6

Dinner was at six, it would be over in two hours, the sun would not have set.

It would be soft like the inside of a seashell, and when the carbon lamps in the corners were lit, the air would still be bright. The fireflies would also shine, and a few frogs would throw themselves on the wet grass. When the evening call to prayer was called, and it was time for the fathers to return home from work, all the children would run like crazy to the dusty roads until 40 km outside the city, and then the fathers would come.

The shy mothers with long kitchen aprons and foamy hands would stay in the kitchen.

What I really want to talk about is not the games the fathers played with the children in the evenings, but the times that had little to do with them. The air created by the family fathers who watered the grass with their pale shirts resembling fish skin and their faces blurred, in a belt that had been pulled into a corner of the self for each of them.

The cool drops of water dripping onto the grass were connected to the taps coming out of the brick foundations of the houses.

The adjustment of the tips had been changed to save money, but it sprayed so long and sweetly.

This sharp hiss that keeps up with the flow and the water density not decreasing, how beautiful was the day I waited under the drops and got wet in that hot Aleppo summer. People were whipping the horses mercilessly while the chocolate-colored men who were driving the horse-drawn carriages were screaming madly on the dusty road.

The horse pulling the carriage leaves a tinkling iron sound on the asphalt and then they leave their feces in lumps. A silent car passes by and as the years pass, the cars started to run quieter. The couples are very romantic and watch the sunset hand in hand.

They are in no hurry, they walk by shuffling their feet.

The men continue walking in their long robes.

There is a summer-specific heaviness in the air on the streets of Aleppo.

In those years, there was no anarchy and terror in my country, there was no civil war, we were poor but happy.

We would not have to walk for kilometers and take refuge in the country of the Turks because of the civil war.

After a while I lie down on my bed and look at the stars, the soft cushion draws me in, my eyes slowly close, there is a star right above me, much brighter than the others, maybe it is the pole star.

Our teacher had talked a lot about this star since it showed the north in class.

That night before going to sleep, my father had asked how about going to the summer cinema.

The summer cinema consisted of a long curtain stretched between two poles in a square about five hundred meters away from our house.

The only entertainment in our ordinary lives was cinema because since our country was governed by the iron curtain, we were experiencing the black and white cinema pleasure that democratic countries experienced in the fifties in the second millennium.

We would take our iced sodas and sunflower seeds and watch the movie with great curiosity. Some of the adults would smoke hookah and pull their dresses up to their knees and cross their legs; when the women wrapped themselves in black chadors, they would lift their veils and try to see the movie more clearly. I did not like Charlie Chaplin, the indispensable actor of black and white comedy movies, and Jerry Lewis, the comedian of color movies, very much. I especially didn't like Jerry Lewis movies; he's a terrible man, I said quietly.

He's trying to impose his own culture on us.

My father said, "Look at this little guy."

"What does he know?"

Chaplin started to appear on the big screen. We're watching an ordinary scene.

Isn't he lifting women's skirts with his little cane?

He thinks he's funny.

I think this move was taken from the Benny Hill show, the famous comedian of the eighties.

My father laughed heartily at the funny scenes as always, even though he found them meaningless, laughing at these scenes had become a reflex for him; maybe he missed laughing.

Living in a country at war and spending his days in constant fear of losing his children had worn him out.

It was as if he had sensed that he had reached the cheerful side of life. I felt happy with my father's laughter.

We walked to the cinema in the light that resembled the inside of a seashell, the big men sitting in the light reflected from the screen and the smell of sweat and socks that were special to them surrounded the area because the audience who wanted to get comfortable on the wooden chair had taken their feet off their shoes.

I remembered the moment when I prayed every Friday at noon accompanied by smelly socks. On the screen, the horsemen galloping at full speed were raising a huge cloud of dust, a cowboy with a revolver on his right and left, his face was long, big teeth and thick lips, tall and hard.

As the cowboy rode on horseback, a piece of land as wide as the world stretched out behind him and he was slowly moving away.

He threw a shy look at the young girl now and slightly tilted his hat forward; he bit the tip of the branch in his mouth and then started walking towards the square from one of the streets, then the cowboy turned his feet and drew his gun with a stern look at us and fired.

After the first movie ended, there was a one-hour break and the second movie started. In the second movie, a woman was turning her head left and right in anger, she was lifting her left leg up in the air, she was also lifting her skirt up and suddenly throwing her left leg forward, and the comedian was running after her.