Once Upon a Time — My Truth

Could it be a regression or an unnatural journey?

Self

In my writing about family members and their misgivings as I perceived them growing in the shadow of their anger, I chronicle history and its shaming effects they impose. Yet, I write about my family with a sense of trepidation, an act of laying bare their shortcomings as I saw them through younger eyes. But I can tell you this: I know my family’s anger and violence intimately.

And this is the story

On this one Saturday morning, I sat in front of our house. Overhead in the enormous sky, birds fluttered their wings and twitted. Insects, attracted by my moist skin, flew against me with a loud buzz and a cutting force. The hot sun was beginning to climb above the palm trees that lined either side of the narrow road that led to our house, and the air grew warm. These tall date palms had trunks surrounded from the ground upward in a spiral pattern. Their tops held more than a thousand dates that matured from yellow to reddish-brown.

My uncle

Suddenly, his lean and wiry body appeared in my view, striding down the road toward our house. He wore baggy pants and shoes encrusted with dry sand. A sheen of sweat lay upon his face and wisps of his curly hair pasted to his forehead. My uncle had eyebrows…