‘Zainab, please,’ Qabila said. ‘I can’t, not now, please. Kanallah.’ She scrubbed the tears off her face and hoped Zainab could not hear her crying.
Zainab sighed and changed the subject. She gave Qabila all the news she’d heard at the forty days: who was sick and in hospital, who had a new baby, who was going to haj. She made Qabila promise to visit them all.
‘Give me a minute. I need to write it on my list.’ She pretended to scratch around for a notepad while she steadied her breathing. She pulled her face into a broad smile. It was supposed to fool you into feeling happy. ‘I’m back,’ she said, proud at how bright she sounded. Dutifully, she added the visits to her list. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so busy, Zainab. I’ll go see them and come visit you. Shukran for the chat.’
‘Afwan. May Allah keep you safe, inshallah and give you shifa. Salaam. Don’t forget to go,’ Zainab said.
‘I won’t. I promise. I wrote it down.’
She was glad she’d called Zainab, even if her list had grown. Even if Zainab scolded. Maybe that was what the dream was for. That night as she cooked, she thought about babies and death, and tried not to think about some of the other things Zainab had asked. Zainab didn’t understand how her and Rashid’s lives worked. How could she?
Qabila lifted and peeled and cut and sniffed spices to the beat of the words that infused her cooking. The words came rushing over her and rewove her into their rhythm: To live is to be free of the spell. To be free of the spell is to claim a spell of your own. To spell is to bespell. And to bespell is to unmake the world. Unspell. Bespell. Spell.
Rashid came in as she was eating. She’d missed lunch again, and the lamb curry’s coconut-milk-infused spiciness was starting to fill the hollow. He greeted her, his left eyebrow lifted in that way she hated.
‘There is food in the pot,’ she said. ‘Lamb curry.’
‘It’s okay, shukran. I already ate.’
Of course he had. She wanted to scream at him. Hurl her plate. Take one of the beautiful fucking ornate wooden chairs they’d spent six months deciding if they could afford and throw it at his retreating back. She bit the rage down and forced an ashy forkful of curry into her mouth. It needed more coriander and she would not cry. Her eyes flitted from the sumptuous cream silk drapes to the District Six artwork they had commissioned, and then skittered off to the sideboard laden with silver-framed photographs: mementoes of a seventeen-year-long farce. If only they treated each other with the same care they gave to choosing their possessions. Or maybe that’s why they brought only the most desired objects into their life: to offset the disappointment of living with each other.
The TV went on in his bedroom and a familiar heaviness settled in her body, slowing her movements. A list, she needed to make a list of things to do. She should check her master list, see if there was something she could do tonight. Maybe she’d spend some time on her article – finish the darn thing. She was a great believer in finishing things. But, no. She’d check the master list first. Soothed by organising her recipes into a folder, Qabila was humming contentedly by the time she got into bed, ready to make her list for the next day.
Chapter 3
Qabila was sewing a cloth so large, there was no horizon. A riotous kaleidoscope of red and blue and fuschia and yellow and black and white and every other shade. She could not say where one colour began and another ended. The needle was too big, too heavy for her hands – and then too small, too light. The air reverberated:
To live
is to be free
of the spell
To be free
of the spell
is to claim
a spell of your own
To spell
is to bespell
and to bespell
is to unmake the world
Unspell
Bespell
Spell
The spell was sung, spoken, breathed, whispered and moaned in every tone and timbre. The words weighted the air like a symphony. It was beautiful.
Qabila sang. As the words tantalised her pores, her stitches sewed each letter, each syllable deeply into her. With each sigh in the spaces between words, with each moan, each exhalation and inhalation, the words beat at her, caressed her. Like a man savouring a woman he adored. The words threaded their way through her hair, wove her toes together, rubbed the sore spot in the middle of her back. Carried her and held her still. The cloth grew as she stitched every needful stitch to the thrum of the words.
This time, she didn’t have to materialise the words on paper. On waking that morning, the words vibrated on her skin, danced and fluttered in her muscles. She stared at the ceiling from her king-sized bed for one, mouthing the words under her breath, over and over and over – she couldn’t stop. She felt a little loosening inside, as if a tightly closed box was being unsealed. Whatever was inside was seeping out. And still she said the words. Faster and faster, the box loosed its contents. And on that still morning, Qabila sobbed. She didn’t start slowly and build to a crescendo of weeping: the full weight of her sorrow was matched by the intensity of her sobs. She no longer needed to say the words: they streamed through her eyes, in every tear, in every gasp, in the tearing and pushing of the boundaries of her life. Just when she thought she could enter an ordinary day, the sobs would start again. Scratching her throat and salting her cheeks.
Qabila, who rarely missed a day at work, sent an sms to her Head of Department: ‘Not well, came down with something.’
That day of great mourning, she wandered her house, touching the memories lodged in things, sullying them with her tears. She wept in the corner of the room she rarely entered but could not empty. Habib’s posters were on the wall: the solar system, the numbers. He’d wanted to go to the stars. And she remembered. She saw them laughing together: down on the floor, playing with impossibly small cars, the Lego that was always underfoot. Pantomiming a tickle monster as he ran and screeched, breathlessly hoping to be caught. The old woman gently wiping down his tired little body. She touched his clothes, the little jeans and the Spiderman T-shirt he was so fond of, and the Batman pyjamas he wore so faithfully in those last months. So many superheroes and no rescue. Her mother holding her in this room, day after day, when her very reason to live had been buried. Her mother facing Mecca, prayer mat on the floor, her body moving fluidly to intercede with the same God that had broken Qabila.
She sat on Habib’s bed, in the shrine that was now older than he’d been when he left this place. She disturbed the sacred air and the sacred linen with her screams and tears. ‘Habib, Habib’ – his name a litany and dirge. Who would remember him with her now? All the stories her mother had, of him, of her, gone. Sitting in Habib’s room, Qabila knew, no matter how she longed for her, her mother would only ever be with her in fragments and snippets. She was truly an orphan now. No one’s eyes would soften for her the way her mother’s had, or ‘tsk’ at her in frustration – and love her in spite of it. She was a mother without a child. A daughter without a mother. A wife without a husband. Lost.
Rashid found her curled in the corner of the room, cried dry, staring into a memory trap. Their eyes met. His grief rose to meet hers – and then pulled back. He walked away.
More tears. How could he thrive in this bleak life? How could she?
Rashid’s shoeless feet came back into view. He laid a box of tissues on the floor, then scooted to sit behind her with his back to the wall, pulling her into his lap. His kindness pulled more tears from her body.
He’d loved Mommy