chapter .1-Advent of the moon

Chapter from my work based on two lives in remote parts of third world, the harsh environment they are brought up in; the attrocities they face etc.

SHE

She is beautiful as she always has been. Her life is not slow and sluggish like mine. It has been full of action and mishaps, that was just until we met again and it all turned around for both of us. Let us not peek into her life in a reeling order but in an unfolding one, the way she has been to me, opening like a book, page by page, revealing beauty concealed under beauty, holding me in a thrill of what to expect, what to interpret.

It was an august afternoon that was awaiting the twilight eagerly, and with the advent of moon in the sky, the longing in earth’s heart curled and straightened over and over, again and again; the spirit of motherhood had never germinated to such fertility in its fecund womb.

The mud house with thatched roof had sweltered all day, less under the sun and more in the glares of anticipating eyes, and heat of praying verses escaping at a rate faster than that of their exhaled breaths, from a variety of mouths; one tapering and nearly toothless, few plump, rosy and with shining teeth even to the gums, one with purple lips containing tainted and stained tobacco teeth that sent a gush of bad breath to Allah, swathing each of his fragile prayers.

The moon above was not in its yellow burqa today, the red of its cheeks was surfacing over its veil that no longer could conceal the envy and thrill it had restrained for the last nine months, since it had heard of it, and tonight under its own shimmering shadow and the dim light of a lamp it was going to behold the advent of a new moon on the very cherished breast of Earth.

In the parchment that bathed in the moon’s eager gaze; to and fro like a pendulum, a haunting apparition scuttled from corner to corner measuring the area repeatedly with his long legs in no time, his big fists choking and releasing the air between its fingers and pad, the long overgrown nail on the little finger sometimes digging into his rough but well padded palm frequently twisting against it and rarely scraping its skin. His mouth was mumbling many times in a single breath,

“Ya Allah, it is a boy.”

“A boy indeed,” he reassured.

Sometimes the man stopped at the door, he didn’t walk, but feet continuously stamped the ground, urging him to keep walking.

It was one such break in his walking session when the door opened, a figure exited the room, and as if it had overheard the mumble, it said

“Allah, answer our prayers; a boy this time”

“A boy, or better dead,” it added another clause now.

It was the scanty teethed lady.

The red on the moon’s cheeks brusquely decimated and a pale color of horror and more of concern and pity supplanted it for it knew

The prayer was not to be heard that night.

“How is she?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about your grief yielding Begum; she would never die before burying my corpse.”

“Can’t provide an heir, better a womb futile than such a burden yielding sac.”

She scorned as she slammed the door closed behind her.

She had ranted a few more curses but kept them more to herself than that ‘Biwi ka Ghulam’[wife's pet] Rehmat;

Rehmat now ceased walking, and mumbled even faster, his feet still stamping the ground, meeting his prayers every word to stamp, hoping that, if his prayers would change the gender ‘if’; “Allah forbids the evil thoughts; "it is a boy.”

The moon now hastily skipped a few co-ordinates and tilted at an angle from where, hiding between the gaps of adjacent twigs of the old apricot tree, through the only window in the house left open for some air, it could behold the spectacle of waiting.

The woman was lying down near the cot, on a plain bed sheet, left hand clasping the wrinkles of it, wrenching and pressing harder on it and the right doing the same, sometimes even harder, reaping often a moan and seldom a shrill out of Zeenat as the grip would dig a nail or two at the back of her hand or would tend to shatter a couple of carpals.

She was covered with a sheet and her legs were torn apart; a young girl ran in with hot pot of water every now and then. The scanty teethed lady would soak the cloth in it and hand it over to another lady sitting close to her legs.

The shackles of sweat were gripping the woman harder and harder, the perennial chain rolling all over her face, neck and body, each bead to drip and disappear but only to be replaced by even denser ones that would follow the tracks drawn by their predecessors on her aching canvas.

They wouldn’t bother her as much as they would bother others, like the rare gust of wind that would drift through the window to relieve their brows but not hers, for the astounding agony under her belly was so thriving and excruciating that even a squall or a storm, a burst or an eruption would cause her no relief or pain.

She was told to push, and pushing she was, but it was not helping; she had done it before but never had it been so arduous and painful, not even when it was her first time. She was tired and repeatedly lost conscious; they rubbed her feet and sprinkled some water on her face; the old lady feared or maybe cherished her dead. Then after she gained conscious, she pushed again.

“What is it, the devil’s child?” the old scanty teethed lady was tired, and full of disdain.

The cloth was soaked and used again;, each time it came back to the young girl’s hand, it was more red than white,she’d dilute the blood that was not stains but a dye now and then hand it over to be used again.

“Push, push” the old lady wanted to get over with it even if it were a dead lump of underdeveloped meat and bones.

“Tell her,” her left forearm raised and touched her other shoulder to be brought down with force; she almost slapped the young girl with the back of her hand, who was ready with the cloth again.

“Push Ammi, Push,” she said in a broken voice, at the verge of tears now.

The woman for a hundredth time dug her incisors into her chapped, fuming lower lip curtaining and revealing them with her upper one as she inhaled and exhaled the heat burning her nostrils, her hands clasped firmly at the sheet and at her daughter’s hand as if she had decided she would not take it no more, she’d spill it or die or even both. She pushed, heaving all her contents into her pelvis and Zeenat shrilled and moaned though she tried to contain the pain and when she could not, she did well to contain atleast the voice of hers, which would anyway go muffled and unnoticed under the raucous and piercing grunts swathed in droplets of spittle escaping her mother’s panting mouth and also the squeaky little cry of her sibling.

As the head had sprouted the old lady’s eyes gleamed for a moment but even before the legs detached, the gleam had turned into derision and despondence.

The woman close to the legs cleaned her dry with a towel and after disconnecting the umbilical cord that was her thread of life in mother’s womb, wrapped her in a muslin cloth, and shifted her towards her Grandmother, who already had gotten up but not without making a remark.

“Shove her back there, or I shall bury this sin; this ‘Devil’s Daughter’.”

Meanwhile, Rehmat was banging at the door, it had taken too long, and the squeak of the new born had initiated the churns of anxiety in his belly.

But it was his wife he was more concerned about, who was alive but half conscious in the lap of Zeenat with the lady close to her legs tending to her.

Hafiza, his mother, the scanty teethed lady now opened the door not to end his wait but to search for an air of relief after her fruitless labour.

“Ammi is she alright?” for the frown on the wrinkles of mother’s brow had already yielded the answer to the question he never raised.

“Rehmat, you wouldn’t get your heir, your Raja, it is just another curse, son.”

“That bitch would yield nothing but an army of sluts, who years from now till the end for their miserable lives would warm the beds of others, yielding their puppies.” She now submitted the curses that she had earlier restricted to herself.

“Ammi” Rehmat refuted almost at the peak of his voice and pushing her aside, maybe hurting her old shrunk shoulder a bit, he dashed in towards his family as Ammi bemoaned and bewailed ‘the advent of the new moon.’

“Where is my blood, where is it?” “Gone down with the currents of Noorie.”

The moon was tempted, so it surreptitiously descended to the window to glance at the new moon that was curled carefully in the arms of her sister, each of whose eyes were gleaming less of their waters and more of the reflection of the tiny moon they bore; eyes were closed, tiny, delicate lips with a touch of rose and face of the size of a chickoo studded with features like gems that were dim in the incandescent kerosene lamp but now gleamed under the yellow moon.

The body still smelt of the embryonic sac as its fingers uncurled to feel the touch of a newer and bigger world. It baked for a while in the copper of the moon from head to toe as the moon tried to savor its innocent beauty in a single glance. It had to leave hastily as Hafiza turned towards the window and that picture was how the new moon would stay in its mind till it falls from the sky. From above, it would watch it bloom.