56. WAS THAT A PREMONITION?

I had slept for some time, one night, I guess, then suddenly I got up and hurried to dad’s room nearby, asking for matchbox. My dad awoke and was amazed to see me asking for matchbox as it was still midnight, and untimely. He asked why I wanted one, and I told him that I had seen a big black scorpion coming towards my pillow. He did not ask me any further questions and gave me the matchbox. Lighting the lantern, I saw a black scorpion standing near my pillow ready with its lethal sting to charge with.  Was this incident a variety of presentiment? I still wonder!

 My dad had killed the deadly little thing. Without saying anything he went to his room and slept. The next day he called me to his room and asked me how I knew of the presence of the scorpion there when I had already slept and it was so dark. I just told him I knew nothing.  Was that with a kind of vision that I awoke. I still wonder.Might be I had a sort of dream, I told.  May be I had a sort of premonition of which I did not perceive fully well. This kind of forewarning like insight had made me postpone some visits to places and make important decisions I had to do with.

One of these days, during the summer rains the wall that divided our house and that of the neighbor had fallen down. Our neighbor was one who had several bulls in his enclosure, which he used to pull his carts  with carrying goods to the goods shed of the old railway station. The wall was in between our backyard and his. As wont, my dad and I used to sleep in the porch of our house and my mom and sisters would in the common bedroom.

 The porch had a thatched covering with a window like breach through which several nights I had surreptitiously peeped into, to see if any of the angels or the ghosts of whom my grand mom told me of, in her stories; would ever play hide and seek in the dark backyard. They did not, and I was still scared stiff to death, in that haunting space. That particular night I could not sleep well, praying to Allah for one. Do not know when I slept. Some alarming sound as if the wicked ghosts were trying to tear away the thatched shed had awoken me. To my scarifying terror, I saw something obtrude its wicked monstrous head through that window like fissure.