MY mother is a tailor. My family lives in Afghanistan. My mother sews clothes for people. When I think about her, I always see her in the corner of the room with the sewing machine. She is so busy making people’s clothes. She always tries to make them beautiful. She can make all different kinds of clothes.
I would like to tell you how my mother learned to sew. At
first she didn’t know how to sew anything. But then one day my father died. We children were all very small. That forced her to do something to care for us. She started trying to sew our clothes. That is how she learned. Day by day she was getting better. When our neighbors saw our clothes—and that they were beautiful—they took cloth to her to make clothes for them, too.
But they were not paying my mother because she was not a real tailor then, and she was not asking for money. My grand- father saw that people liked her sewing. He told my mother, “I will buy you a sewing machine. But tell people, ‘I will sew clothes for you, but you should pay me. You can pay me any amount you want. I will not tell you how much to pay.’ ’’
The people agreed to pay my mother. Some paid her fairly, but others did not pay her very much. But my mother didn’t care because she was so happy.
My mother always tells us to have patience. If you have patience you can do anything, she tells us, and you will never be disappointed. If you want your hopes to come true, you need to work hard and have patience. This is what I learned from my mother. She had a very hard time with a lot of things in her life after my father passed away. Mother works so hard for us because she wants us to be happy. I am very proud of my mother and I love her a lot. Thanks to her, I go to school, I can speak English, I can fulfill my dreams.
—Written by Anisgul.