Call for round the year submissions for Fragments in 2019

MOTHER died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the
Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP

SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could een yesterday.
The Home for Aged Persons is at Marengo, some fifty miles from Algiers. With
the two o’clock bus I should get there well before nightfall. Then I can spend the
night there, keeping the usual vigil beside the body, and be back here by tomorrow
evening. I have fixed up with my employer for two days’ leave; obviously, under the
circumstances, he couldn’t refuse. Still, I had an idea he looked annoyed, and I said,
without thinking: “Sorry, sir, but it’s not my fault, you know.”

Afterwards it struck me I needn’t have said that. I had no reason to excuse myself;
it was up to him to express his sympathy and so forth. Probably he will do so the day
after tomorrow, when he sees me in black. For the present, it’s almost as if Mother
weren’t really dead. The funeral will bring it home to me, put an official seal on it, so
to speak.

Outline

This is an excerpt from Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”

Requirements

A projector and a glass of water

Speaker bio

Musharraf Shaikh

Links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7EBDF_Ixjg