“Busy day?” he hears himself ask, surprised that he wants to know.
She turns to him but remains silent, as if caught off guard by the resumption of the usual morning chitchat that once filled their home. “Yeah,” she says, and starts eating.
In the old days, as they ate breakfast, she leisurely munching on her cereal while he and Alcott enjoyed large, syrup-drenched pancakes Zakhariye woke up early to make, they would compare and contrast what lay ahead, telling each other how busy things were going to be at work as if competing for the title of whose day would be the most demanding.
Thandie would tell their son in great detail about the three or four people booked for surgery that day, all the people that she, as the anesthetist, would gently usher to sleep. And he would inform Alcott about the editorial meetings he would have to endure or the many squabbles between the writers and art department that he as the managing editor would have to intervene in. Alcott, the whole time, would turn his gaze from one parent to the other, always paying special attention to his mother’s stories because to a seven-year-old boy operations sounded far more “awesome” than squabbles over heads, decks, and cover lines.
Zakhariye remembers how Alcott loved asking his mother about the operations and how she relished describing the painstaking work of removing a bad kidney or repairing a defective heart, all the while making her modest part in the whole dangerous endeavour more heroic.
But today as Zakhariye drinks coffee, as he leans on the ivory marble kitchen counter while his wife eats at the nearby table, nothing is shared, no comparisons are made about the coming day. He gestures to refill her coffee. She smiles, silently indicating that she would like that. He does so, and she thanks him with another gesture — a simple nod — so elegant in its precision that it would make a tango dancer proud. Lately, most of their communication has taken the form of these gestures. A stranger observing them would find beauty in the way they distilled complex language into mere gestures.
This graceful series of movements is separated by uncomfortable silences punctuated every so often by an overly polite please or thank you as if anything resembling a real conversation might open another abyss. They lived in that dark, horrifying place for months after they buried Alcott, so they avoid anything that might throw them back there — talking especially. Words have a way of leading them astray into unwanted memories of when things were good and happy and the particles of their lives were securely in place.
Watching their boy’s small body draped in a simple white cotton sheet — in keeping with Islamic burial — being lowered into the ground did things to them individually. It shattered something that could never be repaired. But it also did something to them as a couple. It stopped them from being on the same team. These days they are as estranged from each other as he feels from their previous life. From the moment they found out that Alcott didn’t make it out of the emergency surgery to stop internal hemorrhaging, whatever love and affection Zakhariye and Thandie had for each other had leaped into their past and become inseparable from memories of their son. Regaining even an ounce of what they once felt for each other now means remembering their lost son.
As Zakhariye sips his hot coffee, he glances at the morning newspaper.
His wife gets up, puts her bowl and coffee mug in the dishwasher, grabs her knapsack, and heads for the door. Just before she leaves the kitchen, she stops and says, “Bye.”
“Have a nice day, sweetie,” he replies, barely shifting his attention from the paper.
Zakhariye glances at his watch — time for him to go to work, too. But there is something else he really wants to do now that he has the whole house to himself and doesn’t have to fear his wife giving him another one of her subtle but reproachful looks for wasting so much time in front of the TV. He desires nothing more than to take another cup of coffee, sit before their plasma screen TV in the middle of their beautifully decorated living room, and lose himself in world events where the good guys and bad guys are clearly labelled. Bush and Blair good, Osama and Saddam bad. There is great comfort in such irrefutable clarity.
Deep down inside he knows world affairs are never as simple as the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and the other twenty-four-hour-news channels he watches would have him believe. But since he can’t find an expert, a priest, or an imam who can explain why he had to bury his son instead of the other way around, he gladly consumes the news because it, like a well-made Hollywood flick, makes sense. If he puts aside all that he knows about the world and the corrupt men who run it, he really can find some order.
As much as he wants to vegetate in front of the TV, he knows he can’t risk being late for work again. He has a meeting with the publisher of his magazine at ten to discuss sagging sales and stagnant circulations, and he can make it on time if he grabs a quick shower and jumps into a cab. So he, too, throws his mug into the dishwasher and heads for the bedroom. He tries to sprint up the stairs like his wife, but his back is sore. Weeks of sleeping on the sofa have compromised his much-admired posture.
His posture was the thing Thandie noticed about him when she first met him. She told him that over dinner one night during the initial months of their courtship. “I loved the way you held yourself,” she said, giggling as she confessed to him. “Just fell for those broad, pushed-back shoulders.” He almost chuckles now recalling that evening as he takes cautious steps up the stairs.
In the bedroom he pulls the T-shirt over his head and throws it into the laundry basket that sits behind the door of the walk-in closet. With a single smooth motion he strips off his pajama bottoms and chucks them into the basket, as well. Striding back into the room on his way to the bathroom of the master bedroom, its luxurious ivory carpet under his feet, he catches his naked body in the dresser mirror. He turns to face it and inspects his nakedness. Gotta hit the gym, man, he instructs himself.
All is not lost, though. There is still time to salvage his once beautifully toned physique. Sure, his six-pack, the centrepiece of his own marvellous creation, is barely visible. There is the hint of love handles, and his former rock-hard chest has softened, reinforcing his current state as a man who has at last come to terms with his distinctly average looks. For years he managed to look way above average by sheer hard work and the belief that it was his moral duty to co-operate with Mother Nature and do his bit to make life more beautiful.
As Zakhariye studies his naked self, he lets his eyes wander to his crotch, stopping to focus on his limp penis. Once the centre of his universe, it now appears neglected, unimportant, no longer the facilitator of unimaginable pleasures. It is true, he thinks. The less you do it the less your body desires it. Placing a hand on his genitals, he tries to muster a reaction. A moment later he gives up, disappointed but resigned to the fact that he is a different man these days. He is no longer that guy who lived in the smithy of his body, perpetually delighting in all its pleasures great and small.
Standing over the bathroom sink, still naked, Zakhariye shaves, a task he loathes but has to do today because of his meeting with the publisher. He works up a good lather and takes the triple-blade razor to his face. Starting from the top of his sideburns, he glides the sharp metal along his skin until he strips the last strand of three-day growth. When he begins to rinse the razor, he notices a large drop of blood in the white sink moving toward the drain. He wonders whose blood it is. Startled, he inspects his face and discovers he has nicked, very badly, a shaving bump under his chin. A thin stream of blood trickles down his collarbone. He dabs a finger and holds the blood-covered finger to the light, surprised by its vivid redness. It sparkles. Wow, I didn’t even feel a thing.
A peculiar rush at seeing his own blood grips Zakhariye. It is the kind of thrill foreign to a peaceful, middle-aged, middle-class man who has never witnessed the shedding of his own blood. His delight is heightened by the delayed sting of the cut that his brain now registers. This is the strongest bodily sensation he has had in so long that the elation he experiences overwhelms