Suspicion

I closed my eyes at 25 years old and opened them at 28; anyone in my shoes would find this situation surreal.

Imagine waking up from sleep; and finding that… let's say, just three days are gone from your life, not three years. your first reaction will be to assume that people are just playing a dump prank on you. you will disbelieve them, dismissing all of it as a mere dream.

However, your mind will not rest testing all the logical possibilities. Eventually, you will calm down, then check the date on your phone through the internet, and you will be shocked, at that point, you will be thrown into stages of hallucinations, drunkenness, and colors. But in the end, you will do what anyone that wants to differentiate between dreams and reality does; you will slap yourself.

The pain you will feel will wake you up to reality, and at the end of it, you will face the three days that were lost in your life. The more time someone loses the more shocked he gets.

My mother went home and left me alone. moments later, the doctor and two nurses came in and attempted to help me sit down, but my bones felt too heavy; my brain gives the green light to a part of my body to move, but the muscles don't respond in time. The doctor confirmed that this is natural because my body hasn't moved in years and that I'll need to do rehab, which is why I'll be staying here until I'm able to walk again.

From this day, my daily schedule was simple and repetitive; my mom comes to check on me exactly at 8 in the morning, and she leaves at 9, then in the afternoon, they assist me to sit in the wheelchair to take me to a gym where I do my rehab sessions.

My body is getting better by the day, but what was bugging me in my head was the fact that my father never visited me; I asked for him countless times, but my mother claimed that she was the only one allowed to see me.

Days passed, and finally, my release date arrived, I thanked the doctors and nurses who had been kind to me and bid them farewell. My mother came to accompany me since I am still walking with crutches; you thought I awoke from a coma in a movie and could run by now? Unfortunately, this is reality.

I expected my mother to be cheerful today, but she appeared uneasy, I asked, "Why didn't my father and sister come today?"

"Your father is at the shop, and your sister is with your aunt, keeping an eye out for her,'' she replied.

My sister has down syndrome, she is 17 … I mean 20 years old, she loves me, and she means the world to me, even though she struggles to speak fluently, I completely understand what she wants to say.

The taxi dropped us off in front of the house, then we proceeded to climb the stairs, which were too narrow for two people to climb side by side.

My mother opened the door, and as soon as I took the first step in, I sensed something strange, not... just something, but many things, I feared going in farther and being shocked, so I turned to walk out, saying, "Mom, I'll go get some pills from the pharmacy and come back."

"Usman, you need to rest, and if you need anything, let me get it for you."

''Don't worry, Mom, I will be quick.''

I walked out and closed the door, and all I could think about was my father; I feel like something had happened to him, and my mother was keeping it from me.

I didn't want to put her in a tough spot by asking questions about something she had hidden from me, I thought it was better to seek the well to drink, and the well in this case is my fathers' shop where he sells old books in the old-town market.

My father is used to waking up at 5 a.m., praying in the mosque, then returning home to have some warm soup before riding his bike to the shop at the market, closing at 1 p.m., and heading home.

I'm usually still snoring in my bed when my father walks in. My alarm goes off at 2 p.m., and I wake up to see my parents and sister eating lunch. hello, hello, I go straight to the toilet... To be honest, calling this a toilet is too insulting to the real toilet; 1 square meter, squatting toilet, move here or there and you will score it in that hole.

Then I put on my clothing and go to the shop for my shift. Since the day I was kicked out of school, I've been working alongside my dad; he works the first half of the day, and I work the second.

My fourth-grade teacher was the son of a bitch who screwed up my school life. He ordered us to warp a textbook in a red casing, so I asked my father, but he got me the incorrect color, "it's fine dad, that's okay, bring me the red casing tomorrow."

I went to school without the casing that morning, and the teacher said, "Where is the casing?" I explained what had occurred to him.

"Spread your hands," he said.

"I swear, I'm not lying to you, teacher, that is really what happened."

''I said, spread your hands.''

...six hits just like that, I don't know why some teachers just need a little bit of pretext to beat up kids, you wrote the title with a red pen, not a green pen you get slapped. You wrote a point with the color snot, not the color shit, you get punched.

The conclusion was that I felt bullied since I was beaten without doing anything wrong, hence I swore to pay him back the debt as much as he gave me… with the interest.