Short storyThe boots [Archives:2005/807/Culture]

By Mohammed Bawazeer
For the Yemen Times
As soon as I walked into the house at six o'clock, coming from work, my wife rushed to me and said with an apparent anxiety as if disclosing a top confidential secret:

'Don't you know! The flat upstairs, I mean the flat we are under, I mean the one above us was taken yesterday by a soldier in the army'. Quietly she waited to see my reaction to this news, but I showed no concern. For a long time now I had not been giving any attention to anything that happened around me; my work was the only thing that I had time for. I had no time even for reading, my favourite hobby. My quiet and indifferent response seemed to annoy her.

'You are becoming boring these days, isn't there anything that can excite you at all?' she said.

'A new tenant! Do you think this is an exciting thing” I replied uninterestedly.

'But this tenant is a soldier in the army. They say the army soldiers tend to be tough and violent.
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