I wouldn’t talk to her. In fact I couldn’t even bear seeing her. It all started when I was seven or eight or maybe it was earlier if my memory doesn't fail me. Yes, I am talking about my aunt, my mother’s elder sister. She used to come to our house to help with the chores, do the laundry and bake bread for my mother. This is how she earned her living. Although I was biased in my mother’s favour rather than my father’s and I have always found something fascinating in aunts I wouldn’t accept her. I think it was her looks or maybe her unkempt appearance and straggly hair I hated. I was and maybe I am still fanatic about cultured conversation and women in style. One day I went to my mother and asked for fried eggs for breakfast. But when I saw her go to my aunt, who was baking bread at that moment and ask her to fry the eggs for me, my appetite was gone. I preferred to die of hunger than eat anything prepared by her filthy hands.

She was divorced and had a five-year old daughter who was not much different from her. Whenever they came to our house I tried all means to drive them out and risked getting in an argument with my mother. Some years after her daughter died a man proposed marriage to her. She came to our house, took out a photo of her daughter and dissolved into tears. That scene would have moved everybody present to tears. Instead I wondered how a man can propose marriage to such a sloppy woman. After her second marriage she gave birth to a second daughter who was born lame.

Later and during my university studies we went back for a visit. When I saw her I felt it was time to put something right. I turned to her for the first time and said: hello Aunt! How are you? She didn’t answer for she was beside herself about that. Then she turned to my mother and said: Miriam, I can’t believe seeing him talking to me. I answered ahead of my mother: I am sorry I was a child at that time. Please forgive me. The following day she spread the news to everybody she met about the change in me. Unfortunately a couple of years later we got the sad news of her sudden death. She was not older than 45. I have no idea what has become of her lame daughter but I still feel guilty.

Bremen, 27.04.2007

Comments

Jamshid really like the story , sometimes when you see someone , you say that you don't feel comfortable to him/her , it is not hatred with it's real meaning , it is just a feeling of being not comfortable. or vice versa; you can like someone from the first sight . I don't blame you for your feelings because you were young ;may be it is unjustified hatred but you were young and you know later that you were mistaken in that , it was a sad story but may be the only good thing in it is that you asked her to forgive you and I hope that she does .

It's a very deep story, and it brought tears to my eyes. It reminds me of a poem by Erma Bombeck. The two are quite different in tone, but the endings seem to share a similarity, at least to me.

Thanks for the story, it is deep and it makes one stop and think. I think we ALL have our "aunts" in our lives. But life´s been good to you, you´ve been blessed with a chance to ask for forgiveness. I believe we miss those chances all too often. Yes, one can be angry with a kid, children can be cruel. But the man tried to fix what the kid did. I hope she did forgive you.