Scars, Caresses and Souvenirs
One day after school, my cousin, sister and I were watching a man working with his mule.
The name of that animal in our dialect is Baghla, and my name is Taghla. They sound similar. While were playing close to it, my older sister teased me because I was scared of that mule. She told me, “Be careful! The mule is coming to eat you." When I heard that I tried to jump over a big hole in the bathroom covered by some thin clothes and some stones. It was full of the bathroom waste. I disappeared down the hole.
My older sister went running to tell my grandmother about what happened to me, but she couldn´t pronounce my name because she was so scared. She kept saying, “al Bagla has fallen down the hole," and Albagla, as I said before, is the animal, not me. She couldn’t say my name. Finally she said, "Tagla fell down", and my grandmother realized what she had said. She started crying and calling for my mother.
While they were trying to get me out, I was screaming, crying and I was terrified. Suddenly I stopped crying and they thought that I had died, but a big stone had fallen on my head and I fell unconscious. However, I was very lucky because God wanted me to live my life with my family. The thing that prevented me from falling down deeply was a sharp stone which appearing in that hole and caught the hood of my jacket. Because of the stone they could take me out of the hell that I was in. I smelled very bad and all the people brought perfume with them to put on my body. No one could be close to me because of the terrible odor except my mother, who didn’t care about that. She was crying and thanking God when she saw me alive. After that they took me to the hospital. During that time I had a very strong headache which sometimes bother me even today.
The funny thing is that the name of my story is “Tagla Albagla” which means “Tagla mule”.