Les Miserables is the most memorable book I have ever read. I remember reading it when I was a thirteen-year-old boy in the Atlas Mountains in Algeria. I had borrowed the book from a neighbor. Our village did not have a library. Still, books were shared by the few learned people who had attained at most the primary studies certificate. That was how I got hold of The prince and the Pauper, The Thousand and One Nights, The Warren Commission, and several detective stories by James Hadley Chase.
I was reading the book Les Miserables in the kitchen when my mother walked in to find me crying. She inquired the reason and I told about the main character who broke the window of bakery to steal a piece of bread to feed his hungry and poor nieces and nephews only to be sentence to several years in prison.
“Son, you don’t need to look for book stories to cry about, I can tell you many from our own life here in these mountains.”
This scene of my mother and me in the kitchen will remain forever in my memory.
I was reading the book Les Miserables in the kitchen when my mother walked in to find me crying. She inquired the reason and I told about the main character who broke the window of bakery to steal a piece of bread to feed his hungry and poor nieces and nephews only to be sentence to several years in prison.
“Son, you don’t need to look for book stories to cry about, I can tell you many from our own life here in these mountains.”
This scene of my mother and me in the kitchen will remain forever in my memory.
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