Diary
(3) Leave the goats and tie the Gomaa!.. Ahmed Seif Hashed
My memoirs.. from the details of my life
(3)
Leave the goats and tie the Gomaa!
Ahmed Seif Hashed
One day at the beginning of my first period of study, I was late for the school queue, and I was afraid of the punishment that the school teacher would take against me, and instead of going to school, I went to a room above the cow corral of our neighbor, Mana Saeed..
This room was like an inn intended to receive strangers, who spend a day, or two if they stay long, and often remain empty for weeks without a guest..
I escaped from the penalty of being late in the morning queue to a more dilemma than it, which is to be absent from school for a whole day.. thus I found myself getting more involved in that dilemma, or moving from one dilemma to another greater than it..
On the second day, I went to the same room, and the scene was repeated on the third and fourth day, to find myself every day getting into a bigger and more severe trouble than before.
Every day that passes I feel that my predicament grows, and my expectation of punishment grows in parallel with my continued absence from school.. And the more my absence increased, the more fear and panic I became, and I became overwhelmed with great fear of a more painful punishment, until it seemed to me on the fourth day that it would be severe..
I lacked courage from the first day in assuming the responsibility and the result of the first mistake.
Six hours a day I spend in that dreary room.. The situation was difficult and the hours heavy, and I felt its deadly weight, crushing under its wheels, as if a train was passing through my exhausted body.. However, the courage continued to betray me in admitting mistakes and being ready to take responsibility..
The hours were passing slowly, slowly by the tortoise in a land that was not without roughness.. boring and monotonous hours.. I did not know beforehand that those hours would be the way I lived, or so slow and monotonous, even if I saw them at the same time as less stressful The punishment awaiting me kept getting more and more intense with each passing day, and perhaps it became more than I could bear.
I was trying to relieve the monotony of those hours by looking at the opposite space confined to the corners of the small window from which my gaze peeked out cautiously and concealed.
Every day that passes in that room that I chose as a voluntary prison, I suffer from it and get exhausted for six hours of waiting and bleeding the soul..
I see a small part of the valley overlooked by that window.. I look closely at those who are going and those who come in it, and whenever I hear a sound in the near vicinity I rise suspiciously to watch through the cracks of the door what is happening outside it! I was apprehensive and worried that my secret and my secret would be exposed..!!
Perhaps also sometimes out of curiosity and curiosity towards the opposite side of the room made of boards and tin, my imprisoned gaze peeks out from the cracks in the door, and sometimes out of picnics and the relief of distress, I find my gaze wandering cautiously here and there, and my locks intensify with the slowly creeping time, and the time intensifies slowly the longer it takes. Waiting time.
On the fifth day, my case was revealed and the question exposed me, as I heard the professor asking my father about the reason for my frequent absence.. My father replied with shocked astonishment that I go to school every day, and as soon as this grew to my hearing, I rushed to school jogging, and I realized at that time that the ax had fallen into my head, and that My matter has been exposed and exposed, and I must be prepared to pay a heavy price of pain at once, whose amount I do not know, and I do not know the ability to bear it.
***
Perhaps I was excused at that time because I was still a child who did not guide, but I had not yet become a juvenile in a very harsh environment, which lacked the minimum educational culture and its accompanying means, but most of it was reversed, and its means were dry, distorted or not available at all..
Today the fugitives forward have become individuals, convoys and groups.. the situation has changed from yesterday and turned upside down.. escaping forward has become familiar and usual.. escaping from a dilemma to the most severe is not limited to a child like me, but extends to parties, political forces, revolutions, and even peoples as well…
It is not only my story, but the story of all of Yemen, and its people as a whole.. the story of the forces, elites and parties that fled forward from bad to worse, from worst to disaster, and from disaster to most catastrophic…from internal conflict, to regional, then to international Too complicated..!
What happened was a catastrophic throwback from the dream and entitlement of the state to the non-state… an escape to the extent of panic from the entitlement and dream of a modern civil state and democracy to a war that does not want to end, and we are living its seventh year of absurdity and bleeding..
The retreat and regression continued from the semi-state, to the failed state, then to the remnants of the state, and finally to no state..
We moved from disagreement to disagreement to conflict and recurring cycles of violence, then to a fierce war, intertwined with horrific and catastrophic internal and external wars.
We moved from peaceful protest to various battles, then to a long war, or from no war to a fierce war, then to multiple wars that do not remain or leave..
What happened and is happening reminds me of that Yemeni joke par excellence, which summed it up: “Leave the goats and tie the Gomaa:
Tess entered the room, and the father was having dinner with his children.
The father said to his eldest son: Gomaa, get up, tie the goat quickly, so that it does not run on us.
Gomaa got up in a hurry, hit his head with the bulb and broke it, and the house became dark, and Gomaa couldn’t see anything..!! One of his feet fell into the eating plate, and the plate turned over, and the food inside was scattered on the ground.. Gomaa jumped in panic, and his left leg came in the father’s belly, and the right in his forehead!!!
So the father shouted at his children: O children.. Leave the goats and tie the Gomaa!!
What is more Gomaa today..Gomaa, despite its badness, was better than it is..maybe it was not devoid of goodness, musk, and tolerance, and today it became bullets, death, and gunpowder.. And the most painful…
What has happened and is happening has become far beyond the endurance and patience of Yemen.
***
He follows..
Ahmed Seif Hashed’s Facebook page
