Lullaby
At around 6:00 PM, just as the weather would start to cool, we would all line up by the window, waiting to hear the familiar tune of his cheap plastic pan-pipe; tooorut, rutooot, toorut, rutooot.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t really a tune, it was just the highs and lows produced as his lips would quickly graze over the plastic pan-pipe from left to right then from right to left, over and over again, interrupted every now and then by “Sha3rrrrrrrrr Il Banaaaaaaaaat! Yalla ya wlad, sha3rrrrr il banaaaaaaat!”
To our little ears though, it was the sweetest tune in the universe.
Excited to see him with his stick of cotton candy, we would run outside, our sweaty palms stinking like metal coins, and we would circle around him trying to bargain the highest quantity of little plastic bags that our coins could buy. Then we would sit on the sidewalk outside Teta’s house, silent and still for a few precious minutes, enjoying the soft cotton candy as it melted into our tongues, amusing at how the pale color would turn bright and hard as soon as it touched our mouths.
Baya3 Sha3er Il Banat eventually stopped coming to Shmesani, as did Baya3 il Dorayeh and Baya3 Il-Fusto2 Il 7alabi. I don’t know why they all stopped coming.
I do know though, that for many, many years, Baya3 Sha3er Il Banat’s tune would signal my favorite time of the day.
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