A Short Story from the Collection : Al-Ta’ Tathe’ (The ‘Taa’ Advices)wrote by the Novelist Abeer Almadawy
I smiled to myself as an old friend flirted with me, then she asked with a tinge of reproach: “What has become of us? How have the years changed our faces?”
I whispered calmly: “Perhaps…”
She declared firmly: “I’m leaving for an Arab country to get enhancements that will conceal the burden of age.”
I answered with a hesitant tone: “Perhaps.”
She continued, a fiery intention for change shining in her eyes: “I will turn my life upside down when I return. And you, you are the first friend I will cut ties with. I don’t want anything to connect me to the past, to gloom, or to the intellect.”
I said briefly: “Perhaps.”
She yelled at me in barely contained anger: “Perhaps? Perhaps? Perhaps? Don’t you have any other answer?”
I replied with a serenity that provoked her fury: “Perhaps.”
She left my office in a fit of emotion and rushed toward the beach, which was filled with our old memories. She contemplated the pages of the waves, which drew the features of life only to erase them in an unyielding succession.
The wave whispered into her ear, saying: “Oh, fleeing soul, the wave was never ashamed to reveal the truth of your age, your past, and your reality. It honestly reflected the white hair and the wrinkles of the soul, but it left it up to you alone to determine your future and your end.”
She screamed at the wave in anguish: “You are all in agreement to anger me! Listen, O Sea, I have done it… I have drawn the future with my own hands!”
She suddenly fell silent. She knelt down and wept bitterly. A single tear fell, yet it expanded until it became a sea and a wave. Her defeated image shimmered upon the face of the water. It reflected her disappointment clearly, so she whispered to the wave in brokenness:
“Yes, we await the future and will not surrender, even though we are merely metaphorical expressions (or implied metaphors) that haunt the death of tomorrow.”
