Fear has a taste. It is this metallic tang that floods my mouth as I quicken my steps. My heart is a frantic tattoo, my mouth impossibly dry. I swallow. My tongue glues itself to the roof of my mouth. I squeeze Fatima’s hand and feel her answering squeeze. My breaths slow. And then the moment is gone and I am drowning once more.

Where is he?

I scour the dirty Dadaville streets, willing Zaahid to appear.

Why does he do these things? Doesn’t he know I need him? Is he really no better than his bastard father? The man who abandoned us when he learnt of my pregnancy.

I remember that day. How I twisted words, bent them, spread them. I even poked with them, hoping, hoping for something. He didn’t want the child. It was there in the corded arms that framed his rigid form. Arms that had once cradled all my hopes. His lips, an ugly scratch on his face; jaw, flinty. Zaahid has those lips. Curved so rarely in a smile of late. A jaw as impervious as his father’s.

“Say something! Tell me you love me! That you will take care of us …”

My words just bounced off his armour of silence, fell at his feet. He stepped over them. Click. A door in my face, cutting off my soliloquy, banishing every hope. He stepped into the June air. I saw his breath rise in clouds before his face, saw it vanish. Saw him vanish.

My fear struggles to keep up with my mounting anger; palms slick. Rayhana’s hand squirms inside my own and I loosen my grip. It is too late though. I’ve dragged them with me, deep into my despair. And still I race. Searching, not finding. Fatima stumbles, I slow down.

What kind of son is he? The ingrate! After everything I’ve been through for him! After everything I’ve endured to keep a roof over his head and food in his stomach!

Sixteen years. SIXTEEN fucking years!

Shanawaaz at the Corner Cafe, where his gang, The Kajala Boys hang out, hasn’t seen him. Neither has Ice Man (real name, Arshad), the leader of the Kajalas.

As the sun burns itself out, swallowed by a line of tin roofed houses, my gut clenches tighter. I don’t notice the colours that stain the sky. Barely register that an entire bank of frothing cloud has a silver lining.

I can delay no longer. Anu will be home. Anu will be waiting. And Anu doesn’t like waiting …

Fear wins.

As I round the corner, I see him. A statue at the gate. And I know. I drag my feet as I approach. Both girls cling to my hands. I catch Fatima’s gaze as she steals a look at my face. A fat tear wobbles on her lower lashes.  I can almost taste its salt in my own fear. There is nowhere to run. I accept this. But I can delay, can’t I? Just a little? For them?

He does not shout. Not today. He just takes my hand and pulls me into the house, locking the bewildered girls outside. There is no smell of liquor on his breath. And somehow, I know that today it will be worse.

He pushes me into our bedroom. Shuts the door. A gunshot! I flinch.

“Strip.” His voice like broken glass.

I stand, looking stupidly at his quivering face.

“Strip, you fucking hoer meit!” He grabs my dress, pulls me towards his chest and rips it.

He shoves me onto the bed. I watch his hand slide over the buckle of his belt. His movements, deft.

I hunker, arms shielding my face, eyes squeezed shut, waiting to hear the familiar whistle of the belt. I’m completely oblivious to my nakedness. My blood pounding against my eardrums drowns out the sound of my girls, pummelling the front door with their fists.

His weight bearing down on me catches me by surprise. And then he is on top of me. Thrusting. Prying my legs open. I lie very still. Do not struggle. This is not happening. Surely that woman, so small, so fragile, lying spread eagled on a floral bedspread, she is not me. Surely that man, he is not Anu. He could never be my Anu.

With each thrust, I begin to feel something inside of me breaking. Crumbling. Leaving a gaping abyss that swallows all my fears. All my anxieties. Everything …

By the time he shudders, lies still for a moment before rolling off me, I know … It has to be done.

He stands up, steps into his pants without even wiping.

“Just remember, bitch. I own you. Don’t go looking for that half-caste bastard of yours when I am waiting here to be fed a decent meal. I work damn hard to look after all of you.”

The words do not sting.

I lie there, naked, legs scissored, until I hear him settle in the lounge, switch on the TV. Then I stand up, wrapping the bedspread around myself. It is stained. I’ll have to wash it. I go to the bathroom. I do not let the girls in. Their whimpering is abstract. Like death. I cannot own it. Not today. Not like I’ve owned all their tears since the day each of them was lowered into my arms, squalling, wailing purpose into my life.

I shower, dress, rinse out the stain on the bedspread in the basin, straighten the bedroom and then open up for them. Rayhana has fallen asleep, her head cradled on Fatima’s bony lap. I go to wake her. She is reluctant to wake. I notice how the tears that have dried on her face leave white streaks that age her. When she finally staggers to her feet, her eyes are sad. Scared. My words evaporate.

Fatima’s eyes speak questions. I cannot meet them.

That night I lie in bed, eyes shut, replaying my annihilation on a loop. I feel his weight settle beside me on the bed. His leg brushes against my own. I recoil, but do not stir. He strokes my brow. Bile rises to my throat. I do not blink when I feel his scalding tears fall onto my cheeks. Do not answer when I hear him whisper.

“Why? Why must you make me so angry? Why do you keep on doing these things? Like a stupid hoer meit! Don’t you know I love you?”

***
His snores bounce off the white walls of our bedroom. I study the planes of his face and listen so long that the sound seems to vibrate within me.

The years fold in on themselves. He is whole, once again, wooing me, a single mother with a love child borne of little love. A beautiful man, bearing flowers, chocolates. Crooning.

“Hello, is it me you’re looking for?”

I was so young, so stupid. Collecting his promises like prayers. The opiate that dulled the pain from my father’s slaps. Weakened the poison in his insults. With My Anu, I wasn’t just ‘a stupid hoer meit, fucking every guy with a few rands in his wallet.’ I was more than just the ‘mother of a bastard that even his own father didn’t want.’ I wasn’t a ‘slut just like your mother.’

He made me feel beautiful. With him, I was beautiful.

No musallee bowing down five times a day in the masjid believes in Allah more than I believed in Anu.

The first time he slapped me, I saw it as a test of my faith. Doesn’t Allah always test the slaves He loves? I would pass. My faith would not waver. My god brought me flowers, even wept when he apologised. That night we made such sweet love. It was the night we made Fatima.

All through my pregnancy, he was attentive. Truly a love god. Zaahid would follow him on dimpled four-year-old legs, everywhere he went, as worshipful as I was. How did I get so lucky?

Faith is so easy when the goings are good.

I read his face again. His jowls quiver each time he exhales. In repose, his mouth is not so hateful. It does not spew vitriol. It is soft. Where once, the memory of his mouth moving against my flesh would cause a stirring in my loins, now it fills me with self-loathing.

His neck is no longer as firm; the skin sags, obliterating those once irresistible hollows at the base of his neck. I want to crawl into those hollows. Curl up and sleep. Feel your pulse even in my dreams. His hair is finer and his receding hairline lends a near comical aspect to his face. How come I’d never noticed before today, what a weak jaw he has? In the wrong light, he’s almost ugly.

I stare long, wondering if perhaps today I’ll feel something. He stirs.

Nothing.

My detachment doesn’t surprise me anymore. It has been a protracted death, its final breath, not some whimpering sigh, like a candle being snuffed out, but a blood curdling wail. A sound dredged up from the darkest corner of my soul the day my Zaahid left.

My boy. Gone. Just like that. Not even a word for his mother. No hugs for his sisters. Just a cold bed, waiting for me one morning when I went to wake him for work. His cupboard, almost intact. I sank onto his bed and howled.

I should have walked out all those years ago. After my first broken rib. Anu’s boots had been so hard that night. Zaahid’s fear, so loud.

The neighbours watched from behind their thick curtains. Lights switched off. I could feel their eyes on us. So many watchful eyes, all pouring shame onto my wounds, making them sting even more. Boring into me. Greedy eyes that swooped on every inch of my being that became exposed under Anu’s fists.

Zaahid, 10 at the time, running door to door.

“Uncle, uncle, please! Please, please uncle, help my mummy!” Even through the haze of my pain, I could hear his hysteria. I wanted him to stop. Just stop!

“Aunty Faye. Please Aunty Faye. You’re mummy’s friend. Please, someone help her. He’ll kill her!” His sobbing pierced the silence, clear as shame.

Not a single door opened.

Anu had my head pressed into the bonnet of his car. I remember patterns. Red blooms of blood, flowering everywhere I touched. He smashed my head into the bonnet, again and again, tearing at my hair.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was my daughters, pooled on the pavement. Zaahid, his arms wrapped around them, hiding my disgrace from them, holding them together, so they wouldn’t splinter like Anu’s car window had when he banged my head into it. Falling to the ground in a shower of sparkly shards that caught the light so prettily, I almost smiled.

I woke to find myself inside an ambulance, the street awash with the eerie blue and red lights that herald calamity.

“You should leave him, Miss.”

What did she know? All of twenty, a paramedic, earning her own money, no children to fend for?

Even now, when I think back to the look the police officers gave me when I said I didn’t want to give a statement since I wouldn’t be pressing charges, I burn. Was I really worth so little?

Faye suggested the local Imam. He could annul the marriage. My skin still crawls when I remember how his too-soft-for-a-man hand had travelled up my dress, as he bent to ‘study’ my bruises.

Perhaps it is too late for Zaahid and I. But the girls, I can still save my girls.

* * *

 

They come out of their houses and stand on the grimy sidewalk, gawping. A grown man, ranting and raving, throwing dishes about, threatening to kill his wife and children; threatening to kill himself.

Yissus! He’s behaving like a blerry child. No brains! This is what they whisper to one another when he goes back into the house. Nobody dares talk while he is on the stoep! No telling what the lunatic will do!

Half an hour passes. She steps out of the house, lugging a heavy bag. Her girls hold hands. They look terrified. He follows her. Tries to touch her. She turns to face him. Glares. He shrinks. They smile.

Did you see? Yoh! I never thought she’d ever do it! Sommer like that, nogal!

He looks ready to explode. Stands in the middle of the road, watching her until she turns the corner.

“Aarrrgghhh!”

They scurry back into their houses.

Ten minutes pass. His house is silent. They drift out again, converge like litter on the pavement.

It is then that it starts raining. Pots and pans. Plates and glasses. Bang. Smash. Crunch.

Ag, he’s just looking for attention! Stupid! Look at that vase that he just broke —  Yissus! And it was cut glass too — No man, maybe he’s just depresse —  Hmph! Please, that’s just rubbish! Since when Muslims get depressed, huh? It’s his Iman. It’s weak! I’m telling you! You know he drinks? —  Hachoo? —  Ya, my son told me.

No one bothers to ask her how her son knows. Oh no, now is not the time. Later, perhaps, they’ll consider the riddle and reach their own conclusions.  

Haai, maybe it’s a Jinn. Ja, a jinn! You know my uncle Gulam?

Heads bob. There is no story so good as a Jinn story.

A Jinn got him. Yoh, he was so strong when the Jinn started with him, it took five of us to hold him down! And he could chow! One chicken was nothing for him.

More sage nodding.

Ja, a Jinn! It has to be. He has that wild look about him. His eyes look all black too. Of course no one attributes that to the darkness of the street.

You know, maybe I must tell his wife to take him to Moulana Adam. That Moulana is really good. Fatima’s daughter had a Jinn. She used to scream, Maghrib time, every day. — Ja? — Ja, hachoo! The Moulana showed them when he cut the lemon on her, it had meat inside! So he said it was a Jinn that was troubling her. Eish! You should see her tear her clothes when he started burning the Ta’weez! Yoh! And how she screamed! Like one junglee! — Haai? Eish, they need to burn a few ta’weezes for this one here. — Eish, check, he’s throwing her pots out of the house! — Duck! Here comes a thali!

They duck as a tray flies over their heads and lands with a clang on the warm tarmac.

He disappears into the house, comes out moments later, a gun in his hands. He points it first at them. They scatter; regroup in front of another house two doors up, craning their necks to see.

Whispers ripple through the crowd.

Eish! I think this guy’s lost it man! —He sounds like he’s crying, ne? — Yoh, he’s mad! Now he wants his wife and daughters back! — You think he’ll do it? — Eish! I don’t know. — Must we phone her? — Nah, he’s just acting. Guys that really want to kill themselves don’t stand in the street and make a show of it. You just do it! — If you ask me, I think it’ll be better if he just did it. Will save that stupid woman a lot of trouble. ‘Cos she don’t have the guts to leave him. So many years! He takes her like a punching bag. — Haai, don’t say that! —Check! Check! He’s got it by his head jong! — Ag, you talking rubbish! I bet it’s empty!

The blast rattles the windows, echoes. Blood splatters the wall.

WHAT THE FUCK! Quick! Come inside! The cops will come just now.

And they do.

 

About the Author

Saaleha Bhamjee writes between mothering five children and running her bakery. A self-confessed Twitterholic, she blogs at http://afrocentric-muslimah.blogspot.com/. She was part of the Cape Town February Writivism workshops and the online mentoring program. Her shortlisted story is titled Lunatic.