Prejudgment

A short story by Soran Mustafa Kurdi

It was 8:20 am; I was standing with Chro, my classmate, discussing the criticism class assignment. Hangaw passed by us at five meter’s distance. He did not greet us. I felt miserable and dejected and read a frown on Chro’s face as well.

It was not like him. He was a wonderful guy with a perpetual smile on his face; a smile that warmed one’s heart the way sunlight warms snow covered mountains in early spring.

“He did not greet us,” Chro said, “nor did he bring the criticism book, he was supposed to bring it us today!” 

We decided not to talk to him that day in revenge of his unfriendly behavior. 

Later in the morning, after the class, Chro and I were walking in the college yard when we saw him talking with some of his friends. Seeing us in the distance, he waved in the air and headed toward us after taking leave from his friends.

“Didn’t see you all day long today,” he said with a big smile on his face, “I thought you were not coming to school. By the way, I have brought you the book!”

Chro said that he had passed by us and had not greeted us. With an empty face, Hangaw said he was so busy-minded early in the morning that he might have not noticed us.

“I am sorry,” he apologized “but you guys could have come to me and asked for the book.” Speechless, Chro and I just looked at each other.

 “I will go and get the book… see you in a minute.”

End

A child’s dream

A short story by Soran Mustafa Kurdi 

When I was nine, one day my uncle paid us a visit. He brought me a book. The book was an allegorical short story for children.

Until then, I had not seen or read any short stories except those stories we had in school.

The story was about a little black fish living with her mother in a small pond on the side of a mountain. One day the little black fish wanted to know what was happening elsewhere. He set out for a journey. In her journey, the little black fish saw many new things and went on and on till he reached a sea. Unfortunately, after her adventurous journey she would be swallowed by a heron.

Reading the story for the first time, I felt so sad until tears came down from my eyes. I felt so pity for the little black fish, as her parents were not with her when she was facing the difficulties in her journey. Later that day, I read the story for the second time. I can say, with no exaggeration, that I have read the story for a dozen times since then. Each time I got something from it. When I read it for the fifth time for the next days, something came to my mind: “One day I am going to be a writer, short story writer.” When I got a little older and read more stories and novels, I told myself “One day I am going to be a novelist, as well.”

The story changed my life. I decided that one day I would write the best ever written-novel.

Now, I find myself here, I want to write, I want to make my dream come true. 

End

As Blue as Ocean

 A Short Story by Soran Mustafa Kurdi

“Your eyes are like water, blue ocean water, my son. You have to be like water, water can carve its way even through stone, when water is trapped it makes a new path” Larsa thought about these sentences as he was walking down home tiredly. He had always lived by these speeches. They had given him a kind of relief, but this time they seemed not. He felt he was very tired, he knew that in this life sometimes he would be the windshield and sometimes the bug.

Carrying college books with right hand, Larsa opened the yard door with the other hand. He entered the yard and seemed to be ready to drop. While walking toward inside, he greeted his mother in the yard busy with rolling an inner-tube made rubber band around the water hose that had been leaking for three days. He went into the house. Before going upstairs, he saw his sister carry a wash basin filled with clothes. She was about to go up to the roof to hang the cloths on the cloth line. She welcomed Larsa with a smile and he answered with a fatigue-covered face.

“Let me go up before you do!” his sister said going up as quick as a flash.

Larsa went upstairs; in each stair different thought passed in his mind. Finally, he found himself in his room. After putting the books on the table, he could not stand changing his clothes; he fell on the bed as a dead man when gets shot. He lied down on his back, facing to the ceiling.

He looked at the clock on the wall, it said 2:30. He had been out since seven in the morning, without having had anything. In the morning his mother had prepared breakfast for him and asked to have it some, but he had refused. He had not had his lunch either.

Tiredness had made Larsa not to focus on one point. He shifted onto his left side. In the big window of the room, he looked outside, seeing a boy running a kite. The kite took him back to past and past memory flashed through his mind. He never wanted to be reminded of his past. His past always made him feel weak and hopeless. Back in early childhood, he lived in a small town, like the children of his age; he had liked to have all childish stuffs and play entertaining games. He had liked kite-running, marbling, children card game and football, but his family was too poor to afford these stuffs. Besides, he was left with no spare time to play with other kids of his age, as he worked with his father every day.

 A car honking outside threw a stone into the pond of his thinking. He noticed that a car parked in the street in a way that blocked the street, another driver with a car was trying to pass through the street. The driver was honking to let the blocking car open the street. When the sound of the honk was stopped, Larsa again shifted to his back position, facing to the ceiling again.

  In the corner of the ceiling, a spider was threading the web to set a trap for catching a prey for one of the meals.

 “Do spiders get tired and bored as well?” he thought, watching the spider.

 Thought after thought tickled Larsa’s mind, but he could not concentrate on a thing even for ten seconds. He had never felt this kind of tiredness; he was surprised! Unlike other days, he had passed better classes and spent better times with his friends.

Larsa sat down on the bed, pulling his legs close to his chest, facing toward the wall in front of him.

On the wall, there was a painting in a wooden frame; a purple background with a vase-like oval shape was in the center. Three straight parallel lines were drawn vertically behind the oval shape. The rest of the space was filled with some other indescribable and colorful shapes that made the painting so-called a piece of an abstract art. He did not understand the painting.

 “If art is made up of lines and meaningless shapes, a kid should be the best artist!” he muddled, itching his right sideburn with his right hand index finger.

Larsa got up from his bed and stood in front of the mirror. In the mirror, he saw his stubble face was dull, his hair was jumbled and his ocean-blue eyes were dim.

His blue eyes reminded him of his mother’s speech again.

 “Your eyes are like water, blue ocean water, my son. You have to be like water, water can carve its way even through stone. When water is trapped it makes a new path!”

He was interrupted from his thinking with an abrupt call of his mother downstairs.

“Larsa, I have prepared something to eat, come down and have some!”

End

Envisaging

A Short story by Soran Mustafa Kurdi

 He put the gun on the right of his temple and put his index finger on the trigger. He, at that moment, pictured himself as Hamlet.

“To die or not to die," he said, feeling like standing in front of a throng of people, "that’s the question! What may come after I blow out my brain and leave this exhausting life, I don’t know! When I got to the other side of the world, which I don’t know if there is one, ‘who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes?’ I try to leave all these behind myself here in this life!”

He went on.

“Committing suicide is easy, move your finger a little bit, push the trigger down and that’s it,” He said this loudly while the gun is still on his temple “but what makes me worry is that no one has come back from there to know whether a different world exists, free from burden, or it is the same, with the same sufferings and injustice.”

 Feeling lost in wording the sentences, he was woken by the applause of other performers and the director of the play.

 “Fantastic rehearsal,” said the director “I want you to do the same performance, in front of hundreds of audiences.”

End