Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

zaher omareen

the pomegranates he was going to get from the Salim family in Hamadia, so that his little boy Salah wouldn’t be born with a pomegranate birthmark on his body. Well, they tried everything they could think of to convince him not to go, they really grappled with him about it every which way – but he was he was ut ter ly stubborn, to the end, and also he really lost his manners, he got totally unbearable, you know, shout ing and swear ing , insulting people. We were afraid that the night patrol would hear the commotion – and we had three men hidden in our house, you know, we had to be careful not to cause ourselves an even bigger problem by trying to solve this one. So in the end your uncles

had to let him go. He broke away from them and ran of f towards Hamadia, and Om Salah went back to her house crying and wailing and cursing Abu Pomegranate and the day she’d conceived a child with him. –So did he bring her the pomegranates then? –Wha t pomeg r ana t e s , son? He never came back at all, with or without any pomegranates! That night was the last we ever saw of him. Some people say that he was taken away with the group who were executed against the wall of the old French Palace; others say a sniper got him near the Roman arches and his body was dumped in the Orontes; and other people say he was taken to Tadmor prison, and died

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