Summary of the lesson 'My Sister's Shoes'

 

My Sister’s Shoes (This is an extract from the script of Majid Majidi’s film ‘Children of Heaven’) Ali receives his sister Zahra’s pink shoes from the cobbler after repairing them. Then he enters a bakery and collects some baked nan, stacks them on a piece of cloth and ties the cloth into a bundle.  After that Ali goes into a vegetable shop, keeps the bundle  of nan on top of a vegetable box, and places the bag of shoes in a gap between two boxes. He collects potatoes; the shop owner Akbar warns Ali that their credit is over the limit. He tells Ali to inform his parents that they should pay some money otherwise they will not get any more vegetable on credit.  Meanwhile a junk collector comes and takes Ali’s bag of shoes thinking that it is junk.  Ali comes out and searches for the bag of shoes, but it is missing. He becomes upset and afraid and searches everywhere frantically. He tumbles vegetable boxes and Akbar gets angry, and he shouts at Ali. Ali runs away, scared.   Ali’s mother is bed-ridden due to a disk fracture.  Ali’s father is a worker on daily wages, but now he does not have work and wages. The family is in poverty.  The mother wants to get recovery from her disk fracture and tells the father about undergoing a surgery. But the father discourages her by saying that the surgery will cripple her. (He talks against the surgery because he does not have money to spend for it.) Ali and Zahra are aware of the bad financial problems of their parents, and they don’t want to give them extra burden of buying a new pair of shoes.  They are afraid that if their parents know about the loss of shoes, they will get punishment. While Ali and Zahra are doing their homework, they write messages in their notebooks and exchange between them. Zahra asks Ali what she will wear to school.  Ali first suggests that she should wear her slippers. Zahra gets angry, and she threatens him that she will tell the father about the missing of shoes. Ali replies that if she tells, their father will beat both of them.  Finally they find a solution that Zahra will wear Ali’s sneakers when he is back from school.