Selected Poetry / Избранное (англ.)

If sometimes I felt hungry during our games, I would climb into the house through a side window and eat the potatoes and chunk of bread my mother left for me.

They locked the doors after dinner but they would leave the side window unhinged for me from the inside.

During harvest time all the village people were at work in the fields, and since there was nobody left around except for old women not suitable for work, we attacked the plantings of green onions in the plots, harming them worse than any goats.

When the old women, who stayed to watch after the houses, noticed us, we would jump over the fence and run away. The poor old women had no other choice but yell themselves hoarse and then bite the bullet.

The games made us feel hot, so we went down to the small creek behind the threshing floor and splashed in it for hours or tried to catch fish with our pants and shirts. It was a jolly time!

Once, when I got home in the evening after being out playing with the boys, I found everyone very upset.

«What’s wrong?» – 1 wondered. Then I saw that Sabira apa was thrashing about like crazy, from the floor to the bunk, with scary, bulging eyes, hurting herself on anything in her way. That is how I found out that she returned sick from the harvest, «stark raving mad.»

Everyone in the house didn’t have a wink of sleep that night. Only I, when I felt awfully sleepy, went out and lay down in the cart.

Next morning, at dawn, I heard: «Your sister Sabira apa died and you’re sleeping, get up, get up!» I opened my eyes and saw my mother in front of me.

This was horrible news for me, too, and although sleep is sweet, I jumped up at once.

Sabira was buried that same day. A few days after the funeral, I heard my mother saying to dad: «When you take someone else’s child, your nose and mouth will be smeared in blood; when you take someone else’s calf, your nose and mouth will be smeared in butter.

It’s true, what people say. That’s why it all happened to us!»

I often heard her say such things to him. Since that time, whenever I misbehaved or did something my mother didn’t like, she would repeat these words to me.

As for father and I, we were good friends. He never said a single harsh word to me.