Shaheen
Since the day Bhaiya disappeared, it was a silence the family had agreed to tiptoe around without prior discussion. Fatima Jafar writes a short story about enforced disappearances.
Illustration: Marium Ali via Herald
On most days, Shaheen hated her name. It stretched and echoed a little too long in the mouth. It tasted leathery on the tongue, she thought, and the sound it made was far too wispy. It was, quite simply, the name of a bird’s wind-whipped flapping wings that sounded too old for her eight years. Shaheen had always wished for a name that was soft. Something you could poke at, which came bouncing back like green jelly. A name like her aunt Bubbly Phuppo’s. Her aunt’s giggle-licked aerated nickname was the object of much envy for Shaheen. It sang of the rolls of fat that accumulate around a baby’s wrists and ankles. It sounded sweet, like sheera. ‘Bubbly’ didn’t suit her aunt at all, Shaheen thought, because you could poke at Phuppo all day long and she never came bouncing back. Her knees stuck out like right angles, all bone and not even a whisper of fat. Their defiant sharpness poked and prodded Shaheen whenever she crawled into her aunt’s lap to sleep. Bubbly Phuppo needed a thin-lipped name, she decided, something that had a deep voice and creased at the corners like crow’s feet. A name for pursed lips.
Names worked a lot like her father’s vests, Shaheen thought. Sometimes they fit perfectly, the cheap white fabric clinging to the body determinedly. Sometimes they just hung awkwardly around the shoulders, a little too thin, a little too loose, and a little too old. Bhaiya had a name that hugged him perfectly, one which was as soft as fish meat. Saleem. Shaheen imagined cutting into her brother’s name like how a knife slipped under the skin of a cold fish, easily and without any hindrance. These days, no one said his name much anymore.
“The silence around Bhaiya’s disappearance lodged itself into each of their throats like a piece of glass, and cut away at everything.”
Since the day Bhaiya disappeared, it was a silence the family had agreed to tiptoe around without prior discussion. Baba’s stomach, which once used to proudly protrude from the bottom of his undershirt, had lost its rotund fullness. Shaheen would look over at Baba’s wrists only for her stomach to clench in fear. Much of his flesh had faded away. She could see a kind of skeletal sense, a spiny sense, running through his entire body, starting from his bony wrists and ending at his skinny toes. She could not look for very long. He ate less and less each day, pushing away the plate after a few silent bites before leaving the breakfast table to return to his bedroom. The door remained closed now, even in the afternoons.
The silence around Bhaiya’s disappearance lodged itself into each of their throats like a piece of glass, and cut away at everything. But Shaheen was scared she would forget the slick softness of Bhaiya’s name, so she practiced saying it over and over again in the dark when her parents were asleep. Sometimes, the shadows threw themselves across her bedroom walls in such strange ways that if Shaheen squinted, they became Bhaiya-shaped. A piece of dark for his nose. A slice of grey for his mouth. She often fell into a deep sleep under the milky imprint of her brother’s face on the ceiling.
When Bhaiya was still here, he would make tea for Shaheen every morning before school. Their shared mornings crept into their daily routine like a whisper eagerly welcomed before the bustle of the day began. With his sleeves rolled up, Bhaiya would light a match and put water to boil, a cigarette precariously perched behind one ear. Generous with the cardamom and tight-fisted with the sugar, he would strain the bubbling mixture into a plastic mug for Shaheen and a glass cup for himself. Sitting across from each other at the breakfast table, they would begin to drink. Impatience was often chastised with the sudden surprise of heat, a burnt tongue, and the occasional flinching hand and stained shirt, but they remained steadfast in their slurping.
Shaheen could not drink tea anymore. She didn’t like sitting in the kitchen alone, without the comforting presence of Bhaiya at the stove, busy with his mixing and stirring and pouring. When he was still here, she would often look up from the breakfast table to see Bhaiya killing flies with a rolled up newspaper. As they died, their paper wings and legs broke into a fine black dust, covering the floor with a dark sheen. Bhaiya would pick up their buzz-less bodies in white tissue, and Shaheen could not help but close her eyes each time. She swore she could taste the insect powder at the back of her throat. Bhaiya would then read the newspaper. Sometimes his eyes became wet. His friends’ names would be printed there in small black letters, sitting in the middle of articles like flecks of dirt. Like crushed insects. On some days, it seemed like Bhaiya could not hear Shaheen when she called his name. In fact, it seemed like he was not at the breakfast table at all.
“He marched across towns and cities with his friends. He sat in large gatherings of men and women who were also crying. Sometimes he came home with bruises on his face or marks on his wrists, but he always came home.”
But the world seemed okay on Sundays. Every hour stretched and swelled till Shaheen felt that all she had was time. Time to sit with Bhaiya and listen. He would wake her up early, before the birds began their singing. Shaheen trailed Bhaiya like a cat, curling into herself like a comma on the mattress as they spoke. Bhaiya would tell her about his friends and their work. He spoke about his writing, and about people in cities all across the country who were crying. She held onto his words with sweaty-handed desperation, as if they would somehow slip into the outside and be whisked away from her forever. Shaheen did not know the word for what her brother did for work. Maybe it did not exist. But she would see him writing in his room late at night, when she should have been asleep. She knew he spoke in front of crowds. He marched across towns and cities with his friends. He sat in large gatherings of men and women who were also crying. Sometimes he came home with bruises on his face or marks on his wrists, but he always came home.
As they spoke, the sun would rise with such impervious silence that Shaheen would realise how much time had passed only by feeling the warm shock of sunlight on her toes. The door frames would puff up with the midday heat. Each window would gasp against the weight of the afternoon. Patches of broken sun trembled on the walls, or swam across the floor nervously. At times Shaheen would spot a piece of rainbow light creeping around the corner of the room, or sitting in a teacup like a jewel. It waited for her to look, and then would disappear forever.
It had been two months since she last saw her brother. She remembered that day well. Bhaiya and his friends had spent the entire evening sitting on the floor of the living room. It was winter and everything tasted burnt, as it often did in the cold months. Bhaiya’s friends continued to stream into the room, which was heavy with the heat of bodies in a small space. Shaheen remembered them vaguely, some in woollen hats, some draped in red shawls. Some had beards and some wore badges. She watched them shyly from the doorway. They scribbled on paper furiously as Bhaiya spoke. Some of them recorded videos on their phones. Some of them recited lines of poetry to rows of twinkling eyes. In some moments, the living room swelled with the roar of clapping hands and bellowing praise. In others, it trembled with the silence of salty tears and raised fists.
“She remembered seeing the smoke from Bhaiya’s cigarette still lazily wafting up to the balcony, its wisps curling in the salty dark in front of her even after he was gone. ”
That evening, after the gathering had ended, Bhaiya went downstairs to say goodbye to the last of his friends. Shaheen watched them from the balcony of the apartment as they hugged and parted ways. Bhaiya’s friends drove off, leaving him alone. Shaheen heard the scratch of Bhaiya’s match as he lit his cigarette, and for a second, he disappeared in a cloud of grey smoke. Everything sat still. Shaheen looked down at her street from above. The mongrel dog that had recently given birth to six puppies was lying on her back in a mound of rubble, her sand-coloured babies rolling around beside her. The older boys down the road punctured the air with shrieks of glee and creative abuse, engrossed in their nightly cricket match. The neighbours’ youngest son was standing near Bhaiya under the warm glow of a streetlight, tears shining on his cheeks because he could not find his siblings in their game of hide-and-seek. Shaheen could hear Ammi’s voice from inside the apartment, calling her to clear the living room of its teacups and ashtrays. But Shaheen was drifting away into something. She was fading into the comforting hum of the evening, into the low warm rumble in the air felt by her and Bhaiya who was still smoking, and the mongrel dog and her sand-coloured babies who were still rolling, and the older boys down the road who were still abusing, and the neighbours’ youngest son who was still crying. She was melting into somewhere whole and heavy, like bread.
The calm was suddenly shattered by the vicious rumble of a large black car as it sped towards their apartment like a bull. It stopped with a violent jolt, right in front of Bhaiya. The screech of the tires sounded like a man screaming. Shaheen saw two men rush out and grab Bhaiya by his arms. One of them held a gun to his head.
Shaheen did not remember much else from that evening. The men’s voices were loud and hoarse. Bhaiya’s was muffled, as if he was yelling from underwater. She remembered seeing the smoke from Bhaiya’s cigarette still lazily wafting up to the balcony, its wisps curling in the salty dark in front of her even after he was gone. The large black bull-like car drove off as quickly as it had come, and Bhaiya did not return.
“One night, Bhaiya’s name fell out of Shaheen’s hands and tumbled out of the window like a string. The sharp-edged stony silence that had once surrounded his absence had now softened at the edges. ”
Ammi stopped wearing her brown lipstick. Her name Zohra settled in the corners of her mouth and rotted. The name nestled many meanings within itself, her mother’s most favoured being ‘blossom’. ‘Zohra’, which once filled the house with such furious life as vases and mugs and glass cups spilt over with orange tulips, wilted on every tabletop and nightstand now. You couldn’t walk across the apartment without kicking the fading petals. Sometimes, Shaheen was awoken by her mother’s fervent prayers, in prostration. Ammi was fading away into somewhere else too. It was a damp place, covered in wet earth, where flowers grew wild and jostled for space, where everything was perfumed and nothing was loud. Shaheen knew her mother had one foot in there. When Bhaiya was still here, he and Ammi would lie down on the bed together and listen to songs on his phone. She traced the words of her childhood favourites with her eyes closed, her head gently cradled in the crook of Bhaiya’s arm. Side by side was the only way her mother agreed to be, skin always touching skin. These days, Ammi never left the bed. With the curtains drawn, she lay in the dark on one side of the mattress, not daring to look at all the empty space around her.
Names are funny things, Shaheen thought, because with time their pulse starts to fade. The tongue no longer touches those letters anymore, and all the wispy, the wind-whipped, and the green-jelly sounds stop being made. One night, Bhaiya’s name fell out of Shaheen’s hands and tumbled out of the window like a string. The sharp-edged stony silence that had once surrounded his absence had now softened at the edges. Shaheen let it slip from her fingers. The quiet had draped itself over the house like a shroud that evening and, when nothing could speak, Shaheen sunk into the sticky world of her dreams. She disappeared into sleep. Like a name that had lost its owner, an empty chair at the dining table still waiting for someone to come.
Fatima Jafar lives in Karachi, Pakistan, where she works at a publishing house. Fatima previously studied comparative literature.