Watching Him Work

One new year eve, maybe when I was ten, I stood in silence behind my grandfather. He brought my story book, along with cans of paint and brushes. He opened the book and stopped on a page with picture of a boy and a girl wearing uniform. They walked to school, while waving their hands to their parents.

He took a pencil and started making rough lines on a white wall in front of him. He glanced back and forth between the book and the wall. It took me a while to realize that he was copying the boy and the girl on the book to the wall. I kept on watching him in silence, until I was too sleepy to stay awake and decided to go to bed.  

On the following morning, I looked at the wall and chuckled at it. There’re supposed to be little kids going to kindergarten, but my grandfather messed their faces up. He made them look way older than any five year olds.

They wore uniform with my grandfather’s favorite color: green. They smiled weirdly to their invisible parents. Their tangled fingers were holding colorful balloons.

The balloons say TK NU AL-ANSHAR.

The name of a school he built next door, over thirty years ago.  

On any other nights, I would find him doing another artsy projects for the school. Sometimes he repainted the chairs, sometimes he created hand-written sign boards, and sometimes he re-arranged the classrooms’ layout. When I wasn’t too sleepy, I would join him by watching silently and he would let me. At the following mornings, he would be sleeping and I would be awake, enjoying the master pieces he’s done during the night.

Until now, I still do love watching him work.  

It’s like he never stopped working.