THE BEGGAR – YASIN KHADER AL-QAISI (IRAQ)
He pulled his hand out of his pocket after feeling a dry piece of bread, pressed his chin to his chest and hid his frozen hands under
His armpits curled up in a spiral as he shivered from the cold, and the dirty torn coat covered his shoulders without giving him the warmth he sought. Anyone passing by on those harsh, bitterly cold nights would hear him making a strange groan like the groan of an old dog that had been overcome by cold, hunger, and loneliness. When he fell into a slumber similar to a faint, the bowl he had placed in front of him would ring, waking him up to see if they had thrown him a coin or pebbles to mock him with. He often cursed the passersby more than he prayed for them. When the first rooster crows, he leaves the station platform where feet jostle and the noise of cars and people prevails. When someone asks him about the secret of his departure, he smiles and looks at his interlocutor with eyes filled with much questioning and suspicion, then he walks away in a hurry, carrying his crutch wrapped in old rags, and the dog follows him from a distance, his head always close to the ground, as if he is ready to fall if the old man turns to him. If someone who knows the poor man passes by and sees him hopping on his crutches with the dog behind him, he shouts at him mischievously: “Hey, beggar, be careful, the dog might eat your other leg.” He had claimed that when he was in the prime of his youth, he had participated in one of the wars and a mine struck his leg, so he was not saddened by the loss of his leg as much as he was saddened by seeing the dogs gnawing at his amputated leg. He kept repeating that story, but no one believed him, but the sound of the battles kept reverberating in his head, a noise louder than the silence of the night, its hunger, and its cold. He reached the outskirts of the city, where the ruins sheltered him, next to the garbage dump. He felt for the dry piece of bread in his pocket and turned quickly to fool the dog, hoping to see him standing upright even once, but he was disappointed and quickly knelt down, putting his head to the ground and wagging his tail weakly like the pendulum of a clock about to stop. He threw away the single piece of bread and went inside, waving his hands in the face of ghosts that no one else could see but him.
(Written by : Yassin Khader Al-Qaisi Iraq)
Prepared Angela Kosta Executive Director of MIRIADE Magazine, Academic, journalist, writer, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, translator, promoter
