by Minal Khan
And why hadn’t my mom picked me up that day? It turns out she had indeed sent Nawaz—our good natured chauffeur—to pick me up. Nawaz had been working with our family for four years. He was a religious man. When he wasn’t driving he was often sitting by himself under a tree in the front lawn of our house, reading prayer verses, or prostrating on his dainty prayer rug when the azan—the call to prayer—sounded. Nawaz was gentle, kind natured, but he was also absent-minded. And, as it turned out, he was not good in crisis situations.
On the way to school that day Nawaz crashed the car against the back of a truck, had an accident, panicked, and had escaped the scene. We found our battered Honda civic at the police station four days later. Nawaz was nowhere to be found. The only signs of him left were a pocket book of Quran verses in the driver’s seat, and a set of prayer beads hanging by the rearview mirror.
In class that day, seven years later, Alia wasn’t much different. Her hair had grown into long, undulating tresses, and she had grown very tall. At 5'7", she was taller than a number of the boys in our eleventh grade class. She was also classically pretty, with her large regal forehead and almond brown eyes. When she wore her thick rimmed glasses—before she got contacts—her face looked doe-eyed and whimsical. But her features belied an independent spirit. Boys went crazy for her because she fit this image of an accommodating, almost waif-like, pretty creature; something to be doted on, and sung to. But her humor was edgy and she was the most opinionated person I knew. The same doting boys would often leave a conversation with her, confused as to why they felt shunned, outdone.
Alia smiled at me from across the room, mouthed good luck and turned back towards the teacher. I would need more than good luck, I thought sadly. More like dollops, gallons, no, oceans of luck to get through this. My guilty conscience kick-started once more. It had had its morning coffee and was ready to get to work at my brain, effectively mincing it in half. I felt the onslaught of a migraine. My teacher laid the test sheet down before me. I flipped it over—I don’t know why I even bothered—and read the questions. I read them again. And three times after that. Nothing registered.
Fifteen minutes had passed before I managed to put pen to paper. Another fifteen minutes trickled and I had only managed to write, “Napoleon Bonaparte began.” I glanced at the teacher. She had sunk back in her chair, at ease, clearly enjoying her free period. She caught my gaze and raised her eyebrows in question. Is something wrong? Yes, I wanted to say. I have a brain-block. Any remedies you may suggest? I couldn’t think of an appropriate expression that conveyed these thoughts. So I shook my head and looked back down at the paper.
I don’t know what it was at that moment, but if I were seeing myself in a cartoon, a light bulb would appear neatly above my head. Crucial details started coming back to me. I began to scribble as soon as I remembered any relevant information. I even managed to squeeze in a conclusion before the bell rang. Just as I handed in my work, the bell trilled away, signaling us to get moving to our next classes. I groaned to myself. I had biology next.
My parents had always complained that my combination of subjects was odd. I could partly understand their concern. You wouldn’t find too many people who took world history, biology, art and economics together. They were subjects from four completely different worlds, said my father. He had spent weeks trying to convince me to change my mind before I handed in my application. “It’s like a vegetarian going to a restaurant and asking for some broccoli, a little piece of meat, a helping of fish, and a bit of chicken!” he had bleated. “You don’t have the taste for technical subjects like biology and economics. Where do you plan to end up?” He had flailed his hands about helplessly.
But I persisted. I told my father some part of me felt it was good to be well-rounded. People can’t really put much of a fight up against that word. Well-rounded. But really, the truth was—I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure what I was even good at. With a blindfold on I aimed and picked subjects that sounded interesting, hoping to be led, steered toward some path like a willing sheep to a grazing land.
History made me feel introspective and I really liked how orderly mathematics was. And biology, well, biology was just a science I felt I should have. I had never been interested in learning names like Lactobacillus and Glomerulus filtrate. Nor did I look forward to dissecting a sheep’s kidney. But growing up, some part of me had this yearning to learn a broad spectrum of things. I wanted to learn the intricacies of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization along with the workings of the heart muscle. I really did want to be multi-dimensional. If it meant working hard for biology, I would just have to do it.
After my first few lessons of Advanced Biology, however, I became bitterly disappointed. We didn’t delve into the intricacies of the miracle that was the human body. We spent a month, instead, learning the chemical composition of plant sap. I became less intrigued by the day. I still studied steadily despite my lack of interest—I needed to secure those grades in order to prove to Dad that I was worthy of my unusual choice.
Over time, though, I began to perform my work and experiments mechanically. Flip. Read. Memorize. Insert. When we finally came round to studying the human heart, I found that it held less interest for others than it did for me. While my classmates were busy scribbling down notes on the right atrium, I was busy marveling at man’s weakness. Even the strongest man was a weakling; so reliant on a fist-shaped pump in order to keep breathing. And how ignorant, too. Oblivious to the rhythm of the pulse that governs his existence. He neglects his heartbeat, abuses it. He slows its rhythm every time he gulps butter-soaked gravy. He increases its pace fiercely when he is stressed. He strains its walls when he is in love. And all the while, he is unaware of it, until the rhythm finally breaks forever and he is no more.
The different chambers of the right atrium, by comparison, held little meaning for me.
And, here was yet another biology class. There were more chemicals that needed identification, more conclusions to be drawn from what seemed like futile experiments. It was Tuesday, the assigned day for a practical. I almost cried as I lugged my heavy bag to the biology lab. Mixing solutions and heating them over a flame as part of the practical seemed easy. Just throw a batch of odd substances together and see what happens. Like cooking omelets. Simple. But it took a lot of time. It was a slow, droning process, aggravated by my clumsiness around instruments. This particular time my clumsiness proved disastrous.
Everything chugged along normally enough the first minute or so. I scanned the four test tubes in front of me, labeled K1, K2, K3 and K4. I screwed open the Bunsen burner. The tube hissed out gas at me. I struck a matchstick and carefully held it on top of the tube’s mouth. Voila! It was burning. No one around me spoke a word. All I heard was the tinkle of the test tubes and the hisss of the Bunsen flame. Everyone was fixated on their work, trying desperately to unravel the mystery behind this phenomenon: the identity of K1.
“Check the temperature of the water constantly,” my biology teacher instructed from the head of the room. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with thick-framed glasses resting on the top of her nose. I liked to speculate whether she was Amazonian. It certainly made biology more interesting for me.
The water in my beaker had already started boiling. I placed the supplied white cloth between my palms and tried to lift the heated beaker. My hands performed the necessary procedure but my mind was somewhere else. I was wondering how much more time it would take me to complete my artwork. It had been due for a week now, and I still had much left to finish. When I had told my art teacher that I wanted to draw an army of ants, her face dropped suddenly.
“Ants?” She looked at me, uncomprehending. “You’re going to draw ants.” My art teacher was thin, had a raised, pointy mouth, like a bird. She also had a heavy lisp. “Are you thssuure?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I really want to focus on the ants’ details. A microscopic vision.”
“How will you make that go beyond�
��how will it tranttthscend beyond two black dots?” Her arms widened in mock artistic flair.
“I’ll use the maximum zoom on my camera and find a good scene to picture. Then I’ll draw from the picture.”
She blinked at me, shook her head. “Artists don’t just draw from the picture. They thhransform!” A pause. She considered. “Okay, I’ll trusttth you. Just get it in within the week. You’re already a week behind.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” I bleated, wondering when the last time was that I even used my camera.
So while the rest of my art class scurried to Mohenjo-Daro to take pictures of historical buildings, I ambled my way through my back garden, trying to find as large and grotesque an ant as possible.
I spread out crumbs on the damp soil, and waited. Minutes ticked by. Then half an hour. Eventually, her (or his?) highness—a big black queen ant—strolled out of a pore in the soil, and heavily made her way to the biggest crumb of all. She was bulky and menacing. I took a shot just in time; she had mounted the crumb with her threaded-legs against the backdrop of a jade plant. A warrior mounted victoriously over a killed enemy at battle. Now I just needed to get that image down in brush strokes.
All of a sudden, I was jarred out of my daydreaming with a large thud and a surge of pain. OWWWWWW. I looked down and saw the edges of my cloth had made contact with the tip of the flame. Within seconds the edges had turned black and curled inwards. Another fraction of a second and the entire cloth blazed with fire. I screamed hoarsely and dropped the cloth on the table. A shaking hysteria came over me and I tried putting out the flames with my hands, trying desperately to curb the fire. Pain shot up my hands like sharp daggers. I felt the raw, exposed flesh of my fingers swell and leap up, like the flames had.
The fire subsided quickly. It was like dynamite action; a loud piercing bang followed by sudden, stealthy silence. Smoke crept up into the air and danced around me insidiously. The air was now filled with the smell of burning charcoal and burnt flesh. I let the mist surround me as I stumbled on my two legs, dazed, like a Sufi entranced in his mystical music.
3
From somewhere distant I heard my parents being phoned. I was sitting perched up on the crisp white sheets of the sick bay bed. I swung my legs to and fro beneath me. I stared at my hands, disbelieving. They were wrapped up in acres of bandages. My fragile hands had transformed into two beefy paws, looking like wads of toilet paper wrapped up in never-ending rolls. My hands were lubricated with oily medication. Good, I thought. It would prevent my skin from desiccating like a sun-dried leaf.
I did remember vaguely how I was brought here. I didn’t faint immediately; I had more or less phased out into numbness, consciously dead but still on my two feet. I was carried here by someone, but I couldn’t remember who it was. All I recalled was that I was in assuredly strong hands; they lulled me into a sense of security so that I let myself go, and stopped struggling to remain conscious. I remember indistinct voices of other boys and girls running after me. “Oh my God … is she going to be ok?” My friend, Natasha, had been so shaken up, she started crying. Her howls resounded in my mind like echoes from the bottom of a long tunnel. It was like viewing a dark, dismal movie and realizing you were in it.
No one was allowed to see me now. I was partially glad. I didn’t know how to face everyone’s concerns in this condition. It wasn’t only my hands that were numb. My brain had been dulled, too. I was still struggling to absorb what had just happened. Was that me?
I wondered if the rest of the class was a bit relieved that the practical had been canceled. It wasn’t something they were going to admit, I knew, even to themselves. It was like receiving news that a famous politician had just died; no matter how upset you might be, you couldn’t help but be a little excited that your school would be called of the next day. It was a feeling I had experienced myself, when my classmate’s mother had died in a car accident. He had been there; he had watched his mother’s blood spew across the windshield of a 98’ Civic. The boy, Ahmed, was ten years old at the time, and was shopping for Eid al-Fitr cards with his mother. Eid was a day at the end of the holy month of Ramadan that marked the end of the month of fasting. It was a joyous day. A day of celebration. The equivalent of Christmas. People handed cards and gifts to each other, distributed sweets. The air was indeed heavy with festivity when Ahmed and his mother crossed the street after buying their Eid greeting cards. And then the car rounded up the corner. At fifty miles an hour it hit the mother straight on, while Ahmed lagged behind her, shocked.
I had thought that I would feel a torrent of pain if I were to come across Ahmed in school. But when I did confront him, face-to-face, the only thing that I could remember feeling was relief; relief that it wasn’t me who had been bereaved of a parent. Not on that day.
Moments later my mother arrived at the doorway, her face terror-stricken. She sat next to me and clutched me in her arms, murmuring incantations under her breath. I tried to explain what had happened, but she silenced me. “I don’t want to hear a word,” she rasped, rocking me in her arms like a little girl. “Just lie down and relax. Your teacher will tell me what happened.” She then turned beseechingly in the direction of the nurse, who repeated the entire story that I had provided her with.
“But what dangerous laboratory apparatus you have!” She started, her eyes widening in amazement. “Any carelessness could result in third degree burns! If it was Ayla today it could easily be anyone else tomorrow. What responsibility is the school willing to take for this? None?”
I was lying down flat on the bed now. From a sideways view I could see my mother seated opposite the nurse. Ma’s back was turned but I could see the sheer alarm on the nurse’s face clearly. She said nothing but wore an expression of helplessness that wailed, “I did not decide the safety rules of the biology laboratory. I am the wrong person to be discussing this with!”
“It was my fault, Ma,” I yelped weakly. “I didn’t follow instructions properly.”
My mother conveniently ignored me and went on, “Children are always liable to make mistakes. But the school still needs to guarantee their safety. What will Ayla do now?” she flailed her hand in my direction. “How will she write without any hands?”
Perhaps the brain-block had numbed my senses to this realization. I was practically handicapped now. A cripple. How would I turn knobs, hold the phone, carry my backpack? How would I eat?! I shuddered as images of helpless old people in homes raced through my mind.
Would I have to be fed by my mother, like a nurse and a paralyzed victim? Or would I need a “helper” with me at all times, a caretaker to open doors for me, to comb my hair, to wash my face and brush my teeth for me because I couldn’t grip the handle of a toothbrush with those massive paws?
Maybe the caretaker and I would soon grow inseparable, like Siamese twins. We would have to sit at the same desk (she writing my notes for me while I dictated), visit the same bathroom and share the same bed. She’d be right by my side, punching numbers into my calculator and handing my notes to shopkeepers. She would do so compliantly, without a word. I would then become so reliant on her that I’d find it hard to function by myself, even when my hands healed. I’d forget how to hold a fork with my hand after loss of practice, forget how to type, how to paint. I’d implore her to care for me just a little while longer. We’d grow old together and function as two separate parts of one entity; I’d be the central nervous system, giving out signals to act, and she would be the muscle, carrying out my instructions automatically, contracting and relaxing at my will.
We were walking towards the car now. My mother held my shoulders steadily and directed me towards the door. I wanted to tell her that the loss of sensation was in my hands, not my feet, and that I could carry myself towards the car without any hassle.
She drove through the noisy streets silently, but gruffly. I gazed at her from the corner of my eye. She was dressed in a white silk kurta—a colorless long, slitted shirt—and shalwaar—loose
pajamas. She crunched the accelerator with a spiky Manolo Blahnik heel. Her makeup was the only tell-tale of her worry; it had obviously been slathered on in a hurry. Her lipstick hovered well over the lines of her mouth, like leaking paint, and her eyeliner was smudged heavily underneath her lower lids; it had spread all the way to her cheekbones. It reminded me of the time I had smeared kajol underneath my lids with an inexperienced hand, trying to mimic the sultry Cleopatra. My mother had instantly remarked that I looked like a Chinese panda. I ignored her comment and defiantly went to my friend’s get-together, looking like I had just received not one, but two black eyes.
And here was my mother, the vanity-devotee, reduced to a wreck. The guilt of being responsible for someone else’s grief was unbearable; it picked away at my conscience. If I had a functioning hand I might have just placed it on my mother’s arm reassuringly and said, “I’ll be fine, Ma, don’t worry.” I had no such option so I tried to sooth her with placating words.
“I’ll manage, Ma. It’ll be fine. I don’t need my hands to do everything.”
She gave me a curt sidelong glance and stared back at the road. Were we having a normal conversation, she would have muttered, “Yes, because ninety per cent of your energy goes into chattering. No hands required there.” But the situation called for a somber, motherly demeanor. She said instead, “Yes, but it could have been worse. What if the flames had spread to your entire body? Your life could have been reduced to ashes within seconds.” A tear escaped from her eye and drizzled down her cheek.
“Don’t say that,” I wailed, momentarily ignoring my pain to relieve her of hers. “I’m well and alive and that’s what counts. It could even be fun with these mummy bandages,” I circled them around to demonstrate. “They’re like boxing gloves—they’ll come in handy when I need to fend off stalkers.” I swerved them around and hit in the air. “Bang! Oops, sorry. That was your head I just knocked off.” I looked back at her to see her reaction. I had made success. A smile slowly crept up her face and she shook her head. “This is why your father and I warned you from taking biology. I still think it was a poor choice. You wouldn’t have faced an accident like this had you taken something a little less hands-on, like literature, or accounting.”