Author: Kiran Bhat

Set in Krakow, Poland

8 January 2025

Father looks at his mother, lying on the bed they gave her in the guestroom, surrounded by the family she helped raise, and he wonders, despite all of the body parts of hers that are failing, how her heart, of all things, beats so healthily.

How?

Her mother really has a strong heart, he reasons. He supposes that has always been her strongest quality, and the reason why she came to give so much to those around her.

2 May 2019

When the immigrants from the Middle East and Africa were coming to the town of Walcz and making it their home, Alina Kowalski was one of the few who didn’t seem to mind them. It wasn’t typical to see so many black people in the countryside, as it would have probably been for her son Tomasz who was proudly settled in Kraków. Still, unlike many people of her age and generation, she didn’t have a problem with them. She never insulted them in Polish while she crossed the cobblestones of the main streets. She never sneered at them or complained about them to their face, unlike her relatives and neighbours.

Once, she was cutting up the cabbage for the pierogi they were going to have for lunch. Her eldest son, Natan, was helping her by holding the cabbage steady as she cut it. He was complaining: ,,Those dirty people. Don’t they think there are enough people without jobs in Poland as it is? And they don’t speak the language, they don’t know how to wash themselves.”

Alina looked down and observed the brown dots on her own age-tarnished skin. Memories that she thought she had well suppressed were threatening to flash in her mind.

She had practiced keeping them out of her life for a reason. She responded to him calmly and measuredly. ,,If no one gave anyone a chance, we would not have found work, either. This is a welcoming village. I think it was just a generation ago. People forget so easily. Life was hard for us once, too.” Alina went to the fridge and realised that in her haste to cook she had forgotten to buy sour cream and eggs. It would be hard to finish the lunch without them. She would need to get it immediately.

That day at the convenience store, Alina Kowalski ended up meeting a girl from Liberia. She went by the name of Annie. She didn’t speak much Polish, but she was trying her best, making it a point to speak to Alina and be a part of her day. Her friendliness made Alina feel friendlier. Something about her youthful energy and outward curiosity reminded Alina of her oldest grandson, Tadeusz, who loved to travel the world, and who remain far away from Poland. She missed Tadeusz so much. When Tadeusz was a little boy, Alina had gone all the way to Kraków to help raise him. She taught Tadeusz how to swim, and she went out of her way to buy sugar-powdered cookies to spoil him with. As an adult, Tadeusz rarely talked to her even when she found the time to call him on the phone. She had since given up, but whenever she interacted with a younger person, she missed that kind of spirit that Tadeusz had. She really appreciated seeing it in other humans. She loved what it brought out in herself.

Alina told herself she would speak with Annie if she saw her again. It was hard for them to communicate, but at least she was making an effort. On her walk back home, she noticed the foreigners loitering about, this group of Syrians exiting a crepe shop, this group of Nigerian youngsters at the plaza standing idly by. She wondered more and more what it would be like to speak to them. She certainly thought that she liked seeing them around here. They had come to make Walcz their home after much hardship, in the same way she had done. She liked feeling that Walcz was embracing and accepting. It made her feel like she had been right to start her family in Walcz. It made her feel like Walcz was the home she had truly been meant for.

8 January 2025

Father is the doctor in the family. He is the only one who has seen death on a daily basis. Still, when the other doctor came from the hospital three days back and told him that his mother had caught pneumonia, it was not easy for him. She had already lost the use of her mind and legs. Now her lungs were withering out. She suffered a lot in the last three days. Seeing her now, lying on this bed, almost as inactive and inert as a corpse, Father can only wish and hope one thing.

Please just die.

He feels this way because he loves his mother. He loves everything about who she was and how she was and all that she did for him and the whole family.

He doesn’t want her to suffer anymore.

You don’t have to keep fighting like this. You have lived a full life. You received everything you sacrificed for. Why are you stubborn even as you are dying? What is there left to fight for? Please just die.

7 February 2024

It had only been a week and a half since his mother had moved from her hometown to the city to live with him, and Father was already wondering if he had made the right decision. Was he the proper person to take care of his mother?

Of course, he was a doctor, and Kraków was one of the best cities in Europe. But at the end of the day, Father had lived far away from his mother for decades and visited her only when it was necessary. He had paid her bills, entertained her calls, but otherwise kept as much distance as possible. How could he have done it any other way? Tomasz Kowalski was a boy with his own problems. His father had barely spent any time with him and had always decried him for being too effeminate, which resulted in his own brothers poking at him for his lack of athletic interest. He had left for the big city because he wanted to have the freedom to be who he was. He wanted to dedicate himself to his passion, and he wanted to have his own family, one that he could raise without any of the pressures he felt from his own father.

Tomasz became Father, and no matter how much he tried to be different from the man who had made him, his own anxieties, fears, and concerns resulted in him repeating some of the errors he had worked hard to amend.

The point was that Tomasz had spent so much time writing out the story of how he was going to prove the world wrong and become the success that the world had never imagined him to be that he had never taken the time or effort to understand who Alina Kowalski really was.

That was normal, he reasoned. It was probably the same for Son, who was so busy trying to figure out who Tadeusz Kowalski was going to be that he didn’t take the time to show that he cared about his mother and father.

It wasn’t intentional. It was just what happened.

Still, it had to have hurt the parents. This was something Father could only understand because he had become Father, the one who had made all those sacrifices on behalf of his son.

Father wiped the sweat off of his mother’s neck while the uncontrollable smell of her age got into his clothes, and he thought about who she was. He wished he could have asked her something, just anything, about her life. He wished he could have asked if she was proud of him, if she felt he had done enough for her as a son.

But it was too late.

Father continued wiping her sweat and looked at his mother. Yes, his two brothers and their families had done a good job taking care of his mother in Walcz, but he had invited her to the city for a reason. He had wanted to put his insecurities to rest and to do the right thing for her by taking care of her in her last days. Was that selfish? He just couldn’t help but feel, deep down, that something was going to go horribly wrong because of his decision.

He suppressed his feelings by reminding himself that he was a doctor, that he was well trained for patients like his mother, that he lived in a city with a lot of resources and wealth. The expertise and resources he had accumulated over the years, combined with his love for his mother, were going to be more than enough to ensure that his mother’s health would improve.

8 January 2025

When the lungs wither, they wither. And it isn’t just the lungs that have left. The mucus has built walls in the air ducts, covering up the nose.

His mother’s eyes are completely colourless. There is no longer any excess strength for her nerves to deliver sight. So, her eyes are like blank pool balls in their sockets, responding to no stimulus.

Her legs are puffed and swollen. They are looking more and more rotten with each hour that passes. The reddening is growing, expanding, taking over her body like moss conquers rock.

Every part of her body is dying as all of what remains of her energy goes to her heart so that it can beat on.

Around her are her loved ones. Father’s sisters-in-law are with their handkerchiefs crying. All of their sons and daughters except Tadeusz are in the room, either holding the hands of their mothers, trying to reach for their grandmother, or helping out the priest. Father and his two brothers are by their mother. One brother holds one hand, another brother holds the other, and Father stands there.

He is the doctor in the room. He is doing his best to understand what is happening to his mother.

But there’s no point in holding a stethoscope or reading her heartbeat. There’s no point in administering medicines or feeding her water.

Father has seen so many patients over the course of his career, and he knows what every other loved one is struggling to accept.

The time has come.

7 August 1944

Every day she worries thay she’ll be put to death. Every day she sees people keeling over as they are forced to shovel, being fed to dogs, being a living person one day and a corpse in a pile of bones the other. She’s only eleven. She works in the camps unclothed. She watches women get raped and shot in the head immediately after. There are even soldiers who grope her small breasts and put themselves inside her and spill alcohol all over once they are finished.

She’s grateful she’s too young to be able to carry a child. The ones who get impregnated are immediately killed. She doesn’t want to be like those women who are fed to the dogs or shot in the head.

She works in the field. There’s no thing as a schedule. When you work, you work. And when you pass out, you are beaten by the guards so that you keep working. She gets so tired that it’s a miracle she can still stand. All of her ribs are poking out of her skin.

They don’t see her as a human being. She’s an impurity that needs to be taken off of the human record. She’s a naughty evil blemish. And they can do whatever they want to her.

Someday, most likely they will kill her.

But she wants to keep living. She doesn’t know why this is the case. She doesn’t understand it herself. Given all that she has seen and been through, it would make sense that she should wish to be one of the ones who are given a shower and who never come back. But no matter the pain in her nerves that make her wish for it all to end, she feels like a light that refuses to stop shining.

She wants to keep living.

8 January 2025

Father receives a call and sees that it is from Annie. It’s the middle of the night and she’s trying to call despite that. Father is grateful for it but now is not the time to answer. He is hearing the death rattle. That is the sign that the end is beginning. His mother suddenly breathes deeply as if she is gasping. The sound is sudden and abrupt, sending convulsions down her body. They try to prop her head up with a pillow, they try to give her some water, but once it has begun it will not end. There is no way for her to clear the mucus from her throat, and her lungs are no longer able to pump air in and out of her body. Her chest spasms, up and down, down and up, in order for her body to receive whatever air it can.

The priest is at their side. He has smeared oil on her head to bless her. He begins giving his anointments. As he asks for God to provide her liberation from her body, Father sees his wife crying. She and the other wives are praying out loud, their eyes closed, refusing to see the body. The children avert their eyes. It is only Father and his two brothers who keep their eyes on their mother’s face, gripping her hand or arm as well as they can.

His mother’s legs are growing redder and redder. Her hands are covered in veins. Her eyes are open, but all that stares out are grey irises. Her mouth is open so that air can flow in.

The priest puts a dash of wine in her mouth and says another prayer. He pardons the sins of the woman, though his mother is no longer able to speak and has nothing to confess.

The heart machine shows a straight line. That means her heart is no longer beating. The women clamp their eyes down and pray even louder. They say their prayers in unison, almost singing for peace and blessings and love and forgiveness. Their prayers are like their heartbeats—rushed and loud. And in the meantime his mother is still gasping, her body convulsing up and down.

Her neck tilts forward, a loud gasp resounds, and a wide mouth remains.

Then the body sinks back, and goes cold. The skin loses what remains of its colour. The eyes glass over completely.

Father calls the mortuary.

It is at this time, 2:19 in the early morning, that Alina Kowalski, proud mother of three and resident of Walcz, dies of old age and natural causes.

Set in Fairbanks, Alaska, The United States of America

The weather is cold it’s like Mother is in the middle of the snow and that’s exactly where she is she’s in the middle of the fields and snow has covered it all over it covers her feet all over and yet she’s plodding through it trying to get home she misses her cabin it sits right outside of the suburbs of Fairbanks she thought she was there already she thought she was home she wants to go home yes she is home she’s not outside anywhere she thought she was in the snow but right in front of her is that bed that’s Babette that’s her mother-in-law Mother is trying to say hi to her but her mouth is not moving feet are not moving either it’s exactly like when she thought she was stuck in the snow she’s not able to move she needs to move Babette is choking Babette is dying she’s right there in her bed in the room on the first floor where’s the exit where’s the door there’s no door there’s no walls there’s only bed and the green fields and pine trees of Alaska how tame it looks in the summer there’s Babette she’s not on her bed she’s on top of the grass and Babette is choking and Mother is doing her best to make her stop she is pulling her up but Babette refuses to be pulled she’s stuck there like a stone Mother shouts Babette Babette she’s zooming in to her face saliva’s coming out of Babette’s mouth it’s dribbling all over her cheek and throat Babette’s saying something but Mother can’t understand Babette’s making that loud choking sound she made when she almost died that one time because Mother gave her a big meat chunk in her soup akh akh akh the sound rings in Mother’s ear on and on

Mother’s eyelids fling apart. She shouts a loud gasp. She’s in her bed, just as she thought she was, but it’s the middle of the night. She sits up. It’s a miracle that Father has not awoken from her sounds. During the winter, Fairbanks nights get so cold, where the day is barely a few hours long and the night stretches out, and Father gets a lot of rest without any stimuli to distract him. He sleeps easily.

There’s light outside in the shape of the auroras. Cracks of green light shimmer through the sky. Because they glint through the window, Mother can see the entire room with clarity. There’s their puffed-out comforter and the hardwood floor and the metal nightstands which Mother didn’t want because they clashed with the cottage aesthetic of their room, but Father got them without asking and didn’t want to go back to Home Depot to argue for a refund. The bathroom is on the other side behind a slit of open door in case Father has to pee in the middle of the night.

Mother gets up. She takes the stairs down and cracks open the door next to the staircase. Her mother-in-law is in bed. She’s totally fine, or as fine as someone who’s basically paralysed from the neck down. Her mother-in-law’s head is held up by two pillows against her neck and one pillow under her back. She is snoring, her mouth agape. There seems to be nothing amiss; she looks like she always does. Mother’s just worrying over nothing.

Mother closes the door slowly and softly. She tries to make sure not a single plank of wood creaks as she goes back upstairs. She’s grateful that no one except her is awake, but it is the middle of the night, and she’s an older woman herself. She needs her rest. She gets back in bed and recites some lines from Psalms to fall back to sleep.

In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

In peace I will lie down and sleep…

In peace I will lie down and…

In peace…

In…

There’s so much snow there’s so much light it’s the aurora it’s so pretty it’s green it’s purple it’s violet it’s flashing there’s John dear sweet John John is too sweet John is the best son in the world Hello John there’s no response John is busy of course he doesn’t want to talk to his own mother he’s out and about to go meet a guy probably looking for a black guy to give head he went all across Alaska doing that when he was here and now he’s in some other country giving head to who knows go away John no John don’t go away no John there’s no reason to go no No John don’t leave there’s only one John in the world

There’s no John there was never a John Hello John Hello there’s no John there’s no one there’s nothing there’s just the lights only there’s no lights either

The coughing is so loud the coughing is so intense there’s this bed and there’s Babette again Babette sweetie please don’t eat like that there’s a big bowl of soup and there’s a spoon going in her mouth but Babette shouldn’t be fed at this point there’s a giant tube coming out of her throat it’s so tall it’s like a giant coat rack and it’s coming out of her throat with a lot of pins sticking out of it Babette is coughing obviously she would be coughing who can breathe with something like that in the throat?

“I’m dying.”

Obviously she’s dying even without the giant thing in her throat choking her it feels like Babette has a few weeks max before she is going to go but she’s been stubborn she’s been stubborn this entire year everything about her looks on the verge of death and yet she doesn’t die

Babette tries to pull the coat rack out but it’s just not going anywhere she tries and tries and it keeps going it’s like those handkerchiefs clowns pull out of their throat and it’s changing colour violet red pink and blue this is useless

Mother grabs Babette by the hand.

“Don’t die, Babette, don’t die, you can’t die yet! The world needs you.”

“I’m trying my best but I’m only going to last until the end of the year. I’ll see my sons one last time for Christmas. And then I’ll go.”

“Babette, you can’t go. I’ve never seen Dean so happy before. He loves having you at home.”

“I know. He’s my son, too. He’ll miss me when I’m gone. And I’ll miss him. But he’s done his best. And I’m doing my best to stay alive for him. It’s really for him that I’ve lasted this long. We’ve gone years without seeing each other, and I know he needs me, too.”

“Then stay, Babette.”

“I have stayed, and I’ve done my best. I wish I could have seen my grandson. I wish I could have had time with him, too.”

“He’ll come back sometime next year. I’ll guilt him up so bad he’ll feel sorry he ever left.”

“No, don’t do that. I let my son leave, and every time he came back home to see me I just yelled at him. That’s why he only came when he had to. You don’t do that to your son. You’ll have a relationship with him just like Dean and I do now.”

“Dean’s done so much for you. Even he lived all these years in Fairbanks so he could make enough money to send back to you.”

“I know. I know that really. That’s the one thing I wish I could have told him. I accept him for all he’s done, and I’m proud of him. Oh, I was such an idiot for never telling him. Now I have this giant coat rack in my throat. I’m not able to say a fucking thing.”

“It’s okay, Babette. I’m here. I’ll tell him. I’ll rush over and tell him right now.”

“You’d do that for me? Oh, you’re the sweetest thing. Pauline, I’m sorry we never got along. That was another thing I fucked up. Oh, I fucked up so many things. And now what’s the good of it?”

Babette lets out a wail like the sound babies make when they cry and they’re so helpless and they can’t do a single thing Mother holds Babette and cradles her she feels like she’s going to cry but there’s no tear coming out there’s no tear that can come out she can only say one thing

“Don’t worry, Babette. You have time. You have many more years to live. There are people who have strokes or heart attacks and they suddenly get better. Who says that can’t be you?”

That’s exactly it Babette doesn’t have to be an old woman stuck in a wheelchair she can be like those senior citizens who do jumping jacks in videos or take jogs around the park with her grandchildren she could be like those people for sure it’s just a matter of time now with her son’s loving care she’s gotten so much more active and cognisant Mother is sure that if it keeps up she’ll be walking and talking soon

“We’ll make you better. We love you, Babette. We’ll do anything for you.”

Mother tries to hold Babette’s face in her hands she’s rubbing her cheeks massaging them she can feel her face she can feel the wrinkled skin it’s taut and tender she loves holding Babette she doesn’t want to stop holding Babette she feels so much calm and peace holding Babette she’s hugging her so hard like a blanket like a wool snuggling blanket so soft so warm so comforting so much love

Mother wakes up. She wheezes. She’s in bed, in her pyjamas. Her husband is by her side. She turns over towards him, and despite the darkness she can make out his old, wrinkled face. She smiles.

She had something she was supposed to tell him, but in staring so fully at his face, she has forgotten what it was.

Set in Hamburg, Germany

,Don’t break the Christmas tree,” Father shouts from the bottom of the ladder to his big brother, Reinhard. ‘She’s watching.’

,I’m just putting the star on the top,” Reinhard barks back. ,I’m following your house rules. There’re no footprints on the floor. Do you see any liquor bottles, either? You can give me a breath test if you don’t believe me.”

But Father is observing how Reinhard is swerving on top of the ladder. He isn’t sure if Reinhard had taken any alcohol. Reinhard has poor balance. If he falls, he will hurt their mother, too.

Sta-sta,” their mother is warbling. Her eyes move up and down the Christmas tree as she takes in the glittering lights. How they glint and reflect from the hardwood of the house and make the room appear so shiny and alight. They must be so distracting to her. The star is so covered with glitter that dashes of it have gotten all over Father’s fingers from when he handed it to Reinhard. Father wonders if they should lower the heating. Some of these ornaments are poorly made, imported from places like Bangladesh or Vietnam. Father wouldn’t be surprised if they melted in their toasty living room. The sticker on the Nativity scene ornaments set up underneath the tree has already fallen off.

Mother comes in. Their house is cramped full of relatives on this Heiliger Abend day. Father doesn’t like having so many people in their home, but Mother is used to lighting up her face for strangers. She has brought out a tray of cut-up slices of stollen, the powdered sugar misting around her and getting caught in her sweater as she hurries from the kitchen to the living room table. The stollen looks well warmed, with the candied fruits dotting it already melted. Father is tempted to move away from the tree to grab a piece, and as he hesitates, Reinhard and Father’s younger brother, Berthold, are already making their way to the table and stuffing their faces. These village habits never die out. The politeness culture in urban Germany has been perfected, such that whether in Munich or Köln, people always wait their turn, eat with plates and utensils, and give space to others. In rural Bavaria, however, people are less concerned with these kinds of pleasantries.

Father has been a man of the north for too long.

What is relevant is that Reinhard rushed off the ladder without remembering that he had just put something heavy and delicate on top of the tree. Father immediately catches the star with both of his hands and pushes it down so that it is aligned with the tip of the tree. The tree is tottering, and so Father keeps his hands where they are, around the star. He doesn’t want the star or the tree to fall. As he glances away, he notices his mother. She is looking so kindly at him, and so kindly at the tree and the Nativity scene under it and the wreath on its other side. It’s picture perfect, a memory one would want to keep safe for the rest of time. He doesn’t want his mother’s memory of this time to be disrupted by this tree suddenly tilting over, or the star falling down, or some of the ornaments crashing to the ground.

Reinhard comes back to his place on the ladder. He helps centre the tree while Father puts his hands back on the ladder. Reinhard is smiling widely, probably glad that he has reminded himself of his responsibilities, but he doesn’t turn to face Father or make eye contact with him. Father doesn’t mind it. They don’t have the habit of looking at each other or exchanging polite remarks. This is how it has always been with them.

,, Wow! Wow!” their mother exclaims. Father turns to her and returns her smile, full of warmth and wonder. In another iteration of herself, their mother would be clapping, coming up to give her compliments to each son. This was common when they were little boys growing up in Fischbachau. Their mother always liked to take the time to praise each one of their talents, to make it known that she was aware of how different and special they were in their own ways, and very much loved.

In this version of her, a ‘wow’ is all they can expect, and the beaming smile on her face. She will probably forget what she is excited about in the next few minutes and return to her usual stone-cold expression.

Nonetheless, Berthold looks happy to see their mother in this mood. He exclaims to his wife, ,, She is so happy.”

His wife replies, ,,I’m happy, too.”

Neither of them have helped much with the decoration. Keen to return to the other celebrations of the day, Father gestures to Reinhard and asks, ,,Do you think the tree is sturdy now?”

Reinhard retorts, ,,You’re the one who picked the decorations. Wouldn’t you know?”

Father swallows the air in his throat. It bulges a little inside of him, tickles the back of his mouth. He doesn’t like that answer, but he doesn’t want to fight with Reinhard, either. The last time the two of them fought, their mother was distraught for the rest of the day. She made anxious sounds and swatted the air. She slept poorly and Father did, too, feeling guilty for the pain he caused his mother.

Father is tired standing like this. He, too, is an older man. He can’t stand the way he used to. It hurts the nerves in his ankles, and his thighs are falling asleep against the metal steps. He isn’t going to get an answer from Reinhard, so he does his own inspection. Red and silver balls alternate their way up the tree. They are not heavy and have been well positioned. There are the silver and red garlands, as well as the silver light bulbs. They could cause a problem, but mostly if someone trips on one of the cords. The main point of concern are the angels. There are many of them on the tree, and they have been put in random places. Father personally did not want them on the tree, but he knows his mother loves them, and Berthold believed it would be good to have as many as possible.

,, Reinhard,” Father orders his brother. ,, Take off the angel on the right. It is too heavy. It will cause the tree to tilt.”

Father isn’t using a particularly demanding tone, but Reinhard loves to use any occasion as an attempt to challenge Father.

,,You take it off,” he demands instead.

Father sighs but keeps his words as polite as he can.

,, You are closer. You can pull it off with ease.”

But Reinhard has made his decision. He is not only getting down from the ladder but putting it back in the closet. This leaves Father as the only support for the tree, the only person who could do anything if the tree starts to topple. Except he is on one side of the tree and the angel is on the other.

Perhaps Father is overthinking it. It’s a tree, and they are just angels. Maybe he just imagined it tipping. Most likely Father can leave, and it won’t make a difference.

So, Father lets go of the tree. As expected, the pine tree does lurch rightward. Father anxiously throws out his hands, but he doesn’t grab it just yet. He sees that it is teetering but not falling down. It’s not just the angel, he suddenly notices, that is causing the excess weight. Someone has hung a picture frame of their family near the bottom of the tree.

Reinhard also spots it. ,, Who put that there?”

Mother returns having prepared Eierlikör and serves the mugs to everyone.

,, I did,” she says. ,, I found it in a photo album hidden in the closet. Isn’t it lovely?”

,, You’re so stupid,” Reinhard says. ,, Don’t you see how heavy it is? It’s affecting the tree.”

,, Don’t call me stupid!”

Mother’s eyes are suddenly burning. So are Father’s. It’s one thing to be crass with one’s brother, but Mother isn’t a blood relative. He can’t speak so rudely to her like that.

Reinhard continues, ,, But you should not be putting things there. Do you see how small the branches of the tree are? Go look at them. Then you’ll see.”

,, I’ll make it a point to look at it when I feel like it. This is my house. It’s not your place to tell me what to do here.”

,, Of course,” Reinhard gloats. ,, It’s always about that, isn’t it, brother?”

Reinhard smiles a twisted smile. It would make Father feel so good just to punch it, which is probably why Reinhard has plastered it on his face.

But Father sees the Nativity scene under the tree, Father sees how his mother’s face is still bright and beaming. It’s nothing compared to the dazzling star on top of the tree; it’s so much brighter.

Father sits and takes some stollen from the living room table. As he eats the microwave-softened fruitcake, he looks at the tree from a distance. The branches at the bottom are tilting downwards. But at least it’s still up and doesn’t look like it will collapse, unlike the composure in the room. His brother and wife are starting to bicker. His brother’s wife isn’t even in the house. She’s gone to smoke and hasn’t come back in the past half hour. His mother’s face has lost its smile.

Something is amiss. A little off.

And yet Father wants to take his fingers too frame the scene and take a picture with them.

The tree doesn’t need to stir for him to feel shaken.

He’s never going to have a memory like this ever again. It’s not perfect, but he appreciates it for what it is.

It is five in the morning. The only light comes from outside of the windows.  Their apartment is right by the intersection of one of Qufu’s biggest roads, the one which circles around the city and divides its tourist attractions from the rest of the town. They are south of the commercial street which regularly gets tour buses visiting the temple and graveyard of 孔子, or Confucius. Drunks sleep on that street. Their shouts, as well as the occasional drunk men looking for prostitutes, disturb Mother’s rest, but what usually wakes Mother up is Father drifting from the bed to ready himself for work. He would carefully fold open the sheet and tiptoe in his slippers to the bathroom, but would have to turn a light on to properly navigate it. That would almost always wake Mother up. If it was early in the morning she would close her eyes and pretend to be sleeping; if it was late enough in the morning she would get up and start her cooking.

It is five in the morning, and Mother’s eyes open from habit. She looks out the window and notices that there is no natural light outside yet. She looks to her other side to see her husband completely unstirred. It’s not normal for him to still be sleeping if it is already five. It has to be earlier than that, she thinks. She shuts her eyes, until suddenly a thought crackles in the back of her head.

Father retired yesterday. Today is the first day on which he will have nothing to do except be home with her and his mother.

Mother steadies her body, she steadies her breath. The movement has not disturbed Father. How could it? He has been sleep deprived for decades, and this is the first day since his twenties that he is able to sleep in without worrying about anything. The light from the outside is dim but filters over him. He is curled on his side in a fetal position. His freckles are like baby powder over his sand-coloured face. His wrinkles are crisp but relaxed. He looks at peace, at ease.

It’s so cute seeing him like this.

Mother has her usual schedule. When she wakes up, she goes to her mother-in-law’s room, checks if she still has a pulse, if she is properly breathing, if her diaper has any faeces or urine. By this hour her mother-in-law is usually well soiled. Mother has to dispose of the diaper, clean her genital areas, lean her against the stone wall of the bathroom, and throw water over her via a bucket, washing her from head to toe. After all that, she has to get breakfast ready for the both of them. Father likes to eat the glutinous cakes of 孔府菜, so she takes the time to steam them. Her mother-in-law can only eat soup so Mother prepares that for her. It is a lot of hard work and cooking and it takes at least an hour. If she wants them to eat well for breakfast today, she has to get up now and get to it.

But Father looks so precious as he sleeps. It is almost like a statue of 孔子 itself. There is an aura of complete rest and serenity to his countenance. There is a sense that everything wrong in the world could happen and all at once—and nothing would affect him.

This is her husband. This is her one true love. This is the man who is in her bed, sleeping lazily and innocently.

Mother puts her head on her husband’s shoulder. She wraps her left arm around his chest and the other around his neck. He is so tired that it isn’t even possible to wake him up. He doesn’t even stir. She feels sleepy just by looking at him.

A part of her mind worries. What if her mother-in-law needs her help right now? Everyone will be hungry by the time the sun comes up, and it will be her fault if she doesn’t get started cooking now. Can she handle that pressure?

And yet she closes her eyes.

She focuses instead on another thought. Her husband is no longer going to be spending most of his day at the hospital. She is with her husband now, and she will be with her husband and have his time for many more years to come. They’ll have that life they had promised to each other when they first married. They will live together and be only with each other until the days they are too old to remember even the difference between the characters ‘he’ and ‘she’. It will be ‘he’ and ‘she’ and ‘she’ and ‘he,’ and for the next few decades it will only be ‘them’. It’ll be like they are starting for the first time, around the age when they are turning seventy.

Mother’s eyes firmly shut, and nothing, not even the fiery sun of the afternoon nor the disturbing fears in the back of her mind, seem able to awaken her.

8 September 1984

The hospital was a giant white compound resembling a prison right in the centre of Malabo city. To witness such an ostentatious building, with its many storeys, was a culture shock for Santiago. In his home settlement of Riaba, there were no such big buildings. There were the dwellings the fishermen lived in, there was the river, and that was it. This almost fort-like structure was bigger than all of the homes in Riaba put together. It felt like something that would be in Portugal or Italy, and not on the humble island Santiago had been born and brought up in. It was also different from the other buildings in the capital, which were either colonial in the Spanish style or working-class hovels. It was big and grand, like it was trying to say something about itself.

It was in the middle of the eighties. Teodoro Obiang had been in power for only five years. It was the start of what would soon be rapid economic development and expansion. This hospital was one of the many buildings built as a promise to that future, that under Obiang’s rule, Equatorial Guinea was going to know a lot less hunger and a lot more growth.

Santiago wanted to be a part of that future. He had left his village knowing he would be sending a lot of money back to his mother and his brothers, making sure that their lives in the hovel would improve. It was a grand honour to be working at the main hospital of the capital. Though it was very far from the suburb where Santiago’s uncle lived, requiring Santiago, who was temporarily staying with his uncle, to hop on many 504s to reach it, Santiago made it a point to arrive an hour earlier than the start of his shift. He wanted to greet his supervising doctor before he got too busy, introduce himself, and provide a good impression to the rest of the staff.

When Santiago went to register himself, he eagerly announced his name, but the nurse whom he spoke to practically threw his name tag at him and barely looked at his face. He saw her strained eye bags and them on the faces of everyone: patients, nurses, doctors. Seeing their stress tired him a bit, but he tried to not let it get to him. He had a lot of money to earn to pay back his uncle for all his help, he was freshly married, and he needed to find a place for him and his wife.

He couldn’t let any of them know this. He couldn’t let them know he was from a village, drowning in debt, commitment, and responsibility.

He saw his supervisor across the hall. He cleared his throat and put on a smile.

« Hola señor, un placer » he said, offering a handshake. « My name is Santiago Ondobama. I will be working with you. I am looking forward to hearing your advice and learning as much as I can. »

The supervising doctor looked Santiago up and down. His eyes were full of red cracks. At the time, Santiago thought it was exhaustion. Over the years, he would come to know it as something else. But in that moment, Santiago just saw this man as a respected doctor and a senior.

The doctor must have seen the respect in his eyes, and he wanted to test it. That must have been why he shouted the way he did.

« Santiago? Who are you to come here talking like this? I am not here to give handshakes and kisses. I am here to give you work. Where is my coffee? And where is my file? And did you find out who your patient is? What is your first patient’s name? »

« Perdona, señor, but… »

« Pero… pero… you aren’t a little girl. Get to work. Get my coffee, and get my files. Get them now, or I’m sending you back home. You don’t need to work at this hospital. You can go work in the fields of your village. »

Santiago rushed to find the coffee. Of course he didn’t know where the coffee was, just like he didn’t know where his supervisor’s files were, either. It was his first day. He had no idea how his patients would be assigned, and he didn’t have the courage to ask.

Santiago found the break room and adequately served his supervisor. Later that day, Santiago saw not one but almost thirty patients, more than triple what he had been expecting. They suffered from a lot of diseases that he had read about or discussed in medical school but had never treated. He was afraid he was telling them the wrong things that would result in their untimely death.

At the end of the day, Santiago was yelled at by his uncle who was angry at Santiago for keeping the faucet turned on before leaving home. Santiago lay in bed thinking he would keep his eyes open, anxious about all the things he had messed up, but sleep came quickly.

His first day had been rough, but he’d come to realise that every day for the next thirty years was going to be equally as rough, if not rougher.

1 October 1984

It was Santiago who detected it.

« It is her blood pressure. It is going too high and too suddenly. »

He hadn’t used a machine. He could tell from putting his two fingers against her neck and noticing how much quicker her pulse had become. The nurse didn’t believe him, but it was also because she was too much busy changing the channels and wondering why the remote was slow to respond. He was annoyed at her negligence. He shouted « Dime… ¿What will you do if it’s a heart attack? Tell me what you will do. »

Before the nurse could respond, the patient started taking long gasps. The nurse checked the pulse and noticed it was out of control. The patient was put on a breathing machine. A scan was done. She was having a heart attack. The doctors intervened quickly with CPR. They gave her medication to control the beating in her chest. She was on the verge of a cardiac arrest, it appeared, but it was stopped just in time.

Of course the doctor supervising Santiago, who was an Obiang, got all of the credit, but it was Santiago who knew he had saved the patient’s life. It was the first time he had done so by listening to his own instincts instead of what his supervisor or the nurses had said. For that, he didn’t win an award or a medal or recognition, but a confidence started brimming in his chest, one that reminded him each and every time whenever he saw a patient that he knew what he was doing. He was meant to be a physician, he was realising. He was good at it.

23 June 1986

« Pues, Santiago, ¿qué dices? »

« Pues, Ana Maria, I saw what I saw. There’s a water leakage on the third floor. It’s small now, but when the rains come it’s going to inundate the whole floor. I think it needs to be fixed. And, ¿if Señor Ono doesn’t fix it, who will? »

Santiago saw Ana Maria turn to Claudia. They looked at each other, and then looked down at the leak. Ana Maria wrote some notes, and she said « We will tell Señor Ono you came to visit, and we will see what we can do. »

The next day, Santiago was called in to meet Señor Ono. Señor Ono gave him a firm handshake but was equally quick to yell at him. He didn’t like being told how he should run his hospital, and if Santiago were to say anything of this sort again, he would be fired. Santiago apologised, his forehead starting to sweat profusely. He tried to choose his words as well as he could, that he just wanted the leak fixed, and he didn’t mean to stir any problems. As he spoke Señor Ono’s face remained blank. Santiago couldn’t tell if he was really angry or if he just enjoyed watching Santiago sweat.

Santiago left the office, and as he did, Ana Maria and Claudia smiled at him. Santiago smiled back but wiped it off his face the moment he went down the stairs. For many years after, he made it a point not to say anything to the administration. Though he knew deep down that what he was doing was wrong, he had lost his courage. It would take him some years to get it back.

17 February 1993

« Gracias por ayudarme. »

« Really. You don’t have to say that. »

« But I say it because it is the truth. My stomach feels a lot better now. That massage you gave, it helped, a lot. »

« Gas causes a lot of pain, but in reality it’s easy to solve. »

« But it’s not just the gas. You really took the time to observe my stomach, and then you helped. Not a lot of doctors do that. They are quick to give medications, but they don’t listen to their patients. I feel better now, and it is because of you. So, I said thank you. I thank you, de verdad. »

23 June 1997

It wasn’t just that the X-ray machine wasn’t working. It was that the X-ray machine had been bought a few days ago, and already it wasn’t working. Santiago was convinced it had already been broken when it came. But when Santiago told this to the administrative manager, who was at that time Señor Lima, he got angry.

« This is not your problem. You do not work in the imaging department. »

« Pero… »

« ¿Pero… pero… que? »

Santiago saw the ire in Señor Lima’s eyes. At least Señor Lima was open to listening. He wasn’t threatening to fire him then and there like the previous administrative managers. But giving that little bit of his attention was the most he did. And Señor Lima was volatile. He put his coffee in the pot and paced around, not looking Santiago in the eyes, looking rather like he wanted to find something to hit.

« If the people in the imaging department complain, we will listen. You are here to help your patients. There is nothing for you to complain about. I don’t want to listen. »

Señor Lima saw the coffee was only partially filled, so he came to Santiago’s side by the wall and smashed his fist onto the painted surface above him.

« ¿Me entiendes? You are here to work, not to ask questions. »

« Pero, Señor… »

« ¿Me entiendes? » Señor Lima barked as he pounded the wall, causing pieces of paint to fall onto Santiago’s head and the room to rumble. His eyes bulged. Santiago avoided eye contact, only because he knew he’d be physically hit if he were to engage.

« Yes, sir. » Santiago said. « It is not my place to say anything. I understand. I will go. »

Señor Lima didn’t seem to have anymore to say, and Santiago left calmly.

But when he got into the lift and he saw no one else was there, he couldn’t help but bang his own fist against the door. He shouted some curse words, raising his voice in a way he wished he could have done in front of Señor Lima.

Things were supposed to be different after ExxonMobil discovered oil in their country. The newspapers had written long praising articles about the government and how rich the country was becoming. A lot of growth lay ahead, though it was mostly seen in the buildings that were being built up and in the estates of the people who owned these companies and buildings. At the hospital, things were about the same. Santiago treated a lot of patients who were dying of hunger or thirst, or who were just coming to get free meals. He guessed three out of four people of his country were living with next to nothing. It was just the few key families starting to get rich.

The families of senior doctors, his supervisors, and the hospital managers.

Santiago had said what he had said because he wanted things to be better for the people who lived here. That was all. He had meant nothing amiss. Quite the opposite. He loved his hospital, he loved living in the capital, he loved his people. He just hated seeing how little things were improving for the regular people who didn’t have any connection to the government or big companies.

He wasn’t trying to make a statement about them at all. He just wanted the equipment in the hospital to work.

He banged his fist against the lift one more time.

Why was it such a sin to want something better for his country? Why was it so wrong to want things to benefit those suffering from negligence, instead of seeking out benefits for himself?

2 August 2010

« Hola. »

« Hola. »

« Forgive me for talking too much. As you can tell, I am new here, and you are going to be my guiding doctor today. »

« Yes, yes, I know. You are the new nurse. ¿What is your name? »

« Ana Maria. »

« ¿Ana Maria? »

«. Yes, Ana Maria. ¿Why are you making that face? You look angry all of a sudden. »

« Pues, there used to be an Ana Maria who worked here, and she bothered me. »

« I am sorry. I know Ana Maria is the name of people who tend to be bitches. »

« ¿What? That is not what I wanted to say at all. »

« But it is the truth. I mean, I am kidding, but it is also the truth. I am sorry this other Ana Maria hurt you. »

« You are nothing like her. You are half her age. You have all these strange colours in your hair. And tattoos… most of the nurses here don’t have tattoos. »

« ¿Ya lo ves? Not all Ana Marias are the same. There is no Ana Maria disguise. It is not a conspiracy. We all have different personalities. What a surprise. »

« Okay, okay, te entiendo. »

« ¿ And what is your name? »

« Santiago Ondobama. »

« ¿Santiago? ¿Do you know the first person who tried to rape me was named Santiago? »

« ¿And now what are you saying? »

« I’m joking. But also I’m not joking. Really, his name was Santiago. He was only thirteen. He didn’t know anything. He was from my village of Cupapa. There, the men think they can use women for anything. But me… I’m not that kind of woman. I stood on his penis and almost pulled it off with my foot. »

« ¿You are from Cupapa? »

« Yes. »

« That is on the way to my home village. »

« Oh, that is nice. It looks like they are bringing in the patient now. »

« Yes, we should stop talking. »

« But, Doctor Ondobama ¿do you want to know something? »

« ¿What? »

« This was nice. I enjoyed talking to you. I’m not just saying it. And I’m not flirting also. You look old enough to be my father. But as friends, I like this. Let’s talk more. I’d really like to get to know you, if you’d let me have your time. »

27 August 2024

« You are the best doctor I have ever had. »

« Gracias. »

« I am not saying it to be polite. I am saying it because it is the truth. You are the best doctor I have ever had, one of the best in this hospital. ¿Did you know that? »

« No. »

« I have had many doctors before you. I know how they are and how they think. But you are different. You are a great doctor, and you are a good person, one of the few I have met who are genuine, and honestly so. I will try my best with the doctor who will take up my case after you are gone, but please remember me, and visit me when you can. »

27 September 2024

« And so, it is official now, ¿yes? ¿You are retired? »

« Yes. »

« Perfecto » says Angela Mokuy, the director of the hospital. She gets up and shakes Father’s hand. Then the other people from the administration come to shake it, congratulating him and giving their smiles, which dissipate from their faces the moment he looks away.

Last month he said he was retiring, and today is his last day. Father is just two years away from completing thirty years at the hospital, but he doesn’t mind it. He doesn’t have to reach milestone numbers for the sake of it. Earlier in the day he saw his last patients, he handed over his files, and now he is meeting the board and the directors and the managers to receive his last paycheck and some final words of wisdom. The meeting is quick and easy. Most of what they discuss are procedural, like how much they appreciated his service over the years, and when he’ll start to receive his pension. Father mostly spaces out and tries not to fall asleep as they speak. They are just as boring as the pastors Mother forces Father to listen to when they go to church, which also reminds Father that he is going to have a lot of free time after today, and he will have to do bothersome things like attending sermon again.

Father sits there for some time, really feeling the wood of the chair against his back. Time and time again he has visited this office over the years, and nothing about it has changed. Dust still stubbornly clings to the wood of the table. The portraits of Obiang and his family decorate the walls, as well as the various directors and managers who once worked here. Father starts to remember all of these managers. Most of them got on his nerves, but they met their comeuppance in the end. Augusto Lima was involved in a corruption scandal. His old supervisor, Doctor Ndongo, died in his sixties from a sudden heart attack. He thinks about the random managers who tried to find ways to fire him, and the others who shot him down each and every time he tried to start any inquiry involving the maintenance of the hospital. He gave it one good try last year, but nothing came out of it. It is official. No matter whether or not Father remains at the hospital or leaves, things aren’t going to change.

It is going to be over. It isn’t going to be his problem anymore. Father’s eyes still linger on the wall, but he’s not really looking at these photos anymore. What’s flashing in his mind instead are snapshots of himself from when he was younger. The impressionable junior doctor, Santiago Ondobama, his head shaped long and rectangular like a cricket bat, his skin so pitch black it was clear he was from the village, and his wide, naïve, tooth-filled smile.

That was him. That man was Father. And that man is always going to be Father, no matter where he goes next. Just because Father is retiring doesn’t mean he is going to stop trying. It just means he is going to start focusing his desire to improve the world and help the people who live in it through a different set of actions. He is going to be there for his family, and that is a service, too, just as valiant as treating patients.

Father gets up, ready to leave. He wonders how his mother is doing and what his wife has cooked for the three of them.

Tomorrow was going to be the day that Father would retire, and yet he was meeting a patient today that would need many more days of treatment if she was going to recover. On the island of Kiribati, it was common for young women and teenagers to find themselves impregnated. There was a habit of certain families to send their daughters or sons towards the Chinese ships fishing out by the coast, in the hopes that the children would bring back money from whatever service they were asked of. Many children were born from such arrangements, and the locals raised them with no thought that they were anything except their own.

So, it was common for a girl of fourteen to become impregnated in this way, but the wounds that this girl had, well, those were abnormal. She had pink burn marks all over her face and bruises all over her body. One burn mark was almost the shape of a dolphin, curving against the brown of her chin. It was still a fleshy colour, indicating that the burn had happened within the last twelve hours. The bruises were also freshly purple. Considering how expanded she was in the belly, this was someone who had been impregnated some five or six months ago, not someone who had been raped once, then beaten or burned after. This was someone who was going back to the same man, adding wounds on top of wounds, receiving fresh bruises over healed marks.

And Father was meeting her now, on the day before he would be done with his hospital work for good.

The questions could not help but enter Father’s mind.

For how long have you had these wounds? For how many months have you been pregnant? Do you know the person who did this to you? Are you willing to disclose his name? How many times has he done it? When did he burn you? When did he hit you? Have you already started taking medicines for the pain? What are the medicines’ names?

He had practiced for decades, and these were the types of questions any doctor would ask. However, the problem was that he had no real reason to ask these personal questions. He needed to understand the case more broadly in order to treat her, but tomorrow this girl would be seeing a new doctor, and the entire procedure would reset. She’d have to answer the questions all over again. It would probably be emotionally stressful for her, given the extent of her injuries.

So, what was the point of building rapport with a woman who had been admitted on his last day of work and trying to find a solution?

He could at least work on the obvious. He asked for her consent, then began inspecting her.

Whenever he touched one of the bruises, she let out a sharp and anguished gasp or groan. Wondering whether or not some bones were broken, he touched her a little harder than she would have liked. She was clearly in pain, but nothing was broken. Father told the nurse to get some pain medications, and it was clear that she ought to be administered naproxen to abate the swelling because her chart showed that she was allergic to ibuprofen.

He also wondered about the baby. He took out his stethoscope and listened for a heartbeat from her belly. There was one, and it was strong. While the mother was badly beaten, it seemed the father had taken care not to affect the area around the child. Just in case, Father told the nurse to book an ultrasound so that they could assess the baby’s appearance.

As Father ordered this and that from the nurse, the teenager didn’t say anything. On the other side of her bed was a window. She was looking out of it, as if she wished she had a pair of wings that would fly her away. Because the hospital was on a strip of land that held a road, a few cottages, and the width of the entire hospital building, and nothing more, the hospital’s rooms provided a view of the waves no matter the angle of the window. The sky was a piercing blue, the ocean was aquamarine, and the sound of the waves thudding and crashing was the soundtrack that filled their days. Boobies and gulls flew about, landing on the odd car or pile of trash. If one’s ears were willing to listen, they would hear their coos. And a soft, salty sea smell wafted into their room. It was briny but pleasant to the nose, reminding one of the taste of shrimp and crab.

On the other side of their curving strand of land were the barges, out in the water and yet eerily close.

Father did not mean to ask it, but it came out of his mouth.

“Do you still want to go back to him?”

The teen turned away from the view. Something about the question broke her from her ease. She bit the downturn of her lip. She struggled to take proper breaths, she shook her body, and her eyes were filling with rage.

Father pulled the blinds shut. He turned on the lights and hoped a power outage wouldn’t leave them in the dark. The nurse came back. She said the sonogram was booked and that they would wheel her there. Another nurse came, and together they put the teen on a moving bed and left to the floor where the X-rays and scans were done. Father would have joined them, but he wanted to write out his notes for the other doctor. He made detailed descriptions of the various abrasions as well as their placements on the body and their depths. He knew that this would be one of his last reports, so he really took his time and wrote out three to four pages of observations.

He finished, took a deep breath, and let himself feel what he was feeling.

He was going to fail this patient. He had never failed a patient in his life, and he had worked very hard over the decades so as not to fail any patient. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps he could tell the administration that he had changed his mind, that he wanted to work on, at least until this patient’s wounds healed and her baby was delivered.

That would take at least four to five months, he estimated. Yes, it would make more sense to ease himself into retirement. He was going into it so suddenly. A lot was going to change. Instead of going to work at these predictable hours, he’d have to drive out to the vegetable venders to buy food for the family, or suddenly encounter his neighbours when they were outside drinking in groups by the cars and engage in small talk with them. All of this was outside of his comfort zone. It wasn’t anything like dealing with patients, talking to them about their problems, and living his life in the mission of giving attention and care to those who were sick or injured.

The problem was that in the context of his mother’s life, four or five months was a lot. Yes, her dementia and Parkinson’s had stabilised in the last month, but only because it had gotten so horrible ever since the start of this year and there was not much more left for her to decline. The only thing left was for her entire body to fall apart, for all her organs to fail, and for her mind to completely fade until she became catatonic. Any and all of that could occur not only in the next month but in the next couple of days, and Father wanted to be at home, holding her hand, if and when it happened.

Father didn’t want to fail this patient, but he also didn’t want to fail his mother. Especially since he certainly was already failing his mother, and she didn’t deserve that given how much she had sacrificed to ensure his success. His feelings for this one patient were nothing compared to the aching he felt each and every minute for not being home with his mother, feeding her, entertaining her, making her happy. Life was going to be hard for this teenage girl, but life was getting harder for everyone in general. The atoll’s land was shrinking due to the rising tides, people were without work and getting addicted to drugs and having irresponsible sex, and there was far too much interdependence on the foreigners who were coming and exploiting the island, leading to an exploitation of the locals. There was a feeling that time on this planet was growing more limited, and Father had to prioritise how he spent it and with whom.

He was going to fail this patient just like he was going to fail all the other patients who would come to the hospital tomorrow onwards, who would never know him, or his failure. That was fine, because Father was going to spend that time with someone not worth failing.

set in Libreville, Gabon

It wasn’t that Father was planning to announce that he was ready to retire so quickly. But he was in the canteen, and someone who worked for the administration baited him into the conversation. Father was in line trying to scoop plantains and fufu onto his tray when this man cut the line in front of him. He was the son of the CEO of the Gabon Oil Company and had practically been given the job because of that. He had the habit of cutting the line all the time, just as he was in the habit of driving a rotation of fancy cars to the hospital and revving the wheels for fun. Father usually let him cut in front of him out of resignation, but something was different today, as it had been for the last few weeks: Father was accepting the possibility of no longer working for this hospital, and the more he thought about it, the more he came to like that idea.

And so, unlike the other times when Father would ignore it, he said quite curtly: « I am sure I will not miss working here. »

 

He had said it as a knee-jerk response, with no thought or consideration given to his words.

Unfortunately, he had chosen the worst person to react to. The person from the administration office said: « What do you mean? » and when Father struggled to find an answer, he became like a tree snake detecting a sumptuous meal.

He was going to poke and prod Father until all of the blood in Father’s body bled out.

« What do you mean? So, you are leaving the hospital? You have not told anyone that you are leaving. So, what is it? Are you leaving? If you are quitting, you must inform us. And remember that you are choosing to quit. We do not recompense people who quit. So, what is it? What are you planning to do? Are you going to tell me? »

Father chuckled awkwardly. Confrontation troubled him. He noticed suddenly that his neckline was feeling wet with sweat. He knew that any word that he said would be used against him, so he stayed silent. He found a seat on the other side of the room where no one would be within earshot of any conversation, put down his tray, and just ignored the man. He looked only at the food in front of him, despite knowing that the person from administration was hovering in the foreground, staring at him, waiting for him to say something.

Luckily, the person from the administration didn’t come and sit with Father. He had shown off his importance and was probably satisfied. But someone else did come up. It was that youngish woman who had taken out her braids and grown out an afro, who loved to gamble and swear, and who spent her free time unwinding with a man as conservative as Father. It was Awa, one of his best friends at the hospital.

« Bonjour » she said. She gave a polite smile, one that asked Father if he was in the mood to interact with another person.

« Bonjour » Father said back. He approved of her presence with a gesture he made with his eyebrows, pointing them towards the empty seat. She sat there but didn’t immediately dig into her food. She was looking surprisingly contemplative.

Then she asked, « So, you are planning to retire? »

Father looked at his tray, not sure what he should be eating first. He ultimately snapped one of the beignets in half, took the knife, and put bush butter on top of it.

He asked: « How do you know? »

« I was right behind you in line. I heard everything. »

« You were in line? I did not see you. You could have said hi. And he was being quite loud. He wanted to be loud, to humiliate me. »

« That is all true. I agree. However, you are not answering the question. Are you retiring? »

Father munched on his beignets, getting the powdered sugar over his lips. It was stupid. He really ought to have eaten his meal first rather than dessert, as his fish was still steaming, and the cassava-and-greens mix was going to lose its flavour if it cooled down. But the question Awa was asking also put everything in his mind out of order. He felt like having something sweet on his tongue to restore some coolness to his thoughts.

He waited for logic to return to him. He said: « It is not an easy thing to decide. »

This felt right. Awa was one of the first people he should have told.

Awa responded: « There is not a thing that is easy to decide. It is hard to decide what car to buy. It is hard to decide whether or not to migrate. I think about a lot of things, too. Life in France looks like it would be much easier than life here, and I have a cousin there. Perhaps I should go… »

« Sorry I did not tell you. »

« It is normal. We do not have to tell anything to each other. We work together. That is all. I will leave to France next week, and you will not know. That will be my secret. You will have yours, and I will have mine… »

« Je suis vraiment désolé… »

Father meant it. Awa wasn’t family, but they had known each other for over a decade, and she was one of the few people who wished him on his birthday, or went out of the way to make small talk with him, or who would respond if he ever needed help outside of a professional setting.

Awa was still sitting, but she held her tray, clenching it in her hands. She pushed her chair outwards to stand, but then as her body lifted upwards, she sat it back down again. She took a deep breath, and she said: « I thought we were friends. »

Father smiled. « We are. I am actually touched that you are this affected. I did not even have any expectation that the news of my retirement would be important to you. You are so much younger than me. You have so many other friends at the hospital. I never thought you would miss me. »

« These people are all my friends? » Awa’s eyes snapped open. « They are all looking out for themselves. I know that, and you know that. I talk to them because I want to survive. We get paid little for the work we do. Life is hard. » She inverted her arm to show Father the other side. Where the wrist connected to the arm was a new tattoo, of a woman who mildly resembled Awa, with a big afro and sunglasses, naked, but covering her private parts with her folded legs and arms. « You know that we live in a conservative country. I know what the other men and women say about me. They are around my age, but  still they pass their comments on me. You are different from them and I am different from them, and though it is for different reasons, we are very similar. Of course I will miss you. How could I not? »

Awa’s voice was breaking as she spoke. Hearing the emotion in her voice and the veracity of her thoughts, Father could not help but be moved. They exchanged a knowing smile, and they ate together in silence for a while. Father broke the fufu with his hands and put the creamy cassava fluff into the sauce around the fish. The food was a little too salty today, but it was well absorbed by the fufu. Father chewed slowly. He made it a point to savour the meal. It was simple cooking from the canteen, but it had a different flavour from the food of his home or village.

It wasn’t that he was going to miss the canteen food, but he had to appreciate its texture and the fact that once he left his job, he would no longer have access to the things or people from work that he took for granted.

Father said, « I have known you for over fourteen years now. I remember how we started to talk. It was around the time my son was going to college. You had recently graduated. I saw how young you looked, and I missed my son. I couldn’t help but talk to you. I told you to remove your tattoos. I told you to get married. I told you to work seriously and hard. You were annoyed with me, and I am sorry for how much I offended you. I said those things because I wanted to be friends with you. And now look. You are fond of me. I would have never predicted this. You can be soft. You can be considerate. You are loving. You are a great friend. And I will miss you and it is the truth. »

Awa’s food was no longer steaming. She continued to eat, first picking apart the fish and putting the pieces into her mouth. With each word that Father said, her face moved to make another expression. Sometimes a wide smile or loud laugh was there, joyful at the memories he was bringing up. Other times she tugged her eyebrows together like she wanted to furiously argue with Father, just like how they used to when they were first getting to know each other. But her mouth remained shut. It was only after Father finished speaking and they had both had some time to fill their bellies that she spoke.

« How is your mother? »

« She is good. Well, her health is very bad. It remains bad and is getting worse. I thought I could handle her care and my work both. I now have to pick one. »

« Family is very important. You told me that. I always found it hard to understand. My parents and I come from the same city, we speak the same language, we live in the same house, and yet we spend most of our time arguing. I really wanted to move out. That was why I kept hanging out with foreigners, or trying to make money by playing card games. I did a lot of things I’m not proud of, but I wanted to earn enough to leave or find someone who could take me away from here. Sadly, nothing in my life has changed that much. I have to remember that Gabon is Gabon, and there’s little opportunity for people to move upwards. »

Father protested: « That is anywhere. People struggle to become successful in every country. And a lot of people are successful. I came from a village, and now I am here. I had to struggle. »

« Ninety percent of the population struggle. There are successes. I understand. But it takes a lot of luck to achieve success. Hard work is important, but luck is also important. »

« You reduce everything to luck. You are also a lady of luck. I know where your parents come from. I know how they struggled. They did everything for you. »

« And this is your point? This is the point you are trying to lead me to? »

« The point…the reason…actually, I don’t know… »

Awa responded with a loud and long laugh. Father tried to think about what he was actually trying to say. « The point is that for myself or your parents, we say what we say because we care. Your parents want what is best for you. Their intention is good. You had a goal to leave Gabon. A lot of the younger generation do. My son did. But it is not your fault you were not able to leave. You did your best, and it is normal to struggle. We are trying to give you advice that will make it easier for you… »

Awa scraped the sauce underneath her fish bones and pushed it to a corner of the plate. She mixed it with the rice but didn’t put it into her mouth.

Awa said: « I thought you should have retired when your mother came back home. I don’t remember if I told you this or not. »

« I cannot remember myself. But yes, that is the truth. That is what I should have done. You gave good advice. I just didn’t listen to it. »

« So, the young aren’t always wrong? »

« I never said that. I don’t know why that is something you would think. »

Awa laughed again, this time fondly. She finished her rice-and-sauce mix. She asked: « Have you told any of the other doctors that you want to retire? »

« I will have to start telling them soon. Who do you think I should mention it to? »

« I think you should mention it to no one. None of them are your friends. You will leave, and they will not notice. »

« That is the truth » Father said. His heart sank for a moment, thinking about how many decades he had been here, and how hard he had worked, and how little it had paid off for him socially. Then he looked up and locked his gaze with Awa’s. The natural result was to smile.

Awa asked: «What? »

« It’s nothing. »

Awa asked again, smiling naughtily like a little girl: « What? »

Father looked down. He let his smile leave him. His hands were so wrinkled with age that they almost looked pruned. He hated seeing all the lines around them, as well as the dark spots on his hands that had never been there before.

He had lived so much of his life at this hospital, and while it was good for the people around him and good for his financial situation, there were a lot of other things his hands could have done, and he was sure he would have found a way to be proud of those works, too.

He said: « I have finished my meal. You have finished your meal. I should see my next patient. »

Awa said: « I understand. And when will I see you again? »

Father said: « I have your number. Have you ever met my mother? »

Awa said: « No, I have not even met your wife. I have never been to your house. »

« Then come to our place at the end of the month. I will have more free time after I retire. I will show you around our garden. »

« You have a garden? You must be a rich man to afford all that space. »

Father picked up his tray, Awa joined him. As they threw away their waste, he said: « Yes, I’m rich. There’s also a lot of richness in the life that I lead outside of the hospital. Even I forget how beautiful that life is. It will be great to show it to you. You know me as a doctor and I know you as a nurse, but that doesn’t need to be how we treat each other in the future. I want to invite you to my home, and I want my family to know you. »

Awa said: « I would like that. »

Father said: « I would like that, too. »

They waved and left. Father had said that he was going to see his next patient, but he was actually lying. He was going to the administration to formally announce that he was leaving the hospital. He hadn’t known when would have been the right time, but something about interacting with Awa had given him a confidence and courage, and he was going to take advantage of it before this audacity that never came naturally to him withered and puckered out.

Set in Batam, Riau Islands, Indonesia

“Sayang, saya harus berbicara sama kamu.”

“Baik. But don’t say, ‘I must speak with you’. It makes me nervous.”

“It is something you will want to hear. You will be proud of me.”

“You will finally move us to Singapore?”

“You are this old, and you are remembering to tell jokes. That is good.”

“Singapore is just on the other side. I think about it every day.”

“Singapore is not on the other side of our home. Singapore is on the other side of the strait, and there is too much water between us. Look. Just outside of that window, I see some coconut trees and some bushes and some grass leading to the water, and then I see a lot of water.”

“I see smog.”

“I see smog and water both. What is smog, and what is water…sometimes it is hard to differentiate.”

“Sayang, I am an old woman. Your mother is an old woman. Look how poorly she is eating. You are dangling martabak in front of her but letting the chocolate drip all over the table and the peanut sauce stain the wood.”

“Let me say what I wanted to say…I think I am going to retire.”

“You want to retire? Sayang, that is great news. Congratulations! Congratulations! Do you hear that, Ibu? Your son is finally listening to me.”

“Why are you acting like I am having a birthday party? If I retire, we will have to worry about money again. There will be no one earning for the family. Are you thinking about that?”

“You said it like it was good news. Jadi I started to celebrate.”

“You are happy. I can hear it in your voice. I can see it on your face.”

“I am sorry you are sad that I am happy. I did not realise this was a test.”

“It was not a test. I am really considering that I should retire.”

“Do you want to retire?”

“I don’t know. The economy of Batam is very bad. It will get worse. Everything in Indonesia is getting worse. Soon, most of it will be underwater.”

“And we will not be alive at that point. Our son is also abroad.”

“Benar. But I can work for longer. I still feel energetic and alert. I can work until I am hundred, and I would not even feel like I am older than thirty.”

“That is up to you, sayang.”

“But the idea of me retiring makes you happy.”

“Sayang, you are my husband. I love you. Is it wrong that I would want to see my husband at home with me? We can take care of the hens together. We can focus on our garden again.”

“And my mother?”

“What about your mother?”

“You are a good wife. You spend all of your time caring for my mother while I am at the hospital. But I was a seeing a patient a few days ago, and my patient made me think about her. I thought about all she did for me. I thought about the life in Bintan that I left. She never wanted to leave her life in Bintan when she was well. And I was never able to ask her what she wanted because her health deteriorated so quickly, and bringing her to the city was the best option. But right now she spends all day with you and only some hours of the day with me. If I made the decision to bring her home for her health, then I should be spending more time with her. At least I know that is what she would have truly wanted.”

“I am proud of you for realising that. That was what I was trying to say that last time we fought, but I did not say it well. You understand what your mother wants. It is not really about retirement. It is about spending time with your mother during the time she has left.”

“And what about when my mother dies? What will I do for work after that?”

“Your mother still has time to live. You can consider that question after.”

“Sayang, I consider the bills twenty days before they come. I plan out my hours of rest to the minute. I am not someone who can wait idly and not consider the future. If I retire, I will not be able to return to work. There are also patients who need me, and they will need me long after my mother does. How will I live with myself after failing them? I’ve done so much for the people at the hospital. I have more to give.”

“Did you want my opinion?”

“I don’t know.”

“I will tell you. Yes, I want you to retire. Yes, it would make me happy. Yes, it would make your mother happy, too. It will also be good for you. You will have time to spend with your family. We do not have to worry about money. Money comes and money goes, and we were born poor. If I had to choose between money and my husband, I would rather be poor again.”

“Poor? You want to be like these people who look for nasi to eat in the trash?”

“We will never be that poor. I don’t want a big house. I don’t want money to spend on this dress or that table. I want to be with you. Stay with us. Retire. We will have another person in our family again. We will have fun.”

“Ibu is looking happy as you speak. Look at her smile.”

“Now you are smiling, too.”

“Because I feel good. I feel better. I am glad I told you. And I am glad to see Ibu smile.”

“You know why it feels good? Allah makes us feel good when we are hearing something that is right. Karena itu. It is what Allah wants us to do. You do not believe in Allah the way I do. I respect you. But believe that the plans that have been made for us are bigger than anything in our minds. Believe in Allah’s plans. It is time to retire. Listen to the plan.”

“They will not miss you. They are not your close ones. They see you as their doctor. They are happy to receive treatment. They are not happy because they have gotten to know you. It is not the same as how we feel, sayang. We need you at home. We need the man of our house. We love you.”

“Sa-sa.”

“Look at Ibu. She is trying to say something.”

“We know what she wants to say.”

“Sa-sa.”

“Do not try to speak. Ibu, we love you. Yes, I love you. I did everything for you. You don’t believe me, but I left you because I love you. I had so much to give to you, but none of it could be given if I had stayed in Bintan. I didn’t want you to be lonely, but you were, and for that I am sorry. Now I promise to doall I can for you by your side.”

“Bu-buk.”

“Bukan. Don’t say ‘bukan’. Ibu, I am so sorry. Don’t stress yourself. Don’t speak. And don’t worry, it is time for us to be together. Sayang, you are right. It is time to retire.”

“What is the time?”

“You will have to go to prayer soon. Let me help you ready my mother. Let us go together.”

Set in Lalibela, Ethiopia

You are a queen.

This is what Mother hears, as she is encompassed in spectral light.

You are the woman we live to worship. 

Mother hears this being said in the soft voice of her son, and she smiles to herself.

But then she opens her eyes, and she notices she is nowhere in the presence of him.

She is floating in the middle of the sky, descending slowly to the ground.

Our queen. It is you. We see who you are, and we know you. It is your face on our monuments, it is your image we imagine when we write about you in our books. It is the one and only you, our queen. 

Under her are thousands of men, their skin a caramel bronze, their coiled hair a dripping black, their bodies draped fully in white. It is akin to the white wrap that Mother herself is wearing, as she floats. They hold up their hands to the sky, their eyes wet with tears.

Our Queen Makeda. You have come to us. 

Queen Makeda? Mother asks herself. That isn’t my name at all.

The light is strobing, flashing, headache-inducing. Mother remembers that just a few moments ago, she was sitting over a bucket, trying to scruff the burned shiro paste and injera rinds off of her mogogo. Flies were whirring around her, and she was thinking of opening the window to let them out.

Mother is by no means a queen.

And despite that, here she is, being coronated by light, as people from afar worship her.

Queen Makeda. Finally, you have returned.

They take their turns to bow down to her. Right behind the throng is the church of Saint George. She is far above it, seeing only the cross shape of the stone roof, and then the cavity of ground that rock was exhumed out of, and the church then built out of. The tuff of the church is a chipped-away pink and red and brown. And by the stairs, in between the carved-out empty space and the building, more and more people are coming out to bow towards Mother.

This is not where I wanted to go, Mother thinks. If she focuses her mind, maybe her dream will take her to the destination she wishes.

But is her mind focused enough when she calls out to the person she is looking for?

Does she even say her name?

As she imagines her face, does she wish that this woman will finally take the time to respect her?

The crowd meanwhile rejoices.

Our Queen Makeda, we thank the heavens you are home. We thought you had gone with Prince Menelik to Gaza, but then centuries passed, and you never returned. How we awaited you, our queen. We sing songs about you, we build statues for you. Now that you are here, the great kingdom of Aksum will rise once more. Guide us to greatness, our queen. Come, sit on your throne.

The stone doors of the church burst open, and a group of men carry out a golden throne, hoisted on a sheepskin rug by two iron rods. The rod is elegant, magnificent. The moment it hits the sun, the rays strike back radiantly, almost blinding Mother. Mother has never seen anything shine as it does.

The fact is if Mother closes her eyes, shuts her mouth, doesn’t correct them, and lets them believe that she is the queen they think her to be, then she could have her feet massaged and washed at any given moment, be fed dates and olives by hand at any passing whim, and live out the rest of her days in luxury and comfort.

A dozen fingers tap over the tough points of her face, unwinding each and every muscle.

It will be like never being told no again. It will be like her son or nephew or husband or anyone else finally admitting that she has been right all along. It will be like basking in their eternal love.

Or not really an eternal love. More like the idea that they will treat her like a queen and listen to every order she says without a second thought or doubt.

That is what Mother wants, Mother suddenly realises.

Not to be in unconditional love with those she has given her heart to.

But for them to obey her, because she knows what’s best, and everything she does is in their best interest.

But that isn’t love, is it?

Mother eyes snap open. She drops to the bottom of the ground, the same level as this crowd. She does not want there to be any confusion. She raises her voice and, as loudly as she can, lets out her thoughts in a roar.

I’m not here to be worshipped! I’m not here to see any of you. There’s only one person I need to see.

I need to see my sister.

16 July, 2024

What was it that Father had done, and was it really a mistake?

Looking back on his life, he feels like that he has never really made mistakes. What he could say was that he had made a series of decisions, all of which had consequences, and he was now living in the shadows of them. He always had sound reasons for his decisions, at least at the time when he made them.

It is only now that he is getting a strongly reprehensible feeling that something has gone horribly wrong.

But Father made so many decisions in his life. Which one of them, if any, had been the wrong one?

16 June, 2024

The tube was taken out of her throat yesterday, and yet when Father looked at his mother, all he could see was the hole. It was of course covered by a dressing and bandage, and it would heal in about two weeks. But as his mother sat in her wheelchair, being spoon-fed samlor by his wife, all his mind could focus on was the fact that for the last month, each time his mother was fed through the tube, she looked to be on the verge of sobbing.

He had done it for her good. She had been choking on her food, something many people at her age died of. It was better that she ate properly so that she could live longer. That was at least how Father first justified inserting the tube into her throat, despite his wife’s objections that it was inhumane.

His mother, Tum Sareth, was having her dinner. The samlor was made out of crab, water spinach, and tamarind, all soaked in water. Father had asked Mother to make sure that the samlor was stewed properly. As Mother fed her spoon after spoon, she asked « Is it tasty? » « Does the samlor taste good? » « How is the food? » all in quick succession. Mother had a rapid style of speaking which made it hard for others to answer her questions.

But Tum Sareth seemed to respond. There was a change in his mother’s glances, a sense that she was answering in her own way, the salty and sour taste of the soup activating her taste buds and causing certain memories to rush through her mind.

When Tum Sareth was done, Father finished up the crab pieces and greens that his mother would not have been able to digest. Then he sank into the sofa and turned on folk music on the radio. Father thought. No, he didn’t regret putting his mother on a tube diet. He had done it with good intentions, and while it had not had the best outcome, he had learned something from it. After resting his feet, he went upstairs to take a shower, then laid himself in bed in preparation for the next day of work. As his mind fell asleep, the same question kept ringing in his head.

No, he said in response to it. I have done the right thing. 

16 January, 1977

Ti Leng was twenty-three, and he wanted to study medicine. But this was also the time of the Khmer Rouge, when no one could study medicine. For years, doctors had been disappearing in the middle of the day and the night, and no one knew where they had gone or what had become of them. In the meantime, orders were given for the local population, dressed in pitch-black clothing no matter their age of profession, to keep farming, to keep building up the land of the country, to make sure there was an abundance of food for everyone.

It was two years into the regime, and Leng had not given up on his dream of being a doctor. But there was nothing else to do but work the fields like his father, Khim Ti, wanted. Leng was growing tired of the pressure that Khim Ti was putting on him to take farming seriously like his brothers. He was also getting closer to his mother’s brother, Tum Din, during this time. His uncle Tum Din had a house out in Phnom Penh but had moved back to their village, Preah Dak, due to the orders of the government. Leaning against one of the fences, smoking a cigarette beside the backdrop of a broken Hindu stela, his uncle Tum Din told him stories about the Phnom Penh of the good old days, how he would make out and have sex with random French girls visiting the city and go about getting drunk in the various pubs in town. While Leng wasn’t interested in the life of debauchery and intrigue that his uncle preached of, the idea of living in a grand city entranced him. In the two years since Pol Pot had taken power, malnutrition had become a nationwide epidemic. The more Leng saw the people in his village succumbing to random and preventable illnesses, the more he became convinced that he needed to leave for a place where he could put his intelligence and ambitions to use. He would learn how to serve his countrymen as a doctor. Healing people was more important than farming the land, but these were dangerous thoughts he kept to himself.

Then the Pol Pot regime collapsed, and Leng acted on his decision.

Leng left at a suitable time, in the 80s, just as he was freshly married and looking to start a new life not only for himself, but also for his future descendants.

16 May, 1990

It was just two weeks after his son was born. It was about four in the morning. Father was getting ready to go to work. His wife and child were lying on their bed. She was still sleeping with a hot rock on top of her belly, to help the uterus contract and for her belly sag to reduce. The smell of galangal root lingered in the room. It was a bit too strong for Father, who preferred to be outside when she pasted it all over her body, and yet the smell of the galangal and ginger clung to his clothes.

Their place was small. At this stage of Father’s career, all he could afford was a room in a small hovel, right on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. They were in the process of buying an apartment in a modern complex in the nicer part of town, which required a substantial advance payment. Because Father had saved a lot over the years, they could afford it. Father had made it very clear that they should never take out a loan, because he had seen how loans had left his uncle Tum Din in a financial rut that he would never be able to get out of.

He was grateful that they had left his uncle’s house. His uncle Tum Din had offered to host them for longer when they first moved to the city, but Father no longer wanted to take advantage of a hospitality that had already expired. Tum Din and Mother had started to bicker, and the pregnancy had also made her a bit more tempestuous. The smell of the pollution from the nearby river was horrid in their current apartment, but at least the view of the rising Phnom Penh was in the background. He could look out and see a skyline, as well as the outlines of the golden temples, the stupas.

This coming century was going to be a good one for Phnom Penh. He could feel it in his bones. And he was going to be a part of it. He was going to find his way to contribute. He would do whatever it would take to help his country heal from the baggage of the last few decades, and to ensure the best for the upcoming one.

And he knew his son would be a part of it, too. The boy was just born, barely an anything, but looking at his face, Father could predict an ambition. His son was going to put Cambodia on the map. He was going to make people across the planet remember that people of creativity and talent came from this part of the world, too.

Father decided he was going to do everything for his son and his wife. He would work hard in the hospital, earn as much money as possible, and make sure they would have everything they needed to make a difference for this city, for their people, and for the world.

16 April, 2012

It was the last day of the New Year, Veareak Laeung Sak, and Father felt like treating Mother to a meal in the market after their visit to the temple. After washing the statues of the Buddha with the monks and the other temple goers, they drove to the food market at the centre of town, found themselves on a bench, and ordered some rice noodles. It was rare for them to go out. Father was always busy at the hospital, and these were the years when Son was about to graduate from his uni in Australia. Mother was convinced he would soon come home and they would find him a nice girl to marry, so she spent most of her time researching the most suitable brides from their village network.

Father’s intention was for them to get some time to themselves, maybe chat about things that would bring more fondness back into their increasingly perfunctory marriage. Instead Mother complained about how many people there were, the heat which was causing her to sweat, and how oily the spring rolls cut and dropped into the noodles were. She went on and on about how annoying everything around them was, and this made Father feel annoyed, too. He very rarely had time off from hospital work, he rarely had time to even be around his wife, and this was how she was going to spend it?

They left the market immediately after the meal. Mother started going on about the bad condition of the French-style colonial houses above them as a different set of thoughts came to Father’s mind. He decided he was not going to spend his free time on excursions in the future. Instead he would use it to focus on his body and get the ideal amount of rest that would allow him to work hard so that he would be able to do his best for his patients, who never felt disappointed in his efforts.

16 September, 1961

One day, young Leng was out exploring the outskirts of his village when he ended up befriending a French man. Preah Dak was located right on the edge of the ruins of Angkor Wat. These were the years after Cambodia had gotten independence from France, and the government was actively working to excavate and restore the temple with the goal of making it into a global cultural heritage site. As a result, wherever Leng went, there were statues of Hindu gods overcome by vines and giant stone elephants partly under the ground and covered in fungi. There were also various men, mostly from France, out digging in parts of the ground.

This man was very kind. He’d let young Leng ride on his shoulders, showed him half-broken rocks that they were trying to shape back into statues. He let Leng try all sorts of lollipops and sweets from his pocket. He always dropped Leng back to his parents, who would scold him for going out with strangers. Yet Leng decided it was worth taking the risk, glad to meet his friend even if he knew it offended his parents.

And then one day that man disappeared. He just stopped coming to the site. Leng became sad and cried, but his father beat him for showing too much emotion, and he lost the habit. He spent many days wondering what happened to the French man, creating stories in his mind involving the man being tumbled over by the rocks or swallowed by the vines. Eventually he completely forgot about the man, grew older, and rarely went out for excursions as Angkor Wat became a protected tourist site and was no longer as easy for the villagers to wander into.

16 July, 2024

It is the end of the day. Father was supposed to be going home around six but because of the overload at the hospital he looks to be returning home around eight or nine. He was looking forward to reaching early so he could help feed his mother, but given how late it is dinner would have probably long been done, and his mother would have been put to sleep. He would drive back to his fancy apartment at BKK1, take a tub bath to unwind his joints, and immediately go to bed.

He is exiting the building, but as he steps down the stairs towards the parking lot he feels something in the back of his mind.

In January, back when he had been planning for his mother to move in with him, he had entertained a brief thought. What if he retired? He was getting towards seventy, and it was going to be a lot of time and effort to help his mother and go to work both.

But the thought had only flashed in his mind. He had his wife who lived at home and had nothing else to do. She could easily manage the work, he had decided, and he would do the best he could to help her in the off hours.

It was now a half a year later, and nothing had gone as predicted. Yes, his wife had done a lot of work, but it had also soured their relationship immensely. His mother’s state had also deteriorated since she had come to the city. Yes, she had access to better medical care, but her body was declining, a downward trend with no improvement.

Father felt as he touched the exit doors of the hospital a certain coldness. It was a sense of distance, frustration, and a detachment from his physical body. A question came to his mind.

What am I doing? Why am I doing it? And what is the purpose of it?

Normally when Father made his decisions, he made them well. But as he saw his car in the distance, and he relived in his mind all of the moments he would drive back and forth, forth and back, to home and hospital, and hospital and home, he felt another thought encroaching.

He hadn’t made the right decision.

Was it a mistake not to retire? Was it a mistake to leave his mother’s health in the hands of his wife?

What was it that Father had done, and was it really a mistake?

set in Salalah, Oman

The monsoon had started a month ago, but it was because Mother was out walking with her mother-in-law that she noticed how green everything had gotten. In the monsoon months, the city of Salalah changed dramatically. The gently hot coastal town was taken over by the vegetation that grew during Khareef, turning the entire city from a muddy brown to a vibrant jungle colour. Mother and Father’s house was in a suburb north of town, away from the beach, and the park that Mother had asked the chauffeur to drop them off in was surrounded by the hills. Everything under them was green, as if they were living in a coffee plantation. Though the clouds were damp, dark, and covered the sky as if it was soon to rain, all Mother could think about was how cool she felt.

Mother said to her mother in law « .The weather is too nice »

She wasn’t expecting a response. Her mother-in-law was Fatma, of the same family as the Al Balushi clan. The family came from the north of the Dhofar Governate, from a village near the border with Saudi Arabia. Her mother-in-law had come to live with them in January as a result of her declining health. At the time, the dementia and Parkinson’s were bad, but she would at least make an attempt to communicate. For example, previously, if Mother asked Fatma if she was in the mood for a walk, her eyes would light up, and she would she would cluck out random phrases or say words like وردة الصحر  or ابابايا . She gesticulated and tried to maintain eye contact, giving the sense that there was a story inside her mind that she wanted to convey, even if her mouth and body failed to express it.

Now there was nothing. Fatma’s head slunk against her shoulder with her eyes vacuously open. The boys in dishdasha and housewives in burqa walked by, many of them staring. In her previous attempts to come to the park, the staring had intimidated Mother. It had become one of the reasons why she avoided exercising outside with her mother-in-law.

But something about the weather, the overall environment, and her mental state was different today. She didn’t mind that they gaped at her as she pushed Fatma in her wheelchair, talking to a woman who wouldn’t talk back. She knew it didn’t matter whether or not her interactions with Fatma had any semblance of normalcy. These interactions and excursions were worth having because they were good for Fatma’s mental health and overall stamina.

Mother repeated « .The weather is too nice .We picked the right hour for our walk .We will go in an hour for Asr .At that point, it will start to rain  ؟Do you like rain »

Mother repeated when there was no response to the question « ؟Do you like rain »

She looked towards Fatma to see the same glassy expression. She said « …The rain …the rain ؟Do you like rain »

The more she spoke, the more Mother started thinking about the rain and her own relationship to it. As a child, she used to despise Khareef, when the rains kept her inside, stuck in a room, while the water leaked from the ceiling and dripped onto their floor, furniture, and clothes. But regardless of the weather, most of her early memories involved being indoors anyway, with her mother and her cousins, cooking and cleaning and preparing everything for her male relatives. Sometimes Eid happened during the time of Khareef, and she had memories of eating fresh luqaimat for iftar while rain poured outside the window, the melted goo of sugar-caked donuts all over her fingers.

Mother told her mother-in-law « .I like the rain now .I have a house with so much comfort .I can enjoy the rain from the inside of a beautiful home .This is because of your son Bahir .I am happy I married him every day of my life »

She thought, I am happy for all the service I do for him, including helping you.

Remembering how much better life was because of her marriage to Bahir, Mother felt a genuine sense of gratitude, one that made her want to give namaz to Allah right then and there on their walk. Yes, she was glad to have left the house, to have gotten some cardio, in weather that was not making her sweatily moist under her burqa. And she was with the woman who had birthed the man who had given her such a great quality of life, a beautiful son, and a wondrous home. That was something to appreciate.

There was a boy standing in the middle of the footpath. He had brown skin with sandy freckles, and tangled and unruly hair that looked like it had been days since a proper wash. He couldn’t have been a kid from the streets, but he did smell like hashish. He had the features of someone from Yemen. Mother tried to wheel her mother-in-law away from him, but he was much quicker. He stopped right in front of them and pointed at Fatma, sniggering.

« .She is such an ugly-looking lady .I have never seen a woman who looks like this, ugly like a mule. And she drools like one, too. »

Mother raised her hand. She would have struck him right then and there had there not been a wheelchair in between them. « You go » Mother bellowed. The boy rushed away, but not because he was scared. He approached a group of teens of a similar age who were sitting on one of the nearby benches. They greeted him, exchanging foreign-looking handshakes. Then they all stopped and pointed at Mother and her mother-in-law. It was hard to make out what was being said from a distance, but Mother imagined they were saying something rude. Mother wheeled them off in another direction before they could attract any other unwarranted attention.

She could not believe how rudely they had behaved. During the time when Son had been of that age, it was almost impossible to see anyone speak to their elders like that. Because of the conflict right across from them, a lot more people were coming from Yemen. Not to mention all those videos that the youngsters were watching, on social media, in which random people tried to hurt or prank strangers. There were so many things influencing what people said or did, and the younger generation was acting in unpredictable ways.

Mother said to her mother-in-law « .I am sorry for what you heard .He does not know anything .He is on drugs .He is crazy  »

But Fatma’s eyes did not register anything. They were in the same position they had been earlier, staring deeply yet vacuously at the footpath. And Fatma was drooling a lot. Mother found a handkerchief in her purse and leaned over to wipe Fatma’s mouth.

The clouds were looking darker. The small pieces of gravel nestled in the cracks in the footpath were starting to tumble away from the wind. It would rain soon. Fatma would undoubtedly start crying if she were rained on, and she wouldn’t be likely to stop even if she was dried off later.

It didn’t make sense to stay any longer. Mother called the chauffeur and told them they were returning, then led the wheelchair back towards the parking lot.

No kids disrupted them on the walk back.

The other people in the park must have noticed the change in the weather and were making their own plans to leave. Even the teens who had looked so comfortable on the bench were suddenly nowhere to be found.

It was just Mother and her mother-in-law on the footpath. The two of them, completely out of earshot of anyone else. In this new environment, in the outdoors, with rain encroaching, Mother suddenly felt free to share her thoughts in a way she wouldn’t have at home. She still felt bad about what this random boy had said. Even though it had not made a difference to Fatma given her state of mind, Mother wanted to say something in defense of her mother-in-law’s honour.

Mother turned to her mother-in-law, « .I am happy to know you .Genuinely, I am happy to know you .Last year, I was so lost . I wanted to dedicate myself to all of the problems of the world .I wanted to help out at orphanages .I wanted to give to the homeless .I wanted to do everything, but I felt nothing while doing so .But I feel something good when I am with you . I don’t like to admit it .That is my problem »

Mother smiled, and she liked to believe that, in some way, her mother-in-law, despite not moving her face, was smiling, too.

Mother had finally said the truth. It was hard work taking care of an elder as incapacitated as Fatma, but Mother had wanted Allah to give her life meaning, and she had gotten exactly what she asked for. It wasn’t anything as grandiose as building homes for the homeless, or bringing kilos of food to the starving, but she was still doing a service to a very particular human being, and she had to take the time to appreciate her work. Allah appreciated it, and her family appreciated it. It was a work of value, even if it was small.

They reached the car. The chauffeur got out and helped Fatma into the car. As they drove down the hill, the rain started smacking against the window. Mother smiled, and not just because she enjoyed the view of the raindrops against the misty green hills underneath them. Their walk had been short but effective, and in the next half-hour, it would be time for the Maghrib salat.

Mother said out loud to her mother-in-law « .I enjoyed what we did today .Thank you for this day .It is rare for me to enjoy our time together .But I will take the time to learn to enjoy it .I have to be honest about this .Allah has put us together in your time of need for a reason .Allah has shown this to me during our walk together .I will listen to Allah .I will enjoy the work Allah has given to me .That is my duty to Allah and to you, both .I will behave with happiness and kindness to you .I will not let anyone abuse you .I will not let myself become a person who abuses you as well »

Set in Manalkadu, Sri Lanka

Mother is in the middle of a circle. It is a circle drawn by a stick, right in the mud outside of her bungalow. She is under rows of banana trees. The grass is a thatched green, dry. She hears a prancing in the distance, as if deer are dancing on the dirt road. She is smelling betel nut. How she wants to go dance with the deer, sing songs to them, decorate their bodies with curcuma.

She remembers she is not allowed to leave the circle, but she doesn’t remember why.

As a young girl, she was told the outside world was scary, and for good reason. People used to come trying to shoot them all down. Sri Lanka doesn’t belong just to the Sinhalese, just as it doesn’t belong just to the Tamils. It belongs to everyone. But everyone wanted to kill each other for years based on what language they spoke. It is only because of recent random economic dilemmas that people have been putting their anger aside and yelling at the government. The economy is getting better, though it was in shambles for years, and people are still trying to do their best not to starve. There isn’t violence today, but what if the people who have had enough decide to storm the streets and take their problems out on others?

What if once more the Sinhalese take out their frustrations out on the Tamils—hard-working and normal people like Mother?

There are so many strangers, so many people outside of the family who can cause harm—and for no reason other than they feel like doing so. And so, Mother is waiting waiting waiting in the confines of her circle. She is grateful to have it. It is charmed with a repulsive magic that will fling anyone who is not herself to the farthest corners of her universe. As long as Mother believes in the power of the circle, she will face no harm.

What would happen if she were to let a little bit of fear into her circle?

She would have her arms and legs and breasts cut off. That was what happened to other women who threw caution to the side and acted on impulse. Or she would be raped, she would be pulled from the back by wher hair, naked, as a throng of men cheer on, waiting for their turn. This was what happened to the women who thought they were strong enough to lead an army, but their army turned on them when they found out their fastidious leader was just a little girl.

The truth is that no one can be trusted. The outside world is a dangerous and deceptive place. People don’t need a reason to harm others.

Mother imagines a man with infinite heads and arms dragging her off as she kicks and screams. He holds her in his castle, passing each night violating her, all while she waits for her husband to rescue her.

Waiting waiting waiting. All these years. Not years, decades. Not decades, centuries. Not centuries, millennia. She has buried herself deep in the earth, letting herself be uprooted over and over in a new feminine shape to marry the same exact man. Her husband isn’t bad. He is actually quite kind, and he means well, and she really does love him, just as she loves the family they have.

It’s just that if she did not spend all of her time waiting in the circle, hiding, she would have a very different sort of life.

There was a man facing her some time back. He told her something, but she wasn’t really listening. She closed her eyes, and when she snapped them back open, he was gone. He had been telling her something about the difference between reality and unreality, the power of the dream. The truth is that even when she lives in reality, she is actually still in a dream. So, what is reality, and what is her imagination?

Realisation is the key, and awakening to the truth of the illusion is her ticket out of this muggy weather and mosquito water and dirt roads. All she has to do is truly open her eyes, and the illusion around her will dissipate.

At least that’s how things should be, according to that one particular man. Yet no matter how much Mother tries to blink her eyes, the home she built for herself in this farming village on the peninsula of Jaffna is the only place she awakens to.

There is another man coming. He is a wizened, shrivelled thing, clad in only lungi, walking up the dirt road with a cane. Mother tries to recollect if she knows this man, since she knows everyone in Manalkadu. But he is not a man she recognises. He looks like even the smallest of breezes will blow him down. He looks so beaten in the eyes, so ready to fold to the bullying of time and welcome the arrival of the end of his life. Things have been very hard economically in Sri Lanka. Mother isn’t surprised that there are many people like him, who were probably once well fed, but who now rely on charity to be able to afford their daily rice and fruits. Mother has her three meals a day and has steady support from her husband, and so whenever she sees others who are suffering, she feels the guilt that comes from being grateful of what she has, and wishing to share it with others.

But as the man comes closer, Mother realizes he is not the same man she saw walking towards her a few hundred metres back. This man is a stranger, a foreigner to this land, someone who looks like them but is not truly one of them. Something in her mind is telling her that if she wants to find freedom from this reality, he is the man she ought to talk to.

No, she answers immediately. The circle is there to protect her. She has survived over sixty years a civil war and an economic crisis for a reason. Mother knows when to stay put, when to keep herself out of a conversation.

And yet a deep voice vibrating from the insides of her third eye is telling her that she must talk to this man. It is what destiny has divined. It is the only way that she will progress to the next stage of her life.

But in order to talk to the man, Mother must break the circle.

She could get kidnapped by the men lurking behind the foliage. There could be a tenfold of men, sex traffickers, waiting for her to leave. This man himself could be working with them.

But if all of life is a dream, even if she is violently awakened from this one, what would be the worst that could happen?

When that voice came to Mother ages ago and told her to start dreaming, Mother promised herself that she would not live by the lines she had drawn around herself. She would take the steps to question the script society had given her, she would come to appreciate life on her own terms. Despite that, she has lived the preceding days in exactly the same way as before. And why is that?

When does Mother’s life cease being a script?

Without any prompting, Mother kicks her feet up. The dust from the chappal destroys the line of the circle. She jogs up the dirt road, not turning back. She flings the dust all around her, creating a filmy vapour across her gown and her body. She reaches the man.

She tells herself that she has something to say, and if she doesn’t say it now, she will never know if another time will come for her voice to ever be truly heard.

«Bonsoir, ma tante. »

«Bonsoir, Tina » Mother said to her niece, all the while thinking, What are you doing here?

It was seven in the evening, a half hour after Father had come home from his hospital work. Because of some construction happening in the suburb of Kipe, the lights outside of the house were not working. The muddy street looked murky and easy to fall into. A street dog ambled by on an injured leg. Seagulls from the coast side were fighting with the crows for scraps of food. Their house was on a small commercial strip with a small clothes store and some local restaurants, but that otherwise had no real reason to be frequented by an outgoing youngster like Tina.

Her niece, as if hearing the question Mother had been too polite to voice, said, « I am here to wish my uncle. Can I come in? »

« Bien sûr » Mother said, though she was still confused. While this was the hour Mother and Father had agreed to celebrate his sixty-ninth birthday on, Father had made it very clear that he was not going to tell anyone about it, that it was just going to be an intimate celebration within their individual family. Perhaps Tina had a thing for remembering dates. While Tina was irresponsible in a lot of ways, Mother had discerned that she was good at numbers, given how quick she was at calculating tabs and doing math out loud. Mother did not want to assume mal intent on the part of Tina.

She said, « You have all of the right to come in. You are family. You do not even have to ask. »

Tina took off her shoes and put on the pair of slippers that Mother had by the door. They were actually Son’s, and it was rare for other people to use them, but Mother didn’t address it as Tina was quick to ask questions.

« Alors, how have the last few months been for you? It’s been some months since we last talked, has it not? »

« Oui » Mother said, but before she could answer, Tina spoke on.

« I am so sorry to not have visited you. I have been so busy. I’m now in my second year of college. It’s a lot more work than the first. And soon I will be starting my third year. »

« Are you still studying biology? » Mother asked.

« Ma tante » Tina chuckled. « Why does it matter to you so much? »

« It is because you did not come from Koidu with the plan to study biology, and it is expensive to change your degree like this. Are you not thinking about your mother? When was the last time you called her, in fact? »

« Ma tante » Tina repeated, keeping the amused smile on her face. She opened up an app on her phone. « Do you think I look good in this picture? Or do you think I should apply some more red on my face? »

She showed the picture first without any filter, in which Tina’s face was normal, her cat-like eyes and caramel-toned skin against the steel wall of a mall, her face centered because of the size of her dreads and how much space they took up in the photo. Then she put on a filter, and Tina’s cheeks were fully red, and the size of her eyes were widened out, almost made to look like a cartoon character’s.

« Tina, aren’t you here to wish my husband for his birthday? Why don’t you go wish him instead of showing me these photos? »

« Oui, oui » Tina said, laughing it off. « You have reason. Where is he? »

Mother pointed into the dining room, which was through the doorway on the other side of the sofa. It should have been obvious from the light and the smell of burnt candles. Tina rushed over, and Mother heard her say, « Bonsoir uncle. Happy birthday. »

« Thank you, Tina. » Mother could hear, based on Father’s matter-of-fact tone, that he wasn’t happy about this particular visit. Mother could understand. Tina rarely visited or interacted with them unless she was in need of money, and she barely talked to her husband as it was.

Then Tina roared almost too loudly, « And who is that? »

Mother entered the room. Tina, of course, was referring to her mother-in-law, the great Madame Condé, the dame of the Temme people of Kambia who was well respected in her town, and who was known for being the mother of Sekou Condé in this particular house. She was sitting in her wheelchair, covered in a purple sun-print dress. The dress used to cover her properly, but with how thin she was becoming, it now draped over her like a bedsheet. The only place where there was still a healthy amount of fat deposit was on her cheeks. Her eyes were turning blue with age. It seemed like she had noticed Tina and was putting her lips together to say something, but instead she blew out spit. Drool pooled over her chin.

« What is she doing? » Tina asked.

Father responded to Tina’s earlier question, « This is my mother. I don’t think you have met her, have you not? »

« Why is she making a face like that? »

Certainly, for someone not used to seeing a face in the midst of dementia, Mother knew it would be a puzzling sight. The eyes seemed completely vacant, and yet the lips were open, as if in the middle of conversation. Father’s mother put up one of her hands, and Tina reached towards it as if she wanted to give her a handshake.

But then Madame Condé lost her focus, and she slapped at Tina.

« She just slapped me » Tina said, rubbing her arm. « And it was quite hard. She is strong. »

« Yes, she is » Father said. The chocolate frosting of the cake was dripping onto the table. The lights above were flickering, the bulbs soon in need of changing. « Tina, what was it you wanted to say in coming here? »

« I wanted to say happy birthday » Tina said, her French sounding joyous and polite and very positive. But then something else glinted in her eye, a clear, obvious question.

Was she about to ask for money?

The silence stretched out for some time, then Tina said, « I guess I should get going. »

« You could have some cake » Mother said.

« I am on a diet, but thank you. »

Mother gave a polite smile, knowing that made sense given how Tina thought. Mother gave a look to her husband, asking with her eyes if she could see Tina off. Father gestured for her to go, that it would no bother for the two of them. They returned to the living room, and Tina picked up her purse from the sofa. She said, « I understand why you are so busy. It must be hard to take care of a woman like her. »

Mother held her mouth shut, not sure how to respond. Yes, it was very hard to take care of a woman like her mother-in-law, very much so. But Mother didn’t like Tina’s tone.

Tina went on:

« The cake smells splendid, and there was not a power cut today. It would probably have been a most joyous birthday otherwise, if she wasn’t there, making a mess everywhere. »

Mother wanted to say something to stop Tina in her tracks, something along the lines of, You shouldn’t speak about your elders that way. Someday, someone will say the exact same thing about you. At the same time, all Mother had to do was sniff the air to remind herself that there was now a permanent smell of urine in her house, just as she could see the snot stains from her mother-in-law on the couch, or the TV knob that was permanently broken because her mother-in-law had tried to pull it off one day.

« You have a good day today, Tina » Mother said.

« You too, my aunt » Tina said, and she went in for a hug.

When Tina left, Mother reflected. She was glad that Tina had not asked for money; it showed she was maturing. She also appreciated that Tina had taken the time to visit them and wished her uncle as politely as she could.

But Tina had a lot of growing up to do. A lot of what she had said, while well intentioned, was not appropriate. It was not even correct.

It was a joyous birthday indeed. And what made the birthday important was not that Father was turning sixty-nine, but that this was the first birthday Father was spending with his own mother in many decades. That family time was rare, special, and far more valuable than a big birthday party. While Mother was very tired of taking care of her mother-in-law, it had been nice how they had cut the cake, blown out the candles, and sung French songs from the radio, just the three of them. The presence of the grand Madame Condé did make the house feel fuller, she had to admit, and Father was happier, no doubt about that. Mother was grateful.

Mother was grateful for that very much.

Mother is bending down on her prayer mat on the floor of her kitchen, listening to the call to prayer and performing salah. She has the verse of a particular surah in the back of her mind that she would like to pray towards.

But then her mother-in-law starts to cry. How can it be possible?

When her husband told her he was planning to move his mother to live with them, Mother was hesitant for various reasons. Mother mostly stayed at home and did housework. She had her habits and hours at which she would clean, hours when she would get on the phone to catch up with relatives and friends, hours set aside for prayer and reflection and thought. A new person in the house would interrupt the flow of her daily life. A woman like her mother-in-law, who was suffering from a strong case of dementia and a crippling bout of Parkinson’s, required the attention only an aide could give. Her husband more or less assumed that Mother could handle it alone, and Mother herself didn’t say anything, because even she felt it wasn’t worth the money to hire someone.

An acrid smell covers the room. It is like the decomposed parts of rotting vegetables in which maggots are born. Most likely her mother-in-law is crying because her diaper is wet with faeces and fluid, and she wishes to be clean.

And yet it is the time for salah. Their house was built right on the other side of the Great Mosque, and so the prayers coming from its minaret are loud. They resound throughout the cottage, whether Mother is on the third floor or the ground floor. If Mother were to look up she would see it, an opulent golden beauty, right outside of the window, reminding her to pray first and foremost. With her eyes closed, Mother imagines the building, the height of its minaret, the green-ness of its dome. She reminds herself that the prayer will last another ten minutes. Then Mother will be free to do what she should.

She almost gets her calmness back, but the back of her mind is hit by another image, that of her mother-in-law’s distorted face, pain in its expression.

Mother tries to remember the surah she wanted to pay attention to. It is too late. Her mind is completely out of focus. The verses are coming out in a jumble. She recalls certain stories, images, and similes but not in the right order. The fact that she is emotionally perturbed makes it hard for her to organise her thoughts. This angers her. She is used to praying at this hour and knowing exactly what she wants to pray towards.

What she wants to do is get up and smack her mother-in-law. She deserves to be punished. Her mother-in-law herself was born and brought up as a Muslim woman. She ought to know how horrific it is to interrupt what is so sacred, and to all Muslims.

She orders herself to concentrate. This is prayer time. This is time meant to be between herself and Allah.

Her mother-in-law is not just crying. She is now sobbing so loudly that her wails are as loud as the minaret’s blaring.

It is one thing that she is incontinent. It is another thing how randomly she has bowel movements. Mother is sometimes woken up at four in the morning by the horrid smells. She has had to stop herself in the middle of chopping goat to wheel her mother-in-law into the toilet, discard all of her clothes, and scrub her from top to bottom. There was a time she left millet on the stove to clean her mother-in-law, and when she came back, the millet was a charred blackness that took days to scrub out of the pot. There was a time when her mother-in-law soiled herself so badly that it got on her legs and into the folds of her dress, and the smell was so bad that it remained on Mother’s fingernails and skin for the entire day.

And now, the prayer of all things has to be interrupted.

Breaking her prayer means failing her religion. But she will fail her mother-in-law by leaving her in such a condition. Both, it seems, are failures in the eyes of Allah. Allah has His ways to test Mother, and Mother is Allah’s servant.

The voice from the minaret carries on while her mother-in-law shrieks, wailing in discomfort and agony.

Mother is a human. She wants to help anyone in trouble, because that is her nature.

Mother is also a woman of Allah.

Mother remains with her face fixed to her palms, assured she will clean her mother-in-law as soon as the prayers are done, but keeping herself focused on her prayer’s verses for now.

There’s a house at the bottom of the cliffs. It’s in one of the settlements down under the hills of Arnos Vale, in the town of Calliaqua. The sand on the coast leading up to it is greyer than pebbles, and the shacks dotting the roads on its other side don’t look finished yet.

It’s not the most beautiful place. But the man with a moustache who lives there is a friend, and Father will never say no to a friend. Those are his strong values. They come from his family, the things only village life can teach: to be there for others no matter what. So, even though there’s an obese woman sitting outside on the stoop, wearing a dress that barely covers her body because there are other things her dollars need to buy, and seeing her intimidates him, Father goes into the settlements because he will do anything for the people who matter to him, especially when it’s the man’s birthday.

‘My good man,’ Father says. That’s his friend over there, Junior, standing on the other side of the hovel’s stoop, at the doorway to his own place, welcoming guests. Father gives him a handshake. ‘Happy birthday.’

‘My good man,’ Junior says, his eyes so happy to see Father that they are brimming. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘There’s no need for thanks at all,’ Father says, and he means it. ‘It’s been long since you been telling me to come, and I never done come.’

They talk a handful of times every few years, maybe a total of eight or nine over the decades. For the first few years in the eighties, there wasn’t much between them. Father came to Junior’s store when he was done with his hospital stuff or on the way to do hospital stuff, and Junior sold him soda pop or bags of chips. Then they got to talking, and while they said nothing deep to each other, over the years that little bit of nothing grew to feel like it was building up to something. Some years after, they were already thinking of each other as friends.

But Father still rarely comes over to that side, and not just because Junior lives in these conditions. Father has just always been busy.

And he still is. But in a week, his mother will be coming to live with them, and Father knows he won’t have much spare time after hospital work for a while. It is a coincidence that Junior’s birthday invitation has come right around this time—and what better time to take his friendships seriously.

Inside the house, one side of the wall is violet. That is where Junior stands, welcoming his guests. The other side is just bricks, no paint over them, just some wood benches and stools for guests to sit. The benches are old and full of termites, but Father finds a stool he likes and sits. He’s the only one who has anything nice to wear. Father has come in one of the striped shirts Mother likes to gift him for his birthdays, and some dress pants he picked up in the nineties for some other event. The other guests are dressed in whatever they can afford: shirts and skirts with holes in them. The dust is all over their skin, layering in the curls of their hair.

They smile at Father like he is any other man to them. The small talk begins.

‘Hello, my good man,’ says one of the gentlemen with a cigarette in his hand. ‘What is your name?’

‘Name’s Elvis. Don’t be getting it confused with that American singer man.’

‘Let’s rock, let’s rock,’ shouts the man, doing a little shimmy. He has had a little bit too much to drink, and he’s holding more alcohol in his spare hand. Dizzied by his antics, he keels over a bit.

‘Now, now,’ one of the women says, sitting on the stool on Father’s other side, the braids in her hair coloured red. ‘Don’t be getting too excited. You’ll be giving all the little kids them crazy ideas.’

It’s too late. The kids are bopping and jumping, bumping into each other in excitement and tripping over themselves. There’s some reggae playing on the radio in the background. Some of the men are rolling up joints and smoking them. Father wonders if they are Junior’s cousins or nephews—the tarp-like quality of their skin and the greyness of their hairs make them look old, and yet their style of bantering is far too juvenile to be of that age.

A woman comes up to Father.

‘You must be the doctor Junior was telling about,’ she says.

Father smirks. ‘How do you know?’

The woman laughs like Father has said the silliest thing.

‘We’ve been living here for who knows how long, and you think we can’t recognise when someone not from here comes? Don’t be silly.’

Father laughs along with her. He’s from the capital of Kingstown, which is just around the corner from here and just a few blocks big. The moment a new face is seen on the street overlooking his house, he will know it. He knows exactly what she means.

The reggae has gotten louder. The singer mixes a bit of calypso smoothness into the music. The smoke of the weed and the cigarettes has dampened the air of the room.

The woman stands up and asks Father, ‘Doctor man, you in the mood for a dance?’

Father shakes his hands. The woman is giving him a bit of a naughty look, much like how the youngsters keep giving each other that sweet eye. ‘Missus I’m a married man. I don’t know how my wife would take to me dancing around like this.’

The woman seems to misinterpret the hand gesture, or at least she has chosen to do so. She pulls Father up from the bench, and soon their hands are interlocked. Father’s heart pangs for a second. He is imagining his wife busting in that very moment, slapping the woman, then taking him home, throwing things at him, and threatening to leave.

Then he returns to reality. The woman’s hands feel a little dusty but otherwise warm. The skin on the front is soft, like she has been putting on a lot of cocoa butter to hide the wrinkles brought about by age. Father looks at the woman more clearly. She’s in a flower dress, a bit of her cleavage shows, and she’s smelling like a good day’s sweat.

Really, all she wants to do is have a good time.

Father wants to have a good time, too. He lets the music straighten out the knots in his back. He closes his eyes, really listens to the lyrics. He feels his mind swaying away; he’s forgetting who he’s dancing with.

When he opens his eyes, the room is much more crowded. What had been seven or eight people now looks like thirty. Some are old, some are young, some are kids, some are probably the kids of the kids. But they’re all making room for themselves. The table is being pushed to the side, the glasses people were drinking out of scattered everywhere. The small room is becoming open. The music is getting louder.

Junior comes back into the house. He looks around and catches Father’s eye. He comes straight towards him.

‘I see you’re having a dance with the missus,’ he says and puts his hands over hers, where Father’s hands were. ‘May I have this dance?’

‘Oh,’ Father says. ‘So, this is Amelia.’

The woman laughs, confirming now, without a doubt, that she is Junior’s wife. ‘You silly goose. Who else you think I’d be?’

Father tries to puzzle an excuse together, but Junior has already pushed him out of the hands of his wife. They’re now dancing. Father fears he has offended his friend. He questions whether or not he should clarify that he had no intention to make a move on Junior’s wife.

But Junior is smiling and really getting into the dance, and Father has to remind himself that he’s taking things too seriously again. He sees one of the seventeen-year-olds dancing alone. Something unknowable lights up in him. Father decides to go up to the teen to imitate his moves. The kid is thrusting his pelvis in all sorts of ways. The moves tire Father, but he’s able to keep up.

Father hasn’t gone out and danced in decades. The last time must have been when he was fifteen or sixteen, around the age of this kid now. But when Father was fifteen or sixteen, he worried about how his brothers would act if they saw him dance, or what his classmates would say. It had been a sort of pastime among his friends to make fun of him no matter what he did, and he carried that with him over the years, even decades after, when no one from his village was even around to say this or that about him.

Where were they now?

‘Look at the doctor man dancing,’ Amelia says. The other adults in the room nod or murmur in approval. As if inspired by Father’s own lack of self-consciousness, a handful of older men and women join in, responding to the rhythmic thrusts of the music.

Eventually, the dancing stops. Someone comes up with a cake, and they all start singing the birthday song. People start going up to give Junior their wishes, and Father makes a mental note of his age. Junior is fifty now, almost a decade and a half younger than him. Father reminds himself that he’s nothing young, but he has made a good effort at the dancing. It seemed a lot of Junior’s guests really respected his moves. It makes him want to come back, this time with his wife in hand, to see how she’d react.

She’d realise her husband isn’t the stick in the mud she’s always making him out to be.

Father has some birthday cake and some of the Johnny cakes Amelia has made. Junior’s getting busy with his relatives, and Father feels like it’s time for an afternoon nap.

‘Thanks so much for inviting me,’ Father says.

‘You’re leaving already?’ Junior remarks. ‘We’re about to get out the beers.’

‘I’m not young like the lot of you,’ Father says. ‘It’s time for me to be taking my rest.’

‘And it’s rest you’ll be needing since your mother’s coming over soon. It’s no joke taking care of someone with dementia. You really have to be able to handle the responsibility.’

‘That’s right,’ Father says, feeling a little bit heavy in the eyes. ‘I forgot I told you about that.’

‘You tell me a lot of things in the store. You just keep forgetting them.’

‘That’s true,’ Father laughs. He has so many things on his mind that he’s surprised at half of the things Junior remembers.

‘Alright,’ Junior says. ‘Give my regards to Miss Molly. And to my auntie all the way from Port Elizabeth as well.’

‘I will,’ Father says. He reaches his hand out for a handshake, the same way he always does when he’s at the store.

Junior takes the hand like he always does, but suddenly something in Junior’s body language changes. He pulls Father in with that hand, wraps himself around him, and gives him a big hug.

‘Thanks so much for coming all the way down here,’ Junior says. ‘I know it’s out of the way.’

The hug lasts a little longer than what men usually give each other. Father really feels a part of Junior inside of it. As the hug breaks, Father looks at the faces of the people around him. He thinks about how all of them look more like the patients he sees on a daily basis in the hospital. He notices the dustiness of the interior, the bricks that haven’t been painted, the darkness of the room, the termites and ants eating it away.

He pulls himself away from the hug to look at Junior.

‘You don’t have to thank me for a single thing,’ Father says. ‘Thank you for inviting me. You’re a good man, one of the few I’ve met on this entire island. I hope you’ll be knowing that no matter what, we’re always going to be friends.’

It is a beautiful day with not a single cloud blocking the blueness of the sky or the greenness of the hills, and yet Mother is not happy. She is at church. She should be happy. Every Sunday she comes and hears the choir sing and the pastor’s sermons and leaves to home with a full heart.

Yet she is not happy. It has been this way for months.

The pastor who had made her love this church is gone. She has come to accept that. People come, people leave, that is the way the world works. The new pastor is very young, probably younger than her son, leaning on the glass podium more than standing straight, commanding it. He is a skinny man with a round face. He has not a single hair on his head but there are a few stranded curls here or there on his throat and chin, which show he is not a precise shaver. Mother thinks he looks his best when he goes to the barber to get his cuts.

The young pastor is in the middle of his sermon.

‘Who is here to hear the Word?’ he starts.

‘Amen,’ say some of the congregation, the men in their black or blue blazers, the women in their floral dresses.

A proper pastor would not have even asked. He would have just begun his sermon and engaged the congregation with the veracity of his words.

This young pastor says again, ‘I said, who is here to hear the Word?’

The congregation shout a louder ‘amen.’ This is not because they are feeling particularly inspired; this is because they know he will keep asking again and again until he gets the proper amount of people to shout. He still hasn’t gotten enough, so he shouts even louder, ‘Who is here to hear the Word?’

The people who come to this church are old. They are the women who have accepted that their hair no longer grows well and so they keep it short rather than buy weaves. They are the men who have had children and grandchildren, and some of the grandchildren have had children again. They are Evangelicals, a denomination which takes the Gospel seriously. Anyone would know just by looking at the church. It’s the only built-up building on the road, freshly tiled in blue and painted with yellow plaster each and every year, with money coming from the US. So, Mother wonders, does this pastor know who his audience is? Does this pastor know what he is doing when he speaks?

Because he starts every sermon this way, like he thinks he’s at a football match. It’s no way to begin prayer. It’s the reason why he is losing respect.

He only does it three times at least. Then he gets on to the point. He flips through the Bible. Even from several rows behind, Mother can see that the book is covered with highlights and Post-it notes. Her old pastor would flip open the book, centre it on the podium, and thunder as he spoke. This one was almost hiding behind the podium, trying to make his body look smaller while he found the verse he was going to start with.

Just pick one, Mother wants to shout. Instead, she looks over to the other side of the rows where her friend Mary is sitting on one of the plastic chairs. Back when the old pastor was in charge, Mary would be combing her one copy of the Bible, diligently following whatever verse the pastor was quoting. Right now Mary is on her phone, playing one of those mobile games. She does not even notice the side-eye that Mother tries to give her. Mother feels that in the short time in which this pastor replaced the other, or even because this pastor replaced the other, Mary has changed.

And she’s not the only one. When Mother came in the late eighties, people took the Word of God seriously. Now they mostly gossip, sleep around, and make fun of others. Mother takes a look around and sees how many others are looking at their phones. Few are paying attention.

The pastor finds his verse. He looks up from the Bible, giving a calming smile.

‘God blesses the soil which drinks in the rain that often falls on it and which grows plants that are useful to those for whom it is cultivated.’

Mother knows this verse to be from Hebrews 6:7. She reads it now and again. She is curious how the young pastor will interpret it.

‘That is a very strong statement. We are the soil. The word of God is the rain. When you water the soil, they are plants that are in that soil. And those plants are going to grow.’

Yes, Mother wants to say. That is all very obvious. In fact she believes her old pastor said this exact same thing seventeen years ago, probably when this young pastor was still a boy. At that time the church had no money because nowhere in Cameroon had money at all. It was a concrete building, but compared to the huts Mother saw in her village that were used as places of worship, it was already impressive. Mother was fresh out of Ndu, and it was the late eighties. Any building that wasn’t made out of mud impressed her.

As she came in for the first time, the pastor noticed her and introduced himself. She was a young village girl, and yet the pastor was so humble, welcoming her to the city, asking her about her family, how she was setting up, if she needed any help. It made her feel that people in Bamenda were friendly. Of course, later on she came to know the other housewives of her suburb, and how they gossiped and spoiled everyone for one another. But the pastor was friendly when they first met and remained friendly and approachable over the decades.

And how his voice boomed when he gave his sermons. How he filled the room with his presence. Mother remembered so well how he uttered not only Hebrews 6:7 but all of his other favourite passages, returning to them and re-explaining them time and time again because he wasn’t afraid to show his love for what he was saying.

‘God has given us the Word. Whatever we are experiencing now, God will come and get you. God is the one who provides all the paths to be constant in our prayer,’ the new pastor says.

What does this have to do with his previous metaphor? Even some of the other congregation members are turning heads to chat with their spouse, gossip with their friend.

Perhaps the young pastor notices, which is why he says next, ‘Everyone listen. Be careful. God is inside of you. But there are Devils inside of us as well. Everyone listen. This is how you avoid the Devils.’

That does catch the attention of the churchgoers. Almost everyone immediately perks up, straightens their backs, looks straight ahead, gives him their attention. Mother wonders how he is going to continue now that everyone is listening again.

‘God is the water. We are the soil. The soil receives water. We must use the water to do something.’

Mother readjusts her posture. If it were the previous pastor, he would taken advantage of the tension in the room to speak louder, hammer home his point, call them all sinners, teach them how to repent.

The young pastor is now looking through his book. Is he going to go to a new verse? He hasn’t even finished making his point about the soil and the water.

‘What about the plants?’ the young pastor suddenly asks. ‘What is it about the plants?’

The problem is he is asking an open question, rather than delivering a rumination. One of the women, a thirty-something with her hair braided, raises her hand. The pastor notices it but then looks down. He isn’t trying to get them to answer his question after all.

The woman shouts regardless, ‘Our plants are our actions, the good tidings which come when God speaks and we obey.’

Some members of the congregation nod their head, the woman who might be her auntie quietly claps her hand.

The young pastor has found the excerpt he is looking for. He looks up from the book to say, ‘Let us all reflect on something from Matthew.’

Mother wants to shout, But what about the seeds, and the water, and the plants?

Instead her mind finds itself tuning out. She knows the pastor is quoting something from the Gospel of Matthew now. She is imagining what she will cook for herself and her husband in the evening. She thinks about her son and wonders how he is doing. She feels a mild pain in the back of her ankle and wonders what is causing it.

She has not come to church to hear empty words. Mother comes because she believes in this institution. It is the place that made her who she is. She came to this city and made a life for herself almost forty years ago, and this building was a part of it. She sang in the choir for decades. She brought her husband and son here almost every Sunday. They changed and life changed and this city changed, but the church never changed.

Until the pastor left.

It isn’t fair. Mother still does not know which rumours are truth and which rumours are rumours. Either the pastor did in fact impregnate that girl of sixteen and left because of the scandals, or he was kidnapped by thugs, possibly killed. The point is Mother does not know for certain. At first she expected the pastor to come back and clear his name, but he never did. It has been months now, almost a third of a year, and with no sign of him and nothing from his family and relatives. She saw him every week for decades, and now she knows nothing about where he is.

He is probably never coming back.

Mother sighs softly. The sadness is all-encompassing. It is the sense of being discarded by someone she knows didn’t actually leave her, but nonetheless has still left. There is a sense of uncertainty. There is something outside of Mother’s control, and she doesn’t like it.

It doesn’t help that this pastor is saying nonsense.

‘That is why you must believe. That is why you must pray.’

He has not given a single good argument, and yet some of the congregation are nodding. Have they grown stupid? Is it literally that they will reply or respond to anything that involves Gospel, no matter what is bineg said? Mother sees how most of her friends get their news not from the newspapers but from forwarded messages on their phones. Mother avoids these messages for a reason. She knows they are strewn with the temptations of the Devil, that they are nonsense written by those who have nothing but evil in their hearts. And yet this is what everyone is reading and responding to. Only Mother turns her phone upside down whenever she sees she has thirty new messages.

This pastor, these messages, the things happening in the phone, the things happening outside in the world . . . it’s all a sign of the same thing. Things are just not the way they were when Mother came to Bamenda.

Well, some things have remained the same, actually. Like the walk from Mother’s house to the church. There is a dirt road with pine trees and pungently dark grass on the side. The road sometimes curves upwards and downwards, but that is good for Mother’s legs, keeping them fit. Occasionally, a passing van or truck kicks dust around. Otherwise, it is quiet. Once in a while a woman in a blouse and sun-coloured leg wrap comes down the road with water on her head or potatoes on her hips to sell at the market. They smile, and Mother asks how the woman’s day is going, and the woman asks her as well. It is short and superficial, but it keeps Mother in a good mood. Mother has to remember she is blessed, that she loves much of her life even when she often questions what her purpose is in a world that is rapidly changing beyond that dirt road.

Mother believes in the Gospel. Mother believes in Jesus. Mother believes in everything God has ordained and continues to do. That has not changed, and it never well. It’s just that when she comes to see this young pastor stuttering over his words, trying to command the space that her pastor, this city’s good and honest pastor, used to occupy, she can’t help but feel disbelief. It’s not just that her pastor has disappeared and no one can find him. It’s that the person they have hired to take his place is such a disappointment.

So, why does Mother stay? Why does Mother remain seated on this plastic chair just because she has been sitting on it for years? Why does she keep her eyes fixed on these plastered walls, a colour that reminds her of what she is used to? Why does she avoid looking into the eyes of the people whom she thought she knew, but who have started to tear each other up for this opinion or that?

The point is she loves the Word of God, not the people whom God has put on earth. And she will remain faithful to God until the end of her days.

It is in the middle of the sermon that Mother stands up. Once in a while people are possessed by demons in the middle of a sermon, and the pastor is expected to intervene. Everyone looks up at her, curious if that is what is happening again.

Instead, Mother walks up and leaves the building. Out on the road, she walks around the potholes, and her heels are coated with dust. It does not bother her. The wind rushing against the back of her skirt and the cool air from the hills refreshes her. It will be Christmas soon, she remembers. She will be inviting her friends and relatives to a party to celebrate. Some of the people from this church are invited. They will have the chance to discuss her decision there. Yes, Mother’s life and her friendships will go on despite her leaving the church. She does not need the sermons of this pastor or that pastor or anyone to give her religion meaning. She will find other ways to practice her truth.

The rocks, the hills, and the endless plains around. Snow crusts against the crags from here until the end of land. A few yurts are in the foreground and background both. They are round egg-shaped tents, polyps of human construction against a harsh human-less earth. A brown puffy dog guards the one that is closest by, barking furiously.

Mother rushes by on her horse, and within seconds all of the yurts are far behind her.

How is Mother speeding this quickly? She has never learned how to ride a horse, and yet she races through the frost-covered plains, alongside a herd of other wild horses. It seems like an infinitude of bodies have come to speed alongside her, following her to form a galactic trail of hoofprints. Mother has to cling to her horse so that she doesn’t fall off. Her hands clutch hard against the reins as the wind stings her skin. She can barely see what is ahead through her squinting eyes.

There is snow, there is land, there are rocks, and there are cliffs. Is that a temple? It looks like a small little temple on top of one of the rocks, an octangular box of a building, with charms decorated in bichig nested in the trees around it. Before Mother’s eyes can fix on it, she is thrust away at hyper speed.

Tamag. The place of punishment. She has sniffed its fires before and feels them burning against her hairs despite her horse trampling on frost. All Mother has to do is remember how her life has been a living Hell—all because she willed it, all because she felt so punished in her heart and soul. She refused to let herself feel anything else despite the world of emotions churning under the surface.

Even now she is burning, but she knows she should feel frosted to the bone.

Mother thinks:

It’s all in my head. Yes, I suffered. Yes, men touched me without asking. Yes, I didn’t like my mother’s new husband and wanted him dead. Yes, I made sacrifices for my family so my husband could become successful and respected. And then there’s the matter involving my son.

I spend all day praying for him.

But is it him I’m really praying for?

I have been given a great life. My son lives in a way I don’t like, but at least he is healthy, and he’s made a lot of effort in getting back in touch with me. I have close friends and relatives who spend time with me. I have a house that others would find expensive to own. I have the time to dedicate my life to prayer and thought.

I am an incredibly blessed human being.

So much of my thinking has changed with age. In the beginning, all I wanted to do was bless others with my charity. When we made a home for ourselves, I visited the neighbours because I wanted to help them raise their children. I wanted to help my sister, too. Not because I wanted her son to be another son for me; I wanted to do what was the best for their family.

But then I got caught up with the worries. Years passed. I worried about my lot in life. I worried about the things I didn’t get that I thought I deserved.

This life is temporal. This life is an illusion. And if this life is a test, I am failing. I have wailed at God for every small thing I am missing.

What is the real reason for my prayers? What is the reason why all these small things bother me? What is the reason why I try all of these things in the name of others but quit them when they don’t serve my needs?

What is my role in the life I am living?

When will I face the real me?

The land is once more morphing. The outward crest of white is tunneling. There is a whorl in the distance, right on the wall of a monastery. The walls are whiter than snow, and so the tear in the dimension almost blends in. But it is strong enough to suck in the golden paints on the mandalas and the rooftop. A vivid golden Buddha surrounded by miniatures in a thangka is in the centre of the white hole. It seems to be on the other side of this wall, this portal.

That is what it is—on the other side of this rupture in time is the return to Mother’s world. The one with their house and not these yurts, the one with her husband and son and not these horses. That is where she is going. Her stampede of horses has crossed hundreds of kilometres in minutes, helping her reach her destination. The air is blurring around her. She feels her body sucking apart at the seams.

It’s already time to go back to them.

But am I ready for it?

Before she can take the time to think out a response, the horse jumps through the portal, and the plains end.

(Girar is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.)

It is snowing, far too cold for anyone to go outside. Therefore, the entire family, from Father’s brothers and their extended families to several of Father’s cousins, uncles, and aunts and their families, is inside this dwelling, one of the cave houses carved into the plateau of Meymand. Father feels the claustrophobia every time he returns to his childhood home from his three-storey house in Shiraz, but he feels it particularly today, as he has to finally announce what he has been thinking of doing for the last few months: to bring his mother to live with him in Shiraz.

It is not the time to bring it up before breakfast. Father lies in his bed, trying to rest. He is literally in a cave dug out of the cliffs millennia ago. On the floor are carpets and pillows for people to sit on. Beds are pushed to the sides of the rock walls, with piles of coverings and comforters and sheets for people to keep themselves warm in the winter months. Some sills were carved out of the stone long before Father was born, and on them are ornamental plates, pictures of family members, porcelain vases. the space inside of the cave is small, particularly in these winter months when everyone is inside. Father is not tall, but he still cannot stand upright, always having to duck while walking.

This is why he mostly remains in the bed he used to sleep in as a child even after he awakes.

At the hour of breakfast, Father is called. The wife of Father’s elder brother, Arash, is Nousha. She begins by serving everyone tea at the long wooden table they use for their meals. Steam from the black brew wafts across Father’s nose and warms his neck. Everyone is at the table, not yet talking amongst themselves, still waking up.

Father decides there is no better time than the present.

« .Everyone ،hello .It has been too long since I have come »

The fact that he is speaking has already antagonised someone. Father’s first cousin, Arman, interrupts.

« .Hessam ،three or four months it has been  ؟Why did you ignore us  ؟Why did you ignore your mother when her health is like this »

***

16 January 1965

Once when Hessam was a little boy playing football with his cousins and brothers, he kicked the ball through a window of a car. It was the property of one of his relatives visiting from abroad, and they had asked a lot of money for it to be repaired. It did not help that Hessam’s father had been drinking that day. So, immediately after, Hessam was beaten by his father to such an extent that it looked like he had developed welts.

The first boy who talked to him after his beating was not any of his brothers, who were scared of upsetting their father, nor any of his friends, since Hessam had trouble making friends, but his first cousin, Arman. Arman came and sat on the ground by Hessam’s bed as Hassan lay in pain. Hessam remembered how Arman was not one of the boys who often chided Hessam for being bad at kicking the ball, though he snickered when the other cousins teased. Hessam did not blame Arman or think of him much.

« .Your father has hurt you more than he should have » Arman said, and Hessam lifted his eyes towards him in recognition.This was a brazen thing to say, considering the relatives were in earshot and anyone could have come in and hit Arman.

But no one came in, and Arman continued « .I am angry you were punished like this .You do not deserve to be hit .You do not deserve to be made fun of »

Arman spoke emotionally, and Hessam touched his hand. They held each other’s hands for some time before Arman got up and left.

Later on in the week, after Hessam had recovered enough to join in with football again, it was like nothing had been said. Arman remained in that group of boys who made fun of Hessam, and he never stood up for Hessam against his friends. Arman and Hessam did not talk much after that incident.

***

19 November 2023

Father takes a look behind him. On the other side of the wall is one of the bedrooms, and on one of those beds is his mother, sleeping. One of Arash’s children is watching her. In a half hour, Nousha will come to take her son’s place.

« .That is exactly what I have come to talk about » Father says, but before he can say more, Arash stands up and pinches his fingers, lifting his hands towards Father in confrontation.

« .Your mother is the most important person in this room  ؟Do you know how much we have suffered in trying to help her ؟ Do you know how much we have done for her »

***

12 July 2023

One day in the middle of the night, his mother began to sob uncontrollably. Arash had already been out all night drinking in one of the other caves with his friends. As he came in and sat down, waiting for the alcohol to wear off, he heard her cries.

« ؟What is wrong ،my mother » was all he could manage to say.

It was a different version of his mother these past few weeks. His mother was no longer able to explain why she felt pain. She had become like a child, crying whenever she wanted to go to the toilet and whenever she wanted to eat. When she felt the pain of her muscles stiffening outside of her control, she cried. And when she was confused, sad, or hurt, she cried.

Through his drunken stupor, Arash was unsure whether his mother had responded. Her sobbing was starting to annoy him, so he told her to stop. When she kept sobbing, he shouted louder « !Shut up » Then he noticed the shape of her open mouth, a full O. Because they took out her dentures at night, there was nothing to give dimension to her face. She looked like a baxtak ready to attack him.

Arash started to laugh. He literally fell over, grabbing his stomach, and then he was laughing at the bizarre face his mother was making, the way he had fallen funny, the whole sad situation. Suddenly, a sharp cell phone light was in his face.

It was his youngest brother, Behrouz, who must have woken up from the commotion.

« ؟Arash ،what are you doing »

Arash told him « Look at our mother »

Tears shone all over their mother’s face, and she had a perplexed look.

Behrouz sprang into action. « ؟Mother ،are you okay ؟Did you soil yourself »

He checked her diaper, and when there was nothing there, he checked her vitals, and then he found a damp towel to rub her face with.

« .Arash ،you are drunk .Go back to bed »

Arash went back to bed, but as he tripped over himself, he said this:

« .Look how bad our mother is doing .She is useless now .I can’t believe it has gotten to this  ؟And what can we do about it »

***

19 November 2023

Father speaks over Arash.  « .I know what you have done for her .You have done everything .I have done nothing »

One of Father’s cousins interrupts. This is a woman with what looks like scars from a bad burn all over her body. She is a woman in her fifties, and Father cannot help thinking that she is pretty, a face well shaped, even if a bit mousy. He remembers that she is a daughter of one of his mother’s second cousins, but whose child she is exactly, Father does not remember.

« .Do not be hard on yourself .You live so far away .You send us so much money .I remember when I had to have my surgeries ،and you funded it from afar .I am so grateful to you »

***

1 December 1999

Tarja had a dream to leave her village. In a village like Meymand, nothing much happened. Tarja was married to a man, had a son, and had the life she believed she was meant to have.

Despite that, Tarja wanted to leave.

So, one day, Tarja got into a car with a stranger who liked the way she looked. Tarja was thirty at the time but had not had enough life experience outside of a marriage to understand what was going on. What she knew was she liked how the man talked, like one of these free-minded big shots from Tehran who was exploring the country on a whim. An hour on the road, and Tarja felt like she could tell him everything, from the music she liked to dance to to the way she wanted to burn her headscarf.

He asked for her to give him a blowjob, and she mentioned that she was already married with a child.

The man was not happy. He yelled at her, and she was scared. She tried to open the car door, but he reached over her, hovering over her body, trying to lock it. The car was in motion and going fast, but Tarja knew it was her only chance to escape.

She opened the door and fell out of the moving vehicle.

The pavement charred the skin all across her left arm and back. She thudded and rolled as she fell, destroying her hip in the process. She was lucky at least to have fallen just outside of a settlement. Everyone came out and called an ambulance to take her to the nearest hospital in Kerman. After some days, her husband found her. He yelled at her, threatened to divorce her, beat her. He left the hospital without paying a single thing.

The doctors told her she would be able to walk with surgery. But who would pay for it? Tarja was a housewife, and she came from a poor family with little resources.

Then one day, she found out that her mother had made some phone calls and found a cousin who was willing to help. This was the son of her cousin, actually, who had decided to pay for the medical bill and the surgery. Filled with gratitude, Tarja wanted to call this cousin to thank him.

But the cousin was a distant relative and busy with his own life in Shiraz and took no interest in taking the call.

So, Tarja had her life returned to her, and to this day she still didn’t know why this cousin had helped her.

***

19 November 2023

The woman clasps her hands together towards Father, and Father has to look down. He feels uncomfortable as he cannot remember when or how he helped her. He is used to helping his family in these ways—generous, but removed. He does not like when it is formally acknowledged. It makes him feel more responsible for his helping out than he actually feels.

Luckily, there is not any time for her to say more, as one of Father’s paternal uncles intrudes.

«  ؟ You are sending money  ؟ Where is this money !I am not getting it »

Another uncle from that side of the family adds « .I have never gotten money from Hessam »

His Uncle Ali who is related to his mother and not his father chimes in « If you are sending money to one of us ،you should send it to us all »

And then Uncle Ali’s son Arman says « .Father Farzeen sends us money every day from Kerman »

His Uncle Javed, who is also related to his mother, complains « .I miss my children .I wish they visited from Kerman rather than sending money at all »

At this point, the announcement that Father wanted to make has been buried, and the uncles and cousins are bickering amongst themselves for unrelated reasons. The chai is getting cold. The steam from the kettle has settled down onto the table as drops of brown dew. The women have come with trays of cut cucumber, tomato and feta cheese, dried nuts and fruits, adasi, sharseer, jam, and pita bread. The elders who aren’t shouting begin to serve themselves. The little kids take the pita bread and thrust it into the feta or sesame oil without any concern for their elders, getting the seasonings all over the table.

No one is really listening to Father anymore.

But Father is not deterred.

Father says as loudly as he can « .Everyone ،I am taking my mother to stay with me in Shiraz »

The uncles keep shouting at their sons, but one of the aunties has heard Father properly and she grabs her husband by the shoulder sleeve to quiet him. Father’s younger brother, Behrouz, has also heard and he hushes everyone, repeating « .Hessam wants to move our mother to his home »

Now there is a silence in the room that Father rarely hears. It is like being on a lone highway road with no other car. It is like no one knows what to say and is waiting for that one boisterous uncle or auntie or cousin to speak up, but no one wants to be the first.

Father expands on his point.

« .I have talked to my wife about this for months .Meymand is a small village .There is no medical support here .In Shiraz ،we have everything »

Already he is interrupted, this time by Arash’s wife, Nousha.

« .He is saying that no one is taking care of our mother in this village .I am by my mother-in-law’s side every day .I wash her face with a wet towel .I massage the back of her head .I teach her the words she has forgotten in Farsi .She does need a nurse in our home .I am there for our mother »

***

15 August 2023

One day Nousha tripped in her mother-in-law’s room. She thought she had known everything about the space. She knew where the comforters were stacked, where people kept their slippers, what was part of the rock floor and what was carpet.

And yet somehow she had tripped. No water was spilled. No piece of rug was slightly furled. Nothing was out of place in fact.

She hit her toe and fell on top of the bed and almost hit her mother-in-law with her elbow. Luckily she missed, her arm landing by her mother-in-law’s side.

Nousha looked up. There were only the both of them in the room. The lights were on. There was no noise or source of distraction. Nousha usually thought about this or that in her head, but she never made mistakes like this.

Her hands shook. She stared at them long and hard in agony.

Was she getting older? Was she starting to reach the age where she, too, was going to succumb to these sorts of diseases, physical and mental?

It was unlikely. She was only in her sixties.

But still the thought was in the back of her head, and it scared her. She was a caretaker, not only for her mother-in-law but also for her irresponsible husband, her immature children, and her fairly young grandchildren. If she were to lose her mind or capacities, who would take her place?

***

19 November 2023

Arash cuts his wife off before she can say anything else.

« .I do not need any help as well .When our mother has trouble standing ،I help her to the toilet .I close the door and wait until she is finished .Then I put her back in bed .Behrouz takes her out when she wants to walk .It is cold ،but she enjoys her time outside .And in the summer months she was so happy to see the pistachio trees blooming »

Father says « .I can do such things at my home too »

Still Arash carries on. « .But you have not been helping as such yet ؟How long has it been since your last visit »

Behrouz interrupts his eldest brother. « .Let Hessam speak »

***

11 November 2023

Behrouz was resting with his mother when she tried to speak. It was in the early morning hours, just as everyone else was getting up. His mother yawned and pointed upwards. Behrouz looked into her eyes as she struggled to voice a sentence. A few months ago, these tics of dementia and Parkinson’s were new to him, and he felt anxious whenever he was alone with his mother in the room. But he was used to it now. He tried his best to observe calmly and interpret what exactly his mother meant. Sweat shone all over her face despite the coolness of the cave. She must have been pointing towards her forehead. Behrouz picked up a towel and started to clean off the sweat.

She opened her mouth and then shut it. Whatever his mother was going to say, she must have forgotten already.

She forgot everything these days, within seconds.

A fresh smell of pomegranate being opened filled the room. This was most likely his sister-in-law snapping one apart so that it could later be served. Behrouz remembered how much his mother loved the start of pomegranate season, how she had been the one to open the pomegranates for the entire family up until a year ago.

When she had fallen, she had really scared the family, and everyone pushed her to rest in her bed. She had gotten so used to that that nowadays she remained in a state where she found herself unable to leave her bed.

Behrouz wondered what would have happened if they had not babied her so much after her fall, if they had let her do small things like open pomegranates or clean the floor in her room.

Their brother Hessam was coming to visit soon. Arash was not going to like it, but Behrouz was entertaining a new thought: perhaps it was time for their mother to live with Hessam in the city. Shiraz had hospitals, people who were professionals who could help their mother stay stable. Yes, their mother was surrounded by relatives in their home; yes, she was loved and taken care of, but her mind was getting worse and worse each day. It didn’t matter how many people were there to help her to the toilet or feed her from hand to mouth if her situation grew serious and needed medical intervention.

It was an idea Behrouz was sure none of the other family members were going to like, but Behrouz knew they were reaching their limits. She was in need of much greater help.

***

19 November 2023

Father says, trying to keep his tone as objective as possible « .I have a full job at the hospital .This is also a job with which I use to pay your bills .This is where the money comes from so you can feed our mother and your own children »

Arash says bluntly, as he often did when he was drunk « .How he rubs it in our face .He makes more money than all of us .He is better than us because he has money .He does not care for his family but he has money .How better he is .Yes »

Father feels a saltiness in his throat and in his chest, but he knows he has a relevant point to make.

« .I am not trying to demean you .I am not trying to make you feel insignificant .I am saying that I have things in Shiraz that will help our mother .I am also saying it is my turn to help »

It is about to become a fight between brothers, but Uncle Ali decides to speak up. He has always been nice to Father, despite their bickering. « .We know you have good intentions .You make mistakes ،but you mean well »

Auntie Mahnaz, a first cousin of his mother, says « .Hessam ،I know you well .You mean nothing with arrogance .You want to help ،and your feelings are true .But my son ،we do so much already ،and your mother is stable because of us ؟Are you aware of what could happen if you move her »

« .If it was last year ،I would say yes » Father says. « .But look at the state of our mother now .It is worse than dementia .She cannot make sentences .She will soon need more than someone to wipe her forehead .She will need proper medical attention .I am the only one in this family who can give it »

Arash clears his throat and looks away. The other elders are looking away as well. The silence becomes almost like the heat coming from the nearby furnace—an uncomfortably warm presence, unavoidable, but everywhere.

The one who decides to break the silence is Uncle Ali, who asks with genuine curiosity

«  ؟Hessam ،do you really believe you can provide care to our mother that she cannot receive here »

For once, Father is confident. He looks around at these rock walls, then back at his family, and says « .Yes »

***

1 October 2022

It had been two days since the esteemed elder of their family, Zahra Ahmadi, had a fall owing to a stroke, with a lot of her motor function damaged either by the stroke in question or the fall when she hit the back of her head. Now she had been taken back home from the hospital. Zahra’s two sons and their families took care of her by her bedside. In the dining room where they kept their long wooden table, everyone from Zahra’s generation, from her cousins from marriage to her own brothers and sisters, discussed what to do.

« .She is clearly in a bad state »

« .I am Javad ،her brother .I will take care of her »

« .Javad ،sit down .You feel dizzy the moment you walk for some time .Arash is by her side .Wait »

« .I feel so helpless .I feel so old .I feel like I can do nothing for us »

« .It is not your place to do anything ،my brother .She has her own children »

«  ؟But where is Hassam  ؟Why has he not come yet »

« .He lives far away ،my uncle .He will come once he can »

« .Zahra should be in the city with him .She is resting in a cave .She needs to be in a hospital »

« .That is true. As her condition worsens ،she will need more help .The hospital is so far .Petrol is getting more expensive .We are old »

« .But her children are there .They live by her side .They will help »

« .But there will come a time when their help will not be enough  ؟What will we do by the time her condition truly deteriorates and she needs more than rest »

« .I suppose when the time is right we will have to depend on Hessam .He is the one who does the most when we expect nothing out of him »

The conversation moved on to other topics, but the whole family thought about it long after, each one with their own opinions, and each one wondering if they were right, if indeed Hessam would take on the responsibility as he had always done, even if from afar.

***

19 November 2023

Father asks once more.

« .I want to begin the plans to move my mother towards Shiraz ؟ Are there any objections »

Uncle Ali says Shiraz is a nice city. Uncle Javed says that Meymand has no medical care, and it will be good for his cousin to have a proper bed. Arash doesn’t say anything, and Behrouz whispers his proud approval into his brother’s ear.

Father is glad.

This time there is not a single person who protests.

Set in Guangzhou, The People’s Republic of China

As Father was coming into the room, the patient sat up to greet his doctor. Father had treated many a Black man before, but this was the first time he heard one speak such good Cantonese.

『Don’t worry, my doctor. I am doing well. 』

Father grinned.『 You speak Cantonese. 』

『A little. 』

『 You speak so well. 』

As Father’s excitement wore down, he reflected on the oddness of being called ‘my doctor’ as an honorific. The man had a very prominent accent as well, and Father wasn’t sure if he could carry on a conversation beyond the basics. he would have to test it. Father said, 『You are having pain in your pancreas, correct? 』

『Correct. 』

He understood the word for ‘pancreas,’ a word unused in daily conversation. This was a good sign of his conversational abilities. It made Father not only more comfortable in speaking with him; he also came closer towards his bed. Father started his inspection, lightly squeezing the man in his chest area. Immediately the man winced and groaned in anguish. It was hurting on immediate touch, the result of a severe inflammation. Even by touching the pancreas through the skin, Father could tell it was abnormally large.

Father looked through his charts to see what the blood tests showed. 『The alcohol levels in your blood are high. Do you drink a lot? 』

The man did not answer. That was also understood. It was a sensitive topic for most.

So, Father told him a story. 『A lot of men in Guangzhou, they drink too much. Last month, I had a patient. He was from here. He had a horrible liver. We had to search for a new one. The surgery was expensive and difficult. By the end of it, there were tears in his eyes and he was full of gratitude. And yet I saw him this morning on my way to work. He was sitting in the park with a beer bottle in his hand. He was drinking, so happily! 』

The man smiled, but it was hard to make out if it was a smile showing politeness at Father’s effort at conversation or if he understood the story and was laughing in repsonse.

Father asked, 『Where are you from? 』

『Cameroon. 』

Ka Mai Long. Where was that? Was it in Africa? It had to be in Africa. Where else could the man be from? Ka Mai Long. Father said it over and over again in his head. It sounded like something he had memorised once for a test and had since forgotten.

Ka Mai Long.

A land of many treetops.

Green foaming grass.

Unpaved earth.

Mud huts.

Giraffes and wild dogs.

Ka Mai Long.

Father could imagine it.

But Father had no idea if what he was imagining was true to the country at all. This made Father curious. So many questions bubbled up one by one in his mind. First, he wanted to clarify where Cameroon was. Then, he wanted to ask why a man from Cameroon was living in a place like Guangzhou. Had he come with his family? Or had he come for his family? . Guangzhou was the pearl of the south of the country, with big skyscrapers and famous temples all over the city. What was impressive to Father was that since he had come from his village almost forty years ago, the city had changed dramatically. It had developed and grown, and the faces around him had changed. There were so many people from outside China who now called it home, including many people from all over Africa. He hardly talked to such people because they rarely knew any languages from China, so this was his first chance. He could really talk to him, get to know him. More questions brimmed in Father’s mind. How long was he planning to stay here? Would he remain in Guangzhou? Did he have children here? Did they also speak Cantonese or Mandarin?

But then Father remembered that he was a doctor, and this man was his patient.

As Father pretended to continue reading those charts, the patient asked, 『Where are you from? 』

『Shaoguan. 』

『Shaoguan is too nice. 』

『You know Shaoguan? 』

『Yes. I went there traveling. Shaoguan is very beautiful. They have thin mountains. They look like a painting. 』

Father’s eyes lit up. Even though the man had barely described it, he was summoning in front of Father’s eyes the sandstone mountains that bulged out of the mist like fingers curling out of a hand. Of course a foreigner would find it enchanting. So many paintings and poems had been written about the mountains of Danxia.

To be precise, Father came not from the city of Shaoguan but from a village a few kilometres northeast, in the district of Wujiang. Father wanted to ask the patient if he had visited the region, but he doubted it. It wasn’t a tourist attraction. Still Father’s eyes glimmered, knowing that this man from so far away had gotten so much happiness out of a location he had only ever seen as a daily part of life. Even though he didn’t have any sort of attachment to the natural wonders of his province, he felt a moment of inspiration through the genuine praise of his patient’s words.

Father took out his phone. 『Let’s take a selfie. 』

Despite his pain, the patient smiled as the camera snapped, and genuinely so.

Immediately after, though, Father wondered why he had taken the picture. This man was just a patient, not a random person he was meeting at a hot pot restaurant or the bus stop. He explained, more to himself than anyone else, 『You have been to my province. That is nice. I will send the picture to my family. 』

Father’s family was doing poorly due to the decline of his mother’s health, so it was very unlikely he would send it. Still, he felt a little better having at least made an excuse with some sort of logic.

The man asked, 『 How is my pancreas? 』

Pancreas 

A corn cob stuck between two gobs of meat.

The absorber of nutrition for our food.

A lifeline of our body.

An organ of great importance.

While Father was entertaining this man, he knew his pancreas was running a risk of failing. So, Father ordered more tests. He asked the man about his residency status and working background to know what treatments he could or could not afford. He talked to the nurse and sent her some of his suggestions with regards to medication. The woman stared at the Black man, seemingly not registering or writing down much of what Father said. He hoped that she would remember it somehow. When she came back, at least she had gotten the right medications, and quite promptly.

It must be hard

Time and time again

To be stared at 

To be recognised

Not because of who you are

But because you look different from us.

Father wanted to say.

But this was a patient and not a friend. Have you eaten? How is your wife? Those were the conversations that friends shared, not details about one’s pancreas.

It was strange. Father wanted to ask this man many things, questions he’d never feel comfortable posing to someone he was close to. Was it because this man was a foreigner? Something about it made Father feel peculiarly comfortable, like he could be as open as much as he wanted to be, and without any consequence.

The man was coughing suddenly. Father checked his throat to ensure that his glands were not swollen. The man had a pungent smell of latex, probably from all the different examinations he had received.

『Do you have nausea? 』

『No. 』

『 Do you have a loss of appetite? 』

『 What? 』

『 You don’t want to eat every day, and it is normal? 』Father explained.

『Sometimes. 』

Father wrote down some notes. He also explained some of the medications to the man. He wasn’t sure whether or not the patient understood, but he was nodding along. To ask if he really understood would be too condescending.

『Your symptoms are serious. Take these medications, once a day, in the morning after eating food. Possibly you need to come back in two months. If it gets worse, you will have to have surgery. Please stop drinking. 』

『 That is hard, 』the man said. Father observed a pain in his eyes. He wondered what was causing it. He had his guesses.

Years away in a foreign land.

Adapting to a new culture.

Too many bills, and no way to pay them.

Parents abroad who needed to be fed, sisters and brothers, too. 

Why China?
Why this strange and unique land?
As a land of opportunity, it was promising.

But no jobs for the youth.

No one buying their exports anymore.

Why China?
Why all these promises?
That would never be fulfilled?

Even for their locals?

Father’s eyes met the patient’s. The patient did not avert his gaze, and neither did Father.

Father said, without thinking, 『 I’m sorry about your pancreas. I’m sorry about my mother, too. My mother is going to die soon. And here I am working so hard, too hard. I used to work hard because my family needed it. But my son left home, and now my wife and I have too much. I work so hard, so hard. You probably work hard, too. But I don’t know what I am working for. 』

『Interesting… 』the patient said. Then he added, with none of the politeness from before, 『 But that has nothing to do with my pancreas. 』

Father immediately dropped his gaze. Why had he said what he had said? It was completely inappropriate, almost embarrassingly personal. Was his mind starting to show signs of dementia? He was in his late sixties; his mind would be losing sharpness soon. Father grew the courage to look towards the man and saw the pain in his face, his swollen eyelids. No, it wasn’t dementia. The truth was Father was this close to wanting to invite this man to his home in the village. He wasn’t dour like the average Chinese person. He still saw the country with newness and wonder. Father imagined him taking photographs with his mother and brothers, giving his family one last chance at a moment of excitement.

Father’s consultation was over. He asked if the man had any questions about the following steps, and the man gave him a fake smile, along with a 『 No, thanks. 』

Father left, shutting the door. He kept his grip on the doorknob, really feeling the metal against his skin. He had made a mistake in sharing too much about himself with this foreigner, but now that this certain border in his mind had been crossed, he was starting to wonder if there was a greater truth in what he had confessed, a truth he never been open enough to share in the private labyrinths of his mind until this very moment.

Mother sees her ever so precious niece in the hospital bed struggling to open her eyes and she wants to scream she sees the IV tubes she sees the wound in her niece’s shoulder ever so close to her neck but at least her niece is alive at least her niece did not have her leg blown off she did not have her head blown off she did not get decapitated at the neck all it is really is a bullet lodged in her shoulder it’s just that the bullet wound is giving Ariel so much pain that she cannot stay awake at least she is alive thankfully the gunman was shot down by the IDF after he had probably killed hundreds of others at the Yakhini enclave

Ariel is lucky she is alive she was not killed she was visiting a friend in Yakhini from her college she was sleeping over with her and then heading to a music festival nearby Ariel is lucky she did not go to that music festival because that was the first place Hamas went when they were attacking the other side of the border if she were there she would have been captured she would have been kidnapped she would have been raped over and over again Yakhini is a hamlet Yakhini is a settlement Yakhini was guarded by fences and officers like any other moshav Yakhini was meant to be safe but somehow the gunmen got in and killed a lot of people almost everyone but not Ariel and her friend whose father worked for the IDF

It has been over a week and Mother did not see Ariel in the hospital because Mother did not know she was even there Mother was afraid for her own life Mother wanted to stay put given that Hamas had breached all of southern Israel and was attacking and killing everyone and Mother really did not know what happened to Ariel Mother was calling her over and over again but Mother had so many other relatives to worry about all across the country and her mind was like a ping pong ball hitting back and forth wall against wall she could not concentrate she could not rest she was afraid she was going to die and she was afraid for her other loved ones as well

So when finally she was called by Mother’s cousin Rachel she came to know that Ariel was in the hospital for all these days of course she came to the hospital which was in Askelon the same city Mother lived in and Ariel was studying in and she asked to get permission to visit but she was not a close relative so it took a lot of calls from Rachel to the hospital to get them to let her in

Now she is seeing Ariel and she could scream so loud that it would cause her lungs to give out and she would faint she is used to seeing Ariel singing in the musicals making videos for her Instagram taking selfies with Mother for no reason always being full of gossip about celebrities Mother has never heard of always full of sass always full of things to say always full of live always full

She is not used to seeing Ariel in so much pain that she isn’t willing to greet her aunt

Ariel will recover says the doctor Ariel will soon be able to talk to her but Ariel is not used to having visitors and Ariel is still unable to manage the pain

Mother starts shouting at Ariel and the nurses have to chide her not to do such things

But Mother is livid Mother is so angry Mother wants to find that gunman and beat him with a brick on the side of the head it has been too long since the Jews have suffered and not just Mother and Father but the entire Jewish population it’s like Jews are born to be killed everyone wants to kill us everyone wants to exterminate us everyone wants to see us gassed to death and it was this way not for Mother but for her parents and her grandparents and everyone so many people did not make it so many people did not survive yes Mother and her family they survived they lived on but so many people were gassed to death were bombed to death were shot to death it’s always been a struggle it’s as if it’s meant to be this way for Jews to find it hard to survive and now it is beginning again now they have come and they are ready to shoot us all once more the whole world wants us dead and all because we choose to practice a religion that is different from theirs

Mother is tired of it all Mother is a human being Mother does not deserve to spend every day afraid Mother knows time and time again a day like this will repeat what has happened to Ariel will come to be her situation as well she will someday see gunman at her door she will probably be shot at as well because it happens every month every year all the time and different people die but people die nonetheless it is destiny it is fate it is like the only thing that will come to her because she was born a Jew and is in Israel

It is just that she does not want this fate for the younger generation she wants everyone to get along if the Palestinians want their land let them have their land but the land they are standing on now this is her land this is where her son was born and brought up this is what she has known as home her entire life she is not responsible for the decisions made nearly a century ago by countries so far far away countries that hated the Jews and wanted them shipped off thousands of kilometres to their promised land rather than having to give them equal rights in their own place Mother has nothing to do with this just because she was born a Jew and an Israeli doesn’t mean she should have to fear death each and every day

A bullet could have killed her and that would have been the end of Ariel this vivacious charming girl that was doing well in her studies that was probably going to be heading off to Tel Aviv after her studies in Askelon that had a bright future and was going to have one yet a future that could have ended nonetheless had that bullet hit her right in the middle of her forehead

Israel is bombing Gaza Israel is razing that land to the ground Mother is not an idiot she knows thousands there are dying thousands there too are in hospitals on the brink of life and death they are humans too they are just like Ariel they do not deserve what the army is doing to them

At the same time Ariel is Mother’s flesh and blood not these Palestinians and this is not about Palestine or Israel this is about Hamas a terrorist organisation that doesn’t care about any one life they just want what they want and they will kill anyone to get it in the name of Palestinian independence they would happily kill all the Jews of Israel they don’t care about the people who now inhabit this land they want to raze it so that the people who descend from those who lost their land a century ago could have it back

It doesn’t matter that there were other people who were born and brought up on it and call it home too

These people are the enemies because they see them the Israelis as enemies rather than people who would be willing to talk if the discourse was civil but the discourse is not civil the discourse is to kill them all and hang their decapitated heads on walls this is how Hamas thinks and they are all over Gaza no matter how many good Palestinians there are there is Hamas and they will keep crossing the border and killing hundreds here or there because that is what they want to do

This is not about Gaza this is about Hamas and they must be ended

The news blares on the other side of them on the TV hanging on the wall and Mother sees the buildings of Gaza smoking

Mother knows that they must get what they deserve and the war will not end until it ends this is not just a war this is not about human beings this is a battle between angels and devils Mother closes her eyes and she prays first for the safety of her family members and then for the recovery of Ariel and then for fire to burn all of Gaza off of the map because Mother wills it Mother wants them to feel the exact same physical anguish Ariel is in just as she wants them to feel the fear and anxiety Mother lives in every day she wants to transfer the feelings to them she no longer wants her family to have it she is feeling like a malakh she is feeling like a celestial being full of rage she wants to snap her fingers and cause them all to perish

Because Mother is suffering she wants them too to feel immeasurable pain

When Mother found out that the pastor had been taken by armed militia, she was at her friend Marie’s house, watching as Marie braised bushmeat over a fire. Mother’s house was on the other side of the dirt road but a few kilometres by walking. Mother and Marie were chatting idly when an armed vehicle sped by, kicking dust all over the huts. A crowd of men and women were following it. A woman shouted out. « Don’t take our pastor, s’il vous plaît! »

And then Mother realised what was happening. Kidnappings were common in the Central African Republic, and Mother had grown somewhat used to them. But Mother and the pastor was close. Her full emotional response took some moments to coalesce. It went from confusion to denial to shock within seconds, and then she was filled with so much anxiety that she rushed out of Marie’s hut without saying a single word. By the time she could find a space for herself in the crowd, it was too late. The car had driven off far into the distance, a dot in the horizon as big as a mosquito would be in front of her. The car was heading towards the border of Cameroon, a country Mother had never visited. 

The pastor. A man of such intelligence and wisdom. A man who was so full of empathy, too. He would start off telling a story about Solomon and then end his sermon by dragging the oldest farmer of the town, Desire, to the front and pay him compliment upon compliment for his hard work. He would raise up every village person afflicted by guilt and sing deep songs to the Lord, chasing the shame out of their hearts. He knew how many people struggled to survive because he lived in this village, too. The cassava was plenty but the money was nowhere, and yet they lived on because the pastor instructed them to. 

How could such a man be kidnapped? What did they possibly want to do with him? And why would they take him when he was so important to their community?

Previously when the Séléka and the Anti-Balaka were fighting, it was common to see people kidnapped, killed, and targeted for no reason. Now that the government had stabilised and the Séléka had disbanded, those who were targeted were usually foreigners, like the Chinese who came for business or the peacekeepers from other countries who tried their best to defuse tensions between warlords. It made no sense for the kidnapping to be related to any of that because the pastor avoided taking sides. 

There could only be one reason for him to have disappeared like this.

Mother’s eyes focused on the girl she was convinced had started it all. Now almost six months pregnant, the girl had a belly as big as a watermelon, and she had to hold it as she walked to keep her body balanced. Ever since she had blurted out to the whole congregation during one of his sermons that the pastor was the father of her child, the rumours had spread all across the town. Droves of men and women and children still came to his sermons because they were compelled to, but there were others coming to him after the sermons to shout at him, push him, threaten him. It caused fights to break out between the churchgoers and the family members of the girl. Some people had even been murdered, paying the price for their involvement. Up to this point, it had just not been the pastor.

Mother was so angry she wanted to push the girl onto the dust and give her a piece of her mind.

Then she saw the girl’s face. Her brown oval eyes were aghast. Dust flitted in front of her eyes, and she did not blink. People were coming up to her and trying to confront her with the same thought in their minds, but she stood as still as a stone. This was not the body language of a person who was aware of what was going on. 

It still did not add up. 

Minutes become hours. People were so panicked that they hadn’t noticed how hot it was becoming, and it was becoming hotter yet. As their emotions cooled and bodies burned, they went back towards their huts, knowing there was nothing they could do to save their pastor.

“Why are you leaving?” Mother said out loud. 

This was a dear man and beloved leader of the community, a man who reminded the people each and every day that they were part of a greater humanity, and out of nowhere, without any sense at all, he had been kidnapped.

What was Mother’s life going to be like without him?