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