The Keyword of the Week : THEATRE by @weisser-rabe (and another contest)

My grandmother, like all grandmoms, was old. I had been seeing her wrinkled, old body for twenty years. My parents always said that when she was young she was beautiful but for me, this was difficult to believe.

  
I thought the same about my grandfather whose portrait was on the wall in the sitting room. He was dressed in loose clothes and had a hat on his head. He was an engineer in the Canal Department and looked at least a hundred years old. He did not look like someone who had a wife and five children. To me, they both looked like two oldies playing the role of character artists in a live theatere show.

  

Image

They both didn't look like those who could have grandchildren and the idea about the grandmother—that she might have once been beautiful and young—seemed completely imaginary.

Her figure and body did not match what she used to look like in her childhood. This idea seemed very absurd and vulgar to me, and I always forgot these things after listening to them, like the stories coming from someone about a theater artist.

Her height was short, her body was fat, and her waist was bent. There were wrinkles on her face, which appeared to be coming from everywhere and running to every place.

I sincerely thought and believed that she was always like this. She was old—very old—so old that she could not get any older and had remained so ever since my memory served me. Okay, she was not beautiful, but she looked good. She used to jump around the house dressed in white clothes, with one hand on her waist to maintain balance, and her silver hair was scattered haphazardly on her pale face, but yes, she looked very nice and loving.

Sometimes I felt she was like a theater artist doing a winter scene in the mountains, covered with white snow all around, evoking a feeling of peace and contentment. My grandmother and I were very good friends. When my parents went to live in the city, they left me with her, and we always lived together.

She would wake me up in the morning and get me ready for school. While bathing and dressing me, she would keep humming the prayer in a sweet voice in such a way that I would remember it. I liked her voice, so I kept listening, but I didn't bother to memorize it. Then she would hand me my school bag.

After this, we both ate butter and salt on the bread, had breakfast, and left for school. She kept some bread pieces with her, which she used to feed to the dogs on the way to school. Grandma always went to school with me because it was part of the church.

We children would sit in a row on either side of the verandah, reciting the alphabet or singing songs, and grandmother would go inside and pray. When my school was over, we would return home together.

When our parents settled in the city, they called us to the city too. Now my intimacy with Granma was decreasing, or so I thought. Granma stopped coming to school with me. I started going to school by bus. There were no dogs on the streets here, so my grandmother started feeding the birds in the courtyard of the house.

As time passed, our meetings also started decreasing. For some days, she kept waking me up in the morning and getting me ready for school. When I would return home, she would ask, "What did the teacher teach me today?" Now that she was asking, this started seeming like a drama to me. As if grandmother were a theatere character.

I would tell her English words and explain things from Western science and education, like the principle of attraction, the fact that the world is round, etc. But she did not like any of these. She couldn't help me at all in all this.

The things taught in school seemed useless to her, and she felt sad as to why nothing was taught about religion in the schools. One day I told her that now we are also being taught music. This caused her a great setback. In her view, music meant pleasure and luxury. It was only for beggars and all civilized people stayed away from it. After this, she stopped talking to me much.

When I joined engineering college, I was sent to the hostel. Now our relationship has ended completely. Grandmother silently accepted this separation. Now she kept praying all the time and did not talk to anyone. I heard that only in the evening she would get up for a while and feed the birds. Sitting comfortably on the verandah, she would cut the fruits and bread into small pieces and feed them to the birds, and the birds would keep chirping, eating, and flying around.

Many birds would sit on her shoulders, hands, feet, and even on her head, eat, and peck at her, but she would not mind them but just keep smiling. For her, the happiest time of the day was this half hour.

When I went abroad after my management, I thought that my grandmother would be sad about this. I had to stay away for five years, and I didn't know what would happen in the meantime.

But my grandmother remained as she was. She did not express any sorrow. She came to drop me off at the airport and kept praying quietly. She kissed my forehead, and when I started walking, I realized how precious her kiss was to me.

But when I returned after five years, she came to the airport to pick me up. She looked as old as she was the day I left—not a day older or younger. She didn't say anything, and she took me into her arms.

Even on the first day after returning, I saw that she was just as happy, feeding the birds and talking to them. A change was visible in her in the evening. Today she called the women in our neighborhood and started singing loudly. For several hours, she kept singing songs as if a warrior had returned home after winning a war.

My mom had to stop her by explaining that this would increase her stress. I noticed for the first time that she did not pray as usual. The next morning she developed a high fever, and when the doctor was called, he said there was nothing to worry about but that the fever would subside soon.

But grandmother said now her end is near. She said that she has not prayed for many hours, so now she will not talk to anyone but will spend all her time praying and doing nothing else.

I opposed it and said, "Grandma, don't act like a theater artist." But ignoring my words, she remained peacefully lying on the cot and praying silently. I knew she was suffering but her lips and eyes closed before my expectation. Her face turned pale, and I understood that she was no more. My father put a cloth on her body. After mourning for a few hours, we started preparing for her last rituals.

The next day, the sun was rising, and its golden light spread to the verandah. We saw hundreds of birds sitting all over the verandah and the room where her body was kept. The birds were silent as if mourning for the departed soul.

My mother brought bread for them and started doing it the same way my grandmother used to do it cutting them into pieces and putting them in front of the birds. But the birds did not pay attention to my mom or the bread. When we lifted Grandmother and brought her out, all the birds flew away silently. Perhaps it was "The End" of the theatere for them too.

Hi dear Steemians, Did you check another contest running in this community?

Beneficiary @hive107855 and #burnsteem25