I wrote this story in Arabic and it was translated
by my colleague Jennifer Case.
A real scene as I saw it one burning afternoon
in the streets of Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.
That blazing, tropical mid-afternoon,in the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic, a child sat near a pile of dirt
left on the sidewalk of the asphalt street overcrowded with countless cars. Squatting with his head buried between his knees and his face shielded, he looked preoccupied with rolling the dirt around between his palms, engrossed as if it were the first time he had ever held dirt in his hands. His worn-out shirt had huge tears in the fabric, showing his skin and one of his shoulder blades. Above his head, on a low concrete barrier between the car lanes, was
an empty juice carton waiting for whatever a passer-by might throw. Traffic was gridlocked and the cars
barely moved. Minutes later, a woman appeared and stood directly behind him. She bent down, forcefully grabbed his hair, and turned his face upwards. His mouth opened and his
eyes blinked as the dirt slipped from his hands. The scene was totally silent; what the woman said to him and what the child uttered were unclear. The small, closed window had blocked out all sound. But the scene was obvious; the woman violently pulled the child’s hair and the child screamed. “Wouldn’t you intervene?” I asked myself. She hit him! What business is it of mine? She’s his mother. What if she wasn’t? Who is she then? That’s enough! Leave me alone! I pressed the radio’s power button to silence my inner voice. It settled on a song I like by the Colombian singer Shakira and the band Maná, Mi verdad (“My Truth”).
I continued to drive. Traffic was gridlocked and the cars barely moved. The thin woman wasn’t alone. She was carrying an infant in a cloth sling hanging from her neck, his little legs dangling from two openings made in the sling, while the top was left open so he could breathe. He looked as though he wasn’t born yet.
The scrawny child broke free from her grasp and grabbed the juice carton, getting over the little barrier in one jump,
and headed towards the cars with open windows with his arms outstretched as far as they could reach, hoping to get
a coin from one of their passengers. The thin woman, whose bones were sticking out, watched the tan scrawny child:
There is no time to waste playing. Her message was crystal clear.
While she was also doing her work, the infant fell into a deep sleep. He was fair-skinned, and his thin hair barely
covered his little head, whereas she looked like a foreigner, a Black woman who had just come from the cornfield.
Instead of carrying a big bundle of her dried-up crops, she carried a worn-out sign under her arm. Its edges were
so dirty that the letters were obscured, and you couldn’t make out what was written. But no one was interested in
reading it; it was obvious what she wanted without any reading or clarification, without any questions or answers.
Instead, it played out rather quickly — the window was knocked on, and in a few moments, one of three responses
were given: (1) The person opened the window and threw out something for her; (2) The person inside pretended not
to know she was there; or (3) The person opened it and the woman jumped back with a face full of fear, afraid of the
voice scolding her. She did not always gain people’s sympathy with this weak individual whom she needed for her work under the sun — that unmoving infant. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t get hungry or scream.
He was the beauty sleeping without nibbling on even one bite of an apple!
What could he possibly be dreaming about? Does dreaming hurt in the burning sun? Is he melting? Should we cover
the children so that their dreams don’t evaporate? The thin, emaciated woman wearing tattered clothes nimbly moved
between the cars, trying to get through the traffic to knock on more of these windows, which stretched out in front of
her like a river from which she could get a valuable catch today. She extended her container from behind the glass,
then knocked on the window and waited just as the tan scrawny child with the thick black hair did. This woman had
no face; I am trying to press my memories to recall her features, but I can’t. She doesn’t resemble anyone we’ve seen anywhere; she’s one of those people who don’t have a face, as if they were non-existent, their features blending in
the darkness, like burned bread. The face of poverty is an accusation, so we don’t look at it in avoidance. The light
changed and the cars started moving.
The woman moved back with her motionless infant. Meanwhile, the scrawny child with the thick hair knelt in the shade of the low cement barrier. His finger flew across it, writing letters with the dust that had stuck to his fingers.
The dirt was scooped into his palms again and scattered on both sides without him lifting his head, as if he was trying
to take advantage of every second to focus all his senses on the dirt particles before the light changed and his second
round through the traffic began. He was playing the only possible game here: scattering the dirt. Here on the side of
the street where no one noticed him. The dirt wasn’t a ball or a paper plane, and the sides of the road did not make
a goal to score in.
The juice carton was not for drinking if he felt thirsty, the cement barrier was not a notebook, and the car driver who
was shouting in his face was not his father who withheld his allowance because he didn’t get good grades. The child
being carried by the woman did not resemble him, and there was nothing to suggest that the woman who pulled
his hair was his mother. Only the dirt he held was the truth he was trying to hold onto whenever his crowded world
went quiet.
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Intercambios
is a publication of the
Spanish Language Division (SPD)
of the American Translators Association (ATA),
established to advance the translation and
interpreting professions, and to foster the
professional development of its members.
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