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CLOTH BAG

2024-11-10 08:35:00, Kulturë Agim Xhafka

CLOTH BAG

Today I remember it with a smile, but my going to school was very dramatic. Not because there were no premises and teachers. There were, I even remember, the teachers loved us, even the school guard. But the gloom started a few days ago. And here's how it happened and here's why I can't get it out of my mind.

When I was about to start school, I was in an almost deplorable economic situation. My mother and father worked, but we were three small children, I was the oldest when I was 6 years old. Grandma and uncle lived with us. When he was a student, his father took over his scholarship. And in fact he succeeded for four years in a row. It can be seen that there was little left for books, notebooks or...for the school bag.

The opening day of the school year was approaching. In my time the doors opened on September 1st. A week ago, my father bought the books and wrapped them with the newspapers he used to get from the office. We piled them on the table in a corner and I was waiting for my bag to be brought. I didn't think of it as a lack at all, so I spent my time playing in the courtyard of the palace with a rubber ball next to 6 knobs on the bicycle Jatagani. But on the evening of August 31, I saw that I would not have my bag. As soon as he left and his uncle studied at the university, he absorbed all the money of the house.

-What about the bag? - I asked my father.

- You will do as you will do for a few days, - he said, apparently reading the newspaper.

- How? Will I hold the books in my hand?

Almost crying, my mother brought me to my grandmother's bed. In fact, it was the bed where not only she slept, but also me, my brother, and my sister. Two from the head and two from the feet. That bed was like a small dormitory for us. In the winter, when it was cold, we covered our heads and chatted under the quilt with so much energy and joy that I still can't find my happiest days since then.

-What is your pillow? - my mother asked me.

- This little one.

- Here, we'll take it tomorrow morning, - he lifted it up, removed the case, a piece like beige linen, - and oops, here we put the books, - he told me.

To my surprise, he didn't have time. That in the cast he sewed a belt slightly thicker than shoelaces and threw it in my arms. Then he took the books and filled the case. It took their form and seemed acceptable to me. I even liked it. I didn't put the pillowcase on the pillow at night. I slept without him. I was afraid of sending it and making it dirty. I wanted to brighten up the first day of school.

In the morning I grabbed her and ran to school as early as seven o'clock. No one woke me up, I didn't even take flowers with me. That my mother or father did not give it to me. They were at work. Mother as early as six, father an hour later. I was almost the first on the big football field, where the new year would start. I was wearing khaki overalls, which was the only color produced by the knitwear factory. All the children were like a team, the same. Her voice and tenderness warmed my breast. At lunch, run home straight to grandma's dish. So days passed and the cloth bag stuck to me, it harmonized with my outfit and it didn't seem special to me since many children in class were carrying such bags on their arms.

One Saturday the mother took him to wash him. The weather had cooled down and the honor was for drying inside the kitchen. On Sunday evening, I noticed that it smelled like soap, from that fifteen lekshi that smelled clean a kilometer away. But when I woke up, I saw that my head was on my grandmother's pillow. I didn't get to ask my mother explained.

- The bag, that is, the case, was taken by the grandmother. She ran to Tirana today and put some of her clothes there that she took with her.

-How am I going to go to school?

She laughed. He put a black bag on the bed. It was brilliant.

- Uncle Sofo gave it to dad yesterday. Especially about you.

Sofo, my father's friend, worked in the ambulance. At radioscopy. The bag I told him was a folder where the graphic films were inserted. I thought it was fabulous. I hugged my mother and packed the books inside. I looked like a teacher. But before the grandmother arrived from Tirana, the file was torn. The day she set foot in Korca, I met her at the bus agency. When she came, I hugged her longingly and grabbed my bag, the pillow case that she carried for me all the way to Tirana.

I entered the house, emptied my grandmother's clothes and stuffed the books inside. I was so afraid of being used as a suitcase again, so the next day when I went to school, I poured the entire bottle of paint over it. A large map was distributed. That blue spot seemed to me like a big seal that proved the bag would be mine from now on. Nobody else's.

At the end of the year, when I received the receipt, they also gave me a letter of commendation. Mom and dad rubbed my head, I rubbed the bag. That piece of cloth was my first love, my favorite toy in those times without toys./ CNA