Five days...and an orange...
< In every hug, every meal, and every comforting word, a mother's love are felt deeply>
I was five years old that day, which is stuck in my memory. It is like an old scythe in a haystack.
...that day, my father woke me up early in the morning...early
- Come on, my son, come on. Your mother wants to see you...
- From the intensity of joy, sleep fled from my little eyes.
My eyes were stuck together and swollen like two lone ears in a field... I was suffering from conjunctivitis, and we did not have eye drops or eye ointment available at that time... Their swelling was increased by the crying I used to cry every night out of anger at my mother... whom I had not seen for five Days...
I told my father...
- Honestly, Dad, does my mother genuinely want to see me? Is it true, my father?!.. Honestly, my father, is it true...?
My father said...and his eyes were filled with tears...
- Yes, my son, she wants to see you...(He turned his face away from me)...
The sun has not risen yet... and the darkness still imposes some prestige on those asleep...
The only bus made its long journey and transported me and my father to the city, but we arrived at noon.
Oh, how I miss my mother... her voice, image... her tenderness...
My mother lied to me when she left...she said she would be gone for two hours and come back...and now five days have passed...
Mothers usually lie a lot...
The bus stopped in front of Al-Madina Hospital...
It was a two-story stone building...
My father took me by the hand to the second floor...
We passed into the hospital lobby, it was full
With the rusty white iron beds...
Then we entered a large hall with eight beds...
I swear to you that I knew my mother's bed and my mother's smell without my father showing it to me...
Mothers have a unique scent...and a distinct scent...like the scent of bread in the oven...
I ran to my mother, who seemed more beautiful to me than before despite her illness... and her extreme paleness...
I tell you, mothers are always beautiful...
My mother took me in her arms but did not get up from her bed to greet me....
So I told her
- What's wrong with you, mom? Why don't you get out of bed...Could you come home with me? (and I started to squeeze her pale hand full of needle injection sites...)
My mother took my little hand to her mouth and kissed it
And she said.
- Do not be afraid, my son; I will return soon after completing the treatment.
Soon...soon...I will be back
...I will not tell you... about the clusters of tears that my mother shed while telling me... soon.... soon...
I said out loud to my mother...while crying
- You lie...You always lie
My mother took me into her arms and covered me with a white hospital sheet with a broad green line in the middle...
I fell asleep in her warm embrace...
Moreover, I dreamed, I dreamed...
I dreamed that my mother came home with me and was hanging out the laundry and preparing the food, kneading the dough and baking the tandoor bread, feeding the chickens, washing my head, and combing my hair.
She's the mother I know...
Less than an hour later, my mother woke me up as she was stroking my hair, which had not been washed for five days.
- Get up, my son, lunch has come. Get up and have lunch with me...
Lunch was a plate of rice, soup, and a piece of bread...
My mother made me lunch, and she did not eat...
I was so hungry...so I ate all that...food.
Then, a nurse came and distributed to each patient something red in a ball on a plate.
She said to my mother.
- You must eat all of it, as your body is weak and you have not eaten anything since yesterday (and the nurse gave me a sharp, warning look..)
However, after she left...
I told my mother...
- What is this, mother? (I pointed to the plate containing that beautiful round thing...)
She said ...
- This is an orange... Now I will feed you from it...
Despite her weakness, my mother was peeling the orange with her fingers and looking at me...and I could not take my eyes off that strange red ball in her hands.
My mother took a slice (part) of the orange and brought it to her mouth. When she saw me looking at that slice, she...
My mother brought it back and put it in my mouth... and I ate it as if I were a voracious chick in a nest...
Until I ate the whole orange, and she did not eat anything.
Only that day did I know what an orange is and what it tastes like...
Moreover, I knew what a mother is...and what a mother tastes like.
Mothers are no different from good and beautiful oranges... but they are tall like palm trees... close like breezes... and far away like stars...
In the afternoon, the bus returned to take us from the hospital to the village...
I refused to go back, and I held on to my mother, the bed, the doors, and everything I could hold...but my mother asked me to go back with my father...and she promised me that she would return home after three days...
I got on the bus but remained standing, looking out the window until the stone hospital It disappeared from my swollen eyes...
......
Three days later, my mother returned...to the village...
This time, she did not lie to me. She said she would return in three days, and she did.
She came back covered with a white sheet...with a broad green stripe...