Sailing Off the safe Harbor

Public domain http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:

Winslow_Homer

That’s all about: A Cap Jib: in the brisk,” Avoir le vent-en-poupe”,
in French
_a jib set on a stay to a bowsprit cap, astern._Dictionaries

Sail
I am thirsty for words
At the sole thought of writing I cuiver
When I put my pen to paper, I chiver
Off the safe harbor I leave
For when I put pen to paper,
It’s like riding a wave
Standing on a deck onboard holding a sail,
Facing the offing It’s not so facile

saddling the wind
All the frigates, all the boats,
And all the yachts

The goelands, and the seagulls, in my thoughts.
The Islands, and the seven seas,

the seashore
The gulf I need to drop my anchor
All the words I need to write,
Under the sheltering skies
The parade of the stars over my head
When I write, it’s when I’m lonely
The ocean is my deck in the open,
Sailing I am, writing is my way
With words painting them often
So, Sailing I am, off the safe harbor

Have you ever felt the brisk on you face,
the sun burning your skin,
the specks of sea-salt in your hair.
And its taste on your cracked lips;
Off the Grand Large,
the offing is bleeding,
It’s saying it low
can’t you hear it?
I’m calling you.
At a distance, a boat,
Had blown her toot.
Sailing is in the air
The ocean crushing at your feet,
standing still on the seashore
His ebb and flow,
Has skimmed his batter
in begging you.
can’t you see it!
What’s the matter with you?
what are you waiting for anyway 

If a chance was given to me, I’ll  sail away
How much I loved I have been a skipper,
You may say that I am a dreamer
Better than that, I want no more
From sailing away I won’t refrain
I thrill at thought of sailing again
I am not the only one 

“So throw off the bowlines, and Sail away from the safe harbor.” _Mark Twain

Thank you

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A source please, I thirst for writing

The Myth of Sisyphus, and me

I write from memory most of the time. So, because only now and then, that as memory speaks, when the source is withered, the rivulet is tarried, we realize that is, in reality; we gather our thoughts, to scoop a handful of water from the brackish pond  along the bedrock of the river, as I stood there for a moment. To a wisp that gathered and resumed itself to continue its route, to that singular instant of our life, so, I  got Hiraeth, it’s a feeling what you call it, a rush, I felt the Blues, the last time I went there.

The landscape of the country side had changed dramatically since then. Ago  there was a stretch of land, bosky woods, gardens, and meads, that run along the range. The scenery became  a parched bedrocks   where ago It was rivulets, the rushing waters from the spring , and shady and leafy trails, I found it had been compound   in to a magma of concrete, pods and Iron rods pointing to the sky, and dusty roads strewn with potholes that continue anywhere the asphalt had stopped without, which  lead to a labyrinth of unfinished walls, higher enough to cast shadows on other walls, that the sun could never throw it ray beam  again across the streets, and terraces, and to closed doors behind furtive shadows with oblic regard. Instead of what I had expected to find: where  are they? Those fig-trees, pomegranates, ( for instance, the small town bore its name from the proliferating trees, and fruit), vineyards and orchards, with syrupy figs, and grapes on the vines, dangling at reach of hands, and awaiting harvest,  gazebos, and wisterias  casting on the limestone wall of the houses painted in white, with the terra cotta tiled roofs, the  frutescent fragrant bushes, of lavenders, and daisies, skirted on each side of  a vicinal road,  that lead you to the blue  entry door to the house.

 

I used to wander,  a flaneur , through the laced roads that leads you hill and dale, to villages with evocative names of old Franch colonies. On each side  of the road, rows of pine trees, eucalyptus trees , and tall reed  along the rivulets that hide behind, oranges tree fields, orchards, and vineyards, so it was like rolling on a runner with perspectives that faded off to vanishing point straight ahead, to infinite View blue sky, until you reach suddenly a fork of roads, with similar rows of trees, at each sides, until it bifurcated to a small village entrance, and into its public place, where in these times of yore, dancing balls and parties where thrown each Sundays, and sweet Thursdays. Sometimes, it you take the seashore bus, it continued its way going downhill to clear up to a wide  view with sea beaches on the side, and vineyards that went grappling to the hilltops.

All that  had disappeared or in instance of escaping completely from the landscape. That what left me Sodade

Why I write? The rage at heart,  It was by accident that I came across a book from the author Albert Camus, The Myth of Sissyphus in English, at the Library, the last time I had returned some borrowed books. It’s not that, by being nostalgic upbringing the past, while I had read only The Stranger, and The Plague, it was an assignment then. And it was the near past, in the mid-60s, not that long after the accident the author died in. Therefore I had never read it before, save the passage, The Myth of Sisyphus ; it was Ok, and in the Air-du-temps, to talk about it, to have an apperception about it, to demonstrate  that you have an interesting intellectual style  and to bring the subject in a mondain conversation, the existentialism era was still in it the best of it times. Algiers was the Mecca for all the revolutionary adepts of the motto changing the world. So, the world never change since then, and all the adepts passed their way, and faded from memory. So it was by curiosity now, that I reread  it after that half a century or so had passed , to see as everywhere in the world is the same, that had endured the effects of time, wich is the natural progression and processing moment of erosion and rebuild, life and birth of all living beings and usage of things.

So, after having read the book, apart from the philosophical passages, the  most beautiful thing I have read is, Return to Tipasa, and Summer in Algiers, were it was, like anchors dropped to the port d’attache, to tie the bowlines with the seashore to be moored, for having to live again, moments by moments, and words for words, à-mesure  of the turning pages, it’s a delicate balance between the instants in wich the author discribs the scenes of where he evolved, and the pleasure to rediscover the place you already know  surely  what you have left  was the first and the same  sensations as the author had, body and soul, the changing of colors during the day, the light and the darkening of the tan of bodies the juxtaposition of one’s own experience with the shared the moments of delight and sadness and solitary confinement for a writer and to prove solidarity with him in that singular and personal attachment to both motherland.

“It took me years to take my place among the ten thousand things again. To be the woman my mother raised. To remember how she said honey and picture her particular gaze. I would suffer. I would suffer. I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn’t know where I was going until I got there.

It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods.”

What I’m Digging Right Now

The place of mine, it is called Oued-Rouman

That’s why I write. Writing is my drink, and the glass is emptied now, so it’s time to fill it up to the rim, time and again

And, yes  it is like Sisyphus, condemned by the gods of Olympia, to roll the rock to the top of the mountain, then let it roll back to the feet of hill, and push it again and again, to the top and watch it rolls down hill, then to go after back and forth, without state of mind, in resilience, to not offend the gods again

Writing, that’s all I need

It’s said, elsewhere that it doesn’t matter where you sat, and what time it is, essential  is to be ready for when inspiration strikes, you don’t miss out the train  of thought, at the  station where you are, ceise the thing and get the hell out of  it, and put  it down to  paper

on creating-the-physical-and-mental-space-to-write

Seven is enough of, for  a family members  living in a house  of 2 bedrooms, that you are always in quest of a quiet place where to read, write, and as the usual routine had absorbed your time at work, for  when you get  home, fed off  of computers you  want only to  just relax. As Mr.W. Somerset  Maugham’ quote said, to read you only need is  a secluded cocoon like, or just to shut down your ears, and cut yourself from the  world outside noises, and continue reading, like when you commute and usually do. Save that in your house, besides your  domestic duties, cook, do laundry, and errands, at the end of the  day, the only place of your  realm where  to gather yourself, thoughts, and pains parts is the little corner of the  shared sofa. It happens that I  have that little Eden,  with a imprenable  view of a safety-escape rusted iron stairway that stop right on a the asphalt of street.

It’s a nook where I have written   about all of my blogs and  posts, on my  iPad, and sometimes, my laptop, late in the  night when  the tribe  had joined the  pillows, I write for an hour  or  less –I told you  that already, It’s  mansion of  2 bedrooms, I did? Oh! Yeah, Sorry for  repeating  myself, so that’s it. At wee hours You  can see through the  curtain time flies, and season playing at seek and hide, for  your  eyes only, and a visit of whimsical bird stopping by the windowsill to read you blog? Peering atop your shoulder perhaps, than rises an eyebrow and flaps  his wings away. Good  morning  sunshine, it’s  Sunday morning, I got to sleep

Thanks for sharing reading

A True Saint

Haruki Murakami on the Weirdness of His Birthday as a Public Event

The last item on this list of public events was an announcement of the names of famous people whose birthday fell on January 12. And there among them was my own! “Novelist Haruki Murakami today celebrates his **th birthday,” the announcer said. I was only half listening, but, even so, at the sound of my own name I almost knocked over the hot kettle. “Whoa!” I cried aloud and looked around the room in disbelief. “So,” it occurred to me a few minutes later with a pang, “my birthday is not just for me any more. Now they list it as a public event.”

A public event?
Oh well, public event or not, at least at that moment some of the people throughout Japan – it was a nationwide broadcast – standing (or sitting) by their radios may have had at least some fleeting thought of me. “So, today is Haruki Murakami’s birthday, eh?” Or, “Oh, wow, Haruki Murakami’s ** years old, now too!” Or, “Hey, whaddya know, even guys like Haruki Murakami have birthdays!” In reality, though, how many people in Japan could have been up at this ridiculous pre-dawn hour listening to the radio news? Twenty or thirty thousand? And how many of those would know my name? Two or three thousand? I had absolutely no idea._extract from blog.longreads.com

Haruki Mukarami,  A leaving Legacy

” One of the side effects of the saints is that they can make the rest of us feel crummy, or even annoyed “_in Good Prose, Kidder Tracy

Also,” The list was  clearly jocular. But I had the feeling he had said something important. I thought I got it…This view of drowned farmland…was a lens on the world…”–TR

I found such singular similarities in narrative  about Saints, in reading the essay of Mr. Haruki Mukarami, and the book” Mountains beyond mountains of Kidder Tracy.

“ln any case, he seemed to think I knew exactly what he meant, and I realized, with some irritation, that I didn’t dare say anything just then, for fear of disappointing him.” So, I am in this situation as he was, save that I’m one a reader of  Haruki Mukarami

The list that Mr. Haruki Murakami is of other register of different events related to each epoch and people, but its finality is in rapport to celebrating an anniversary or a birthday of a celebrity among others names born on the same day. ” On this day is born…”

I guess, what pleased him the most is to open a “Jack London ” bottle of wine in his honor and to say: ” cheers, Mr. Haruki, and happy birthday to you

• Kalimelo

home,Unveiled

Unexpected imaginary encounter with William Langewiesche

The  Physics of Blowen Sands

To the longing for a home, not as an unspeakable grief or rage they carry in them , but merely as in their acceptance of the odds, by having fate in a better morrow. As they travel to where their camel leads them, in their pursuit of such moments of happiness gone by, a mirage of such tremendous wisp, to never give up on labor, and without a home where to cease from strife, as the day ends, The Men in Blue of the Sahara desert, whither they bake under it their bread, they make their bed of sands, and then in the night, under the sheltering sky’s,  to make from the dust of the stars a blanket, a cover to rest, and sleep to a single dream, with an image in it, a home retaken from the sands; what is real in their life fines itself down.

The Sahara is like a woman unveiled, and because of that,  the men of the desert;  while they walk with pride, and loftiness  in their pace, they always humble themselves,  to cover their face before it.

Original, below:

Expert from: Sahara unveiled A Journey Across the Desert

Unveiled2

But your house is your heritage, and you would like somehow to preserve it. As the dunes bear down on it they will collapse the walls. The defense is again the Saharan acceptance of destiny: having lost the fight against the sand, you must now invite it in. Sleeping on the sand, covering your floors with it for all these years, helped prepare you mentally. But shoveling in the sand is not enough. Your last act is to break out the windows, take off the doors, and knock holes in the roof. You allow the wind to work for you. If it succeeds, and fills your house, the walls will stand. Then in a hundred years, when the wind requires it, the dunes will drift on and uncover the village. Your descendants will bless God and his Prophet. They will not care that you were thin and poor and had no work. They will remember you as a man at peace with his world. The desert takes away but also delivers.

• Return to The Desert Extreme: An Interview with William Langewiesche
  

  ---

  Copyright © 1996 by William Langewiesche. All rights reserved

Daily Prompts: Ritual|à Mes Augusts soles of my feet|tiles-topkapi-palace-circumcision-room

http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/how-to-bring-your-voice-to-life-in-personal-essays

I tell you this not as aimless revelation but because I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: You are getting a Man* who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest other people.

*_a woman, in the text with respect to the original _Joan Didion, “In the Islands”, emphasize added

_A refreshing and quite place, that once you enter in, you’re lulled and inspired, and you left, circumcised and circonspect.

“The places you walked in once, you pass through them, as they pass though your mind, you take with you each time some dust of wonders, at the soul of your shoes, and leave there a little  of your life”_kalimelo

Primo, I embraced religion, or more precisely I would say quite so as people say, I entered in religion tip-toe-in_not like a thief, stealthy entering a church, loin-sans-fault, that is, (because there is no such church clergycal meaning in Islam,) but rather, an empty mosque, with just a few straw-stressed mats spred on a bare floor, whitewashed limestones walls, and domed-ceiling, and a minaret enclosed aside, with nothing to steal from, doors open to the winds, and always a welcome shelter for a night errant passer-by. Then, that I was painfully straight walking, to join the bunch of kids sitting on the floor, a round the Taleeb, after I had received a warmful  greetings; a Falaqat_which consists of a series of strikes on the soles of my little angel feet, with a riding crop, cut from an olive tree; it was a well-spred  practice then, a sort of mnemonic method, that a Taleeb, an Arab teacher, used ago in Algiers of Old, for  teaching  young pupils Quran, to correct them from the missing words, or even a nifty character from verses,  they forgot while they were learning the Quran, by rote.

However, as much effective  it was, so that I didn’t forget any of it after that; neither the numbers of Falaqats, nor the number of chapters of the Holy Quran; which are Sixty two chapters  and with more than a  million arabic characters. After that, I grasped  some meanings of what we call it a sense of a sin; for being forgetful, I felt guilty of stealing my self moments of escape, and having a wandering  mind. And of not being a thief, like the “Saint.” Or Arsin Lupin, the Gentleman Thief

Secondo_Just after that, followed an experience that I lived down to the skin, and it was all the same, ardently burning too, of instant pain, presently; a circumcision,  with pumps and circumstances, that had left on my little body, a lasting trace, and of being circumspect of all things, left me skeptical for the longest of my life. Trust nobody.

Solemnity obliged, the day preceding the event, we went shopping together,  my father and I, with in a shopping list in hand ; a Gondura, a sort of white traditional gown, with Chechia_a cap, and Babooshs shoes, then followed, a visit to the barber shop for a hair cut, and in the evening, when back home, a ritual coin of Henna and fist wrap that my grandma put on my hand palm, and tied it up with a scarf around. The soirée was entertained  by the Zorna group and dancers, a  music band with drums and pipes, accompanied by the strident Yuyus, shrills  of the Moselmeen women. That is, each step is a ceremonial of its own, and most of all, it was intended to divert me from thinking about the tomorrow’s awaiting event.

Grandma kept it tidy and gorgeous, an elevated little 3×3 feet-square garden, in the middle of the courtyard, the kind of ryad, a patio you find usually inside the houses in Morocco, and Spain,  which was a lounge inside doors with its charming landscape  and secrets, where luscious Cyclamens, Geraniums, Begonias, and likes, that disputed the exiguous space, with a gorgeous jasmine  vine, wisterias, where its secrecy was kept tight-waterproof  together, although the flagrant presence of a brass bowl, finely chiseled, with a couple of other terra-cotta bowls, on top of the border of the small wall, at reach of hands, but then, put there for an intended purpose. Tither, the little hands of kids like us, and adults can reach them as well, those hand of insouciant kids would be grown up by then, nevertheless they will be acquainted with the rituals soon.

Tersio_The ritual, a family secret heirloom, that I have a dull  suspicion of the existence about it, for a quite sometime now, that I recall, that my grandma was somehow the accomplice of my grandpa, in the way that she kept it, and feigned to ignore, even though, as it really existed. My grandfather who was the author of thousand circumcised kids, still, he remained above suspicion in their eyes, and of mine too, a saint with his  jovial charisma  of always. He professed  circumcisions, and was faith healer of repute,  from father to son, since passed generations. They were gifted with blessings; that they healed even animals, and concocted potions with medicinal plants for the relief of the poor; it was said that one of the earlier great-grandfather was a disciple  follower of the great Averroes, Avicenna or some great savant in the time of Al Andalusia, in Medieval Spain, that’s how they got the knowledge of things. The problem with saints, the moment of being annoyed, that is you can’ show it, but while still embarrassed, when they talk, it is considered as the intrinsic Truth as is, what they say, and that you have to take it as granted.

I was confident in fairy tales, that my grandmas recounted me by night, until I felt asleep, dreams, thus I took it for granted, until the day of a circumcision ceremony during  of which I sneaked a peek, a little by chance, and more by curiosity, to what was going on under the white bedsheet that was thrown on the lap  of the would-be circumcised boy, to cover the scene from the sights of the little cousin, who was candid enough, and all smiles to everybody; he didn’t even paid attention to what was going on under the white bed sheet, without knowing that he was at the very moment ready to be circumcised; thence, I discovered that my grandfather was the mystery instigator, under my own eyes scrutiny, I kept  wide open,  and the secret was then in to the open, too. I was terrified, suddenly my groin felt the burning cut of a razor, at the same time, the band that was playing joyfully  the Zorna an instant before,  stopped a moment to a complete silence. A word: “boqalettes” was highly uttered; game is over, the terracotta bowls full of water, that two young men were holding high, while standing aside of  the man who was siting there on a chair and holding on his lap the little cousin all the time, while my grandfather sneaked furtively a just a while under the sheet; the bowls were thrown to the ground, broken in thousand shafts,  at the same time, as the boys uttered  “boqalettes,” the circumcision was done, the music to resume forth, and the  brass bowl with some dirth in it, on top the little cut of intimate innocence, went  handed over the heads in a flight directly to the Garden of Small things. It joined the multitude neglegeable quantities of little things, subjects of passing pains,  already forgotten, in a place worth of  poetry, and watercolor paintings of the Orientalist’s Era, otherwise.

Daily Prompt: Pour Some Sugar on Me|Salt n’ Peppa’

What is your favorite sweet thing to eat? Bread pudding? Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? A smooth and creamy piece of cheesecake? 

Pour-some-sugar-on-me

I have posted this post some months ago, and I renew it here, in this time of chocolate, so indulge moderately

When I read The Daily Prompt: Pour Some Sugar on  me, I was going to write about the sweets topics and all the above: Mille-Feuilles, a French pastries , and petite salties, petits-fours gourmets I am found of, then I saw the featured image by stu_spivack in a second,  I recalled Nina Simone’s “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” song,

What It Was Like to Hear Nina Simone Live

I want a little sugar in my bowl

I want a little sweetness down in my soul

I could stand some lovin’, oh so bad

I feel so funny, I feel so sad

I said to myself : forget about the food,  I couldn’t help but  just post this video as is, http://www.last.fm/music/Nina+Simone/_/I+Want+a+Little+Sugar+in+My+Bowl http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rqU9LKA83Yc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLyk7Jst9Bk&list=RDrqU9LKA83Yc

A little treat for myself, it’s mon Peché-Mignion, that’s  what I wanted to share with you, first,  so I grabbed a Mille-Feuilles, an Eclair-aux-chocolat, at a French bakery at the corner of the street,  and some petit-salés, with a bottle of champagne Moêt et Chandon, (these are traits from France,) where she lived for many years, and I sat back and listened to Nina Simone, but  you don’t have to, so listen you proper music if you don’t like Jazz, and please indulge delightfully.

But then I got that bitter-sweet taste heft in the palate, when I got to read the Longreads post: What it was like to hear Nina Simone Live?

http://blog.longreads.com/2014/08/06/what-it-was-like-to-hear-nina-simone-live/   http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/raised-voice?src=longreads

But wait! There is more to it, I just read this http://nyti.ms/1FsNLNj that I want to share it with you, for the time being too, it’s on Tweeter, I feel not so funny, but so sad

Tranquil Toughts

 

Yesterday, it was Super Bowl Weekend, in the City, 34 st, It was crowded like crazy, then I woke up this morning, outside it was lovely, cool, snow falling on Brooklyn, and the branches, wires and street side-walks were sawing as the snowflakes piled up on them, I have read a Blog of Someone  complaining about the weather down there in Florida, then I got a gleam of this following passage on my mind, of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”:

There are days wich occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, when the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth make a harmony , as, if nature would indulge her offsprings; when in the bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that  we,have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shinning hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sigh of satisfaction and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts.”

Global warming, climate change… who cares. Tranquil thought

The Next Great Idea|Threshold

To muse, and not to mull, rather than slogging through the usual staid topics en route to the research frontier, for writing I use to draw upon my imagination, till I got the next idea .

“The Sentry Clause:

Participles.

_Initial participle &co.

Before we are allowed to enter, we are challenged by the sentry, being a participle or some equivalent posted in advance to secure that our interview with the C.O. (or subject of sentence) shall not take place without  due ceremony."

in “Good Prose”, by  Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd

“_see Fowler”

Courtesy to the writer and the author, cited above, both of them, with permission; credit is where credit is due

Cutty-sark-and-the-semi-colon

“At a wee hour; and just before that dawn, at the threshold of a new day, it will break in to a thousand suns…I was looking for some quotes, reviews and excerpts  and the like, from new releases-the usual warp-and-weft-to shape up my blog, I stepped out for a coffee; I like the aroma of hazelnut and vanilla that fills the street up to my window, from the café next door when it starts brewing, then when I rehashed to open the door of the café I came across the placard pined to the pane of the windowsills;” Sorry, out for 10m, be back soon”, I got the next idea to write this post”_Kalimelo

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/threshold/ or, how to escape the grammar policy http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/25/escape-grammar-police/

Because we need  a thousand words to say what an image would say in one: an image worth a thousand words; the challenge, to say it in one word, by the Sentry at the threshold of a sentence

 

So I stood  for a moment  Speachless|Writing This week Post; it is a must, voilà!

“Dare you come back for a little Dickens” Late Show, Letterman

A Lone writer|snapshot-stories

The Lone Writer

Taking the slow road, and The Road less traveled

Memory-on-the-menu:

Memories, Speaks_Vladimir Nabokov

_Chalk, Ardoise*, Violet Ink, Fountain Pens, Pencils, stained fingers, Falaqat*, and the like…

 * a flagellation on the sole of my feet! with a long, and thin stick crop from a limb of an olive-tree,  wich I still remember till to today.

_a quick mnemonic method of no harm, used a longtime  ago, by a Taleb, a teacher of sort, for teaching kids the Koran, in Algiers of old. Usually the momentarily little burning on the little soles, it passed  a little while after it was flicked, but the learning of the Koran by rote will last forever. Similarly  to that a method, in Zen Buddhism teachings_  Bashõ, the Zen Master used ago his stick to strike a naïve monk, for  to let him remember his scriptures, it is called Satori. See Zen in Japanese Culture_Suzuki

"The more I read, the more I am itching with words for writing, " 
_G. Flaubert

“You must learn some of my philosophy. Think of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.” _Jane Austen

Then, it was unthinkable for me, of such thing to be on affair with writing; a would be-writer, some forty years ago. Because, it was an affair.

Ardoise 
 noun ar·doise \ärˈdwäz\
  : A slate, a stone cut, of a grayish purple that is stronger than 
telegraph blue, bluer and deeper than mauve gray, and bluer 
and paler than average rose mauve, used for handwriting with a piece 
of chalk, for initiating children in Pre-k,in those golden years

The first time when I started doodling Arabic calligraphy with a piece chalk on a slate; it didn’t occur to me then, nor having the slightest thought to be one day a writer,  rather I was in awe before the white chalk handwritings on a blackboard, that I rewrote meticulously on my slate tablet, at first, then on a double-ruled lines handbook, later on, like any other kid on my age, a longtime ago, at the madrassa of the small village, where I spent the precious years of my childhood.