Wash Them with Water...

by defeza (12/24/2005)

Wash Them with Water

The smell of my fingertips will never disappear. I have been washing my hands for fifteen minutes by now since my poor mum has been calling me out for dinner.

 

“Are YOU coming, Ali?”

“Aliiiiiiiiii, areeeee youuuu coming to eat the sarma with your sisters?”

 

I love when she calls out my name from the kitchenlike room. It makes me believe that I am someone important or the baby lamb being invited to get closer to her mother and her group while trying to find grass to eat in the slights of Barlas Mount. I reply at the end not to make her furious and throw me the wooden slippers, takunya, which you can only find these days in some mosques.

 

“Yeah mother, I am there…almost there”

“Aren’t you embarrassed you have been making me call you for houuuuuurs? I have just lost my voiceee…”

“My hands mum… they are never clean”

“The workers hands cannot be called dirty even if they touch the sheat of the cows to make tezek. Plus, you are wasting the water and the soap.”

“OK, ana OK…”

 

I know when my mother starts complains about something this can go on nonstop for weeks. She always starts with something from our lives- like I do not do this or that- and it ends up how horrible guy my father is.

 

We usually have sarma as soon as the grape leaves appear in mid April. Of course, my mother makes some also in winter using the conserved leaves in salt, but my preference is the fresh ones without meat pieces. For instance, my younger sister Azime loves the salty dry ones with meat and she has the ability of eating twenty of these little fingerlike food at a time without taking a breath though she is just five. Hakan loves when you put yogurt on top and he does not care of the kind.

 

“You like it?”

“Yeah mother, God bless your hands”

“Hakan, pass me the salt”

“That’s enough Azime, you are not eating salt”

“Mother, put some more yogurt this is not enough!!!”

“OK!”

“I want some mint and onion too!”

“Get the fresh mint outside…(Crush) All right here is the onion”

“Give me the heart the heart…”

“Here!”

“Ay ay ay aaaaaaaaaaaay, I comeee out of the jail. My friends are not fair…The Mountains are there, but the roads are hereeeeeeeeeeeee”

 

Here comes our nightmare again. My drunk father…Too early to start this time…Suddenly I feel full. The last piece stuck in my throat…I am dizzy and about to faint. I feel that the veins are getting narrower in my body. I feel a sudden cramp at the bottom of my stomach. My mother looks like she was given an electricity shock She lost the ability to think and like a robot appearing in the room.

 

“Come on… Hurry…It is enough...go and wash your hands…Wash them well.