Fazmina Imamudeen
Prologue
The Fork in the kitchen rack knew a dark secret. Something gruesome. Still, the Fork was a forced ally. Aye! that was it. A muted ally. A cold friend who was her solace.
Stealthily, the footsteps would approach it- the meeting between the two happened secretly. She hated the Fork, and she loved it too. So did the Fork. None saw nor suspected this secret affair: A fatal attraction.
Neither had a choice. Living with was an agony. Without the agony maddened. A noxious romance.
Seized forcefully, the Fork would powerlessly wane into the darkness. Well, it didn’t matter whether it was dark. When it happened, it happened. Yet no one could see what unfolded behind the thick overgrown shrubs. Only the Fork knew the truth in its entirety.
The Fork. The one who did the dirty job. It felt abused. When all was over, as if nothing happened, the Fork would be back on the kitchen shelf, clean and shiny, after a bath. No one knew. No one saw. Except for the Fork that was taken on a dark journey down a path. It was always dark.
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Her ears twitched. The faint call of the azan reached her room, and she stirred. It was time for prayers. Her sleepy eyes begged her to continue her conversation with the pillows: “Go back and count the sheep”, they whispered softly. It sounded very appealing, but her phone alarm didn’t give up. “Wake up Zubee, WAKE UP.” It went on like a toddler who wanted loads to binge on fast food when mom said No!
Groggily, Zubaida opened an eye. The phone seemed resolute. It persisted. The intolerable toddler wailed and whined.
“URGH!” This was the only time she shunned the device. “Where is the damn snooze button?”. Just then, her mom walked in. At half-past four in the morning.
“Zubaida!” Mom too was like the phone; wouldn’t snooze. “Wake up dear, time for Fajr.”
Fajr never excited her when it was time for Fajr.
Every night, before she hit the bed, she always pledged with a sense of devotion–“Zubee, tomorrow for sure. Let’s do it, girl! 4.30, on the dot. Fajr”.
“Mummy, wake me up for Fajr. Don’t forget!” she insisted. And this was a routine. She needed to utter these words every single night before she bid farewell to the world. In her bed with her favourite toy, she’d indulge. In the darkness, as the light that surged from her phone baked her face, many things came to pass. Finally, sleep would embrace her, hours after what she had planned for initially.
Fajr never excited her when it was time for Fajr.
The blue glaze of her phone had drained her previous night’s enthusiasm to prostrate early in the morning and talk to her Maker about her woes, worries, dreams, and whatnot. And now, sleep seemed sweeter than a conversation with God. If there was a wrestling match between Fajr and her mattress, the mattress had a bigger chance of winning. The magnetic attraction of the bed seemed stronger than her love for her Lord. Sleep was intoxicating. So, there were days, many days, when she retreated and listened to the lullabies of the soft mattress; betraying Time and Time would simply slip away- no Fajr, once again–another morning in which guilt shook Zubee awake. Convicted Conviction.
Zubaida wasn’t an unfaithful believer. She was a staunch devotee. Never missed a prayer when the sun ruled the earth. Four times a day, definitely, her forehead would kiss the floor to unravel her fears and her worries, her dreams, and her wishes; her thoughts spoke ceaselessly. She hoped he listened—her God. This was why she blamed the sun. Maybe the fault was in the sun – not the stars like John Green’s book said. Her indolence peaked when the sun was in the belly of the sea. Yes, it was the sun.
Zubaida!
A young woman with a spirit that could never be harnessed. In her was a free spirit, colourful and undaunting. Her scarf-clad head swarmed with such curiosity; she loved hiding in it. Suddenly, she would smile because her brain cracked a joke. Sometimes she spoke her thoughts out loud. “No Zubee, not like that.” And around her were the eyes that rolled. “What has gotten with her?”
Zubee’s faith allowed her to be boundless. A Muslim. A Muslim woman. Full of flaws- racked with imperfection – she was a human being. A flawed human who struggled with her faith. But she always tried. She questioned herself. Sometimes, the questions led to disappointments. The ultimate question of many. “Why me Lord? Why the heck me?”. Many questions kicked her around like a rugby scrum, and they passed her on from one ruffian to another. These questions challenged her beliefs. Yet her curiosity pushed her forward. She stumbled. Staggered. Dragged herself forward. And eventually a try, sometimes. Now and then, Zubee found answers to her questions. Her Lord was merciful.
She feared none; lived a life that was defined by risk. Young and rebellious, she was not a caged bird. She sang her songs with a voice so sharp, her fearlessness speared through the sights of the eyes that watched her. She never took heed of voices that spoke ill of her- they called her audacious.
“Tsk, tsk, Zubaida, isn’t it time to think of marriage?”
“How long, child? How long are you going to be single?”
“Enough Facebook and Instagram. Don’t waste your energy on social media”
“Why can’t you edit your face with a smiley and post your pictures! Shameful no men!”
Did Zubaida worry? She would laugh it all off.
“Aunty, I am happily divorced. Let’s see! If a good man comes my way. Deal?”
“Find me a man, so. One condition, aunty! A good man, ok?” and she would laugh.
“I know, right! Such a waste of time! But that is where all my friends are. Nothing serious”
“Well, that sounds like an excellent suggestion, sister. I will try it.”
And the next minute, all forgotten, Zubaida would get on with her life.
Some wise old man had once told her that life was a struggle. The one who could love struggling would win over it. This was Zubaida’s philosophy of life. Her life wasn’t easy. She was born into a family of no siblings. At a very young age, she understood she would play the game of solitaire. She realised she had to enjoy struggling like a ruggerite. And, she learned to do it with style.
Deep within her id were memories she had forcibly buried. As she grew, her memories faded. Not her scars. They had deepened – the embittered wounds.
The doctors diagnosed it as migraine and gave her medicine. She accepted the doctor’s wise reading of her health. Whenever her brain felt like twisting her thoughts, it would send her a warning sign. She immediately gobbled down the pills and dipped her head in a bowl of ice-cold water. Never harked back to the scars. Never to the embittered wounds.
As a wide-eyed, fine young child, Zubaida’s eyes fed on horrors that scythed her childhood, sowing scars in her that would hurt her head and heart.
She dreaded Maghrib. It was not the time to recite the Quran. It was the time when her father returned home.
The mellifluous sound of the azan for Maghrib always drowned in the obscenity of her father’s colourful language.
“You bloody bitch”, she heard her father’s voice molesting her mom. She pulled herself into the darkness of the floor; she felt safe under the bed with the boogeyman.
A daily drama.
She would clinch her worn-out teddy bear, and her teeth would sink into her lips while she swallowed her sobs. She was petrified. Listening to words that were pronounced with such bitterness, Zubaida’s babyish vocabulary was enriched with frowned-upon-lexis. And the meaning didn’t matter. She didn’t understand. All she knew was that the words that her father spat did not carry love in them. So, she never used them.
She spent many of her nights under the bed, shivering, shuddering. Her comfort was the darkness, and her fingers dug into the skin of the teddy as the house quaked with her father’s rage. The teddy, too, was wounded, just like the little mind who searched for solace in the oblivion.
Zubaida grew up, and she let them all grow fainter. She never spoke of those under-the-bed-with-her-teddy nights to anyone. Nor did her mother. When her father died of the accident, she felt happy. The day he was taken away in the Sanduk was the day she lucidly heard the azan for Maghrib. She slept in the bed with her teddy, hugging her mother. Her eyes slipped into slumber while listening to her mother’s beautiful voice reciting the verses of the Quran. In it, Zubaida could feel a deep sense of liberation.
When she was thirteen, she met Saleem. The boy who reached the bus stand early enough to flirt with her. She loved how he sneaked into her mind and made her giggle whenever he did something silly. In the young boy, she saw the man whom she missed in her father. And her juvenile mind yearned for some manly attention.
It was a Wednesday. She rushed to the bus stand. Her eyes had stolen a bit of her mother’s Surma. She was going to tell the prefect at the gate that it was a sunnah and that Muslims had to wear it. It always worked. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled slyly. “Saleem, it is for you. Notice me and smile.”, her youthful thoughts danced at this prospect.
He was there. White trousers that couldn’t reach beyond his ankle, slightly greyed black shoes, white shirt with the school emblem stitched to the pocket- Saleem looked gorgeous. Edible. She smiled and batted her eyes, rather purposefully.
A romantic journey from the bus stand to Good Shed in Kandy was taking shape. She, in her white-shawl-that-never-covered-her-head, short frocked with the four striped tie and him in his typical every-school-in-Sri Lanka-uniform, sat next to each other, giggling for 45 minutes from the bus stand to Good Shed and then back home. Everyone who saw them knew they fancied each other. She was thirteen, and he was fifteen.
Years passed. Her plaits grew longer. Her lips turned slightly pink. Not a sunnah. But a youthful tinge caused by a smuggled lipstick. And him. He grew taller and quieter. CDS hid in the dungeons of his backpack, smuggled into his class so he can lend and borrow – spend an educational night behind the closed doors of his room. Their giggles receded. With time, words went missing, and the language became more physical, more private. Saleem, being a student of science, demanded biology lessons from Zubaida. He groped and touched her in the dingy alleyway that was not used by many. A daily dose of manhood for Saleem. She silently succumbed to the demands, and at home, she scrubbed her saliva-stained lips until they turned crimson. It was not because of the smuggled lipstick.
Mrs Zubaida Saleem. At 19, Saleem bought her for a mahr of 10,001 rupees. Zubee was happy that she was his, finally.
Married soon after ALs, everyone in the family congratulated her mother for ringing the wedding bell right on time.
The night of her marriage, Zubee draped herself in white because Saleem’s mother was an examiner. It was time for her virginity test.
“Saleem,” Zubaida nudged him. “Maami asked me to wear this.” she pointed at the white cloth that she had wrapped around her and giggled like the schoolgirl under the bus stand. He pulled her towards him, and they sunk into the blankets. The white cloth lay on the floor. Untainted.
The playful excitement didn’t last long. Saleem changed as her marriage aged. The nights became lonelier and Saleem became busier at the hospital. Time became very possessive of Saleem and he became very creative when Time gave him a break.
“On-call, Zubee,” and he would rush off in his Black SUV.
The nights recorded her sighs as she cuddled herself in the bed. She missed his warmth next to her. Saleem, too, was in bed. Miles away from Zubee, he was busy in bed with the nurse who joined his clinic a few months back.
Saleem’s secret affairs grew in the belly of another woman.
When Zubaida learned of this reality, she surrendered to silence. She hid under the bed with her teddy. Only this time, the teddy was in her head. Her welled-up tears feared to escape her eyes. They dried in her heart; unknown to her, carved new wounds over the old embittered ones.
What started when she was 13 ended almost two decades later. She became single at 31.
Walking out of a marriage was not a simple choice. Not because it was impossible for the woman. But because it was impossible for society to accept the audacity of a single woman.
Zubaida was not an exception. The aunties labelled her.
“How can she think she can live alone? Is this America?”
“Married for over ten years and no kids. Which man wouldn’t look for greener pastures?”
“I am telling you, darling. She should have been patient. A doctor and all. He was a good catch.”
“I am sure Saleem couldn’t take it with her big mouth.”
“Who knows what went behind those closed doors?”
The aunties graded her with marvellous letters. Zubaida, the one who tussled with style, flaunted these Scarlet Letters like Hawthorne’s Hester.
Crown Season 4 was on Netflix. Zubee loved Princess Diana. She was only a child when she saw the news flash on the screen. “Princess Diana died in Paris in a car crash.”
And now there was a series about Princess D, and she couldn’t miss it.
She binged on the series. Zubee felt a deep-seated hatred towards the prince’s betrayal of his abandoned wife, the beautiful Princess Diana. Diana’s misery crept through her and pinched on the scabs, and the wounds that were buried deep under festered. Her dried tears, which were imprisoned in the beds of her conscience, awoke and escaped her eyes this time. For Diana.
Spellbound, Zubee digested what unfolded on the screen. Zubee binged on the episodes of Princess Diana again and again. Diana’s surreptitious struggle to combat the apathy that surrounded her fascinated Zubee as she watched the series vomit the truths of this lone woman’s life with a bowlful of melted ice cream and bananas.
Looking back, she realised why she packed and ran away from everything. From Aarib.
It was when she moved to Colombo, few years after her divorce, she met him.
“How are you, Zubee?” she heard her friend Sanathana’s voice from the other end.
“Are you all right with the move?” the voice hugged Zubee with concern.
“I am all right. It is just that all this is so new. Colombo is so big and scary. I still am not sure of all the numbers that follow Colombo. I am familiar with Colombo 3- that is Colpetty. Thank God! There is Uber and PickMe. They find my destination. My work is good though. I love it. Weekends are the best Sunny. Rugby Matches. Art exhibitions. Book fairs. I love them all. I go with my friends whenever I am free.” Zubee went on and on.
Unexpectedly, one Sunday morning, Aarib walked into her life.
They met in the elevator to the Museum of Contemporary Arts.
It was the Sunday of the curator’s tour. The artist in her was wide awake even before Fajr. This time the mattress couldn’t calm her fervour; it lay hushed. She prayed for Fajr. She packed her rucksack, wore her shades, and rushed out. The PickMe guy was already there. The tuk-tuk rushed through the early morning traffic and when she reached her destination, it was already 8.00 in the morning. As she entered, she saw him. In a white linen shirt and a pair of blue pants and ombre shades – he grabbed her attention. Shaking it off, she rushed into the elevator. He followed.
The journey towards the museum seemed eternal. Alone in it with a man. She didn’t like it.
Men. The term repulsed her after her divorce.
And now, in the elevator with him, her heart signalled panic. Her head danced like an enraged Kathakali dancer. She glared at him as if he had whipped away her peace. His silent presence aggravated her. The air around her carried his scent, and as it reached her breath, a wave of queasiness drowned her sanity. Unknown of her exasperation, the man smiled at her, his eyes twinkling with innocence. Her lips betrayed her, although her eyes ate him away with abhorrence. They spewed out daggers at him.
This was how Zubee met Aarib.
Whenever she shared this episode with Aarib – how she felt when she first saw him – never failed to make them laugh. She loved the time they spent together. Aarib was like chocolates. He was always by her whenever she needed some comfort.
What she felt for him was a deep sense of love. Not sheer romance.
“I really like you Zubee,” Aarib finally confessed that he would want to see themselves beyond mere friendship.
She stared back, food in her mouth. She laughed.
“Aarib, not yet. Not now. I am not ready.” She stopped him.
No longer was she the Zubee who batted her Surma-clad eyes at her heartthrob. Surma had washed away with her trust, long, long ago. Nor did she want her lips tainted in crimson with kisses. Not in the darkened alley. No. Not even in the privacy of her own house that she had rented in Colombo. Her brain demanded her not to bind her mind. Commitments intimidated her. Aarib was too special. She did not want him to share the bed with some other woman when it was her. She feared he would do that. After all, he too was a man.
She packed her fears back into her and she ran away to what she was familiar with.
She moved back. Her manipulated childhood brought her back to the house where she spent many nights hiding under the bed. Aarib became a WhatsApp friend.
Zubaida!
A Muslim woman. She was a beautiful young Muslim woman. Flawed and human. Stylish and suave. Humourous and attractive. A passionate artist. An ardent Rugby buff. Zubaida learned to live.
She learned to live a convincing lie.
Swallowing her sorrows as a young bud shaped her future. Her struggles slowly sank her into space that no one could enter. She had many faces stored in her closet. Her favourites to flaunt were smile-away-when-you-were-out-and-about, act-like-everything-was-smooth, laugh-it-all-out-loud, playful-and-carefree.
No one saw the other faces that she hid away.
In her room, she felt safe. She felt herself. The child who hid under the bed hugged Zubaida. The young girl who let herself be groped and touched in the dingy alleyway reassured Zubaida that she would never leave her. The woman who cuddled herself in the lonely bed cuddled Zubaida, too. The artist who ran away, zipped up her desires and unpacked her fears with Zubaida. They, together, would feast her with such realities; in her room, Zubaida stood naked. Maskless.
Painted in strokes of angst, fear, doubts and disappointments, she looked like a desert warrior ready for a struggle. Come what may, another battle. Her heart pounded like an Arabian daf and she would go into a trance.
Scattered inside her room were food wrappers, empty canisters, leftovers. Huddled together, the Four binged. They binged with her. They binged into her. They incessantly binged. On her scarred past. On her bitter memories. On her fruitless future. On food too. Like Princess Diana.
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Epilogue
She would slip away. Into the kitchen. Seeking for her cold friend. The Fork. Her accomplice who helped her to gag. Not once, not twice. No, not three times either. Many a time throughout the day.
The metal fork would wound through her throat to welcome back all that she swallowed. And then she would vacantly stare at the mess, naively believing that everything was over.
“This is the last time Zubee.” The warrior promised herself.
But promises were made to be broken.
The Fork knew Zubaida would return again.
