying anytime the wind blew. I didn't like the balcony much,it was boring to look on as other people went about their daily business,but her nephew could stay at the balcony all day.
The kind aunty gave birth one weekend. My mom told me,she dropped the phone back on the dialer one Sunday morning at the end of a call smiling. "Your friend has put to birth" my mom exclaimed happily to me,and then turned to tell her sister who was visiting how good God was,and how this neighbor have been trying to concieve a child for years. I ran out to tell my friends.
I was waiting at the door the day she came back from the hospital,the baby wrapped in a blue shawl,she was smiling even more than she usually did. We went into the apartment together and that evening visitors came in their numbers, music blarred non stop and some men sat out on the balcony smoking and drinking. Her baby grew up to laugh and smile as much as his mother did. He would laugh at every gesture I made,his laughter was ticklish so I liked making him laugh. I would carry him everywhere but her nephew would come take him sometimes and sit with him on the balcony. I would see him anytime I was outside, holding the baby on the balcony and singing to him.
One Saturday I was playing SUWE with my friends,I looked up,he was standing on the balcony and hugged the baby to himself as he rested the baby's bottom on the railings. I looked away and continued playing,soon the sky was getting dark and it was slowly becoming very windy,I had to squint to avoid sand getting blown into my eyes. Everyone was hastingly running to the lines to take their clothes, children danced in circles,the smaller ones took off their clothes in preparation for the rain bath,I could see some women in far off buildings bringing out bowls and strategically placing them at the edges of the building to collect rain water and then I heard the shouts,at first I thought the children were excited as the first drops of rain hit their skin but the women were shouting and pointing too,I looked up just in time to see my neighbor's nephew loose grip on the baby,it seemed he had been struggling to hold the baby after the child slipped. It happened so quickly,the baby fell, perhaps the dogs were excited, perhaps they thought the baby was a flying dirt,but they stopped the baby's fall with their bared teeth.
My smiling neighbor slumped at the news.
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