bed time: "The Story of a Monkey"

EarthQuaker asked me -very politely- to tell him another story after he had read AL-Sultan Sulaiman story that I wrote back in July (when I had a lot of free time). and I suddenly shifted -after his polite request- from writing about Kuwait City, the building codes and integration (I hope my T.As never read this) to "The Story of a Monkey" (!)

I hope this will make you sleep faster Mr.EarthQuaker ;)



Once upon a time there was a giant sad monkey who used to be in a circus, but the circus couldn’t afford his transportation so they just left him on the road. The monkey was sitting lonely down a big cliff, he was crying out loud creating a symphony of echoes and queer sounds. He was a very huge monkey that he can’t feel good without any attention to his presence. All of a sudden, he saw little colorful bubbles floating down the cliff that made the monkey puzzled! ___ But he wasn’t a second! They were little ants going down the cliff by little bubble gum balloons! He was happy to find living creatures in this rural area and they greeted him while passing by his wide eyes.

“Hello dear ants” said the monkey in a theatrical way. The ants were whispering with giggles and amusement “oh he is the famous monkey….. O I loved his shows…… remember when he lifted a bench with the audience sitting on! He is the greatest!”
The monkey felt satisfied by those pride-filling whispers and thought he should do them a little “humble” show, so he told them “little ants.. Little ants I will be condemned with shame if I didn’t climb this high cliff with my meek hands but by a spirit weighs mountains and skies!” the ants now formed a half circle and set themselves into an event mode, he afterwards stepped into some rocky steps and began to climb gracefully, he can hear the ants’ cheers very clearly from his big wide ears but as he got higher he began to hear a voice from inside the wall of the cliff it was a very heavy voice that can cause the rocky cliff to vibrate a little. The monkey was worried about this sound, but it slowly got quiet so he forgot about it. The cliff was very high so he climbed…. climbed……. climbed until it got pretty dark. Suddenly his fingers touched a soft surface, he touched it thoroughly, and it was grass! He was so happy to reach a flat land eventually. “Eh a___h humph oh’oh a___h” he did the final moves of a long climbing journey by standing up. Then slipping down!!!
For the cliff wasn’t exactly followed by a flat land. Instead the monkey fell down in his first step on the new land he reached, he couldn’t see what was ahead of him for it was so dark by then. After reaching the sandy ground, he recognized the sound he was hearing while climbing, it was …snoring!
He opened his eyes when he heard no more of snoring. He found no one around! Only him, and the big wide hole he was in. so he wanted to reach a higher horizon to see where exactly he was. But he walked very funny on the ground that he looked as if he was dancing. “Hey what’s the problem with this ground?” he mumbled. So as he wondering, he saw that the ground was not from sand neither from one single material. It was a queer configuration of ground that seemed like different colorful rugs sewed or piled together in one place. There was leather, wool, soft, bouncy, rough and smooth. The monkey was mystified, what is this place “where am I?” he shouted, soon he got many answers from his own voice “HERE I AM!”, he was scared because it felt as if someone was replying to him so he shouted in a lower sound “I don’t understand!!”, then the echo came to him “UNDER..UNDER”. There was something wrong with this echo, it wasn’t normal and the monkey was clever enough to know that. When the echo replied UNDER, he began to try searching under the rug-like ground. As soon as his face got closer to the ground (he was tall you see) he heard that the ground was breathing, and there were sewing marks everywhere, but he couldn’t find the initial knot. He then, started following the marks until he found it. He released the knot and tried to pull the thread out of the weird ground and all at once it began to look bumpy soon he realized that animals with abnormal sizes were getting out from the ground and he understood that he was walking all along this place on those animals’ backs. He then heard a beautiful voice from under his feet; he looked down to find a tiny elephant.
“You are a life saver, we shall never forget you” the elephant said “there used to be a grumpy king to rule over this area and there was a great award to any person who can make him smile, there was a young man who found our land so he diluted the water of our lake by a sleeping solution. In one day all of us were sleeping in the lake that got dry with time after we had to drink from it as usual and fell a sleep inside it one by one. He sewed us together with one thread and this created weird echoes because of our different surfaces, and also a nice dancing stage. At night he brought the king and let the lights only on him standing inside the dry lake and he began to sing and dance he looked so funny in that bizarre performance that made the king laugh from all his heart.” The elephant said in a serious voice then continued “The young man got his award and forgot all about us” and after a sigh of relief he said: “until you came and released us, thank you very much”.
“You’re welcome, but you cannot live here any longer your lake is dry and you may be deceived once again if you remained in one place” said the monkey who began to have some new thoughts.
“What shall we do then?” asked the elephant.
“I used to live with humans and they hired me to make people laugh by doing simple moves in a place called circus, I am the only giant monkey in the world and this made them laugh, I don’t know why, but the humans got money to make people laugh so that they can give us food.” He wondered a bit then continued “I traveled all around the world it was a very beautiful life”

“Lets do our own circus!”

Some years later if you ask any person about the best circus you ever attended they will definitely tell you “The Queer Animals Circus”