ABSTRACT
ONCE, in the days when the Turks ruled Iraq,there was a coppersmith of Basra, and Khalidwas his name. He was born in Nasiriya, and lived there Wltil the sixteenth year of his life. Then, when his father died, he took his mother and went to Basra and he worked as a coppersmith in the bazaar of Umm el Brum, that he might earn enough with which to live. Now, the amount he earned each month from the owner of the coppershop was only enough for food and rent and clothes for his mother and himself, nor could he save money enough to buy a shop of his own or to marry a wife. And Khalid and his mother lived in a poor house, and she did the cooking and all the work of the house was in her hands.
