The Thirty-Seventh Bucket

This book narrates the story of a girl who, from the age of seven or eight, hears the tired and hopeless voice of a man coming from the depths of her family’s well: Maryam, Maryam! In her imagination, Maryam connects with the plastic cover of a car lamp located in the corner of the house’s restroom. The lamp cover tells her that it truly does not know whose voice that is. However, it suggests that perhaps when she grows up, she can heal the wounds and pain of the owner of that voice. She had to fill thirty-seven buckets with water into the pool until the water splashed over the edge with the thirty-seventh bucket and poured into the footbath, flowing towards the drain. Before reaching the twentieth bucket, her hand blisters burst and the rope’s fibres rubbed her skin down to the blood. She lets go of the bucket. The rope runs toward the well, like a snake escaping a scorpion, crawling into a hole, and…