The Scatter Here Is Too Great

by Bilal Tanweer

  #09

  Sadeq

  TURNING TO STONES

  Asma Aapa’s stories had become strange. She did not tell me old stories anymore. Stories like the ones about the clever cobbler who enters the king’s palace by saying he’s a rich merchant and is then helped by the princess who falls in love with him and makes him rich. Or that other story about the beggar who makes the king realize his mistake and the king rewards him by making him his vizier. . . . Now her stories ended with strange problems like sadnesses that couldn’t be cured. Not even with happy things.

  “So,” Aapa said, smiling, rubbing cream on her hand. “I have a new story for you. Have you brushed your teeth?” she asked, untying her black hair, brown in the lamplight. “Take off your socks. No stories if you don’t do as I say.” She turned out the lights in the kitchen and was checking the locks of the main door.

  Aapa had said the blanket does not have heat of his own. So I was already in the blanket rubbing my hands and giving some heat to him. She came and sat on the bed. And then she told me the story of a king whose body was turned into stone by his wife.

  “The king, of course, did not know he was marrying a sorceress. He thought her a very, very beautiful woman. His viziers and counselors cautioned him about marrying a woman he did not know, but he ignored them and followed his heart’s desire and married this beautiful girl who had come to his court and won his heart. Some months after the marriage, they had a fight and she got angry and turned him—from his belly down—into stone.”

  As she said this, her warm hand petted my belly under the blanket and I wondered if the king’s stone body could feel warm hands.

  “And then she took over his kingdom.” She paused. I waited for her to tell me how he got his old body back, but she didn’t say anything. So I asked.

  “But didn’t his friends and viziers look for him?”

  “They did, but the sorceress-queen did not allow anyone to visit him in person. In fact, she made it known that the king had died. She even arranged a dummy funeral for him, and cried so much that everyone believed her. She locked him in her chamber where she visited him every night.”

  “What’s a chamber, Aapa?”

  “A chamber, my dear, is a big, big bedroom, with a king-size bed and lots of red velvet cushions. But”—she paused—“here’s the interesting part: the queen-sorceress returned to her chamber every night where the king was writing poetry, lamenting his condition and fate. She sat with him, and tenderly said words of love to him and asked him to read his poetry to her. She cried when he read. She then took his poetry and sang it on her one-stringed guitar, which she played to perfection. In those moments, there was no enmity, no hate, no bitterness between them, and the king would feel like he had done absolutely the right thing by marrying her. He forgot his pain and his stone body and all his animosity for this woman. When the queen’s song was over he looked at her, thinking she would cure his body again. But she left him without saying anything. This happened every night till the poor king died.”

  I was very sleepy. Aapa turned off the lamp. It would not be possible for a stone person to turn in his sleep, I imagined.

  “So what did the poor king do if he wanted to take a bath?” I asked Aapa with my eyes closed.

  She laughed a little. “Well, the queen would bring him soap and a bucket full of water . . .”

  In my head, I saw the crying king washing his legs of stone with sponge and soapy water, and foam and water sliding down his legs into a blue bucket. . . . With his other hand, he was writing poetry on a piece of paper. His tears were slipping into the exact same curve on his face one after the other.

  Aapa and I had come to spend our winter holidays with Nani in her apartment because Amma and Baba were out of our city, Karachi, and we were her grandchildren and we loved her. This was also the reason why Aapa washed Nani’s dishes and her dirty clothes.

  Nani’s apartment building did not have any elevators, so Nani couldn’t go anywhere because she once dropped a full bottle of strawberry jam on her foot and fractured it. I mean nothing happened to the jam bottle, but she was crying when she called Amma. Yes, she was crying even though she’s so old. But it was not at all like when I cry; because when I cry, I just cry and forget about everything else. I can tell you she cried because I saw a tear stuck in the corner of her eye when I went to see her in the hospital; she was sitting on the hospital bed behind a curtain with one foot swollen and raised on two or three or four pillows. She asked me to come close and then she kissed my head.

  After this incident, whenever Nani left her apartment, two people had to lift her chair and bring her down (or up) the stairs. She would just sit on her chair and talk to the men who were carrying her.

  There were other things wrong with her too. She had a cut on her elbow which released a strange yellow substance and dirtied her clothes and made her irritated. She bandaged her elbow with her one hand and did it even better than the doctor who did it with two hands. The doctor said this himself.

  Nani, Aapa, and I had our breakfasts, lunches, and dinners together. Nani was always asking Aapa if she liked some boy in the family and when she would get married.

  “My girl, I tell you. You have already studied more than all the girls in our family and extended family. There is no point in studying further. See, listen to me now. You have to get married eventually, right?”

  “Yes, Nani. But not now. I have to study,” Aapa said.

  “Why do you have to waste your time in studying? All the rest of the girls are doing it, why are you acting so special? The time you are with me you should spend in learning how to take care of the house. I will teach you how. You should start taking care of this house. You will learn . . .”

  During most other times, Nani was usually talking on the phone in her room—about getting people married in the family, who was ready, who suited who. She would also be asking people to come and see her. But no one visited her.

  Every night, before we went to bed and Aapa told me stories, we spent time with Nani. We put her to sleep before we slept ourselves. It is good to take care of people.

  Nani sat on the bed with her hair spread on her shoulders, all red and white and wet, like a mess, dripping water on her neck and clothes (her hair was red because they were white and she put henna in it; it even smelled like henna—cool and dirty). I saw her usually with her hair tied in a long red-and-white braid, but when she let it down, her face looked strange and I was a little afraid to go near her.

  Nani’s room was clean and smelled of a special musk she got from a special perfumer. She liked the color white. So everything in the room was white, except for the wooden furniture. Even her books with yellow pages had white covers and the carpet had white sheets on it.

  “I will not clean anyone’s hair in my room. Pick that up. There . . .” she said, pointing to a certain part of the sheet. “If you have a problem of hair falling, put this special oil, but clean your hair from my room. I should not see anyone’s hair on my sheets. I don’t have servants in this house.”

  Sitting on her bed she surveyed the room for broken hair or specks of dust. To avoid any dust in the room, she kept the windows closed. And everyone was required to check their feet for cleanliness before stepping into her room. The kitchen was in between the three rooms of her apartment. She said she washed and cleaned it three times every day. Now Aapa washed and cleaned it twice every day. Only once throughout the day did she open the windows, and that was before she went to sleep. She liked to get some fresh air before going to bed.

  That night Aapa was massaging Nani’s shoulders and I was pressing her aching feet. After this, Aapa had to oil her hair, prepare a list of the daily expenses, and then line up Nani’s medicine.

  “Come, my dear. Come here. Press my legs.” I sat on the floor and she sat on the bed. (Her legs were too fat for my hands.) After pressing her legs for some time, I was bored so I stopped and stared at the moth sitting on the tube light. It was not m
oving. I wondered what it was thinking (but how much it could think anyway with that small tiny head).

  I started looking out of her window from which I saw a boy in a shalwar and sleeveless undershirt biting his fingernails and rummaging through clothes piled on a bed. Suddenly I felt Nani’s leg shake. “Umm Hmmm . . .” She glared, raising the eyebrows of her little eyes. “You should never look in other people’s houses. Understand?” I resumed pressing her legs. After a while, I looked again and I noticed the boy looking through our window; his eyes were following Aapa as she moved in the room.

  Aapa started leaving the house in the afternoons. This was during the time Nani was taking the after-lunch nap. Aapa washed the dishes quickly and then let the water gush down on the already washed dishes. She told me to wear a pair of big blue rubbery slippers and not to close the water tap. She told me to play or do-whatever-you-want wearing the rubbery slippers that were too big for my feet. They slapped wetly on the kitchen floor. (I liked the slapping sound they made—it was like bursting a nice plastic bag full of air.)

  The first time she left, she brought her face close to mine and her long wet hair fell forward and covered her face on the sides. I felt I was entering a dark place with the shampoo-smell of her hair. “I am just going out for a little bit to see the girl who lives one floor up. I will come before Nani wakes up. If something happens, come and get me from her apartment. But do not take off those slippers, understand? I will bring you something when I go shopping.” And then she left hurriedly.

  When she’s in the kitchen, I play and talk to her as she is working. But now no one was there. I felt alone with the water gushing, the big slippers slapping, and the feeling that Nani was breathing in her sleep in the other room.

  The kitchen floor was gray and divided into big squares; each square had many little stones of many colors just spread about. It was like someone had dropped all those stones—white, dirty white, brown, red-brown, dark gray—and then just rolled them into the floor with the cement and made squares around it.

  I thought about what each stone was saying to the other stone. They were talking about changing places. One of them wanted to turn and push the other guy away, while the other one wanted to leap into the other square, which had less stones. He thought it was like jumping into the sea, which had high waves and bobbing heads.

  Aapa returned quietly. I noticed she had left the door slightly open. Her white face was a little pink and she was smiling. She did not speak with me and went quickly to our room and closed the door.

  “But, Aapa, if the king was a very intelligent king, as you said, why did he marry that evil sorceress, Aapa?” I asked when we were sitting on the bed and she told me her head ached, so no stories tonight.

  “Well, the problem was he did not ask himself why he was marrying her,” she said.

  “Hain? You mean he married her without asking and all that? But his viziers asked him, no?”

  “Yes, but when his old vizier tried to ask such questions, the king got angry and threatened to get the old man lashed to death.”

  “But why didn’t he ask such questions?”

  “Because he was asking himself different kinds of questions,” she said without looking at me.

  “What are different kinds of questions?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me. I have a headache.”

  I don’t know why she was angry. But she was angry. So I turned my head and started looking at the lamp. There was an ant walking on the lamp shade. It seemed like a dot of darkness walking on the floor of light.

  “I am turning off the lamp,” she said.

  “No,” I said. Because I wasn’t sleepy and I was watching the ant.

  I felt her hand taking my hand and then she kissed my neck. And then she put her face on my pillow.

  “When the king turned to stone, he used to think about that moment when his vizier asked him questions about that girl. The king would curse that moment and himself for making such a rash decision. But then he realized that he could not have asked himself about the girl, because he was in love with her. . . .”

  I turned on the pillow and looked at her.

  “It is like this,” she said. “The king was a different person when he was in love. Now that he was turned to stone, he was a different person.”

  “But I did not ask that. I asked why didn’t he ask questions about that evil woman?”

  “My dear, you are not one person. You have many people in you, and each one can ask only some kinds of questions.”

  I did not know what this meant. So I just kept on looking at her. She smiled. “Go to sleep. I will tell you another story tomorrow.”

  So that I wouldn’t get bored in the afternoons when she left, Aapa bought me three little chicks—pink, yellow, and red—from the man who comes on the cycle every day outside Nani’s building and sells little chicks. Nani was angry and said these chicks would come into her room and dirty the whole place and she couldn’t clean bird shit at this age in her life. But Aapa and I promised her that we would close all the doors when I play with them in the kitchen so that they do not go into any rooms.

  I named them: the pink one was Ta, the yellow one was Za, and the red one was Kha. I wanted a box to make their home, because the man on the cycle said they must have a home. Nani gave me a big-size oil can. But when I put the chicks in it they couldn’t stand and slipped on the oil stuck to the bottom of the can. So I got a little carton for them. I made three windows in it so that they could look out into our house when they were bored. There was no door because I did not want them to go out whenever they wanted. They had to ask me and then I would take them out and put them wherever I wanted. I played with them in the kitchen when Nani was sleeping and Aapa was out and all the doors were closed. They were good children.

  So Aapa was out that day and I wore my big slippers and took them out and told them to stand straight and listen to me. But the pink one, Ta, would not look at me. I was telling him that he should listen to me, otherwise I would punish him by putting him in the slippery oil can, where he would just slip and slip and get tired and would not be able to play with the rest of us. But then suddenly he ran after a line of little ants. I was wearing my slippers and I ran after him and by mistake, I did not realize, I stepped on Za. Quickly I picked him up. He was hurt. I think it was the slipper which had hurt him. He was blinking one of his eyes very, very slowly. I ran out to look for Aapa.

  I was quickly climbing up the stairs in those big slippers, which was difficult, and they were making so much noise. I reached one floor up and there were two doors there and I did not know which one Aapa was behind. Then I heard footsteps and I saw her coming down from the steps from one more floor up. Her face was very red and she looked at me with anger.

  “What is it? Why are you coming here?”

  I lifted Za in my hand to her. “He is dying.”

  It looked like she did not even hear me. She said, “Wait.” And then she ran back up the stairs. She came back and took Za and looked at it. She was panting a little. “Hmm, it is dead, I think. What happened?”

  “Can’t we take him to the doctor?” I asked.

  She did not say anything. She just smiled when I said this.

  When we came down, the door was locked. We knocked and Nani opened the door. She stood in front and asked us where we went without asking her.

  Aapa replied quickly, “His chick had run out. We left in a hurry to get it.”

  Nani looked at her. “But you were upstairs, weren’t you? Did it run up the stairs?”

  Because I had started to cry (a little), Aapa did not reply to her and tried to stop me from crying. She caught Ta and Kha and put them in their box.

  The tap was turned off. I passed by Nani, slapping the big slippers on the floor. We knew she was angry.

  That night, we buried Za in a flower pot that had only mud in it and said special prayers for him.

  Nani worked with Aapa in the morning. She made Aapa do all the
work. Aapa made breakfast; then she cleaned the house and then made lunch. Nani was mostly on the phone in the mornings. Then she would have her lunch and the nap. She woke up and then we all had tea and biscuits and other things like nimko and then she went and talked on the phone till dinner.

  Aapa and Nani spoke very little. And that night after Za died, Nani did not speak to Aapa during dinner and not even afterward when we were in her room before going to bed.

  Nani was speaking with me a lot. She asked me if I could read. She gave me a book of hers (yellow pages, white cover), pointing out the page she wished me to read. I tried to read, but I was reading very slowly and making a lot of mistakes. She corrected me as Aapa oiled her hair.

  When Aapa said, “Come on, let’s go. Time to sleep,” Nani said, “He will sleep with me tonight.”

  So I looked at Aapa when she said, “Good night,” and smiled.

  It was dark in the room and I was facing the other way on the bed. Nani said, “So what do you do in the afternoons?” She took my hand in her hand. Her hand was a little nicely cold because she washed her hands before sleeping.

  “I play with Ta, Za, and Kha. Otherwise I just play with something else.”

  “Where’s Aapa?”

  “She’s working in the kitchen.”

  “Does she go out?”

  I was quiet. I was afraid to tell her that Aapa goes out to meet the girl who lives one floor up. So I just acted like I was sleeping.

  Nani asked again, “Are you asleep already? What was she doing today? Why were you wearing her slippers?”

  “What? I don’t know, Nani jaan. I am feeling sleepy.”

  “Hmm.” She did not say anything then. Then she kissed my head and said, “Sleep now. Tomorrow I will cook something special for you. You like halwa?”

  I found it difficult to sleep with Nani because she was snoring loudly and she held my hand in hers. After some time, I pulled my hand and got off the bed.