The Spam Inbox of Uncle Brutus Bashir

Sara Batool

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Dear Uncle Brutus,

  I know you will not be hoping to hear from me, but I would like to write an email to you hoping that you are well. We are being taught how to write letters and emails in school now, and I thought that there was nobody I wanted to write to as much as you. I wanted to tell you that I miss you and Rashid Manzil so so much. I miss Kiku and her red beak and her green wings and am glad that you cut them off so that she will be there when I come next time. Mumma said that I should not- ‘should not’ write to you like this when you have not invited me to come again. But I told her that you have forgot to call me. I beleive in you.

  

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Dear Uncle Brutus, my summer vacation begins and I have nothing to do, only TV all day, or stay in my room reading until Mumma’s guests leave. She says this. I lie on the trunk near my window which we use for blankets and old clothes and look at the ceiling after lunch till evening. I can see the sunlight upside down like this. I wanted to tell you that I miss you so muuuuuch! All day I think how I was afriad of your frend Mr. Ambar and wouldn’t come out of my room when I was staying with u, but u came to my room and looked for me and found me hiding under the bedsheet. You sat there on my bed beside me and said that you couldn’t see me till I came out on my own. There were bombs bursting inside my stomach when I come out. But you held my hand and took me downstairs and we sat side by side with Mr. Ambar and have yellow mango shake. How did you know it was my favourite? Tell me PLEASE! 

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Dear Uncle Brutus, can I tell you something? I promise I am telling truth, not lies. When I see your friend Mr. Ambar, my hands and legs turn white and my eyes hurt. I cannot breath well. You said me he is not bad man just teasing me. I beleive you. But I still cannot breath well when I see him and want to sleep and not look at anything. Mumma left me at Rashid Manzil for 10 days, and I count on my fingers how many days will it be when I can go back. You are so nice to me. That day you took me out to a farm and teach me how to climb a tree I slipped and fell down and my knees had blood. You rubbed Dettol over it and hugged me when it made the hurt sting. You put bandage around my knee. You called Mumma and made me speak to her when I cryed. I sleep so well in the night, I don’t even dream of Mr. Ambar opening the door and coming inside my room. Otherwise I kept hearing the door of my room opening and shutting all night.

P. S. Did you think why I didn’t tell Mumma about my dreams? Because I am a brave girl like you said. 

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Uncle Brutus

Why you don’t reply to my email? I am mad at you. I don’t like you. That is how we use the word ‘mad’ now, it doesn’t mean pagal anymore. But you never call me pagal when I talked to you about everything that happens in school and home and my freinds. You laugh so deeply when I tell you my stories- like a cloud rumbling before rain- that I keep thinking and thinking of more things to talk to you. Uncle tell me you are really a real teacher? Asli wala? Mumma says you teach people sports. She told me that she left me with you because she trusts u a lot. Uncle pata hai I really hate my PT mam. 

Do you also make boys and girls do PT when they don’t want? And make them stand in sun for not wearing PT uniform? I stay in your house for two looooooong weeks, but you never say all this to me. You say only, come down for breakfast, or let’s go out, or Ambar is not a bad man, or that  I am brave girl, or I am such a special person to you. I shut my eyes and when everything becomes black I try to imagine you scold children like me and make them stand in the field in the sun. But your face starts to slip away from my brain, like I am really trying to look at the sun. I miss you so much on Saturday and Sunday that I don’t want to go to school on Monday afterwards because you will not be there. 

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Dearest Uncle,

  Am I an ‘inconvenience’ to you maybe? My friend Hera says that when she doesn’t want to do something with someone--- her voice becomes all high and squeaky and she tells people ‘I wouldn’t want to be an inconvenience to you’. Maybe that’s why you don’t talk to me anymore, but u still text Mumma and ask her how I am. She tells me whenever you talk to her about me and it make me very happy. 

  There is nothing much to tell. The days are very long and boring. Summer is here and I feel hot and itchy all the time. (Have you noticed how good my grammar is now? I started using Spellcheck on everything and run it through a Grammar Checker before sending it to you. But I don’t know how good you are at grammar to even understand) The wind makes me uncomfortable and I can’t go out in the heat and hate staying in my room all the time too, even if Mumma got a window A.C. fitted into my room. We don’t share rooms anymore. 

You know, I love pickles and keep stealing them before they’ve dried out fully. Mango pickles, and red and green chilli, and lime, but only with thin skins. 

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Dear Uncle Brutus,

It’s been a long time since I wrote an email to you, a full week now. Summer is worse than ever, and it’s way too hot to read. Even I realize that, so I didn’t write to you. But I am pleased to tell you now that I have joined a swimming camp in school for the rest of my holidays and shan’t be bothering you or inconveniencing you anymore. I go with Hera at eight a.m. sharp in the morning, and it’s so difficult to keep doing it day after day that I am thinking of giving it up soon. But I don’t want to inconvenience you after I do that. So I think I will keep going to the camp after all.

Yours lovingly,

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Uncle, have you ever been in a swimming camp? And is it the same experience for boys as it is for girls? It’s not the part about swimming that’s hard, it’s before, when you have to be in front of everyone in a swimsuit. All the girls are staring at each other, and their eyes always seem to be getting bigger and bigger--- just from seeing whose thighs are skinniest, whose legs are longest, who is getting lazy while shaving and who doesn’t believe in shaving at all. I bought a one-  piece costume that’s blue and green (I thought it went well with the idea of water). But after my first class I began to think that the seller gave me something horribly old- fashioned. I stayed below the water most of the time and pretended I was ducking to get used to being in water. Meanwhile, everyone else including Hera has taken to wearing two- piece suits. Some of them look really uncomfortable with showing their bellies, and are always sitting with both arms across their abdomen as if  they’ve got cramps. I even ended up asking a girl if she wanted to go to the medical centre, but she got so annoyed that I clamped my mouth shut. Of course, there are a few girls who’re really cool with their bodies, Hera being one of them, but they’re usually the slim, fair, clean- shaved, short ones. 

The only exception is Damini, our class topper- she’s got a sleek heavy cat- like figure that she carries around fearlessly. She has stretch marks all over but she’s not conscious about them. Her eyes get at me though; they’re so black and deep and full of yearning that I always want to be very nice to her. I never understand why, she’s generally so cool and warm and laughs so loudly that everyone looks up to her. It’s a strange world for sure.

Thanks and kind regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

I know it’s stupid to feel hurt by such small things, but I didn’t like it when Hera joined the other girls who stay back after class to hang out. She could have invited me. But I know- or at least I can guess- why she didn’t. You may think I’m sensitive, Uncle, but you don’t know how people are. I’ve heard at least two people among them whispering about unhygienic it is for girls to not wax their bodies in this day and age. And they looked around at all of us who don’t with such beady eyes, water droplets squeezed out of them. Hera doesn’t say such things, so I’m surprised that she’s around them now. Maybe she does agree with them but is nice to me because we’ve been friends since way before we grew up. 

  And not that you asked, but I did feel horrible. I do try to get the stubborn patches under my armpits with my safety razor regularly, but it doesn’t come off easily. Anyway, what would you know about these things. I just have to deal with it on my own. It’s probably normal for everyone else. 

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

Dear Uncle Brutus,

  These days I’m reading Jane Eyre and can’t put it down for a minute. She’s so amazing at all moments--- even when she’s scared or angry or frozen or depressed. If someone beat me up regularly at home as a child, and shut me up in a Red Room, I think I would kill myself. I did stay shut up in a room when I was at your place, but that was because I didn’t like your friend, and anyway it was so much better because you were there the whole time. Plus I’m almost grown- up now, fourteen years old. Plus you are such a loving and kind person, looking out for me all the time, making sure that I don’t feel uncomfortable or angry or frightened that I cannot stop myself from liking you all the more. 

  It’s weird how much effort goes into learning how to keep afloat. I’ve been trying for two weeks but kept messing up. Damini understood, kind of, what was going on with me. “First you have to scrunch up your eyes and forget everything that you’re afraid will make you drown,” she told me. Now that is already hard, because to forget first you have to remember, and whenever things start flashing in front of my eyes I lose my footing in water and start flailing around. I also inhale a lot of water whenever I breathe, and I can’t hold my breath for long when I’m under it. 

Damini says it’s all in my head. I wish I could get inside my own head and throw everything out of it, you know. So many things are stuck to the walls inside, it’s like trying to scrub off slime. Your hand begins to ache after a while. And sometimes when I come up for breath, your friend Ambar seems to be grinning at me from thin air and I want to go down again. He has a puffy face and small eyes and very thick brows. He seems a very happy person. But it’s so hard for me to laugh when I see him around. I spent just a couple of weeks with you, and for some reason he simply won’t disappear from my head.

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

  Does Kiku miss me? Do you? Sometimes I think you don’t remember me at all. Then your face jumps out at me from everywhere, and your voice echoes off the top of my head. You knew I liked white pasta without my telling you. I didn’t like a lot of things that were happening at the time, but your being there made all the problems vanish. But it was odd how my stomach kept churning even when you were around me. I can’t understand why. 

  I am watching YouTube tutorials to learn how to shave in a way to get the dark spots out from my underarms. It’s all about angle and positioning and proper lighting. I bought a safety razor online without telling Mumma. We never talk about these things, I don’t know why. It feels icky talking to her about it though. Hera gets annoyed when I bring up the subject around her and try to get her view on the matter. ‘You’re fussing over such small things,’ she says. Maybe I am. But I can’t help it. I cringe physically when I think of how the other girls must stare and whisper when they see me trying to swim. I want to get rid of the dark patches. They might even think it’s dirt that won’t get off my skin because it’s so hardened. YouTube seemed helpful, but I haven’t tried that particular technique on myself yet. Let’s see how it goes. I hope it works this time--- I don’t want to keep turning up to swim camp only to be labelled as the ‘unhygienic’ girl in the pool.

  Damini and I became friends over the last week, and all because she was helping me learn how to float. It’s taking me much more time than other people, but she tells me not to worry about that. ‘Everybody is different,’ she says, her sleepy eyes warm in the sun. I feel like her younger sister sometimes, which is odd, because I have never had a sibling before. Damini is not like the others in our class though. She is very very studious, and she never misses school, not even when she’s on her period. Once when I asked her about it out of curiosity, she told me she has PCOS and gets her period only six months in a year. She’s cooler than the others, but she would never say something like that. She just--- knows that she doesn’t belong and is fine with it. That’s so new to me. And she goes on living her life without minding what people say or think about her. Or maybe she does, what do I know about it. She is taking lessons in French too; she continued studying a foreign language after middle school and now her accent is so perfect that she almost never pronounces her R’s. 

The coolest thing about her is that she laughs so easily at things. She is one of the few people that I like talking to; she listens keenly when I tell her the things that I feel stupid mentioning to the others. Like how much I love Jane Eyre, how the paintings that she makes in school express everything that she couldn’t say while being at Lowood, and how I wish I could paint but can’t because things on paper never turn out the way they are in my head, and then I hate them for it. Strangely, she doesn’t try to make me feel better, but just listens quietly and with deep interest, as if she were discovering something strange and wonderful about me. 

With thanks and love, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

  I tried shaving again with a trimmer yesterday, instead of a razor. It ran smoothly everywhere, almost everywhere. But there was a point right in the middle of my armpit where hair springs up so stubbornly that it’s not easy to get it all out. I ran the trimmer over that spot so many times that it turned red and blotchy and when I wore a shirt it began to chafe really badly. I’m kind of relieved that I don’t have the guts to send you this particular email, which will remain in my outbox forever. I can’t imagine what you would think of me if you read this. I’m still writing it out because I MUST tell somebody what I’m doing, and feel shy telling Mumma or any of my friends. It was painful when I was scrubbing my armpit with the razor, but now I don’t feel anything anymore.

  All my friends now go to coaching classes. Some because they want help with maths and science and social studies, others because their parents want them to become doctors and engineers. There is another group that goes to ‘personality classes’, and those who are left behind just join in with the others because they’re lonely. Everybody is on their way to become something- but what exactly they’re going to become, nobody knows. 

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

  Five days. 120 hours. 7200 minutes. 4,32,000 seconds have passed since Mumma told me to come downstairs, and I rushed down, wearing dungarees and a purple T- shirt and saw you standing in the hallway, standing, not moving, not sitting down, just looking from Mumma to me, as if waiting to be admitted inside. Mumma is good at entertaining guests. She asked you to take a seat in the lounge while she got you juice and I fried some snacks for you. My heart was thumping loudly in my chest. Would you have read my emails? Did I tell you too much about my life? I used to talk so much when I was around you but never thought twice about it. But things are different when you are mailing someone. You were wearing a grey shirt and brown pants and your shoes were well- polished, as if you’d dressed nicely to meet us. I’m sure it was because of Mumma. People generally want to look their best around her. 

  When I brought in the snacks and placed them on the coffee table in front of you, you reached out to hug me, but I’d already flung myself into a chair opposite to the table. Neither of us said anything as we looked at each other, as though we were both waiting for the other one to speak. The hair on the back of my neck stood on edge. You had opened your mouth to say something perhaps, but then Mumma came in, and whatever you had to say was lost. ‘Bashir, what took you so long to visit us? Where have you been?’ she said as she sat on the sofa next to yours, her usual vision of unaffected girlish charm when she was around those friends whom she knew were deeply attached to her. Before I could ask you whether you were getting my emails or not, and why you hadn’t replied, you and Mumma were already in a conversation about grown- up stuff, property and notices from municipalities, and I’d lost track of what was going on. You were so busy in your conversation that you didn’t even look at me again.

 My throat began to throb in pain. When I sat in the chair, I hadn’t noticed any pins sticking out all over the cushion and the back. I felt them now digging into my flesh, urging me to leave, to get away from where you and Mumma were sitting and talking so calmly while I was on fire. And I couldn’t even tell either of you about it. My feet were frozen for so long. How long was that? It felt like years passed in that moment. As soon as I could get up, heart beating like a drum in my ears, I ran out of the lounge, upstairs, into my cramped room with the window A.C. and the balcony where pigeons shit every morning. I ran into it and locked myself in. And I couldn’t stop trembling all evening and cried myself to sleep because nothing makes sense anymore.

  Neither you nor Mumma seemed to notice at all. Dear Uncle Brutus--- was I invisible to both of you? 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

  I forgot to write about this, but I’ve been shaving daily over the past week. It’s not painful anymore, or at least not while I’m doing it. Wouldn’t it feel wonderful, uncle, to raise my arms above my head before diving into the pool, and see everyone looking at my smooth skin, not a hint of hair on any spot? Almost like those extremely beautiful women from the Hollywood classics--- Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, and even Zeenat Aman if you look closer home. 

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

  Damini noticed that something was up with me today. ‘Your upper arms are so red,’ she said, as we slipped into the shower before the class, ‘did you have an allergic reaction or something?’ I tried to reassure her that it was nothing, but she forced me to show her what had happened. And when she saw the wrinkled and purplish bare skin under my arm, swollen and beaded with blood here and there, a steely look came into her eyes. ‘Are you stupid? What did you do to yourself?’ she yelled, not caring that we were not alone. The girls around us began to stare and whisper. I tried to explain it to her but she wouldn’t listen. She dragged me out of the shower and told me to go dress up. Now she’s told me that I’m going to spend the day at her place, and I’m in her car, a deep blue Hyundai. I’m sitting in the backseat while she sits in front. Her mom is driving us home. It’s strange how nobody has said anything in the past fifteen minutes.

  I’m lying on my bed and typing this to you, two days after returning home from Damini’s place. After everything that has happened, I feel as if somebody has hit me in the face with a saucepan. Mumma wasn’t keen on my having stayed the night over at her place, but it doesn’t matter anymore; I know myself that I won’t be visiting her again anytime soon. 

  Damini is a really good person. It hurts me to remember that and still know that there is an unbridgeable gulf between her life and mine. Trying to cross over results in nothing but suspicion and distrust. Maybe both of us were just really naive. Maybe growing up changes us all more than anything else.

  Her mother drove us from school to their house. It was a nice, white, conventional house built in a very modern style, with most of their rooms wallpapered and a huge living room with Madhubani art suspended just above the seating area and a very ornate divan bed at one end. Random glass walls in places that didn’t need any glass walls, like the stairs. Damini didn’t even look twice at the living room; she took me straight to her own. I blinked twice as I entered it. Her room was the only place unlike the rest of the house, crammed with books and posters and the most lurid dream catchers and a wall with a tree painted over it in black and birds flying towards its branches. She sat me down on the bed, pushed her rotating chair in front of me and asked very seriously, “Are you trying to kill yourself?” “What? No, not at all,” I told her, growing more ashamed and uncomfortable by the minute. She glanced at me sharply, and then turned away. I squirmed my feet, not knowing what to do. Then she sighed and said, “I’ll get you something to drink.” 

  While waiting for her, I looked around the room more closely than before. It had the air of someone who wanted to study but was constantly driven to distraction by a wealth of beauty and drama. A copy of the periodic table was stuck to the back of her door, peeling off slightly. Her desk was littered with markers, pens, sticky notes, various shades of nail polish and lipstick, untangled earplugs, hair pins and kohl. In the space of the wall between her desk and an overhead cabinet, two brilliantly coloured posters stared back at me. One featured a startlingly beautiful woman in a black lace dress and red lipstick, her eyebrows shaved off and drawn on again with a thin pencil, standing in front of a mic with an exultant expression on her face. Her eyes were very unlike her expression though. They seemed swollen and full of tears. The other was an African man with a large forehead, a hunted look in his eyes and a tear- shaped scar across his left cheek. 

  I was still looking at both of them when Damini came back with two glasses of Coke in her hand and handed one to me. ‘Oh, so you’ve spotted my celebrity crushes,’ she said, half- sitting on the bed beside me, ‘Meet Marion and Frantz.’ ‘Who?’ I sounded stupid in front of her. ‘Marion Cotillard- the French actress who played the role of the singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ I nodded. ‘And the other guy?’ ‘Frantz Fanon. He’s an African writer who wrote in French,’ she said, leaning back, ‘everything he writes is so poetic and powerful.’ ‘How do you know all of this?’ I asked her in awe. She laughed. ‘I was learning French, remember? Been obsessed with it since we were in fifth grade. And Fanon I discovered through my father. He used to be an academic before he became a civil servant.’ I did remember. ‘How far have you gotten in French?’ ‘I’m almost fluent now,’ she said, leaning across the gap to reach her desk and grab her smooth mobile Philips speaker from the drawer. ‘Here--- listen to Piaf sing‘Je ne regrette rien’. She was such a bold woman for her time!’ And she laid the speaker in my lap, and a woman’s heavy, silken voice, rich like desire, began to reverberate in the air, unapologetic and unafraid of being alive. I can’t quite describe it, but it was very delicious. I didn’t even know how long it lasted, only that I felt a little bit empty after it was over. Damini even danced a little to it, as she sang along.

  Then she told me about herself. Learning French, wanting to leave her house, to run away because she was never enough for her parents. Dreaming of freedom, of being bohemian in Europe, completely wild. And then her father being transferred from city to city because he couldn’t get along with the ministry. ‘Academics don’t do well as subordinates,’ Damini told me, shaking back her curly black hair. She made friends easily and lost them easily. That’s how she’d ended up with a boy who lived five hundred kilometres off whom she’d been passionately attached to for four years, and who had cheated on her thrice already. Her eyes seemed to grow liquid and become molten chocolate when she talked about him, how easily he got along with her, how well he’d known how to get past her defenses. And now there was nothing to do, of course. Not because he’d cheated, but because her parents would never agree to her marrying him. Different caste, different class, different city. A mire of meaningless hateful differences that existed passively until they actively stood between them. 

  ‘Listen, I know this sounds weird, but can I put some ice on your cuts?’ she asked me softly, when I had eased up a bit more, ‘you were still bleeding in the morning. Hiding them away under clothes doesn’t help in healing, you know. You’ve got to give your skin some air.’ I stilled. The past hour had helped me see a different side to her. She no longer seemed larger- than- life, an amazing concept of womanhood turned to flesh, but just another fourteen- year- old like me, struggling to cope with the life that she was born into. I nodded. She slipped away, and returned with a bowl of ice cubes. I lifted my shirt gingerly, and she held one to the chafed raw skin under my arm. She was so gentle about the whole process, as if she had been trained into it.

  I was about to tell her this, how healing her presence was to me when the door of her room was pushed open almost forcibly, and her mother stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, staring at us as though she’d walked in on a scene of crime. I didn’t understand why, but Damini did--- she dropped the hem of my shirt quickly and backed away from me. ‘It’s not what you think, Ammo,’ she said quietly, as she stared back. ‘Is this why you brought her home?’ her mother spat, her eyes colder than the ice that was now melting in Damini’s fingers, ‘Of all the people I could have found you with--- a Momedan?!’ ‘Who?’ I said at the same time as Damini replied hotly, ‘Don’t call her that!’ And once again, without understanding how, I became more invisible than anything in their whole house, more invisible than walls of glass or carpets in the living room…as if I’d sunk into some dark zone of non- being where nobody could sense that I could hear them, could understand the tones of their voices, could recognize the look of a hunter in their eyes. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, and walked quickly past both of them, even though Damini tried to stop me. My feet seemed to have direction on their own, and they led me out, out into the street and the coolness of evening, where a green and yellow auto stood waiting at the corner of the road. That’s how I came home alone. 

I don’t know how I’m going to face her in swimming camp anymore. 

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

To: brutus_bashir@nogmail.com

  

Dear Uncle Brutus,

This is probably the last email that I will ever write you. Are you surprised to hear that? Is your mind trying to come up with reasons for why I am doing what I am doing now? No it’s not because you didn’t reply to me or noticed me the last time we met. It’s not because of your friend Mr. Ambar and also not because of anything that Mumma might have said. It’s all because of my dream last night. 

  You will make fun of me now. You will tell me I am childish and stupid and make up things in my head. All of that could be true. I was also childish and stupid in my dream, and very ill. I was in a lot of pain and just wanted to get away from everybody and sleep alone in my room, where I wouldn’t have to look at anything or hear anyone. Mumma was trying to find a reason for why I was the way I was and she told me I had fever and my joints were coming apart. Isn’t it strange, we think when we know the name of what is happening to us it will take away the pain of what we feel? That wasn’t how it was in my dream. I was back in my room, and a lot of people had gathered outside because they’d heard that our house was going to be bulldozed at the end of this week. Mumma was fretting and crying because we didn’t have the right papers, or something of the sort. I wanted to comfort her, but I was so ill that all I could do was collapse in my bed. Everyone was looking at me and whispering to each other. A haze of disbelief had covered us all. Your friend Mr. Ambar was there, his head bowed, looking guilty and speechless. Even Hera was there. They were asking me which medicine they should give me but I pulled my blanket over my head because I didn’t have the energy to think or talk to anyone. 

  Then Mumma began to whisper hopefully that you had come to visit me. A raw hurt seemed to emerge in my throat, which was full of more thorns than ever. You walked directly into my room, ignoring everyone else who told you to be careful around me. I saw you- a glimpse of you- before you pulled me to yourself. You were wearing a warm brown jacket and jeans and your hair was astray, as if you’d left everything and rushed to me in a hurry. I was too ill to speak to you. But you sat right beside me and pulled me into a hug and were saying comforting words to my head. I didn’t want to be so close to you and tried to fight you, but you were already kissing my forehead, your arms pushing me down into my pillow. And that was when I lost consciousness. 

  When I woke up, for a second everything seemed as if it had become alright. The sun was shining again and I was alone in my room, and the vaguest sense of having someone who understood what was happening to me filled me with radiance. I was about to call out to Mumma, to ask her where everyone had disappeared yesterday, when I noticed something on the sheet in which I’d slept. A dried spot of red--- like the blood that used to stick to my arms, only this time I did not know why or how it had appeared today. A strange terror seized me; I tried to remember your face from yesterday, the warmth of how you had looked at me, but all that came back to me was the blurred image of your outline broken and refracted in a bowl of cold water with which you had been massaging my forehead at night. And a curious, overpowering heaviness--- the weight of your body on mine, until the tremors shaking my fingers were no longer noticeable. Why couldn’t I recall when or how you had disappeared? I needed water to wipe it all out, the confusion and the stain on the sheet and the memory of how you were there yesterday and are gone now. The sheet trailed behind me, and even as I poured warm water and detergent over it with shaking fingers, I knew the stain would not just disappear. We were both suspended on the line on which Mumma dried clothes, the bedsheet and I, and we knew that we would not be able to stand up again for a long, long while…

  

So you see, Uncle Brutus, that the blood will remind me of you every time. That’s why I will not write to you. That is why I must learn not to care about u after this. That’s why shaving scares me now, and why I am sitting in my room wondering why the sunlight is hurting me today.

With thanks and deep regards, 

Marjana Zaidi.

***

Bio: Sara Batool is a writer and poet from Lucknow, India. She completed her undergraduate degree from the University of Delhi and is currently pursuing her masters in English literature from Jamia Millia Islamia. Her poetry and short stories have previously appeared in the Indian Periodical, Sahitya Akademi’s bi- monthly journal Indian Literature, the literary newsletter Muse India, the Pakistani creative anthology The Aleph Review and a host of other journals and anthologies. She is mainly interested in stream- of- consciousness writing and postcolonial as well as resistance fiction.

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Setu, July 2025