Memory of My Childhood

The house where we lived til I was four years old was situated on the bend of a dirt road that intersected a back country highway. The place was nearly a furlong away from the main city. It was a grand house with a dark blue-coloured tile floor and beige coloured walls with a musty old style . My favourite part of our flat was a window in my parents’ room from where I used to watch a farm that was near our house and a narrow street with the hustle and bustle of housekeepers buying groceries from the small shops.  

And when the rains came, I would never leave the window no matter how much my mom would pull me away. I loved watching the rain from there. (Rain in Saudi does sound weird but it did occur once in a blue moon, just a little more frequently in the city we lived in ‘cause it was on a hill station.) .
The sky would become all dark and blustery. The rain rain would fall in torrents, except at occasional intervals when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets, rattling along the rooftops and fiercely agitating the the scanty flames of the lamps lit by poor men on the streets selling vegetables. I loved the sound of raindrops spattering on the stones. But I pitied the poor men who even after creping under the large oak trees got completely drenched in the rain as their clothes clung to their arms and legs and mud squelched between their bare toes. But they could not even move because the city got enveloped by the black of the night. But soon the rain would turn to a drizzle and in no time people who stood motionless, feeling completely helpless got busy taking care of their small tented shops. And all my ………..

I remember my mom telling me that when I was born the nurses in the hospital were………, wondering why   I was so dark, like a negro, when my mother and grandmother were fair beauties. But that’s the pun that life plays on us. But the better part was that I had cute chubby cheeks and beautiful deepset eyes , with a certain...