"The bigs"

Shabab

“The bigs” (older cousins), as we called them, were so separate to us with their own world that they only shared with us when the age gap was no longer a subject. They were the great grandchildren who got to see the great-grandparents. I came to life with them being adults, and my great grand-parents being characters who were told to us in the forms of reminiscent stories.

After coming home from Hamdan center with bags of video tapes and new Nintendo games, the boys made us watch WWF (World Wrestling Federation) every Wednesday night. They explained the fight beforehand and told us that we had to watch wrestling in case we ever got caught up in some sort of fight. All we wanted is for them to finish using the TV in the room where me and my girl cousins pretended to be the Spice Girls.
Thursdays would usually entail us all going to the souq next door, and all of us buying almost the same things. We went back to the house and split into teams, overtook the women's Majlis in Baba Yousifs house, and resold our toys - and everything else we could put our hands on - to each other with pretend money. Before I would leave, my cousin Aziz would get his battery charged car and park right outside the Majlis; he would take me back to the main house with my new sales, and buys.

Image created by Munira Al Sayegh for her FIND story Steel Gate