Half Life by Roopa Farooki

Author:Roopa Farooki
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312577902
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Hassan

Kuala Lumpur General Hospital, Malaysia

Hari Hassan is relieved when indifferent Malay Nurse enters his room for the routine check-up, rather than the other one whose kindness seems to have led inexorably to her engaging with him, to her interfering. He is quite sure that even if he is writhing in agony and speaking in tongues, Malay Nurse would simply check his pulse, administer a mild sedative, and let him get on with it. No psychobabble for her, no imposition of cheerful golfers and softly spoken middle-aged women in beige suits. A cheerful young student, one of those volunteering at the hospital, pops in with a leaflet while Nurse is replacing his drip. ‘Hello Hari,’ says the student overfamiliarly, ‘Are you going to come to the movie showing tonight? We could arrange for you to be wheeled down to the room. We’re trying to drum up interest, as no one turned up last week. This time we’re making popcorn as a bribe.’

‘Mr Hassan could choke to death on popcorn,’ says Nurse pragmatically, dismissing him, and the student looks slightly hurt and leaves. Thank you, Nurse, thinks Hassan, for making decisions for me, for scaring people away. I know you’d be perfectly willing to let me die, but just not on your watch, not on your shift. As the disease slides deeper into Hassan, inhabiting his legs so he no longer has the use of them, into his chest and throat so eating and swallowing are now difficult and soon talking will be too, it takes hold of him with a muscular, personal embrace, gripping him hard enough to kill little pieces of him, like cold fingers inching along his flesh. Hassan has had dreams sometimes where he has been placed in his coffin, his body shrunk to nothing, his skin stretched across the fleshless bone, his eyes lidded, his cadaverous smile fixed by the embalmer, and people pass and pay respects, shuddering at the horror of his mummy-like, reptilian form, as though he has regressed centuries, as though he has just evolved and crept slimily from the sea, and no one notices that he is still there, hidden inside the body, screaming silently for someone to hear him, to notice that his dry little heart is still pumping red blood to the strangled veins. I’m still here, he cries without moving his lips, pinned invisibly into place over his teeth, I’m still here in these paper walls, caged in my bones. He continues to cry out as the silk-lined coffin lid is shut over his face, as he hears the earth pound on him from above. When he has this dream, Hassan wakes to feel grateful for practical Malay Nurse, as he knows that she alone would not walk by him with creeping sentiment, but would look at his desiccated remains without affection, and efficiently check his pulse. She alone will make sure that he is dead before he is gone.

The student is back again already; this time with a little flyer he has probably made himself on his laptop.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.