Secret Son

Начало книги

THE RAIN CAME UNEXPECTEDLY, after nearly three years of drought. In those days, Youssef still lived with his mother in a whitewashed house that huddled with others like it along a narrow dirt road. The house had one room with no windows, and a roof made of corrugated tin held down by rocks. The yard, where his mother did the cooking and the washing, was open to the sky. It was in the yard that she cleaned the sheep hides she took in on the day of Eid, and there Youssef received the rare friends who came to visit. The front door was painted blue, but over the years rust had eaten its edges, turning them reddish brown, so that holes had begun to appear at each of the four corners.

They were having lunch when it began to drizzle, the thin raindrops making craters as they landed on the fava bean soup. Youssef’s mother looked up at the sky for a few surprised seconds, and then, as though a spark had ignited inside her, she jumped to her feet, grabbed the soup pot by its ears, and took it to the bedroom. Youssef’s first thought was of the framed black-and-white picture of his father, which hung on the yard wall, above the divan. He took it inside, wiping the raindrops off the glass with the hem of his shirt. His father gazed back at him — a young man in his twenties, in a dark suit and gray tie, with his hair combed back neatly, as if he were on his way to an important appointment. His smile was timid, or perhaps reluctant; Youssef had never been able to tell. He left the picture next to his bed and went back outside.

Читать дальше →