Youssef and the Robe

Author: Ibrahim Aslan

Thus came the woman's call through the dense trees on the shore and the large castor leaves, and the night spoke. The first time, I thought it was a dream, the sound, and when it recurred, I didn't sleep. The stranger said it was a woman who came as a young girl with her brother to do something. Zeyn went into the water here but never returned. She comes every day with her unchanged bundle, calling out while standing, once, then sitting until the daylight is about to expose the shore, and then she leaves. She has been doing this for twenty years. He said, in the early days, all I cared about was waiting for the call; with time, I no longer even heard it. If it weren't for your presence now, I wouldn't have thought of it. You don't have to exert yourself to get used to this new refuge. Rather, all you have to do is gradually surrender to something like a coma until you get used to it, and everything else.