Outside People and Other Stories by Mariam Pirbhai

Author:Mariam Pirbhai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

BREAD AND ROTI

THE MECHANICAL RING of the toaster jolted Umara awake. She touched the side of her face, reminded of the pain. She turned her head and noticed a sparrow that beckoned from the balcony ledge of their ninth floor apartment.

Kashif, her son, came into the room carrying a plate with two slices of peanut-buttered toast. She couldn’t understand how he ate that dreadful paste. It looked like mud and stuck to the roof of your mouth.

“Ammi, remember your doctor’s appointment this afternoon,” he said, sitting down on the recliner he had made a point of claiming in his father’s absence.

She nodded slightly, the bare minimum of a gesture. It still hurt too much to talk, especially in the mornings before the day’s round of medications kicked in.

“It’s an important one,” he added, just as his cell phone rang.

Umara didn’t need reminding that today the doctor would tell them if she could finally be rid of the feeding tube inserted in her stomach. It made her feel like those factory machines.

“The news? No, I just woke up,” Umara heard Kashif say to someone.

She turned to the television. A film had started playing on her favourite Hindi Classics movie channel. An impious looking man in a frumpy suit was heckling workers hunched over by the weight of large sacks of flour they were carrying up a winding hill.

“Again? I can’t believe it!” Kashif’s voice drifted over to her in heated tones. “Is anyone hurt? And the maulana? Was he there when it happened? Khudah ke fazal.…”

Umara was taken aback by her son saying things like khudah ke fazal. He had never spoken that way. And why was he inquiring after a maulana? They hadn’t been to masjid in years.

“Of course, I will,” Kashif continued, somewhat flustered. “Please tell Ishaq-bhai I’ll be there.”

Ishaq-bhai? The name was vaguely familiar, but Umara wasn’t sure if Kashif had mentioned it before or if she knew it from somewhere else. She was increasingly bothered by the fact that her son was spending less and less time at home, and more and more time going god knows where and doing god knows what. It was too much like the months before.…

She felt the heat rise to her face. She was tired of the way the world kept sneaking up on her like a car’s headlights in a dense fog. With every part of her anatomy hijacked by the cancer treatments, could anyone blame her for feeling this way? Didn’t Kashif understand how little energy his mother had to be worrying about him too? She couldn’t inquire about his every movement and action. Simply watching his comings and goings was enough to wear her out.

Umara sank back into the film. The South Asian channels helped her through days that unfolded with the certainty of sickness and inertia. Yet the monotony was enough to make her miss her job at the Ginetti Family Food Corporation. She even felt a brief twinge of nostalgia for Indira-sahiba, her disagreeable supervisor. At least Indira-sahiba and her coworkers at the bakery were part of something that was uniquely hers.

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