Inside the Patos Orchard

by Mohammad Skati

The Patos Orchard was a place where I spent most of my childhood with my playmates at that time . It was not far from our house and from my old school too a long,long time ago . I used to play with my all friends over there ... The Patos Orchard was a big spot that contained a lot of old houses,tin houses ,and the landlord's palace which they used to call it " the Saa'da Palace" at that time ... It was a long ,long time ago when the poor people,the pooe peasants,and the cameleers who used to keep their camels inside their long-ceiling houses ... The Patos Orchard was a spot where all kinds of people used to live over there .... I am not too old to remember all those stories about the above-mentioned place,but senior people like my grandfather and some other people used to talk about that place and about its landlord ... They told us about that luxurious life that the Saa'da palace's owner had lived it with his folks ... There was abject poverty at that time where those poor people had lived a very hard life .The owner had lived luxuriously with his family and his friends while the rest of people were in bad situations ... It was very,very hard times where people suffered from hunger and from other things just to survive ... There were no streets or clear roads towrds the Patos Orchard ,but it was that huge landsscape in front of the well-known palace at that time ... The landlord used to look at people in front of his palace and through his windows' glass panes to see if they were working or not and so forth ... The senior people used to narrate a lot of stories about that landlord and his luxurious life,but all secretly ... The poor people were on one side and the landlord was on the other side ... He never ,but a little bit cared about them ... People suffered from famines and from different diseases ... As for me ,as I said that I heard from grandfather-who passed away twenty-three years ago - who told about that life which people encountered at that time ... In addition to that they said the landlord's palace got haunted by genii or something like those and a result all occupants had left for ever and ever ... Later on and after a long dispute about it they made their mind to level that palace into the ground and to have a school in its place ... It was ,in fact , a myth that nobody could solve what happened to that palace in the Patos Orchard ... As kids , we did not care ,at the last days of our childhood , about anything other than to play over there ... Nowadays there is no Patos Orchard or the Saa'da Palace simply because they got replaced by a modern-style school ... That's what happened to the Patos Orchard and the Saa'da Palace ... I think a few people know about that story simply because the modern life has made people caring about other issues ... _______________________________________________________________


Rate this submission

Characters:
Dialogue:
Plot:
Wording:

You must be logged in to rate submissions


Loading Comments