Trafika Europe 4 - Armenian Rhapsody

me with a guilty smile. I jumped towards her, looked at her fingers and noticed a small red drop of blood. I looked at her, and then I put her little finger into my mouth and tasted my blood. Bibi laughed, and I smiled with her little finger still in my mouth.

“It was the thorn, but it doesn’t hurt any more.”

“Are you tired?”

“Yes, let’s go.”

“Run, Bibi. Don’t wait for me.”

She ran ahead, I followed her. We were getting closer to the village where my mother’s mother, my mother and her mother were waiting for us. I could picture the scene – they were waiting, annoyed, excited and displeased . . . I had taken the little one to the forest with me. They don’t trust fathers, and perhaps that fear is not groundless. The path merged with the motorway with rows of gardens on both sides. I felt as though the rows of bean bushes were following me from behind the huge walnut trees. I reached my grandma’s garden, took a knife out of my pocket and approached the fence. There was a big pomegranate tree surrounded with small sprouts, as if guarding the garden. I saw a sprout outside the fence and thought it was a good one, so I started to dig around it to pull it up by its roots. I wanted to have a pomegranate tree in Yerevan. I finished

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