long ago, the sky was quite low. if you stood on a stool and stretched your hands up as high as they would go, you could touch the sky.

at that time, far on the horizon, where the sky was always especially low, there was a village. in that village, in a little mud hut thatched with straw, there lived a bent old woman.

this bent old woman was the oldest woman in that village, possibly the oldest woman in the world. she was so old she no longer remembered any other way of being. she lived all alone in her little mud hut, for she had neither friend nor family left in this world. she had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. so all day long, she would potter round her hut, first cleaning this corner, now dusting that, now scrubbing this bit of floor, now sweeping that. the bent old woman thought of nothing else any more, except more and more ways of sweeping and scrubbing her little mud hut.

one hot summer, the land was dry with thirst. there was dust everywhere - on the trees, on the roofs of huts and houses, in people's throats and eyes, even in the air. all over the village people were coughing and sneezing and choking with the dust. even the poor old sky was not spared - it was so close to the ground that the slightest bit of wind would set it coughing with the dust that rose from the parched land.

the bent old woman's hut too was covered with dust. the old woman swept and swept and swept the little hut with her broom. she swept the inside of her hut, she swept the outside of her hut, she swept the front step and she swept the front yard. but the dust rose all around her in great brown clouds - the more she swept and plied her broom, the more the dust that rose from the earth.

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