Paan Leaves

The fruit seller gazed at her daughter. He turned and spat. In her burqa she looked like a small, walking lamp shade.

Her mother was looking at the fruits.

‘Come, sweet lady.’ He said, smiling. ‘I have the best mangoes, from India.’

People pushed past her. Soraya picked up a fruit.

‘You live here?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Widow?’

‘Excuse me?’

He smiled. His teeth were red from chewing paan leaves. ‘I said, are you a widow?’

She looked at the leering face. Then she grabbed her daughter’s wrist and walked away, her bag of fruits hanging from the other side.

‘Wait!’ the man said. He was taking fruits and putting them in a plastic bag. He shoved them towards her. ‘My apologies. Take, for free, please!’

He took a chocolate bar and proffered it to Noor. ‘Sweet candy for the sweet girl.’

He was making a great show for all to hear, as he pushed the goods away from himself. It would be worse to reject it. She took it and walked down the road, blushing.

The salesman leaned back and frowned as if the fruits had said something ill to him.

‘Look at her go,’ he muttered. ‘Taking my fruits for free!’

He lay on the charpoy. It was a sunny day and he was basking in the warmth, eyes shut, like a predatory cat.

‘Must I always go out? People are noticing me.’

‘That is the point. I want you married.’

She set the goods aside, took her burqa off. The summer heat beat against her. Her brother opened his eyes and looked at her.

‘One would think one marriage was enough.’

‘That’s after the second marriage. Then you are bad luck,’ he said, smiling.

‘That isn’t funny, Irfan. I am not bad luck.’

He looked away. As if to say that was her right to think, but not his contention.

‘Everyone nowadays has bad luck,’ she said.

He nodded. He seemed not to have heard her.

‘Don’t you think so?’ she said, looking at him. She sat down on the ground.

‘I hope so. I wouldn’t want it to just be us.’ He stood up and stretched. ‘I need to get you married, and this is as good a way as any,’ he said.

‘To fish sellers?’

‘To men.’

‘Those are not men. What about my girl?’

He looked at Noor placidly. ‘We will marry her, too. She’ll go for more than you.’

Soraya started crying. Irfan didn’t flinch. ‘Men die in war, and women marry. The poets make it a scene of glory, but it is rarely that.’ He walked to the gates.

‘Where are you going?’ Soraya said, sniffing.

‘I’m going to make money. You just keep on spending it.’ He sneered at the fruits. ‘You are good at that.’

He stepped through the portal, rifle hanging from his shoulder, and the iron door shut, and locked heavily. She sat there, sniffing. A young woman in a bundle of dusty clothes. The sun was high, the sky porcelain blue. The walls of their courtyard were gleaming white, and topped with barbed wire.

She remembered father’s books and music instruments. Those would have been enough to keep them well fed, had they not burned with everything else when the caravans came down the streets, and the new flags waved in the air.

 

Days passed. She took Noor to school. She cooked. One day she was walking through the bazaar. Again, the fruit seller called her. He stood at the side of the road, his back to the vandalized wall of an old British municipal building.

He gave her a wide grin.

She walked with the canny awareness of whispering. The widow was not much for rumors, but in that town people made do with what they could.

‘Come, sweet lady,’ he said sonorously. ‘Come. Mangoes.’

He reached for another chocolate bar to give to Noor.

She went to him. She looked at the fruits with robotic movements.

A truck passed behind her. Suddenly there was a rattle of gunfire. Several young men riding in the trunkspace had stood up and unloaded their weapons into the sky, shouting and laughing. The noise echoed in her ears. The truck was gone as soon as it had come.

The seller had leapt back. ‘Have these mangoes, sweet widow. Have some mangoes. They will stop your tears.’

Something moved behind the cart. Near the salesman’s knees. She saw the ratty scalp of a boy appear. The salesman jumped back again.

The boy ran from below the cart, a fallen mango in his scrawny grip. He ran to the sidewalk with strange loping motions, crouched on his haunches, and bit through the skin. Gaunt, half feral, with both eyes lazy in opposite directions, as if he had evolved his own unique defensive mechanism, he chewed with an utterly vacant look. She shivered and looked away.

The paan chewer swore. Then he smiled.

‘Sons,’ he said, lips curled. ‘They never learn.’

Tears wetted her burqa. What a terrible world. She wiped her eyes. There were many people around her again, where for a moment it had stopped. She looked at the sidewalk again. The boy was gone. The chewed mango lay discarded.

Her daughter was gone, too.

Soraya looked about quietly. She put the mango back. She walked through the bazaar, feeling unrefined madness gather in her as she called for her. At last, she screamed.

 

The taxi engine faded away as she entered. He lay on the charpoy, eyes closed. Soraya sniffed as she told him. She seemed like a child again.

‘You lost her,’ he grunted.

‘The police didn’t look,’ she said. ‘They laughed at me, Irfan.’

Irfan lay utterly still, his face as expressionless as unchiseled stone. Eyes shut like the grateful dead. Then he sat up slowly, and looked at her. He looked like a sleeper newly awaked. He stood up, and tested his legs.

‘They said if I didn’t go home they would flog me. They called me crazy.’

Irfan had begun pacing. He slowed down, and looked at her. He went inside, returned with his rifle slung over his shoulder.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

He grimaced. Once he had felt such pity it made him sick.

‘To the market, that was where you lost her, wasn’t it?’ he said.

‘Take me with you.’

‘So men can laugh?’

‘Take me with you. I can show you where I lost her.’

‘I know where you lost her,’ Irfan said. She followed him anyway.

‘I know who took her. I pray to God I am wrong,’ she said.

 

For the first time, the paan chewer was gone. She pointed at the barren spot. Irfan gazed at it speculatively. Not a word was said between the siblings. He stopped the car, and questioned people around the area, calm and soft spoken to them all. She watched from inside the car. He had left hurriedly that evening, they all told him, and on no account.

‘The fish seller took her,’ she said, breath caught with disbelief.

Irfan nodded. He asked the man which direction the salesman went. Then they went back home.

 

The car was an old sedan. It was her deceased husband’s, and it still had those bullet holes in it. It groaned at one axle.

‘I’m going to have to go after him,’ he said.

They reached home. She stepped through the iron gate. ‘When are you coming back?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Please, come back.’

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘Please do.’

 

He drove after him.

He left the city and passed through the checkpoints. A highway bisecting fields. High mountains. His window rolled down, he asked after a paan-chewing salesman with opium-yellow eyes and those whom he asked laughed, for that type of man existed in countless numbers.

The car couldn’t manage the highway. Something snapped, and it drifted to the side of the road. He waited, hand raised. Eventually a motorcyclist stopped.

‘You won’t get that to a mechanic,’ he said.

‘It was junk. Can you give me a ride?’ Irfan asked.

The motorcyclist studied him. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know.’ Irfan smiled. It was a hot, sunny day, and he squinted at the man. ‘I’m chasing after someone.’

The motorcyclist nodded as though he understood. A car honked behind him, and he flinched, and looked over his shoulder, and waddled the motorcycle off the road.

‘Well, I’m going far,’ he said. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘That’s okay.’ Irfan said.

The motorcyclist gazed at the road as if there was something on the horizon he couldn’t entirely see. ‘Look, sir… Let me see your ID,’ he said.

Irfan frowned. He took his wallet out and showed it to the man. When the man saw it, his face changed. He put his feet up and rode off.

Irfan watched him go, laughing. ‘You idiot,’ he muttered. He sat down beside the car and thought about what he was going to do.

When the next man stopped, he just asked to be taken as far as the next town.

 

Soraya never learned Pashto, but her brother knew it. He passed the checkpoint. There the driver left him. Walking through the dusty roads, he asked after the journalist. Going to old men with steaming cups and hard, wrinkled faces sitting by the road in plastic wicker chairs.

Boys standing at the roadside with wet shalwar kameez stared at him with amusement.

‘Is this the journalist’s house?’ Irfan said.

They studied him. Irfan sat down. He was covered in road dust and exhausted. ‘There are many journalists. Which one?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never got a good look at him.’

The boy speaking didn’t smile, but looked at him with eyes glimmering with laughter. He turned with a shrug, and kicked a stone.

‘Tell him I am family. I need to talk to him.’ Irfan said.

The kids stared at him. The boy turned his head and called, ‘Baba.’

 

The man had a thinning pate, and a big head on boney shoulders. He walked out the door like a very delicate marionette, grinning.

‘I thought you had left the country,’ he said.

Irfan smiled.

The man put his hand on Irfan’s shoulder. ‘Why do you never visit, Irfan? I saw you when you were this little. Let’s walk.’

‘This is urgent.’

‘Look around you. It’s late. You came walking?’

‘Something like that. Will you give me a car?’

The man regarded the houses. ‘No. And I will tell you why. But for now, understand that since you don’t have a car to sleep in, there is no reason for you to go anywhere. So let’s walk.’

He took a pack of cigarettes out.

‘You coward. Why didn’t you help us when we needed you?’ Irfan said.

‘Where would I be if I had done that?’ he said. ‘Come on. I am nobody. I can take you to a man who can help.’

 

His name was Usman Khan, and he was a broad man with a light, nasal voice, who listened to his soft Pashto sympathetically. He sat heavily with his eyes half closed, and he could have been sleeping except he would occasionally shake his head. Irfan sat in his guesthouse, a great meal of palaw and bread, of yoghurt kefir and almonds and walnuts and water with syrup spread before him, but he did not eat much.

‘Where do you hail from?’ he said.

Irfan shrugged. ‘My father was Nuristani. My mother, Pathan.’

‘Ah, you are a kafir. That is unfortunate,’ Usman Khan said. ‘I know this story, and I know it to be true, for I have seen it many times. People like you.’

‘People like me?’

Usman Khan nodded, his lips noiselessly moving. ‘The Taliban take Kafir children,’ he said. ‘They always have.’ He kissed his fingertips and blew. A prayer for his safety. ‘Will you go back, if they try to kill you?’ he asked.

‘Is that what happened to the others?’ Irfan said.

‘I never saw them again.’

‘I see.’

‘Something happened they could not control. Cowardice or pride.’

Irfan nodded. Usman Khan motioned. ‘Eat.’

‘I cannot. Today is a fasting day.’

‘For the dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is a noble effort.’ Usman said. ‘But ultimately we all must eat. There are too many of the dead. If we had done that before, maybe, there would have been no trouble. Don’t you think?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You do not trust the will of God. I respect you as a house guest. You are an infidel all the same.’

‘I did nothing to deserve this.’

Usman Khan exhaled and leaned back. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. He became quiet and his eyes were closed. The other man lit a cigarette. The Khan was not roused by it. He gave Irfan a quick smile.

‘You’re in a terrible situation,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t have friends?’

‘Not really.’

‘I mean, you don’t have anyone who could help you with this?’

Irfan shook his head.

‘Do you smoke?’

‘No.’

‘You know, a school right here blew up not long ago,’ he said.

‘Who did it?’

‘The ISKP,’ the man said.

‘Who are they?’

The journalist smiled. ‘Guess,’ he said.

 

Usman Khan invited him to pray. A great many Pashtuns stood in lines. Some with their guns, as if they had long become their familiars. They prayed in the courtyard, where the mountains stood vast and valiant and high suspended. Then Irfan was off. A tribesman went with him, rifle slung.

‘These roads were once the dancing grounds of vast empires. I think we are destined to see the world end before Afghanistan does. Do we deserve such a fate?’ the journalist said. They were waiting in the cool grey morning for a car to be brought. He smiled at Irfan. ‘Boy, do you know what the Soviet Union was?’ he said in English.

The boy that was accompanying Irfan looked at him. ‘Sweet onions?’ he said, slowly.

The journalist waved him away. ‘He’s learning,’ he said. The car was brought, and Irfan got in.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more,’ the journalist said.

‘You helped enough,’ Irfan said.

‘You should have visited me more,’ the journalist said. He shook his head. His laughter seemed like crying and then Irfan realized that was what it was. ‘I saw you when you were this little,’ he said.

‘God bless you,’ Irfan said.

 

He drove out of Kunduz, over highways with more checkpoints and road scars. From what war, what battle did they come? Some gashes went below the road, rivets from the very Earth. The young man, a son of a friend of the Khan, grew increasingly anxious.

The highway grew congested. Now they were moving at a snail’s pace to the Taliban town of Baghlan, cars honking around them.

‘How far are we going?’ he said.

‘I’ll only go a little further. If we don’t find the man, I’ll turn back,’ Irfan said.

‘Lets go back.’

‘No,’ Irfan said.

They found the paan chewer not much later.

Baghlan was ruined by floods. Further on, the road was brown with mud and debris. The paan chewer was in the middle of it. His rickshaw had broken down, or he had crashed, right in the middle of the diversion. Cars blared their horns, and he smiled and waved as they passed. Fruits scattered all over the place. His feral son squatted off road, smiling at some secret joke.

A band of truck riding Talibs were haranguing him for blocking the road.

‘That’s him,’ Irfan said softly. He was struck by the old feeling his life was being wagered in some game. He shut his eyes and calmed himself, before stepping out.

The Pathan boy muttered an oath, and followed Irfan out of the car. Irfan walked to the young Talibs, who were shouting at the man and slapping him for they had found the girl.

‘She is my daughter,’ the paan chewer said.

‘By God she does resemble you,’ the young man said.

‘She’s my niece,’ Irfan said.

A Talib looked at him. ‘Who are you?’

‘Her uncle, idiot. What is wrong with her?’

‘She’s high, man,’ a Talib said, and laughed.

The paan chewer blinked and smiled like an abashed child. His bright red teeth glinted as he smiled, like a gay cannibal, at the cars and road and sky. His son continued his meaningless grasping and tearing. Noor lay limp in a Talib’s hands. ‘Pretty little thing,’ he said.

‘He’s an imbecile,’ another Talib said.

‘No, he just saved some of the opium for himself.’

‘Give her to me,’ Irfan said.

‘Watch your tone,’ a Talib said.

‘Why don’t you just give her?’ Irfan said.

‘What are you afraid of?’ another Talib said.

He studied Irfan. Another pushed through Irfan’s pockets, and found his pocketbook.

‘Things must follow the law. We aren’t vagrants,’ another Talib said.

The Talib read his ID, and slapped it against his chest.

‘Infidel, this is not your country. This is God’s country.’ He spat and turned. The paan chewer was stepping into the truck bed. Those who were not distracted by him looked at Irfan curiously. ‘What do you mean by that?’ one said, over Irfan’s shoulder.

The Pathan was staring at them, and flexing his grip on his rifle.

‘Run along before we string your head on the highway, boy. As for you, infidel, get in your car and follow us. If you try to flee, we will arrest you,’ they said.

Irfan looked at the men, his skin was tingling with rage. He spat and turned.

He went back to the car. The Taliban went, leaving the paan chewer’s wares and son where they were.

‘Can you get back home from here?’ Irfan said.

‘I want to come with you.’

‘Go away,’ Irfan said, waving. ‘This is not your fight. You will know when your fight comes. You will wish it hadn’t.’

 

Baghlan was a large town. It was busy with Talibs, for the war was not over. At the checkpoint a Talib gave him a tag. One of the men was waiting. He entered his car, and pointed in a direction.

Inside a compound, Irfan stopped at a large white house. He reached to open the car door. The young man shouted. A humvee passed, with an American flag. Then he was allowed to open it. The Talib took him to a chai vendor. He made him wait as he bought a cup. He came back blowing the steam.

‘What are we doing?’ Irfan asked.

‘Waiting,’ he said. He sipped. ‘Let the judicial process carry out.’

He looked at Irfan. ‘You look tense.’

Irfan spat.

The Talib studied him. ‘If your story is true, you have nothing to worry about.’

‘Hopefully.’

‘Why not?’

‘I think he brought her exactly where he wanted to.’

The Talib looked at the road thoughtfully. ‘You’re Nuristani,’ he said, in a different tone.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t look like one. Is all they say about your people true?’

Irfan said nothing. He sat down.

The boy stopped drinking. He put his chai aside and crouched to look closer at him. Irfan blinked.

‘I found a book on your people once. Dusty. In the governor house. It had fallen behind the shelves. It was written by a British man, very old. I read it cover it cover,’ he said.

Irfan raised an eyebrow.

‘I could give it to you.’

‘I know a man who would love such a thing.’

The Talib looked pleased. ‘Do you still drink your enemies blood after you have vanquished them?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ Irfan said. ‘I never had the chance.’

The Talib smiled.

‘So they say we did that once, eh? Savages.’

‘It’s not savagery. It’s strength without hypocrisy,’ the Talib said.

Irfan shrugged. The doors opened. The paan chewer stepped out onto the road. He didn’t see them, but they saw him. His teeth gleaming red, he held his hand over his eyes and crossed the road, vanishing into the town.

 

Into the building. The Talib left. Irfan did not know if he really intended to give him the book, nor did he care. He seemed to have regretted the proposition in the end, for he left without telling him his name.

Inside was a white, clean, and empty place with a slow fan, a tellers desk, many empty chairs. He sat. Another armed young man stood nearby.

The sun fell. Mosquitos and flies fought for his flesh. Finally, an escort took him to a room deep in the building. A large doorway behind which came warm voices. The escort knocked on the door.

The governor was a man with a huge beard and turban. Sitting in his guesthouse were four men at either side. He was having dinner.

‘Sit down,’ he said. He had a plain voice and a plain face. No prostration mark on his forehead, nor wrinkles, nor circles under his eyes. The men smelled foreign and dressed from other markets. An incense burned somewhere.

‘Let’s deal with this. What is your name?’ the governor said.

‘Irfan Hamer.’

‘I knew Mr. Hamer,’ one man, with thick framed spectacles, said, smiling. ‘Him and his gang of subversives. You must be his grandson.’

‘I need to get my niece.’

‘Your niece, yes, we have doubts about the truth of that. You don’t have any proof, do you?’

‘I am her uncle.’

‘You said that already,’ the spectacled man said. The governor stared at Irfan and sipped his tea. ‘That is a woman. Who is to say whose daughter she is? She was found in the caravan of a known human trafficker. She was drugged. Who is to say how long she has been travelling?’

‘Gentlemen, ask her yourselves. She will admit it,’ Irfan said.

‘A mere girl.’

‘Yes.’

‘She is drugged. Besides, by Sharia four women do not equal one girl. Maybe it is different for a Nuristani.’

One man was tapping his fingers with boredom. Another scrolled idly on his iPhone as he picked his teeth. Only the governor and the spectacled man spoke to him.

‘I only want my niece returned to me. I don’t have anyone else,’ he said.

‘Do you have any proof that is who she is?’

‘No.’

‘No.’

‘Not until she wakes up.’

‘What did I say about eyewitnesses,’ the spectacled man said.

‘We lost all our documents with the house.’

‘What happened to it?’

‘It was burned.’

‘That is unfortunate. It was your grandfather’s house?’

‘Yes.’

The governor said ‘your grandfather must be in hell.’

The spectacled man nodded. He checked his watch. A bit of palaw stuck to his fingers fell to the carpeted floor. ‘You should be shot for your grandfather’s revolutionary actions,’ he said. ‘Not a flag that came, he was not on their side. Is there anything else you would like to tell us?’

‘Would it change anything?’

‘We are always open to evidence of error.’

‘You can show us a video of your father saying the shahada,’ the iPhone man said, giggling.

‘You can do that.’

‘You don’t have any right to be God’s wrath.’

‘Nor do I take that responsibility. How terrible would the punishment be if I were to fall short?’ the governor said.

‘You think I’ve offended him.’

‘Nobody can offend God, but he does hate presumptuousness. You judge his works.’

‘His works?’

‘What put you there, and me here,’ the governor said. He shrugged. ‘I can see it in your eyes.’

‘His works are unjust.’

‘What would you prefer? What do you call justice?’

Irfan sat, tense and unmoving. On his tongue rolled murder, war, violence, bloodshed. ‘My niece,’ he said.

‘No.’ The governor smiled, shaking his head. ‘No. Peaceful today, deadly tomorrow. I know your kind.’ He turned his head to the doorway.

‘She is sleeping in my office. She will wake up soon, I think. She is mine. God brought her to me. If you were not sinners, God would not have punished you thus.’

One of the men nodded. The other man put his iPhone down finally and looked at them.

‘What did we do to you?’ Irfan asked.

‘What did you do to me? Ask what you did to God,’ the governor said, shaking his head. He studied Irfan. ‘Well. I will let you go anyways. You have time to repent’

Irfan flinched. The men shifted about lazily. Some were standing up. Slowly, for the blood had left their feet. Dinner was finally over. The Talib escort pulled on Irfan’s shoulder.

‘Tell me one thing. Such godless people as you, what do you believe in?’ the governor asked. ‘Dragons?’

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘That is punishment enough.’

 

He was left outside of the governor’s compound with nothing to show for it. He passed walls with faded posters. Somehow, he felt disappointed.

He drove very slowly, and didn’t seem to know where he was going. The point of the journey had somehow been forgotten somewhere along the way. He was to be a coward again, and go to an empty home, and tell the terrible thing himself.

The paan chewer was crying at the side of the road. He remembered his voice as one does the pain of an ancient accident, and came to from his thoughts. He stopped, and rolled down the window.

‘What’s the problem?’ Irfan said.

‘Oh, good man, they took everything from me! I came to do business, and they robbed me instead. Everything is on the highway. I..’

‘Get in the car,’ Irfan said. ‘Where do you want me to take you?’

They went down the highway. Eventually the paan chewer stopped crying, even became quiet. Irfan drove thoughtfully, watching the setting sun. There was a heroic compromise yet to be made. A way of saving face. This had always been his destiny, maybe. He had battled fear all his life, yet now he felt calm.

He felt extremely light, a lightness to his bones, like he was immaterial as the air, tomorrow’s dream, the stuff of legends.

They reached that point of the highway. The rickshaw had been pushed into a ditch. It was almost fully sunk, and soon no trace of it would remain. The paan chewer looked at it, and he looked for his son, and called his name, but that boy had returned to the wilderness, maybe, or who knows.

Only suddenly, at the very end, did his heart, closed off for so long, feel a pang of pity. He seemed to feel pity suddenly for the whole world. Fear then crept in, and he knew there was no time left.

He shot the paan chewer. The man fell noiselessly into the ditch. Then Irfan walked to the edge of the ditch. He raised his rifle and shot again. The ditch splashed.

 

Soraya was hungry and cold. The charpoy sat empty. She might have been sick. She didn’t eat, and didn’t go inside the house, because it seemed full of ghosts.

The sun baked her mercilessly. The wind blew down from the mountain valleys, hot sometimes, or soothing cold. She remembered her father and her brothers, one after another. She remembered her brother, and she waited. He was the least hot blooded of all of them. They had every one of them die under the wheels of vehicles or bullets, IEDS or fire, far from home, but him. He had always had a way of evading heroism, and she truly hated heroism.

On the sixth day, an engine was running outside the house, and someone knocked on the door. She took her scarf, and wrapped it around her head.

‘Who is it?’ she said.

‘Ms. Hamer,’ a voice called.

A chill came over her. She wrapped the scarf tighter, and slid the bar, and pushed it gently ajar. A man was standing there smoking, another man in the car behind him. He dropped the cigarette and ground it.

‘Are you alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Nobody else is in there, but you?’

‘No.’ Her voice was barely a whistle.

The man looked at her. She was thin, and her eyes unapproachable. He studied the sky. He nodded. When he looked back at her again, he said, ‘come with us.’

‘Who are you?’

‘There are many people who knew your father. You are not alone. There are women there who will understand.’

‘Is my brother there? Did he find my daughter?’

‘I don’t know. I was only sent to bring you.’ He looked away again. ‘You are welcome to come with us. You cannot stay here.’

‘Do I have any choice?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He shrugged, and looked down the road.

 

She wore her burqa and sat in the back of the car. She was leaving much behind, but there was nothing she could carry with her. Or wanted to. Behind her was her identity. Ahead awaited annihilation, and all the comforts that came with it. The driver whistled and drummed his fingers. The other man sat quiet and immobile. Occasionally he lowered his window to greet someone.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Baghlan.’

There was a salesman with a bicycle of goods riding alongside the road, and with her remaining money she bought a necklace of flowers. She smelled the flowers and she wore it, and she sat in the back of the car and watched the mountains, tall and immobile. Their grandpa had once spoken of brooding dragons, witches, and faeries with backwards feet.

Long after such sufferings, when she was old and simple, she would remind children of such stories, and they would love her for it.

Eventually, she fell asleep.

 

 

Image by Mohammed Rafeek on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.