Cow trough

On Friday, my mother took me to her father‘s house in the Ajyad neighborhood, which was full of guests from relatives and people of the neighborhood. She began to announce in the women‘s gathering her longing for her old neighborhood, the neighborhood of the Haram, the crowded market, and the old alleys. She began to sarcastically call the neighborhood "the Cow‘s Basin," and she used to call it only Al-Hud neighborhood. But when we are in the living room of our house, it leaks. Sometimes we heard the sound of musical instruments and singing coming from Rabha‘s house, and my mother got up to close the windows and the balcony door. If a song played on the television, she turned it off. One time, my father came in carrying a colorful bag full of small figurines of forest animals. I would scatter them on the floor of the vestibule and play with them. When I finished, my mother collected them and hid them in the games room, and forbade me to play with them in my room or even take them upstairs. I did not I was passionate about playing alone. I even played with that electric car for a week and then abandoned it. My greatest passion was for stories, songs, and people‘s stories, and lying on the couch for hours on end, watching television. In the morning, I would sit on the balcony, watching the neighborhood and listening to the conversations of passers-by and the quarrels of passing children. Sometimes I would see Hassan waving to me in the street or at the door of their house, and I would wave my hand at him or ignore him.