You can rest now

Houssem Ben ali

by Houssem Ben ali

Story

You feel the weight of your body sagging down further in the chair you’re sitting in. This has become the norm for you. Every time your body senses even the minute second of rest, the full weight of your body starts to pull you down, as if the gravity of the earth is also trying to pull you down, or the entire planet has doubled in size.

Your years are starting to show on you, you are now, what is usually characterized as, an older gentleman, and your dark skin has already started to show wrinkles and has lost all of its natural glow and elasticity. You are sitting in a giant conglomerate fast food chain restaurant, thousands of miles away from your home. Your eyes have lost their natural whiteness and the dark circles under them are projecting in full force your forty years of age.

You look over from where you’re sitting, and there he is, your five-year-old son, running around with the other children, a faint smile planted across his face. He looks at peace, oblivious to the decades of struggle that you and his mother have had to go through so that he can be here today, playing with his peers, with not a care in the world.

You Had to struggle since the day you were born, you were born to a poor farmer family, and your father was an illiterate man who worked the field through the entire day, all your memories of your father are a picture of this tall dark man, always bent over plowing the grounds.

You try to remember the features of your father, but the only images that are conjured up in your brain, are those of his hands, big, strong, and very rugged. The skin on your father’s hands is thick and has the same markings you would expect to see on an old tree trunk.

Growing up, you always thought that those were the markings of a real man, and so you look down to your own hands, and you notice the same markings, but less protruded, and your hands are visibly smaller than those of your fathers. Your father has worked endlessly to provide a roof over your head and put you through school, and you gained your markings by working with him in the fields in every opportunity you could get, at nights after school, or over the weekends.

After your parents have passed, you managed to pick up your life, and with the opportunity your father gave you, you managed to move thousands of miles away from home, never to be working in your field again, instead, you’re slaving over big metal engines and greasy components, and still, you had it easier. And now, you’re determined that those markings will not appear on the gentle hands of your son. For now, your son will have endlessly better opportunities than what you had.

Your father had it harder than you, and now your son will have it easier than you, and in a way, isn’t that a sign of a successful father? Isn’t that the proof, that your own father has succeeded? You feel the weight of your body pulling you down further into the chair, and you sink lower, feeling satisfied with the efforts that you have done. Your father has done enough, you have done enough.

My son must not have it as hard as I did.

© Houssem Ben ali 2023-07-28

Genres
Novels & Stories
Moods
Emotional