by dris khali
Bitch
My brother is the only person who dared to slaughter a bitch and its five puppies. It is sickening to write this story. Sickening to read it. This happened on Sunday night when the muezzin called for the prayer. The puppies were hungry. There was no milk in The breasts of their mother. And the dog couldn't resist the eating of the only three eggs laid by the chickens of my brother.
The bitch put all her confidence in the wrong human heart .My brother Sharpened his long knife and called the brown bitch .The stupid bitch .She did not consider what was inside the mind of my brother. If she did, she could have seen evil gathering drop by drop in his eyes and thus could have run away or defend her right to live..
From vein to vein my brother slaughtered her. He did so , he said, in the name of his Great God.
- Allahou Akbar. Allahou Akbar. Allahou Akbar.
And in ten minutes my brother had finished off the five puppies without any sense of mercy.
My mother says to herself:
- Oh. Accursed, from which hell did you bring this monster ?
Crow
My brother is the only human who has challenged the crow. Raven appeared to Cain when he was unable to bury his brother. Raven turned with time into a sign of death. My brother showed himself to the crow .But the crow could not fly.The wings couldn't save the bird. They couldn't save it out of my brother's trap. My brother caught the wandering crow when the sun was at the zenith of its heat. He slaughtered it so that he can eat it in the mercy of his God. So says my brother. He grilled the bird's meat and devoured it.
My brother is the real death in the eyes of the crow.
- For seventy years, "says my father, I have never heard or seen an animal which saw in the crow a desirable meal.
My Lord. You should have created my brother with one eye in the center of the face , with one hand in the center of the body so that he be a lesson for those who chant blindly:
- Every creature on earth lives on behalf's God
My brother lives on the roof of the house. In the room it was I who paid for its construction. From the window my brother watches the crows that ,may be, are looking for their lost friend .It seems they don't know that another ominous evil has come to earth .
My father returned from the South and did sex to my mother. He was so thirsty and he forgot to name his Lord when he saw the body of my mother as the cold water of our village's fountain. After nine months, my brother came to the world. My mother was alone. And my brother almost fell on his head.
With the passage of two years, my brother has eaten eightieth square centimeter of the paint of our conventional oven's wall.
At his seventeenth's winter all the pets that my mother kept taking care of shivered at the mere sight of my brother.
And five years ago, my brother showed exactly himself for the Crows and taught them how to burry the bones of their friend that had wandered and found the strange abdomen of my brother waiting for him.
My father says:
- Even a wolf's belly wouldn't have accepted a crow's meat!
- Oh God, does this dumb monster really belong to me?
Cat
My brother has two young doves. One morning, he Came out and went to a place called the castle. In the castle there's a graveyard. An old unknown one. There ‘s also a lot of dense trees. My brother infiltrated inside the castle. And as an experienced cat, he found a dove's Nest. By instinct, he reached the nest. The very young doves couldn't Fly. The mother hovered around my brother. The poor dove was trying with all its feathers and beak to save her two little babies out of the claws of my brother. The two young doves were so small and their feathers were beautifully yellow. The mother approached from the head of my brother which looked like a circular black stone. But my brother, my real brother, was deaf and dumb and monstrous. He knew nothing about pigeons except that every year they lay two small eggs which turn to be two young doves valid for grilling.
And the cat tried to betray my brother. It flattened its straight tail on the ground and put all its weight on its four legs in preparation for an attack on the two young doves. And my brother went out of his cave and picked up the cat that left its small kittens waiting for its fruitful return.
- Miaw. Miaw.
My brother pointed out to the cat. He was furious and the cat could not run away. It seems that he was telling her that she was a traitor who was trying to rob his young doves.
He caught her.
And The cat struggled using all its teeth and claws. She was trying to get rid of the solid fingers of my brother. She wanted to come back to her small kittens. But, my brother's fingers were like a vulture's claws. He went to his cave and then returned with a bag and an electric cord in his hand.
Half an hour later, he was in the castle. He climbed the dense tree and in the empty nest of the poor dove he put the cat. He tied the mewing cat there. In the dove's nest. And by instinct , my dumb, monstrous brother tied the poor cat to the thick branch near the nest.
- Miaw. Miaw.Miaw.
Proud of his strange victory over the poor cat, my brother returned home. And he dug a hole. A big one. And as an experimented dog , he looked for the nice innocent kittens. when he found them, he grinned. Ignorant of what will happen to them, the kittens just looked and mewed angrily. From now on, They will not have the chance to grow and understand how to hunt small mice.
My brother put mercilessly the kittens in the hole and heaped the dirt on them.
I say:
- The cat committed a grave mistake when it tried to get close to the young doves of the other son of my parents.
Therefore I exist.
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The text was origginally written in Arabic.
Dris, I'm interested in the viciousness of this brother partly because it is offset by a narrative concern for it. We have been seeing viciousness in a few of our narratives -- very, very brief narratives without room for comment -- then the comment becomes the reader's approval of it as a story. Here I think there is room for comment. The narrator is guiding us. The parents in the narration rue the violence of their other son. It is even suggested that a prayer forgotten prior to his conception is the reason for his violence to animals. There is a little difficulty in the translation, but that serves to take me out of the American setting, to another landscape, a location far away, a cultural relocation.
*
It would be great to work on a close translation of this piece. It's enthralling in its present form but I'm sure we've only touched the surface.
Great piece.
What an arresting story, beautifully written.*
Anne, Roberto, kim
Thanks for reading and commenting my text.
I agree, this is not a close translation. it's an approximate one. it lacks the flavour of the original text.
Those who know arabic can read it on this site: www.shehrayar.com or www.almihlaj.com
this is the title of the text in Arabic and my name .
أخطأت القطة
ادريس خالي