Short Story: THE BRIDGE [1]

By: Mohamed Hassan Youssef

 
Far away beyond this human world, there is a big forest. Long and deep grows the grass there, and all morning long sing the birds. The sun looks down, and the trees spread out their great arms over the earth.
In this forest live all kinds of animals in peace, calmness and love; because they can find all that they want to eat or to drink. But suddenly, the animals found the food was nearly finished and they feared the thought of hunger. They, therefore, met to discuss this matter.
"Our future depends on the other bank because the land here is becoming small for all of us and our parents and grandparents. Wealth and happiness are waiting for us", says the fox, who is the cleverest animal. "But we cannot swim, so how can we go to this new land?", asked the animals at this point. Actually all the animals were thinking about the solution. "I think the best thing is to ask the government to give us a sufficient amount of wood and iron so that we can build a bridge to enable us to cross to the other land.", finally said the fox. "This is the best idea!", said all the animals at the same time.
The animals agreed to send the elephant to the government offices to ask them what they wanted because he was the biggest one. After two days the elephant came back but without anything as the government officials had ignored him. The same happened with the fox and rabbit. At last, because they were very desperate, they let the donkey go to the government officials. They did not expect him to bring anything, so it was very surprising for them to find a long row of trucks full of wood, iron and concrete coming speedily to the forest.
The animals could not believe themselves and ran quickly to the donkey. "How did you persuade them to agree to our request?", they asked him. "Because all of them are my brothers, it was easy to convince them of my point of view!", said the donkey happily. "But why did they give you so much?", the animals continued to ask the donkey. "When they asked me if I wanted to build the bridge along or across the river, I said that we wanted to build it along the river!!!", the donkey answered joyfully.

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[1]  The idea is from an Egyptian novelist, but I wrote this based on my memory of reading that story.