I have a couple of friends, not too much, just two or three, that they still sticking around with me, the other is far away.
One of them is my pet, Mackneen, The Algerian Goldfinch, it has been a companion for me since childhood, it is the witness of all my 400 coups, and more my confident for my secrets, chagrins, joys, and pains, failures, and success. It was always him that shared my moments
I know, you may say that a bird doesn’t leave longer than a decade, I agree with that, since it was the parent for the pedigree or the lignée, wich I started the breeding with, so it made sense for me then, to name the following new breed after the parent’s name ; Mck I, Mck II… I had less pain and sorrow for the loss of a pet, since I always taking care of the siblings, with that time spent in a cage , taken young from the wild it became a domesticated bird, so to speak, as it grew older.
The anecdote is, sometimes, I forget the door of the cage open, while I was cleaning the cage, filling the jar of water, and the feeder box with seeds, totally absorbed by the task. At first, it made its way throughout the cage, then , to the ramage of a cherry tree, in the backyard. He stood there for a while on a branch, sleeked his feathers, clipping his claws with his beak meticulously, taking its time twiddling with his fingers and spreading his wings at large wingspan. Then , he flung to the Heaven his contented glee, as though sinning raucously its triumphal cri de coeur, a longtime contained anger between the fold of his chest; finally he got delivered. He shakes once more time his plumage, then flew back in a flight, in an atmosphere of joy that circumfused the celebration, right to threshold of the gate. He perched on the still, as a sentinel of a gate. Since then, the gage door stayed still opened. He flew now and then from there to the top of the cherry tree. When the fruits ripped, I used to climb to highest limb of the tree, to crop the fist cherry, he usually picked on it, and we disputed. I knew then it was time for harvest. He passed away few years later.
The cherry tree still blooming years after years, but the disappeared from the region, due to a savage urbanization, that changed the landscape, and it topography, of shrubbery area, of thistles seeds, its preferred food with ponds and rivulets and shady pine trees, that constituted its natural habitat, to highways, and housing projects, the sewage took place of the canals, and culverts. It was the death of a region, once called The Fahss, in the suburbs of Algiers, the Capital of Algeria.
The other friend is a book, The Legends of the Fahss, it’s sort of, The Legend of the Fall, and A River runs through it, combined into an Algerian way of life style, in the last century, that I am writing since five years, it’s a saga, I hope to finish editing it , sometimes soon, if the circumstances permitted.
The third friend is my wallet, I try to keep it well fed and happy it always gives me back when I needed the most. Like to say; what friends stand for.
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