We waited for this driver for a long time, we were planning all the places we would go to, she would take us everywhere, she might keep us away from this hell. When she arrived she was walking strangely. At first, we thought she was shy about the new family. We were standing at the door like orphans who had finally found a mother who would adopt their dreams.
There was something strange about her gait, we dared to stare at her feet, they were normal, and her shoes seemed comfortable. It seemed to us that a fault in her feet made her walk, and not reach. She didn't limp, her feet didn't look desperate, and she was simply, very slow. We understood her reluctantly, she says that people in her country are slow in everything.
Unfortunately for her, people in our country are very fast. They drive fast, which makes death love us because we don't take up much of his time. As for them, they do not die quickly, because they drive cars as if they were walking on the graves of their loved ones.
Talking to her is a very long matter, as she listens to you very slowly because a movement in her eyes makes you slow down as if you are in prayer. And if you speak quickly, you will not be asked to repeat, and you will not be stared at like an idiot who does not understand the language of the other; But it will make you feel in a suspicious way, that you are a fool, and that you lack chivalry.
Her words are like an orange, you need to peel them, to understand them. Her anger at the slowness makes her calm herself down by herself. She cannot be easily provoked, as provocation is a characteristic of speed. Salt grains are mealtime, of course, she didn't tell me that, but the time she spends eating makes me confirm it.
As for her job as a driver; She has not been in a single car accident; This is because the road itself is not aware of her existence, and if he notices her, he will think it is a broken-down car, abandoned by its owner and died. As for the roundabout, everyone passes before her, she does not find any problem in allowing the world to pass, nothing misses her, time passes by her and he gets bored, he feels a philosophical insult from that person, what slowness? What wisdom?
As for her staying with us until this time, because she is smart, she sets off for our appointments much ahead of her time, until she arrives at the right time. She is good at waiting, she does not get tired of waiting, and even in her steps, she senses some kind of expectation.
Don't call it waiting, call it things whose time hasn't come yet. When we are tired of waiting for my mother in the car, my mother wastes time arguing with a seller for a discount of no more than two dirhams; You find her smiling at emptiness, sniffing at an annoying slowness, you might feel the urge to start a fight with her, why isn't she angered by waiting! She does not show human eagerness when an expected thing is fulfilled, for it is just something that happened at the right time.
Nothing she missed in her life but the misery of waiting. After a year of slowness, which we are accustomed to, I was sitting in my room, waiting, not knowing what to wait for, perhaps I was waiting for the life that I never had. I heard a strange running, I know the sound of my brothers' steps, I know the confusion of their steps if something to worry about happened.
As for those steps, they were running with terrifying brutality, they were howling, howling like a deer whose son was torn by hyenas, so it started running in the open, not finding God to extinguish this burning. Our driver was wailing and uttering quick words as if she were coming out of sap, and I understood reluctantly that someone had died, it was her father.
The news frightened me and shook me. Every death is an earthquake for a being who dreams of immortality, but what scared me the most was its slow slipping away. This time, I was the one who spoke slowly, hugged her slowly, and cried slowly. And she, with brutal speed, repeating the name of God, and invoking Him, spinning in the hall, with a frightening speed, frightened the reassurance of the walls. And being the only one who understood that dread, I awoke quietly the next day, and put my feet on the ground, very slowly, as slowly as one walks on the shady ground, which bears an old mine in its heart.