Short Story: Bouza in Sour 🍦

In the summer of 1993, my mom was very pregnant with my brother Hassan. Hot, uncomfortable, and routinely sending six-year-old me down our five-story building to get her something sweet.

We lived in Sour, and if you know anything about the city, you know it is hot and humid in the summer.

To top it off, our elevator was broken.

Mama was not big on food at the time, but she had one exception:

Sweets.

Losing power in Lebanon was normal. Sometimes the stairwell was completely dark.

None of that stopped us.

My brother Ahmad and I always flew down those stairs so fast it looked like we were gliding.

One afternoon, my mom handed me two 500-lira coins.

“Go get two ice cream cones from Souhail.”

Two coins.
Two cones.
Two hands.

Easy.

One was definitely mine.

I was thinking about it all the way down.

I fly down the five floors in flip-flops and cross the street.

One side of the street, done.

Six-year-old me, with a thick braid and an even thicker headband, stops in the middle.

Looks left.

Then right.

Then I cross to the other side.

I grab a cone in each hand.

And now…

It was time for the hardest part.

Getting back before the heat of Sour melted my precious ice cream.

Two tiny hands with red nail polish holding two ice cream cones still.

I had to be fast enough that the ice cream didn’t melt and careful enough that I didn’t drop either cone.

When I finally handed Mama hers, I could see the relief on her face.

She was sitting by the veranda with the fan on her, waiting for the sound of my flip-flops coming up the stairs.

“I knew you could do it… Farah el Shatoora.”

Or at least that’s what my little brain thought.

And yes, I was doing it for my overheated, very pregnant mother.

But I was happily doing it for me too.

Because one of those cones was mine.

I could already feel the cool ice cream inside my chest and the sweetness going up my cheeks on my way down.

Picture two ice cream cones replacing my pupils.

That reward was all I could see.

Maybe that’s why it never felt like discipline.

Because it really wasn’t.

There was ice cream waiting for me at the end, and I wanted it badly enough to make the climb.

But 33 years later, the ice cream isn’t really what I remember.

I remember Souhail across the street.

I remember our building.

The dark stairwell.

My flip-flops hitting the stairs.

Mama sitting by the veranda with the fan blowing on her, waiting for me to come back.

That’s the thing about Sour.

So many of my memories there were ordinary while I was living them.

I didn’t know I was supposed to hold on to them.

Now I do.