Sunday Story/ Sun Friend

2023-08-13 08:25:00, Opinione Agim Xhafka

I don't remember many things, but since it was a compelling story, with strong drama, I have it deeply embedded in my mind. I was 5 years old that time. Unprecedented troublemaker, that's what my grandmother called me. Until one day I alerted the whole village.

In Korça, every beginning of summer, potholes were repaired. And barrels filled with pitch were placed on top of them. A fire was put under them and when the wave stirred, they took it with large buckets and sprinkled the parts of the road that they were going to fill. Into one of these barrels, but still without fire underneath because it was morning and the workers had not yet arrived at the construction site, I, the brave of Alajdin, rode. And after two minutes the jelly that was like jelly from the warm weather stuck to my sandals. I wanted to take off one leg, put weight on the other and run down. The black bitumen first swallowed my fingers, it was sticking to my knuckles... then I started screaming. Scared, helpless, anxious and stressed. The workers arrived moments later. They grabbed me by the hips, they gave me strength to go up, but the rope wouldn't let me go. It would bite me as soon as I was forcibly lifted.

When my mother arrived, my tears and fear increased. She pulled out her hair and shouted:

- Poor me, the boy will be left without legs. It will become like Nerënxa. (It was our invalid neighbor, with a prosthetic leg.)

A passer-by suggested we light a fire under the barrel. Some boards were collected and...

- Stop the watch, - shouted the father.

It looked like he had been running and his forehead was full of sweat beads. He removed the boards with his feet and after hugging me, he knocked me down on the street along with the barrel.

- Don't be afraid, son. Now we are together.

He pointed the muzzle of the barrel there from the west, put his shirt under my head and lay down like me on the boulevard. It started:

- I will take you to Pogradec for two days. We will swim in the deep, son.

- I don't know how to swim.

- I will learn it, I promise.

- I want to write the name myself.

- I'll tell you.

He asked his mother for a pencil and paper and we started.

- This is A and G, I...

Then I started my rhyme "A little bird sits in the nest". Then we sang a lot of songs. The sun was shining on my head, but I could also see it in my father's eyes. Next I noticed that I had slipped off the barrel. I had gone out with my husband. The heat of lunch thinned the black jelly, left him toothless. The father took a beak from Jan, the neighbor on the first floor and removed the pieces around the leg as a nurse. Then he lifted me up and squeezed me tightly. Together with the mother we went home happily.

Every time this conversation was opened, it was said that the sun helped me. Without his father, he couldn't do anything. It was his wisdom that said to the sun:

- Save my son! Quick! Now!

The sun did. That a friend does not spoil a friend...