Good job, Mahmoud

[عبد الرؤوف]

السَّلام عليكم

Good job, Mahmoud

Mahmoud swallowed. It was his first speech in front of the village those elections. His rivals had given speeches on varying topics, all told without once looking at their papers and without stuttering. But as soon as he tried to give his speech, the words just wouldn't come out of his mouth befittingly. With an audience intrinsically lazy, he tried to slow down and add more pauses, but that just made him sound worse and he ended up losing his train of thought. When the ordeal was over, he slunk from in front of the crowd and back to his seat in the rear end of the gathering

Good job, Mahmoud. A police officer told him. It was all too evident it was a lie but the crowd nodded approval

[عبد الرؤوف]

Mahmoud, unaccomplished

السَّلام عليكم

Mahmoud, unaccomplished

[align=justify][align=left]

Mahmoud had the feeling that no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't do anything peculiar and distinct. His initiatives to be elected mayor were mere copies of another. His thousands of words were not yet satisfactory to the villagers demands. The raw feeling in his looks was something to be ashamed of. He felt unaccomplished

And as the villagers ranted on about his old checked shirt with two buttons missing, his brown unpolished shoes and his faded blue jacket he began to realize that no matter what he's done, someone else somewhere has already noted something wrong about him. He had tried his best to create a candidacy of something [/align]prodigious, and it came out a stick figure of a worst ordeal

[/align]

[عبد الرؤوف]

Mahmoud, the special

السَّلام عليكم

Mahmoud, the special

Mahmoud the candidate was also special in appearance

He had a crumpled face with two vertical wrinkles between his incredulous eyes. He had a fringe of grizzled grey-white hair around his bald crown. His translucent lips were twitching upwards as to maintain his thick and bushy moustache and they unveiled crooked yellow teeth sat in a brownish-rimmed mouth

His right leg was obviously longer than his left, so although he was moving forward, he seemed in some such way to be moving sideways. This hobble replaced his inborn hastiness by an unbalanced amble midst mayoral campaign when rashness was, as a matter of fact, vitally needed


But Mahmoud is yet a man beaten down by old age. His whole body was worn down by so many years of hard work and had withered by time that had left him nothing but a frail layer of skin. But for him it was not too late to run for mayor

[عبد الرؤوف]

The heat of the campaign

السَّلام عليكم

[align=center]The heat of the campaign[/align]
The summer heat rained down on the village like the wheeze of Gehenna and it was scorching hot in the middle of the mayoral campaign. It was oppressively hot for Mahmoud put suitable clothes. He had ill-fitting trousers and a stained shirt undone to his navel. He chose an interlocutor but his mind went off on things he had to tell other people, then he turned back to him. He sweated and wiped a towel over his head. He shook dozen of hands and the sweat reappeared immediately. It beaded on his forehead and dripped from his chin. He spoke on the phone and chattered with people simultaneously and the force of it all made him sweat even more profusely and the salty drops invaded his eyes and trickled down his back. He wiped his forehead and then the sweat begun to break out again. The sweat soaked the clothes on his chest like a blurry picture of the village. It was also the brutal heat of the campaign

[عبد الرؤوف]

Mahmoud, The D-day

السَّلام عليكم

Mahmoud, The D-day

The D-day was approaching and the mayoral campaign remained in deadlock. Mahmoud fixed every passing resident of the village in serious gazes. He greeted them in a jarring tone, with a discordant huskiness and with a hint of a more seriousness than his frail body would suggest as if everyone of them was under his suspicion for plot then he whined his doubts out taking a deep breath that made them wonder which breath would be his last

[عبد الرؤوف]

No one voted Mahmoud

السَّلام عليكم

النَّص الأخير من قصَّة محمود

No one voted Mahmoud

No one voted Mahmoud. As his eyes skimmed the results his heart sank into his shoes. He sit there on a chair, with no strength to move. His shaky hand finally came to stop after running restlessly through his bald scalp. He bit down on his lip trying not to burst into tears. He nodded in disbelief and cleared his throat, like the whimpers were already sticking to the back of his mouth. His nose wrinkled and his lip curled and he looked around him in despair and, at the same time, his mouth flattened into a half-smile to ward off mocking gazes. It was a strange consistency, a line walked between two competing emotions

He remained quiescent, unaware of the time that passed, just starring into the abyss. His briny tears raced down his cheeks and welled in the cracks of his lips. No thoughts came to him except that his fate was sealed