Khaoula E.’s Comments (group member since Aug 13, 2014)

Khaoula E.’s comments from the iWrite group.

Stan wrote: "Khaoula, you are mixing your tenses in one paragraph, a big no-no."

Thank you Stan, I very much appreciate your feedback. I do have a tendency to mix up my tenses, and I'm glad you caught that. I'll be more careful.

This is a kind of a prologue for a collection of stories I'm working on. Please let me know what you think. Thank you :)


He was sitting there in silence contemplating the world around him. A world that became all silence with only occasional hums and noises. He never loses track of time though; he's a person of habit. He goes through his routine every day, in silence.

At night after dinner, he likes to watch the TV, always the same channel on. He watches in complete silence trying to make sense of what he sees until he's tired and then he makes his way for his bed upstairs, always in silence.

His life is not as miserable as it seems. There is life around him; he just doesn't seem to always get a grip of it.
He lives in a full house; a wife, two of his youngest daughters and a dog that he hates. The other children visit regularly with their kids. They basically run an open house; they host a family lunch every Friday and all kinds of special family events.

And still it seems like he's in another world.

The last time he heard a proper conversation was... He doesn't even remember. It's been too long; he even forgot how his wife’s voice sounds like anymore. It used to bother him; not being able to listen to his children, losing the ability to talk normally and have conversations. Not being able to know what's going on in the world unless someone shouts a lot of inexplicable words in his ear. Even the small things that he barely used to notice seem to make a difference now, like birds singing, listening to music and hearing people laugh. Even now it still brothers him sometimes, but it's been too long to let himself dwell on that.

For more than 12 years his life had been the same. Waking up for morning prayer, going downstairs for breakfast (bread and coffee with milk) and then going out to run an errand accompanied with his older daughter. The errands usually are either going to the market or to the bank.

After praying, lunch should be served, otherwise he gets very upset. He developed a short temper through the years, when it comes to waiting. In the afternoon he usually takes a nap before praying and then drinking a cup of green tea. After that he just sits around and watches the TV until dinner time. Dinner also has to be served on time after the last prayer so that he can go to sleep and end his day.

It seems like a simple boring day. And sometimes it is. Sometimes his mind wanders to far places, to the other worlds he lived in; to the other person he was. The lively hard working man he used to be. Maybe life beat him, maybe his disability did. Whatever it was it came between him and that person he was.

Sometimes he didn’t mind.

He was tired of holding to that controlling father he was, long he was gone. Now he cares and prays for them; that’s as far as he can go. They were independent and they let him know it.
Now most of them were married with kids. He has four daughters and one son. Three of them are married with different numbers of children and the other two are still in the house, as a burden sometimes he thinks.

When there are too many people in the house he can feel the noise without hearing it, that's why he prefers to usually just stay in his room, praying or reading.
Sometimes he blames himself for his failing ears, sometimes he blames his old job. It depends on his mood.
He was 85 years old. A long stretched life was behind him. A lot of times he just sits around remembering every bit of it, sometimes even he thinks how he could have done things differently. But it is too late now. His life is gone, everything is done. All was left is him with all the memories.

His life was decent. He was an honest and wise man, and that showed in his way of talking and dealing with different situations. He was also a stubborn man, a little bit hard to deal with sometimes. But his family members are used to that, even his sons-in-law got used to it after a while.