The winters of Boumerdes

There was an evening I was sitting next to my dad while drawing one of my silly illustrations as usual. He had his bare feet on the table. His right foot was resting on his left foot and they looked rough. They looked so rough I had to check on him. “Baba, why are your feet so rough?”, I asked. He answered: “Well my son this is from the winters of Boumerdes, let me tell you how they became this way.”

“I was 8 years old and it was winter in Boumerdes. The winters in Boumerdes can be unpleasantly cold. So the (number) of us grew up destitute, living in a home 6 by 6 meters. I got up every morning and walked myself to school. I didn’t own any pair of shoes, I was already pleased I had some clothes I could wear for weeks. I walked on any type of road on my bare feet. Mud, gravel, asphalt, nothing I haven’t walked on. Every time my feet got wet after my hike to school. It was that cold, my feet started freezing. It was even more painful after every step I took. When I finally got there, I had no more feeling in my feet. I spent the first two hours of class, “ *his eyes teared up*, “with my knees to my chest trying to warm my feet while crying. This went on and on until the end of the unbearable winter of Boumerdes.“

“The summers were hot but the winters in Boumerdes were bitter, my boy…“