Translations by Jumaana Abdu

Author:Jumaana Abdu [Abdu, Jumaana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761343889
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Aliyah thought about what was sick in the town all the long week. She thought about the ulcerous river. She thought about overflowing psych wards and hospital jails. She thought about the quiet desolation of an aging population. She thought about rotten mangroves and skeleton reefs. She thought about Hashim and his father slaughtering sheep until the drains spilled over with acrid froth. Then she remembered the sickness of the city, the productivity-as-wellbeing, timed by the minute, the virtue signalling, the massage parlours on Oxford Street, men asleep on the kerb outside Sydney Tower, which shot up through the boutique outlets of Pitt Street to a rotating restaurant serving panoramic views and an all-you-can-eat buffet.

In medicine there is a saying: If you go looking for anything, you will find something. Aliyah was looking for disease. It took only a week.

She was at the agricultural warehouse one afternoon putting in a bulk order for orchard netting – they were having issues with seed-keen cockatoos glutting off their citrus trees. Hana had requested a flowerpot for the dining table, so Aliyah made a stop at the ceramic aisle, where, on the top shelf, she spied a baby-blue vase Hana would have adored. Aliyah stepped backwards on tiptoe so she could better see it. A thump and a jolt sent her stumbling. She spun around with an apology on her lips. There she found her roadkill: a woman with fire-engine hair, crepe-paper skin and eyes burning like cigarette butts between Aliyah and the mess of soil and tulip bulbs on the floor.

‘Aw, for Christ’s sake!’ she moaned. ‘Can’t you see with that towel on your head! Everywhere I turn it’s like f*cking Clumsistan. These bloody people. You can pay for all this; I’m done paying for your type!’ She kicked the dirt at Aliyah. When she left, witnesses stepped out of her way.

Aliyah was flaccid, mute. She was like a fish on the pavement: alien to the element. The other shoppers looked uncomfortable. Aliyah was embarrassed for having made them so. She forgot the vase for Hana. She paid for the netting and the woman’s tulips and left. She didn’t think to complain. She desired no retribution of any sort. In fact, the sooner she could forget, the more relieved she would be. It had been an inconvenience first and foremost. She drove with a single, oppressive line of thought all the way home, aching to take shelter with her own kind.

In her resistance to an old nag insisting she be incensed, Aliyah saw herself as traitor to a cause she emblematised. Her mother had been a scholar; Aliyah could imagine the kind of self-possession a woman with peers the likes of Edward Said would have embodied. Perhaps her mother would have resented Aliyah’s passivity. Perhaps, in Aliyah’s place, she would have sprung back with a dignified wrath, a professorial disparagement so superior it would have charred the lady into ash. Was Aliyah complicit? Should she have erupted in a diatribe, thrown her

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