House of memories

His father wasn't there, so he went out in the direction of the third room. He passed by the bathroom and in front of the door of the third room, He reached for the handle, then hesitated, then let it go and headed for the kitchen. By the light of the dilapidated refrigerator, he found half a can of tuna and the remains of a pea that was almost rotten .

He put it away and took out a loaf of bread, heated it on the stove before coating it with cheese and placing it on a plate. Then he took a cigarette out of his pocket and brought his face close to the blue flame, drawing fire. He put down the teapot and leaned against the marble of the sink, waiting for the boiling bubbles to erupt to the rhythm of regular banging coming from a nearby apartment whose owner had decided to hammer in every nail.

His memory began to fade... his childhood days appeared... before middle school... the time when he owned the spirit of the age... his first computer, the dream of life... and the Atari (2600)... excelling in his studies, especially in history, which he absorbed from his father... calm in nature in theory, even if he was dusty, as his mother describes him... gradually, cracks appeared in the pillars... he witnessed the stages of transformation... resentment... criticism and screaming for the most trivial reasons... and complete silence... during that period, he withdrew into himself... he was no longer that bright boy, his parents' only son... he faded until his color became closer to the color of the walls... colorless... you could barely distinguish him from the furniture... the days passed over him in a volcanic tension, its suffocating fumes covering the ceiling of the house... and overnight, everything ended...

His mother left quietly! The owner of the lion's wife's share in memories... despite his instinctive love, only remembering her was enough to make him grit his teeth until he broke a splinter off. The end came in a closed room. All he heard was: "If you're going to leave, forget Lucas ."

She left after that..

Nothing pulled him out of those scenes except the cheese knife, which he pushed away with his back leaning on the kitchen table. It fell to the floor with a bang, snapping him out of his reverie. He took a last drag of the cigarette, then put it out in the sink and went out carrying the cheese sandwich to the last room.

The room was dark except for the reflections of car lights on the ceiling. A small desk in front of a medium-sized closet, next to which was an antique suitcase. To the left was a huge library, its shelves lined with loads of books piled carelessly. On the floor, there was no room for the room's feet, piled high with papers. A staggering number covered the floor and walls. Papers written in ornate black handwriting from the entanglement and complexity of the lines. An abstract exhibition weighed down by ink!!.

By the window, he was as still as a rock, sitting on a wheelchair wearing faded pajamas with a robe that was olive-colored and no longer there, and his face was covered in Russian-style glasses through which he stared out at the street. He seemed completely absorbed, drunk. Lucas stood for a minute in front of the door, contemplating it before he reached for the light switch in an awkward motion and opened it. Louis jumped up and lowered his head: "no, no, no… Turn it off, Lucas ."

Then he put the glasses on his eyes for a few seconds before moving the chair back, as the room's light revealed him from the outside like a fly in a cup of milk. "Aren't you going to stop these actions?"

- "Why don't you stop looking at women? I have to marry you off ."

Louis showed no sign of humor. He moved his chair closer to the wall where a calendar was hanging. He snatched a paper with today's date on it and put it in his pocket.

Louis Al-Zahar was nothing but a middle-aged man of sixty-six, of the type whose features did not suggest that he had ever been a child. He no longer carried anything from the last cluster of his father's house. He had an unregulated obesity that had been the result of sitting for long years without moving. There was no room for black hair on his head or eyebrows. He wears antique glasses,giving his eyes the bulging eyes of a fish.

His mouth dry, cracked lips and short white hairs covering his chin like untrimmed garden grass, he has been living with his miserable situation for a long time, satisfied or so it seemed, he spoke little and was absent-minded most of the time, his monthly consumption was papers, pens and some modest meals, in addition to the Cleopatra cigarettes that he smoked like an old steam train. This condition began gradually with the decline in demand for him from school students.

After the emergence of a new generation of teachers moving between houses like bees, agile in movement, disseminating the necessary information for exams, With the fading of his name and the lack of demand for him, he began to withdraw, occupying himself with writing, rarely meeting guests or relatives, writing about everything he encountered, something like a diary, involuntary secretions, and his only pleasure was stealing glances through his close-up glasses.

His window on life and the solace of his solitude. He was accustomed to observing the lives of others, memorizing their customs and traditions, their relationships and the number of Their children, their outings and birthdays, he lives with them as one of them, following big and small things with extreme avidity, he is addicted to it and it has become his main concern, he talks passionately about various incidents he sees in the neighborhood and sometimes he is silent for days and perhaps for a whole week.

Lucas stopped trying to get him out of that state so that he does not collide with dialogues that have no hope behind them, he repeats and increases and gets angry and ruminates on his memories then calms down and is silent, he decided to let him do whatever he wants, he does not even prevent him from smoking, trying to maintain the calm chemistry of his brain.

- "What's new?" Lucas asked him.

- "Someone who has a chair like this, everything is new to him."

Lucas approached and placed the plate on his father's lap: "Okay, hit it, dad. Enjoy!" Then he reached into his pocket and took out a small box of biscuits.

Lucas put the biscuit in his robe pocket and greedily ate the sandwich, the crumbs falling from his chin as he muttered, "The dog's tail will never straighten up… Sergio the dog's tail!!"

Lucas didn't wait for an explanation. He was used to words that suddenly popped up without warning.

Lucas focused the lens where his father pointed " again Sergio!! What's the story? Until now, I don't even understand why we visited him last week... Didn't you swear that you would never look him in the eye again?".

"You boycotted him for years, and suddenly you want to visit him!!"

- His father replied "life is . . . Fleeting."