A beheaded calf is among the sacrificial offerings enumerated in
the Bible).
My grandfather, cradling an infant's crib, departed. Navigating left
and right, far along the pavement, he reached a concrete, round, post.
There he rested, sheltered from the humid sun by peeling posters for
lachrymose Turkish films. He pushed the crib outside the penumbral
circle and waited.
Curious folks besieged the old man and his orphaned frame and then
proceeded to buy from him the salted seeds and sweets that he lay,
meticulously organised, inside the crib. My grandfather smiled at them
through sea-blue eyes, as he wrapped the purchased sweetmeats in
rustling brown paper bags.
My embarrassed uncles built for him a creaking wooden cart from
remaindered construction materials. They painted it green and mounted
it on large, thin-tyred, wheels borrowed from an ancient pram. They
attached to it a partitioned table-top confiscated from the greengrocer
down the lane. Every morning, forehead wrinkled, my grandfather would
fill the wooden compartments with various snacks and trinkets, at pains
to separate them neatly. Black sunflower seeds, white pumpkin seeds,
the salted and the sweet, tiny plastic toys bursting with candies,
whistles, and rattles.
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