Read Part 1 - here
Read Part 2 - here
Read Part 3 - here
Read Part 4 - here
Read Part 5 - here
Read Part 6 - here
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The quietly harassing superincumbent weight remorselessly manoeuvred by Majid through his insistently distressing behaviour was slowly cracking open fissure of pain that had long been plastered and oft-forgotten behind the perfunctory smiles his parents had grown accustomed to manufacturing.
The quietly harassing superincumbent weight remorselessly manoeuvred by Majid through his insistently distressing behaviour was slowly cracking open fissure of pain that had long been plastered and oft-forgotten behind the perfunctory smiles his parents had grown accustomed to manufacturing.
Ironically, their tepid marriage had found some warmth in the mutual awe and endless surprise at bringing forth a new life, which a decade and a few years later served to push them apart with disquieting acrimony.
Majid had not always been like this; it was only after he turned twelve that his behaviour seemed to change overnight.
Attributing this sudden unruly attitude to adolescence and teenage rebellion was an easy excuse to ignore any real reason behind and thus it was left unchecked until it got aggravating to the point of dangerous and the Wasim’s who’d tried hiding on the long desultory road of parental apathy, now found themselves lost and much too far away to find their own child they’d once loved.
The increasing pressures of waking to a new day of bleak misdemeanors and complaints from school and neighbors constantly nagged at the already weakening threads of their half-hearted alliance, when once they believed they could live through as a team, Majid’s parents were stranded to bear each other as jaded individuals disgruntled with their lot in life, streaked with venomous sarcasm in lieu of conversations when the horrific news of their dead son broke them down into lifeless pulps of meagre flesh.
It had been a week since the incident and they had no one but each other to love and neglect. The only glue once holding them that later peeled them apart was murdered and no one knew why.
There was no funeral because the body was being dissected, torn apart, ripped and sutured. Majid would come back as an abstract composition of human child badly sewn up perhaps, for funeral rites a few days later, until then, there was nothing but the sharp burn of astringent memories and their collective failure as parents.
There was a time, once, when Mrs Wasim thought she could fashion a skeleton from all the bones she had to pick with her husband.
Those odd late night calls from Nehar Sinhal just moments after Jumaid returned home from work or so he said, abrupt messages during dinner which he’d hasten to check, anxious hushed whispers he didn’t think Meina Wasim was stealthily trying to discern, and no, she never understood the manner of conversation between her husband and Nehar Sinhal, but that they were merely social calls of well meaning camaraderie was as make believe as his mandatory morning hugs..and yet, right now, as he sat smoking those disgusting cigarettes that smelled of burnt spices, she held no malice in her heart.
It was true, she hated it. Oh how she hated herself for dressing up each time they were invited to the Sinhal’s for a soiree, for dinners, for gatherings, and yet, she’d find herself drawing a smile on her face, a secret clown, readying to play the beautiful wife, the dutiful mother, the loving parent, of which she was none.
All this, for what? just so they could be friends with the powerful Sinhal’s, the perfect parents of a perfect child, who just happened to be her son’s best friend; her son who was wicked and tiresome, who’d rejected his own parents, who only found happiness with Tejan- his happiness was all that mattered, didn’t it?and thus she persevered.
Such pathetic weakness, swallowing her pride just so Majid could keep out of trouble.
Didn’t she see the light in Jumaid’s eyes each time he entered that vile Sinhal mansion holding Meina's hand, but latching his attention to that woman who played with a perfect smile and resplendent perfumes?
Nehar Sinhal, that splendid viper slithering amongst their conjugal bedcovers that even she knew were redolent with pretence.
Meina Wasim would find herself cringing, each time Nehar held out her beautiful long arm to greet her husband, she recoiled in disgust whenever he lit up that cigarette. Jumaid Wasim, that beautiful man, suave and handsome, who was unhappily married and who was a bad parent.
He was all that and perhaps more, maybe Nehar knew him better, she who often sent him home with tiny markings of overflowing passion and territorial scratches.
At least now, Meina Wasim thought, she wouldn’t have to go to meet Sinhal’s anymore. Whatever excuse they once had to visit them now languishes under a scalpel in a mortuary, and whatever her husband wished to do was his business and yet she didn’t understand why she didn’t tell the whole truth that morning when the police took their statements.
They kept calling it the body, and she wanted to scratch out their faces and tell them it was her child, her only son who used to dance and sing, who used to be the loveliest thing she’d ever set her eyes on, who sucked his toes and learnt to walk in front of her.
It wasn’t a body, it was Majid. Her Majid, a strong, robust child who now looked frozen and pale. This pallid body, this child was punctured with wounds that had congealed into thick clots of blood. She saw his hand, unbending, mortified, slipping out of the stretcher he was clumsily thrown on.
Jumaid was holding her back. He was crying too. Was he sorry?
Where was he that Sunday? He’d left her all alone in the afternoon and came back much later in the evening. Why couldn’t she tell the police the truth? Maybe she didn’t want to believe that Jumaid was spending the evening with Nehar–the evening they had to themselves.
But wasn’t she almost relieved to find herself alone, to not have to share her silence, to not look at the man whom she didn’t grow to love, who didn’t love her back?
She could tell them the truth the next day when they visited, couldn’t she? Did she want to? Jumaid had ignored her pleading glances when the two policemen had spoken to him.
He was staring at his phone waiting for Nehar to call, wasn’t he?
But then why did Jumaid lie?
Why did Jumaid tell the police that Majid was carrying his own phone, when in fact it was Jumaid’s spare phone for work.
Meina hugged herself, feeling the winter seep into her arms through her fingertips. It was getting cold.
Her husband blew out a thick mist of cinnamon flavored smoke that swiveled in a miniature tornado before disappearing, leaving in its wake a shroud of noiseless shriek, a haze of lingering scents.
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