Blue tusk.(vendetta).
Short Story by Awny Seif, Cairo.
Rasmia went out from one of the clinics specializing in gynaecology and childbirth. She was a little bit going to town except for medical counseling. Her left hand is behind her back to support herself and right hand on her husband Abdul Basit’s shoulder.
A young woman in her 30s, pregnant in her last month, her husband Abdul Basit is just a few years older. They go to the city only for necessity.
Several days before the birth, Hamdan was waiting for Abdul Basit whom is going to the field. Hamdan shot and killed him, it was inherited blood, an old problem between the two families.
The problem of vicious circle analogy. Every time someone from this family is killed or that. It’s an ancient vendetta that looks like a small river of blood passing through the homes of the two families.
Abdulbaset’s family refused to receive solace, but it would not have been entirely refusal.
They put options in front of Rasmia, some family members want to end this bad habit.
Rasmia rejected the voices of reconciliation, and they also refused to receive mourners. She refused to let Hamdan go to jail. She put herself in the vicious circle the families suffered. She said we’ll take a vendetta. This baby who hasn’t seen the light of life yet, will kill Hamdan, and take his father’s vendetta.
Hamdan doesn’t grow up much. He chose to kill Abdul Basit as a vendetta , because he killed one of his brothers decades ago. His choice is not for nothing, but because Abdul Basit is the best of his brothers. Vendetta in some villages of Upper Egypt is similar to the sacrifice of the gods, a disadvantage for those who want to take revenge to kill a sick, disabled or old. He chooses the best men from the other family.
Rasmia labour came at dawn, and Mustafa was born orphan. She cared for his education. The interest in education began to increase among families in this period. Growing up Mustafa and entering the Faculty of Medicine at Sohag University, specializing in heart and blood vessels. He excelled in his specialty, and became a famous quickly, he had a glamour name among the province’s doctors. He married and resided in the city to be close to working at the University Hospital.
Hamdan also has a son, Saied who graduated from the College of Pharmacy two years later. Refusing to live in the city, he opened a pharmacy in the outskirts of the village to serve the villagers, because the village had never had pharmacies. They were going to a nearby village to buy medicine. Saied like Mustafa loves people and help them.
It’s a Friday, one of the weekends, Mustafa went to the village to check on his mother, visiting her.She told him the secret of his father’s death, and told him the old vendetta stream, took him to her bedroom, took out from under the bed an old Russian-made rifle. She said:
It’s time, Mustafa, to take your father’s revenge from the Hamdan family. This speech hit Mustafa’s head like a lightning bolt. Some rats of thoughts were running in his head.
What an end they put me in? Do they want me to kill?
How? And I’m the doctor who devoted himself to saving lives and hearts? But my father died. Does my father die by shooting and I relax on my life and don’t care?
While fumbling all these thoughts in his head, the thoughts were boiling , he was silent about the shock.
His mother told him, you are educated man, if you don’t like the rifle, buy yourself a new gun, lighter and better.
He went out to his car and didn’t get a word out of his mouth, he’s against murder, even if he was the killer of his father’s killer. But he had a strange feeling on his heart, which he had never felt before, that he was shocked to know of his father’s death.
Rasmia has her sorrows, whose she didn’t heal, and intertwined worries, heavy on the heart. She would like to take her husband’s vendetta, she would like the villagers to tell her son a real man, he would take his father’s vendetta.
She has a blue tusk that has not and will not be taken off, and also loves Mustafa so much and at the bottom of her heart wishing him safety and a happy future.
This dilemma in the habits of the people of Upper Egypt has made Rasmia sleepless. Since she told her son the secret, mountains of concern have accumulated on her chest.
Mustafa will refuse to take revenge, and her heart is torn apart by contradictions.
She said to herself,I was a woman who turned her heart on fire. I lost a lot of my age. I never forgot my husband.
In the morning she took the old rifle and went to Dr. Saied’s pharmacy, shooting four bullets at his chest.
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