Orphan cow

Story 03: Orphan cow

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They were alone in this world after their mother died and their father remarried.. Fatima and Hussein miss their mother so much, they realize that she is in another world, but she feels them, and still loves them as always, their father also loves them in the past, but now he prefers their sister The youngest Aisha, although she is not an orphan like them.

At home, a quiet old cow witnessed the birth of the Fatima and Hussein and saw them grow. She was a member of the family, and she lacked nothing but speech. She understood everything that was going on around her. She attended the last moments of the mother in this life. She saw all the sorrow and tearing of the heart that refuses to stop loving, all the human suffering that before it disappears refuses to leave behind another suffering, the cow saw all this pain in the face of the dying mother, but she could not tell the children or anyone else, this was her secret .

The two youngsters used to take out the cow every morning and walk with her to the field, in fact they were following her, for she knew all the paths, she made them feel that she had somehow compensated them for their late mother, and in return they felt that, so the child's heart is his guide to the one who love.

In the middle of the day, Fatima and Hussein have reached the spring of water, and they sit by it to divide a loaf of barley bread made of bran and a little flour, there the cow approaches them and with a smart look from her, the two children understand what she wants.

Hussein splits the bread and Aisha puts it on the edge of her dress while she invites the cow to lunch.

Since the two boys shared the cow for their food, her udder became for them, and they nursed until full, and they did not care after that to find the bad couscous, which the stepmother prepared to dinner, and when Aisha asks for milk and her mother means the cow to milk it, the udder dries up and only drops, do not even fill a cup.

The stepmother was not satisfied with this situation, she hates the cow, which reminds her of the children's mother!

Soon she would repeat over her husband what she said:

"Your cow is worth nothing, it has been outdated and drunk, it must be sold."

The husband replies: "Impossible, woman, I made a promise to the deceased that I would keep it for the little ones, it is a sacred oath that I swore."

This was the husband's answer every time, and his wife did not insist on the request, but rather kept her anger and was silent, but her anger started burning more and more as she saw the two boys getting healthier and brighter despite the prevention of food from them, while her daughter Aisha was getting thinner and paler every day, so she decided to Find out the secret, she said:

"Aisha, my daughter, accompany your brother and sister and do not leave them, and make sure that you do what they do."

When the boys arrived at the spring, Hussain and Fatima took out a barley disk as usual, and Aisha took out a disk of bread made of wheat, which she ate alone, then tried to imitate her sister and offered a piece to the cow, but she turned her head away from her, so Aisha considered it stupid.

And when Hussain and Fatima were breastfeeding, and Aisha saw that, she cried out to them:

"Leave me a place between you."

"Okay," the brothers answered, "go ahead, we will leave the place for you."

The little girl advanced without fear, and as soon as she got very close to the udder, the cow hit her face with her hoof, hitting her in the eye.

Aisha screamed loudly and fell unconscious. Her two brothers rushed to her and started spraying her with water, so she woke up and started crying and crying from pain, so they carried her in a hurry to the house and the cow followed them with slow steps without being affected!

When they got home, the parents examined their daughter, and found that she had lost her eye, her face was completely swollen and her eyelids were black. The parents treated their daughter and treated the bruise for days.

The two orphans were not to blame for what happened, but the fate of the cow became unknown, what would happen to her, and Aisha with one eye became more ugly than before.

"It's a shopping day, hurry, man," said the angry wife, pointing to the cow. The husband got up, bowed his head, and at once acquiesced, and the cow walked in front of him to the market. When he reached the end of the village and the entrance to the market, he passed his hand on her as he caressed her, and suddenly he felt a shiver that passed under his hands. A sad, but clear voice knocked in his ears: "Go back to your house, for an orphaned cow has no buyer!"

The man withdrew his hand in panic, looked left and right, put his fingers in his ears, and stayed for a while not knowing what to do, then finally decided to go on.

He arrived at the place where the cattle were sold, and there he did not wait long for a buyer to come to him, but as soon as the next man opened his mouth to ask and negotiate the price, the phone came back again, shouting in a clearer voice than before: .

The man walked away in astonishment while repeating prayers, and the same was the case with everyone who went to the cow, the second, third, fourth and fifth, the strange voice was louder each time, and with the last customer the phone shouted in a decisive tone indicating impatience: "Go away, benefactors, for the orphaned cow She will never have a buyer."

People moved away from the cow in fear, and the news spread to the entire market, so everyone started whispering and talking about bringing one of the guardians or even stoning the man, and as soon as the father of the orphans heard them saying this, he fled with shame and regret.

As soon as his wife saw the cow returning with him, her voice rose with quarrels and screaming, and the cow threatened severe punishment:

"Your account will be with me from this day forward, I am Umm Aisha, whom I made a one-eyed one, and no one will want her after what you did to her."

However, the cow was indifferent, returned to its place and crouched to ruminate.

A few days later, a large black man, of ugly nature, came to the house, carrying a machete and an axe, and this man was the butcher of the neighboring village, whom Aisha's mother sent for him without her husband's knowledge.

After she gave him food, she untied the cow and took her out to the courtyard while she was dragging her and stretching her by hitting her with a stick. The husband ran away to see this. As for Hussein and Fatima, they turned pale and froze in their place, while Aisha was happy to bring the rope to her mother. The cow was waiting in confusion as to what the man would do. The huge man standing in front of her, motionless, left him tying her legs, then rushed with all his might, knocked her to the ground and tightened her neck, then asked for his dagger. Then the cow realized that it was going to be slaughtered, so it let out a terrifying mooing mixed with bitter despair that resounded throughout the house. The butcher quickly cut it off with a quick movement from him.

Hussein and Fatima fled in terror from the horror of what they saw and ran until they reached the cemetery where their mother lay, and they sat at her grave, weeping hot.

The two children did not think of returning home after what had happened, so they continued walking through the tribes and villages, and they spent the nights in the mosques.

They remained so for seven days, and the next morning, while they were walking without guidance, found that they had become close to their village, after they had crossed a path little frequented by passers-by, they were running in tattered clothes, and they were tired and their bodies had loosened, and at the bend of the road they saw their father and barely They recognized him. The father approached them while murmuring incomprehensible words. His clothes were worn out, his hair was radiant, and his eyes were stunned. He started hitting the ground with his feet as he turned around and moved his arms and shouted mockingly:

"Look at the sons of the madman, there they are, haha! The big red dagger...ha-ha, the black butcher." Then he rushed toward them and they ran off the fence of the field and closed their eyes, and after a while they looked around, and they found the father had turned away and hid among the fig trees at the slope of the hill, That was the last time they saw him.

The boys did not find the courage to return home, and preferred to limping to the field, where they took the cow every morning, to drink from the spring water and to rest from the troubles of the road.

Nothing remained of the cow except the droppings and remnants of the slaughter that the stepmother left there to vex them, and their vision awakened feelings of sadness in the two children. The remains, and two udders were revealed to her that grew out of the ground as mushrooms grow in the wilderness, Hussein knelt on his knees near his sister and began to breastfeed without hesitation, and from that day they decided to return again to their parents' house, from which no one dared to expel them.

Every morning they went out to the field as they used to and came back at night to sleep, and day after day they were recovering their strength and their stepmother noticed this, so she watched them, and discovered their secret despite their keenness to hide the two udders carefully every night, and returned the ball by sending her daughter with them, but Aisha was whenever she tried to breastfeed like her two brothers Her mouth filled with blood and pus instead of milk, and she spit it out and vomited with disgust, then she returns sick to her mother, who swears that the last word will come to her.

Aisha's tried to get rid of the udder by cutting several times, but she failed each time.

If you cut them off during the day, they would grow before nightfall, and if you cut them off at night, they would grow again in the morning.

In the end, she concluded that the solution was to burn the two udders, so she went down to the field with a red bucket in her hand:

"I want your milk or I will burn you," said the stepmother.

She bent down to the udder and bit it fiercely to withdraw the milk and see if she was obeyed. Her mouth filled with a tasteless liquid, which was neither milk nor blood, and when she was not sure of its taste, she swallowed it so that she might realize what it was and what in the end was nothing but poison.

When she did not find the taste of milk in it, she emptied the coals on the udder and began to look at it in mockery as it was burning, and when nothing was left of it but the ashes, she tried to open her mouth to speak, but the words disappeared and turned into a gasp that fell on the dead coals.

Thus, the source of evil was cut off, and Hussein and Fatima lived with their younger sister, Aisha, and they treated her kindly, and she learned to love them, so they lived together as orphans in solidarity.

And ... .....