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my pockets, I don’t have a lot – two thousand drams, here,
take it and buy medicine. She doesn’t take it. She
tremblingly puts the five hundred drams in my palm. I hug
my little rheumy lady. I hug her tight. It’s not the stench of
urine, but the smell that emanates from all old people. I
cry. She cries too. Because of the smell, I start to sniff as I
cry. I’m a bad person, bad, my dear, I’m very bad, I’m so
sorry. I feel like dying.
I sit in Saryan Park for an hour or two. I don’t want to go to
work. The vibration on my phone grabs my attention. It’s
my director. I don’t answer. He stubbornly keeps calling. I
switch my phone off. I have to get home, it’s time for my
old lady’s walk.
I am seated on a bench on the sidewalk between our two
buildings. She had come out at this time yesterday, she had
walked along this path. A group of elderly people walks by.
Five or six people. They walk with difficulty. All of them.
They barely raise their legs, almost not raising them at all,
shuffling along as they walk. I guess the muscles start to
grow weak if you don’t raise your legs enough when you
walk, and then they stop working. Later, you can’t raise
your legs any more. As soon as I reach my bench, they start
to shout, push each other around and laugh loudly. One of
them has a handful of half-ripe apricots and empties it in
my lap. “You’re young, you have teeth. Eat up,” he says and
quickly shuffles off to join his heavy-walking flock. “You
just poured half your pension into his lap, old man, apricots