The Nice Thing About Strangers
Creative Non-Fiction Short Stories. :) Travel, Oldsters, Love, and Compassion.
Siblings and ‘Staches
The youngest child of a huge family is drinking Ayran, a beverage made of yogurt and water, as far as I can tell. She is at a table packed with siblings, elbow to elbow, eating their lunch hurriedly at a sidewalk café in the early afternoon. The girl spills a few drops of her drink into her lap. Her eyes widen and she looks left to right like a character in a cartoon. When she notices that no one has noticed, she pats the spots in her lap, soaking them into her slacks, then wipes her hand on a napkin before another sip.
She wears a white mustache from her drink. Her slightly older brother is standing at the head of the table and gestures to her. She beams at him, raising the yogurt mustache in an upward turn. It seems he wants to tell her about her accessory without everyone at the table noticing, and they continue a helpless game of charades until she begins to shadow his movements. He holds a napkin to his mouth. She does as well. Then she realizes her upper lip is wet and she laughs. He winks at her and they carry on as siblings do.
–Izmir, Turkey
My little brother put the mustache on the monkey. 🙂 Now the monkey travels with me so I always have my brother (relatively) close.
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The Nice Thing About Strangers 