Silence of the Heart

It was late September; the smell of damp earth filled the air when Mother was watering the trees. I hadn’t smelled it for a long time. We used to make necklaces from jasmine flowers and hang cherries and sour cherries like earrings from our ears, sometimes coloring our lips red with cherry juice. We were carefree and joyful, oblivious to the sorrows of life; but it seemed that with my father’s departure, all the grief and sadness of life had fallen upon us, and our childlike happiness came to an end. Yet, with someone’s departure, the world never truly ends, and life always goes its own way. I was awakened by Mona’s shouting; I had probably been asleep for an hour or two, but due to exhaustion, it felt like a few minutes of deep sleep. I woke up from this sleep, but my father never did… When Mona came home from work, poor thing, she either had to help mother or look after my father. Both of us tried to lighten the burden on my mother.