Fiction By Laiba Fatima
I. Fajr
They prayed Nana Jaan’s Salat al-Janazah at Fajr, and I slept through it like a dead man. By the time we got to Islamabad, all the guests had already arrived and were busy reciting the Quran or praying over rosaries. Nana Jaan’s body lay in the middle of all this, wrapped in a kafan like a freshly bathed child. Even as my mother stared at her father’s body, she didn’t cry.
We couldn’t start Nana Jaan’s prayers without his son, so while we waited for my maamu’s flight to land, I made my way to the room he had left behind. My grandfather was a man of few needs. His room housed nothing but a charpai he thought was better for his back, a mirror on the wall next to a picture of his kids, and a small comb for the hair he no longer had. He had used that comb to brush my hair when I went to the mosque with him for the Eid prayers that year. His spare white taqiyah had been unable to matte my unkempt curly hair, so he gently massaged it with the olive oil he used for his body, carefully untangling every knot with his hands before combing through. I smelled like him the entire day.
Now his room smelled like death, even though I didn’t really know what death smelled like, and he had died of a heart attack picking lemons in his garden. Maybe it smelled like his prayer mat, always pointing west, the corner folded like a book that put God on hold while waiting for his children to come visit. Maybe it smelled like the song I couldn’t get out of my head or the guilt of not hurting as much as I thought I would.
The first few rays of sunup started creeping in through his curtainless windows and up his bare walls. I lay down on his bed and stared at the still ceiling fan. He had been in this very spot the night before. Doesn’t death seem so easy?
II. Zuhr
The Zuhr azan played in the background while my mother and father attempted to scream over each other’s existences. Ever since Amma had decided to join the sewing club with the other aunties in the neighborhood, Abba had begun spending more time at the mosque as a way to punish her.
“Do you even know what Iqbal said to me yesterday?” Abba said.
“Azam, I sit in this house all day and listen to doors creak,” Amma replied.
“He asked me if I don’t buy you enough clothes that you felt the need to sew them for yourself.” I heard Abba shuffle for his keys in the glass bowl by the front door. “Raise your kids better if you’ve got so much time on your hands.”
I put my cigarette out on the windowsill and walked towards the door, pulling it open to hear them better. After Nana Jaan’s death, I had acquired the hobby of smoking, and Amma had acquired the hobby of hobbies. I felt proud of my mother for talking back to my father, but that was soon flooded under the realization that my parents weren’t in love like they used to be. My father no longer brought her gajray whenever he came across any at a traffic signal, and my mother no longer texted him at work to update him on any HUM TV drama episodes he had missed.
“They’re your kids, too,” Amma said.
“But they’re not my job, Firuzeh.” Abba slammed the front door shut behind him as he stormed off to pray.
Falling out of love seemed like a fog rolling in. I couldn’t tell when it happened, and I doubted they could, either. I wondered if he ever prayed to feel the way they used to, or if he just prayed for my mother to quit sewing.
III. Asr
Amma and Abba had gone to visit some relatives on the other side of the city, and Shehrazad and I brought out the vodka we had been hiding under my bed. Shehrazad’s boyfriend was the son of the military advisor to the Prime Minister, and the military advisor to the Prime Minister was an alcoholic. Her boyfriend had slipped a bottle out of his father’s cabinet and given it to Shehrazad for their five-month anniversary. I put on Keane on her laptop, turning up the volume loud enough to drown out every conversation that had ever been caged between these walls
“So, am I a cool little sister now or something?” Shehrazad took a cautious sip of her drink, running her tongue over her lips to lick away the bitterness.
“You’ve always been a cool little sister.” I poured myself a shot and threw it back in a deadpan toss. I got up from her bed, ruffled her hair and gestured at her to get up as well. As she looked at me, amused, I slowly tapped my feet to the beat of the drums in “The Way I Feel.”
“Well, someone’s in a good mood.”
“I’m terrified I’ll never feel this way again.” I smiled and spun and waltzed against gravity, each step of mine feeling lighter than the one before.
“I’ll ask Rehan to get us more vodka, don’t worry about it,” she said.
“Do you ever feel so happy you could die?” The chorus picked up pace and so did my feet. I had never really been much of a dancer, but I was afraid if I didn’t dance, my skin would turn blue from the heaviness that always seemed to be waiting at my door. Like my heart would free-fall into my stomach, and I’d have to spend a lifetime rummaging for it again.
“Alright, majnu.” Shehrazad laughed and turned off the music. “Azan.”
“There’s five every day, let God hear our music for once.” I continued to dance.
IV. Maghrib
As I crept across the front yard much later than I had originally planned to from Musa’s house, I heard someone call out my name. I turned around to find Mrs. Malik standing in front of her car, the back door revealing large METRO Cash & Carry bags stuffed to the brim with groceries. She was a stout woman with a face that never stopped smiling, like she knew something I didn’t; the secret to life and health and all that was good and bright in the world. She waved at me enthusiastically, signaling for help.
I picked up the bags in both my hands and was taken aback by the weight. Mrs. Malik expressed her surprise at my ability to even lift it off the ground, considering how much she thought I looked like a ghost, like I hadn’t slept in years. She made me drop the bags back in her car and took me inside her house to fix me some food. As she warmed up the chai she had made that morning, she inquired about my mother no longer dropping by to say salam.
I had never really talked to Mrs. Malik before. In fact, I didn’t even know she knew my name. She had moved in recently from her son’s place after her divorce, when her daughter-in-law had kicked her out for being too nosy—or at least that’s what Uncle Iqbal had said. Her voice carried a familiar weight; a heaviness that came with being lonely, a heaviness that just wanted to know.
I couldn’t tell Mrs. Malik my father thought he was God or Uncle Iqbal was God and divorce was a contagious disease, and my mother thought it better to comply than step out of the fucking house and come say salam. I couldn’t say, “If it makes you feel any better, my father hates me, too.” I was afraid if I did, I’d make her weightless and she’d float away. So I told her I didn’t know. Mrs. Malik patted my head and said it was OK to not know sometimes. I sipped my tea as I sat at her counter and wept at how good it tasted.
V. Isha
I lost one of my socks, so I burned the other. Then, I enjoyed burning my socks so much, I burned every single pair I had. Amma and Abba had stopped checking up on me ever since I’d told them I wanted to see a shrink last week and they’d told me I was godless, accounting every odd smell to either tobacco or weed. Nobody wanted to talk about which.
“I have no pairs of socks. You want me to fucking freeze to death?” I said, my hands rolled into fists at my sides, my teeth biting into my bottom lip. I had had enough.
“Bizhan, what’s with that lang–” my mother tried to reply.
“Maybe if you cared about your own goddamn kids, you’d know that.”
“Everything is someone else’s fault, isn’t it?” my father said, still looking at his phone.
“I’m saying you could have bought me more socks.”
“I gave you everything I could.” He slammed his hand on the coffee table, intentionally or not, knocking his rosary to the rug.
“This isn’t about you,” I said.
“How is it not about me when my only son says he wants to kill himself? What face am I going to show God?”
“Come with me tomorrow, I’ll get you more socks, beta,” my mother said.
“The face that helps the damn son if that’s what he says,” I said.
“I can’t help who God can’t help.” My father went back to staring at his phone.
My mother grabbed my hand and told me we could go shopping right now if I wanted. There seemed to be no point anymore. I unclenched my fists and went back to my room.
