Nocturnal

In the mirror blotched from years of use and obscured under the layer formed from accumulated smoke and dust, Asiah glanced at her own reflection; blurred, and beaten down. She dipped a corner of a ragged old cloth into half a mug of their precious preserve of water, and rubbed savagely over her face, dabbing at the corner of her eyes, trying to scrub off the stale remnants of a day old make up. After five minutes worth of merciless scrubbing, Asiah looked up, facing her own familiar form, ordinary, except for perhaps the angry red patches from all that rubbing.

It was about four in the morning, which meant that the inhabitants of the peninsula were warily dragging themselves back to their beds, since the break of dawn indicated the end of their working hours, and it also meant that no one would possibly notice Asiah if she crept out at this ungodly hour.

Asiah quietly stuffed the modest dish of smashed eggplants, a single egg, boiled and peeled, and some rice, overcooked, and therefore a bit sticky. She marvelled for a moment over how she successfully managed to fit all that in a small blue lunch box, which was given free with a packet of detergent she'd never bought.

The kids were still asleep in the other room. That meant one less thing to deal with. She briefly wondered if she should wake the neighbour up and ask her to look after the kids, but in the end, had decided against it, and she ended up locking them up instead. "I'll be back before they wake up," she consoled herself, before remembering that it was long since the children last cared to wonder over where there elder sister was, or what she'd been up to. They'd learnt to lock up their curiosity, withhold their judgments. They'd learnt to let go of their childhood.

Asiah enveloped her face with her long scarf made of heavy fabric. She was in her best attire, one which helped her trick herself into thinking that the last six months never happened; she was once more the girl with her head full of dreams, the world still an euphoric place to her.

She let go of the hood once she was on the bus, and certain that no one would recognise her. She had actually started to enjoy herself, but then the bus stopped. As she stood up to leave, her stomach lurched, as it did before every visit. She braced herself, gritted her teeth, and started walking in long, robotic strides, her legs moving in autopilot.

The journey that stretched over the next twenty minutes went by in a blur, as it always did.  In her memory, these twenty minutes were nonexistent, wiped out by her brain to alleviate her of her burden somehow.

Asiah clutched her box closer to her as she felt herself being scanned by the policeman, whether or not he was an officer she could not tell, they all behaved the same.

"I… could this box be somehow given to Mr. Julfiqar?" her voice quivered, her mouth dry like sawdust.

They never let any sort of food pass, and yet she'd cook and carry it every single time, in the hope that they'd perhaps exhaust themselves of refusing and let it go. But when the man reached his hand out to take the box, Asiah discovered that her fingers would not unbuckle from around the box, her knuckles white with the effort. As the man pried the box that she'd been clutching like a lifeline, she suddenly felt off balance, and vaguely underdressed, as if she were denuded somehow, by the absence of the box.

She was about to pull a couple of crumpled up notes from her purse, but the man dismissed her with an impatient wave of the hand.

The butterflies in her stomach activated themselves at the sight of him.

"Abba," she whispered, and the man looked up, life sparking in his head eyes.

"Asiah," he said, his eyes liquid, "How have you been, beti?"

She stared at her childhood hero, the man whose broad shoulders were her favourite seat. It all seemed like a lifetime ago, for his skin had now drooped around his eyes, his shoulders hunched forward. No trace of the man whose laughter would ricochet off the walls of their humble home.

"I'm great!" she piped up, "Jainab and Abbas are at school, so I couldn't bring them. But hey, I'm here!" she felt like it was someone else talking.

As her father looked at her expectantly, she transformed into the girl who'd sing lullabies and weave stories for her siblings. And in the next moment, she was telling the story she knew to be a fictitious one, but she believed every word she spoke. When she saw her father's eyes moisten with relief upon hearing about her job, her flat, her siblings and their friends, the trust in her father's face seeped into her own, and for those few precious moments, she believed.

"What about you, Abba? Are they treating you well?" she asked, her eyes full of concern.

"Oh, of course. They know that I was framed," he tried to smile, and Asiah knew it was her turn to feign relief.

On and on the two grownups went, as long as time would allow, making up stories, fooling the other, fooling themselves, like children playing pretend.

* * *

Asiah dipped the corner of the ragged cloth into the remaining half of the water from earlier that morning, steadily wiping away the dried tear stains on her face. In the dim candle light she applied her makeup, rouged her cheeks, carefully place a teep on the centre of her forehead. When she looked up again, a girl embellished in obtrusive and unnecessary items meant for beautification stared back at her. She checked on her siblings in the next room, who she knew, were only pretending to be asleep to save her the embarrassment of trying to explain herself.

She opened the door to the pitch black world outside, and since she was no longer the little girl who buried her face in her father's chest, afraid of the dark, she stared outside, bold and sure, for she'd been forced to transform into something she didn't want to be.

She stepped outside, and the darkness embraced her, sheltering her in its own womb, as if to shield her against the humiliation and ridicule of the world.

Upoma Aziz is a walking, talking, ticking time bomb going off at versatile detonators. Poke her to watch her explode at www.fb.com/upoma.aziz