The Village Idiot Poem by Fatima Naoot

I feel like weeping,
I really do,
A girl lost in the streets
Unable to calculate or count
Always laughing
She fills herself with the smiles of passers-by
Knows neither ridicule
Nor pity
Clasps a kitten to her bosom
And walks the streets untidy hair a tatty cloak
From her pocket
A bean pod drops
A dry crust of bread.
She swallowed
The teeth she lost laughing
As she had no mother to tell her the heat:
'The sun, sunshine'
And because an old woman at Bab al-Khalq
Told her a swallowed molar
Made another tooth grow
She did not get rid of dry crusts
And refrained from biting her nails
Until the season of teething.

She is all alone
Without family
Without friends
And people don't love her
She sings
In spite of defects
Cannot pronounce ‘esses'
A man laid her on a waterwheel
Made her pregnant of a girl
Who died
Of dry bread
She has no family. Why people don't love her?
Finally, she thinks of weeping
Yes
The village idiot feels like weeping
On your shoulder
You don't scold her
When she can't count her fingers
You don't take a peep at her thigh
When her dress shrinks
In cold weather.