The puff of smoke lingered desperately in the air. It certainly had the potential to take shape, any shape, and then it may have instigated Amina’s imagination just as clouds did when being watched on lazy days. But the wind blew across the veranda, and the smoke was abducted, taken away somewhere in the dark night. Amina took another puff of the cigarette. She was rocking gently on an old swing, wondering where billows of smoke really went to when they vanished. Everything seemed so mysterious to her.
“So, basically you’re asking me to prove myself,” she remarked, “only people do stupid things like that!”
Bruno raised his hind leg to scratch his ear. He was sitting on the swing with her, and its gentle rocking made his tail sway. “Well we are what we prove ourselves to be, don’t you think?” he replied.
“Rubbish!” Amina said crossly, “labels only mean what you want them to.”
“All I’m saying is that what we do defines us,” Bruno said, raising an ear at Amina’s unnecessary defensiveness. At the rate she was puffing the cigarette, it would hardly relax her.
“Okay,” Amina said, turning to Bruno. “So why did you warn me to watch my back at the gates?”
“For exactly this reason!” Bruno exclaimed, pointing his paw at her. “Look at you, you’re as high as a kite!”
“Prove it!” Amina instantly retorted, and they both realized that the conversation had gone full circle. Only people did stupid things like ask others to prove themselves.
That thought warranted another puff of the cigarette, and Amina furiously took one. To the naked eye, they were just a woman and a dog gently rocking away on a swing one moody night but, really, their conversation had all the charm of a domestic squabble. Being a dog who found it difficult to just let things go, Bruno leapt off the swing and thud upon the wooden veranda. He swung around to face Amina.
“How can you be invisible if we're having this conversation?” he asked.
“Maybe you're mad!”
“I'm a dog,” Bruno replied, rolling his eyes, “dogs don’t suffer mental disease.”
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘mad dog’?” Amina sneered.
“I think you’re missing the point,” Bruno said, making another attempt to talk some sense into Amina. “A sniff of that concoction has made you high, and you don’t even know it!”
A healthy suspicion overcame Amina. She stared pensively into the darkened field that surrounded the farm. Had there been any answers out there, she was determined to find them. Her confusion compelled her to, and she took another draw of the cigarette to steady herself. Perhaps Bruno was right. She certainly felt intoxicated when the image of her two beautiful children suddenly manifested in the night sky.
They danced, performing the same shenanigans that they used to entertain themselves when avoiding going to bed early. The delusion lightened Amina’s mood as she realized that, even though the umbilical cord was cut at their births, she was still tethered to those children through the ether. Doing something for them remained the equivalent of affecting herself. Motherhood was the only true human connection she knew, and that was why Amina’s children were about the only human beings she didn’t dislike. She even allowed them to tell her what to do.
But then Amina heard her own mother’s voice booming across the darkened field. It scolded her for making her children suffer for her stubbornness. Amina hadn’t considered them when deciding to handle the conflict that followed Leila’s engagement with tight lips.
The criticism left Amina with a gaping void within, into which doubt quickly filled, and she was soon asking herself if mothers even knew for sure whether their children loved them back. Mothers loved anyway, she convinced herself, successfully enraging herself for no reason whatsoever. Amina took another drag of the cigarette, and that’s when it struck her that the only way to dispel her haunting thoughts was to employ her own doubt. It was, after all, simply an acknowledgement that she didn’t know. That wasn’t so bad.
And suddenly she saw a way out.
People routinely took advantage of her softer nature, and she was sick of it. That was really what bothered Amina. It was her own doubt that crippled her, and it was over her dead body that she would allow her children to suffer because of it. The only way to safeguard their innocence was make sure it was never risked again, and for that she had to destroy Anwar. Even a father didn’t have the right to stand between a mother and her children. If Anwar thought that taking them hostage would sway Amina to do what he wanted, he had another thing coming. Between her children and her husband, there was no contest.
“Then will you forgive him?” Bruno asked.
He hadn’t magically read Amina’s thoughts. Bruno told her that she had been speaking out loud all along. While he thought that the absurdity of her talking to herself proved that she was out of her mind, Amina pointed out that it was much stranger to be entertaining a conversation with a dog.
“Who knows?” Amina replied, ignoring her embarrassment, and flicking the cigarette butt over the banister. “Besides, you should be happy. Forgiving Anwar will prove that I’m actually visible.”
The windy night then refused stand still, and carried away with it the apparitions of Amina’s beloved children. Amina sighed, reminding herself that everything was exactly as it was.
And while she continued swinging in that murky night, Anwar watched her through the kitchen window. Amina looked like the star of a motion picture that he had seen one too many times. The characters were familiar, and Anwar had his favourite scenes, but the magic of the story had lost its grip on him. Now his wife looked like a starlet that he once had a crush on, still picture perfect, but inimitably distant in the same way that an audience can only watch a movie rather than engage with it. Amina was a lifetime away and, with the kitchen window between them, Anwar began to see the futility of thinking that movies were anything more than just stories. Being in love with the idea of someone wasn’t quite the real thing, and he felt excluded from the very life he had built with Amina.
“I didn’t even know she smoked,” Anwar said when Khadija arrived.
“I don’t see a cigarette in her hand!” Khadija frowned while peeping out the window.
Anwar shook his head. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You only think you know someone…” he brooded.
“Well I like her,” Khadija remarked.
“That’s because you don’t know her.”
“You’ve just told me that we only think we know people!” Khadija retorted, “so how sure are you that you know her?”
Anwar turned to Khadija. Her comment stuck a cord.
Lately, when he was with Amina they fought, and when apart, they managed to continue screaming at each other through telephones. It seemed that the only thing he and Amina knew about each other was that they hated each other. For the first time he realized that a vast distance had grown between them.
A guilty cloud poured over Anwar as he wondered if he had been so distracted by his feud with Brad, or so distraught at the thought of losing his father, that he’d completely neglected Amina. Of course, it was also worth considering if the things that he and Amina had done to each other had forced them to grow in different ways. Even if distance was an occupational hazard of marriage, Anwar had no idea how to close the gap between them.
“Go to her,” Khadija encouraged. The doorway was right there, but Anwar didn’t move a muscle.
“Aww! Don’t be a paw-paw face now!” Khadija teased.
Anwar was clearly afraid, so Khadija sent him off to Mevlana. She was instructed to do so as there still was work to do if Mevlana was to ease Amina out of her episodes. Whether Amina responded to any treatment was really her choice, and while that may reveal who Amina truly was, Anwar remained convinced that she was just one damn stubborn woman.
Khadija remained in the kitchen to find a pot. She filled it with water and slammed it onto the stove. Her cheek still seared from the slap that Mevlana gave her, and Khadija didn’t just look like an elephant, she had the memory of one too.
In the scullery, she picked out the ingredients for the potion that Mevlana wanted brewed. They were carried over to the kitchen table where she chopped and sliced them. Into the pot of water was tossed a pair of frog’s legs, eight spider eyes, two fresh cloves and some lemongrass. Lastly, she added a scoop of sugar. The recipe in the grimoire didn’t call for it, but Mevlana said it was necessary that the brew tasted good. Though tempted to ignore his instructions, another slap on the face Khadija didn’t want.
With a great big heave, she mustered up all the insolence she could find and spat it into the pot. That concluded the list of ingredients called for by the recipe, and Khadija covered the pot with a lid. When she turned the dial on the stove, the gas hissed, and a spark set it on fire. Soon the diabolical potion began brewing.
Outside the window, Amina and Bruno were still rocking on the swing. When its momentum pulled them toward the dark night, Amina disappeared momentarily, and when it swung back into the porch light, there she was again. Khadija spied on Amina as intently as Anwar did. She too was intrigued by who the woman really was.
To her, Amina tallied up to yet another frivolous housewife. Amina was wearing a pantsuit with a frilly blouse, and the outfit was garnished with her long black hair that hung straight down her back. She looked like someone in a department store catalogue, and Khadija hated the type. They were just too normal for her tastes. Amina, however, represented a possibility. She seemed a living example of something that Khadija couldn’t quite put her finger on, but was responding to nevertheless, and that fascinated Khadija.
Consumed by the daydream of who she may become, Khadija didn’t hear the pot boiling over. Only after the steamy tonic crept over the pot’s rim and singed on the stove, did she get a shock. Khadija doused the flame with a wet cloth, and lifted the lid on the pot to allow the steam to escape. The potion simmered down, and Khadija watched the furious bubbles dwindle. Cutting the gas, she found that the potion had brewed perfectly. It looked just like water.
To test it, Khadija dipped a ladle into pot and blew on it lightly to cool the liquid down. She then poured a sample of it into the bottle that fed the rats. They were obviously thirsty in their cage, and fought their way to the spout for a drink. The winner pattered through the skirmish on its little feet and sucked greedily. Glug, glug! Once satisfied, it fell to its feet again. Almost instantly, the rat’s little legs caved in. It lay there helpless while the other rodents scattered in the opposite direction. Their lame brother then closed its eyes and died.
“Some guys have all the luck…” Khadija sang.
It was a song she had heard a long time ago but it stuck with her for some reason. She chucked a handful of lily leaves into the pot and stirred the potion to help them infuse. The recipe said that they would knock the edge off the potion.
An awful grinding suddenly caught Khadija’s attention. In the garden outside, Amina was yanking the starter cord of their lawnmower rather desperately. The motor turned, but she wasn’t pulling hard enough to actually start the engine, and began yelling like a drunkard. Bruno hopped around while Amina pushed, prod, and kicked the mower. None of it helped to get the mower started either. While scolding Bruno for wagging his tail, as it really wasn’t polite to laugh at others, Amina climbed into the seat of the lawnmower to gain some control.
Khadija giggled. A whiff of those herbs had really set Amina off, and Khadija considered taking them herself just for kicks. With her hand on her cheek, she wished that she could let herself loose too. One day, Khadija thought, she may just turn around and slap Mevlana right back.
That same insolent demon that stoked Khadija’s anger reared its ugly head outside in the garden. To Amina, it was a familiar one. It climbed into her mind and exploded into a fog that waylaid even her best efforts to escape the farm.
She was manic, yet planned to ride the mower all the way back up the dusty path and to the main road where she could hitchhike to Pa’s house. Once there, she would ask them to buy Anwar one of those double-horned hats that Napoleon Bonaparte is famous for wearing. The benefit of decorating tyrants was that ordinary people like herself could identify them, and when everyone had come to know Anwar for the control-freak that he was, his chances at claiming Pa’s inheritance would be at an end. That’ll show him. Destroying Anwar was all that Amina could think about. Once she did, he would know how she felt.
Relentlessly, Amina pulled the starter cord of the lawnmower over and over again as hard as she could, but to no avail.
“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” she cussed at the machine between her legs.
From the kitchen window where Khadija was watching, it all looked rather hilarious, but she could not have guessed that Amina was really cursing herself. Amina refused to give up on that stubborn lawnmower, and huffed and puffed until the demonic fog in her head suddenly gained the colour and definition of the night that she graduated…
“My daughter!” her Dad exclaimed while proudly placing Amina’s graduation hat on her head.
Amina pushed it askew to tease him, and everyone chuckled. They were at a restaurant to celebrate Amina’s newly acquired pharmaceutical degree, and her parents had invited Amina’s uncle and aunt to share in the occasion. Each had pitched in to buy Amina a gift that she truly wanted, and it was presented to her in a little box that was tied in ribbons.
“D-aaaad!” Amina squealed when opening the box. She threw her arms around him. It was a key, and outside on the street was parked the car that it started.
Dad gulped his emotions down while wishing Amina a prosperous future. He had always been Amina’s biggest fan, encouraging her to be independent and free. The car was his idea since he saw it as a way to mobilize her. She now had the means to establish herself in the world, and the key in her hand was a symbol of Amina’s future.
Suddenly a world of possibilities was open to Amina.
Of course, Amina’s mind was filled with adventure. She dreamt of using her car to drive to the coast for holidays, or visiting local markets, but her family around the table were less impulsive after having waltzed through the corridor of time. For them, freedom meant a whole lot more.
Her uncle Khalid told her of a time when he was a young man who carted boxes in his beat-up van for extra cash. Financial pressures mounted when he and Amina’s aunt Jameela found themselves expecting their first child. Whether sunshine or snow, Uncle Khalid got up at the crack of dawn every single day to deliver parcels all over the city before shuttling to the office where a day-job was waiting for him. Today, he was reaping the rewards of the seeds he had sewn back then, and hoped that Amina’s education would yield her a good crop too.
Amina hugged her uncle. It was gratitude for the sacrifices they all had made to put her through university. She had always been very close to her uncle and aunt. She sometimes even thought of them as a second set of parents, if ever she needed.
Over dinner, they discussed where Amina could seek an internship to bring credibility to her pharmacy degree. That raised all sorts of further questions, like where she would live, or if she had paid enough attention to her chores to know how to feed herself and do the washing. They laughed, but Amina had suddenly become aware of all the things she now had to do because she had graduated in a career that she hadn’t chosen for herself.
Everyone had talked her out of becoming a veterinarian when she applied to university because it just wasn’t prestigious enough. A pharmaceutical education, however, could be used in the research of many diseases, and perhaps even help to change the world. That was the magnitude of potential Amina’s family had seen in her, and they pretended to know better simply because they had lived longer than she had.
Their love for her was indeed real, though it did skew their perception of who she was as a person. Her own parents couldn’t see her love for animals and, because she had allowed it, Amina’s life was now cultivated by someone else’s ambitions. It was tantamount to living a lie, and sitting amongst the people she loved most in the world, Amina began grasping the first true lessons of adulthood. It was difficult to swallow, but Amina saw clearly that it wasn’t necessary to like those whom she loved.
The revelation turned a victorious night into the saddest dinner of Amina’s life, and the brand-new car parked outside the restaurant seemed the perfect gift to just get the hell out of there.
When the memory faded, Amina found herself still struggling with the lawnmower. Every time she yanked the starter cord, the lawnmower coughed, but just wouldn’t start. Still, Amina couldn’t stop herself from trying, and kept yanking the starter cord over and over again in the hope that something in her life would miraculously start working.
That she struggled to perform such a simple task made her feel stupid indeed, and alienation became Amina. The bitter truth of feeling entirely alone could not be avoided, and that’s when Amina stopped.
She let go of the cord and sat down on the lawnmower. Undermining herself was just a waste of time. From that moment on she was going to establish boundaries. She was also going to police them diligently, and make sure that she put herself first. It was painful to realize that Amina only had herself to rely on, and she calmly put her hands back on the lawnmower’s handlebars. It suddenly jumped to life. The starter button was there all along. She just didn’t have the eyes to see it before.
She was then forced to call upon her wits as the lawnmower leapt ahead like a rodeo horse. Struggling for control, Amina rode it right over Bruno’s tail, and a tuft of hair was ripped from his body. It floated gently to the ground while Amina yelled at Bruno that he best believe she was invisible.
“Bruno-oooo!” Khadija yelled from the kitchen window.
She dropped what she was doing and waddled out of the kitchen on her short legs, stomping across the veranda, past the bannister, and over the lawn to rescue her dog. Khadija fell upon Bruno, and hugged the furry beast as if her own life depended on it.
“You’re hurting me,” he growled, but not everyone understood dogs very well.
They watched Amina zig-zag across the lawn, cursing the damned machine for having a life of its own. She managed to steer toward the gate, beyond which was her freedom, and her children.
Being a novice at gardening though, Amina drove the lawnmower over a patch of stones. The blades were spinning in full motion, and scattered a heap of stones in every direction. Bruno and Khadija ducked for cover while some of the shrapnel hit a nearby drum and played a tune. More stones thudded against Anwar’s brand-new car, and at least one went crashing through the window.
Woo! Woo! Woo! The car alarm blared in the silent night.
Doof! Doof! Doof! Two men could be heard stomping down the wooden stairs in the farmhouse. Mevlana and Anwar rushed outside to see what the commotion was.
As much as Amina had struggled to get the lawnmower started, she was as clueless as to how to stop it. Eventually she jumped off and rolled on the ground as the lawnmower crashed into the shed, and killed its own engine. Amina got to her feet, and wiped the dirt off her face. Mevlana and Anwar were standing on the veranda, the former’s teeth clenched, and the latter pulling his own hair out.
“My car! My car!”
Amina did the only thing she knew how to do when her independence became overbearing. She ran!
Besides, no one could catch her if she was invisible. Soon there was some distance between her and that dreaded farmhouse. The wind blew in her hair, and her escape became all the more exhilarating. The sheer force of her feet thrusting on the ground, throwing her one lunge ahead at a time, allowed the fresh country-side air to penetrate her, and clear the clouds in Amina’s head. In her mind’s eye, Amina had already jumped the gate and reached the road. She had already hitch-hiked to Pa’s house and tore the door down to hug Mo and Fatima. That image exploded as surplus energy in her gut, and Amina’s limbs carried her faster than any pharmacist had ever run before. She could feel freedom on her face. She knew where she was going, and that was no story that she had made up in her head. It was simply what she wanted to do.
Rather unexpectedly, she ran into the old farmhand with his one grape-eye. Undeterred, Amina swiftly changed direction, even though she heard his pack of dogs barking behind her. Amina refused to stop until she had escaped the farm, and this life that she didn’t want anymore.
She was pretty sure that there was a word to describe such a vibrant state of being, but was still searching her mind for it when the thorn bushes on the perimeter of the farm shook like an earthquake hit them.
Amina had run right into them.
Her limp body was carried into the kitchen and laid on the table. Thorns still stuck in her limbs, and her clothes were ripped, soaked in blood. Lying there, she looked like a life-sized voodoo doll.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Anwar cried.
He caressed Amina’s face the way he hadn’t in ages as the thought of losing her finally struck him. Ever so carefully he pinched a thorn out of her face and, when her cheek bounced back, Amina coughed to life again.
For that one moment, while Amina was battered and bruised, and Anwar was doting generously over her, they were a couple again. They saw eye to eye and, amidst her own confusion, Amina recognized the tinge of green in Anwar’s eyes that she had always found so enchanting. He loved her, and that was an indication that they could still make it.
Outside their little love bubble though the kitchen was in a frenzy. Mevlana shouted for the dog to be kicked outside, and Khadija banged the screen on the kitchen door shut. She then ransacked the kitchen for emergency supplies, and out of one cupboard tumbled a cereal box. It crashed on the floor and spilt its contents. Mevlana cussed at Khadija and, when Amina gleaned what the fuss was all about, she noticed that her handbag was sitting in the cupboard where the cereal box ought to have stood. She thought that she had forgotten in the lounge, but it was deliberately stolen.
Mevlana swatted Anwar out of the way to inspect Amina himself.
Khadija brought him a clean rag, which he dipped into a dish of warm water and squeezed over Amina’s face. That was the way to wash an apple, and Anwar was flabbergasted. Amina’s wounds needed far more attention, and Anwar hopped behind Mevlana’s broad shoulders in an attempt to supervise the mystic. But Mevlana threw the rag down and began laughing.
Anwar and Khadija stood by wondering what was going on when Mevlana pried Amina’s eyelids open and examined her pupils. He was satisfied by what he saw, and giggled.
“She fell apart,” he smiled, “the diagnosis worked.”