Flying in the cloud

She once asked what his childhood short name was. He said: “Soma”.

“May I call you Soma?” asked Nina. She wanted to caress him somehow despite of the distance between them! As she couldn’t touch him with her hands, she could at least caress him with words, intonation, with the name his mother called him.

It was a maternal feeling in Nina, because he was a very young boy of eighteen years, and she was more than mature…it was even scary to say it out loud, she was fifty-four.

In addition, this void that divided them, this abyss of time seemed to her to be an irreparable misfortune, a black hole into which she was slowly and steadily falling.

Until then Nina was proud of her age, the fact that she was already a mother and even a grandmother, that she had succeeded in life and had a lot of victories in her artistic and professional lives, and, most importantly, the way she looked (forty years, no one could have given more).

However, now her age seemed to be a curse. She actually deleted her age from all her social media pages leaving only the day and the month.

How did that happen to her? Was it due to loneliness that she fell in love like a girl? No! There was someone beside her.

It was a man with whom she lived together for nine years. He was also younger than her, but the gap wasn’t that huge.

Their common friend have never even noticed the difference. Lately, Nina even started looking younger. She noticed it while looking through their photos. It was just that he became bald with years, and had a beer belly, though he was still full of energy and, like all southern men, was a great lover.

So how did this boy appear in her life?

"…So much time has passed. Aladdin has turned fifteen. And once, when he was playing with other boys, as usual, a dervish, a wandering monk, approached them. He looked at Aladdin and said to himself: “He’s the one I’m looking for. I’ve been through a lot of misery, before finally finding him.”

This dervish was maghribian of the Maghreb. He called one of the boys with the gesture of his hand and asked him who Aladdin was and who was his father. He then approached Aladdin and said to him: “Aren’t you the son of Hassan?”

“I am,” replied Aladdin…”

“The magic lamp of Aladdin”. It was Nina’s favourite fairy tale. The name of this tale always made her heart beat faster and awakened her imagination, and she started feeling somewhat hot in her chest… Nina even wrote a poem about the feeling.

It’s worth mentioning that she wrote poems from time to time about the most powerful and important feelings, since she was used to writing for a newspaper, when she studied in an art college.

In the land of winds and snow
Where nights are dark and damp
My heart warms up with the glow
Of Aladdin’s magic lamp
As the Genie waits to serve me,
Make my wishes come alive
Eastern winds are gently blowing
And the land begins to thrive,
And to touch the flow of cashmere
You just need to make a step.
All the happiness is near
With Aladdin’s magic lamp.

And this “happiness” suddenly fell on her head, and Aladdin appeared in her life, though under a different name, but very close to this fabulous character in age. An eastern boy from a distant Arab country… As if on a magic carpet, he flew into her calm and measured world.

Nina had never enjoyed hanging out in social networks, although she did have several accounts there. She visited them from time to time to chat with family and friends and strictly for business matters.

However, the time had come and the issue of the increase of sales was raised in her company, so it was decided that all employees had to create personal business groups in popular social networks for product promotion.

Nina decided to go for Facebook. To do this, she started a personal page there and created a business group. In her profile she posted several photos of her and interesting posts. Then it began!

As if from the Horn of plenty, a lot of friend requests started coming to her page, mostly from men Arab and Turk.

At the beginning, Nina welcomed all, remembering her goal: to fill the group with subscribers.

She soon noticed, however, that among those men who had sent her requests, were a lot of anxious youngsters with hormones “blowing the roof” and explicit maniacs with improper proposals and photos, as well as Internet scammers trying to involve mature women into emotional relationships and then stealing their money.

Nina quickly figured out “Who is who” and ignored such proposals, blocking the most shameless and pushy of them.

The boy had also sent her a friend request and Nina pressed the “confirm” button without even looking. After some time, she received a saucy message from him. Nina did not respond. When he sent improper messages several more times, she automatically removed him from the friends list.

But the boy didn’t give up and continued sending her provocative photos and messages. Before finally blocking him, Nina decided to look through his profile.

She attentively examined the young face on his avatar photo. His big sad eyes were as if looking into her soul. Nina was somewhat hurt by his look. In his eyes there was purity and pain.

Yes, indeed, there was purity, in spite of his indecent messages. But the pain-why? How can there be pain at such a young age?

Nina read his personal info: eighteen years old, studies in college, lives in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Nina somehow didn’t expect him to be from Egypt.

It immediately reminded her of the Golden mask of Tutankhamun, which she saw in reality, many years ago in St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad), where an exhibition of art objects from the tomb of this pharaoh was hosted, brought from Cairo Museum.

Nina, then being a schoolgirl, stood in front of the mask and was amazed by the beauty and detachment of the boy-pharaoh’s face. She suddenly felt as if his face became alive and started changing its expression in the blinding glare of gold.

His almond eyes were staring at her…

Then she read about him all that she could find.

It struck her that he had died at the age of nineteen, a wreath of field-flowers was found in his tomb, and then almost all the scientists involved in the opening of the tomb died shortly afterwards…

What amused Nina the most were the details of the wreath: it was a small wreath laid on the forehead of the golden funerary mask of the pharaoh.

It consisted of leaves and flowers of cornflower, fruits of poppy, and fruit of the mandragora, all of which contributed to the pharaoh’s libido during his lifetime.

They were the flowers of love, laid on the coffin by his young widow, Ankhesenamun, who, by the way, was the daughter of Nefertiti.

Ankhesenamun believed that she will meet her husband again in the afterlife and therefore she wanted him to want her alone even there…

While Nina was thinking about Tutankhamun, she continued looking through the photos on the boy’s page. His name Ismael was of Muslim origin, he had a beautiful white face, dark curly hair and expressive brown eyes.

And one more detail: a small mole above his upper lip. It made his face look more tender and Nina had never seen a young man with such moles.

There were a lot of photos where he was depicted both alone and with his friends, dark-skinned Egyptian teens, in his profile. Nevertheless, he was so different from them! His whole appearance was full of some nobility and depth.

All the innocence and purity was mixed with maturity and pain in his appearance.

Apart from his personal ones, there were many photos of famous football players and football teams in his profile. Remembering his horny messages, Nina decided that this boy was only interested in football and sex.

She was ready to press the “block” button, but changed her mind and wrote him a message.