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Counting Chickens
WEDNESDAY IS ELECTION day. Umma votes. Wapa votes. They come back with little ink marks on their fingers to show that they have voted.
Reeni and I go up and down the stairs asking everyone in Horizon Apartment Flats.
“Have you voted yet?” “Have you?” “Have you?”
The newly-marrieds have voted.
“Yes, yes,” they tell us together, holding up their index fingers with the little inky marks for proof.
Shoba Aunty has voted. Arvind Uncle has voted, too. Reeni made sure of that. Chinna Abdul Sahib has voted.
Has Book Uncle voted? We race around the corner and all the way to his little house.
“Have you voted?” we ask him.
“What’s the use?” he says.
“Book Uncle!” I cry. “You have to vote.”
With Reeni’s help I tell Book Uncle all the things we have been doing to get his library back to its corner.
“If Karate Samuel wins, he’ll let you put your library back. Don’t you think you should vote for him?”
He looks at me through his thick round glasses.
“We mustn’t count our chickens before they are hatched.”
“What chickens?” Reeni and I say together. Then I get it. These chickens are like marbles and bricks and flapping doves.
“Book Uncle,” I say, “forget the chickens. If you vote you will be one of those doves that managed to escape from the hunter.”
He stares at me.
“The doves,” I remind him. “In that book that you lent me.”
“You are right,” he says slowly, in a thinking-very-hard kind of voice. “I’ll go now. Is there still time?”
“Yes,” we say. “There is still a little time before the polls close.”
We see him on his way. Then we head back, feeling as if we have done a full day’s work. Reeni goes home. I go back to 3A, where Wapa is boiling rice.
“Where’s Umma?” I ask. He tells me she’s taken the phone to the shop to be repaired.
“It’s lost its ring tone,” Wapa says. “But Nathan’s Electronics said they could fix it.”
“Oh!” I cry. “We should have gone to the shops! We talked to lots of people but we didn’t talk to the shopkeepers.”
The rice water boils over. Wapa says something under his breath, then turns it quickly into a cough.
“Talk to them about what?” says Wapa.
“About Book Uncle.” I explain about the fruit man’s pyramids of guavas, sapotas, oranges and papayas, and getting big things done little by little and gathering the people we need. I tell him how I have been talking to people all day long, urging them to vote for Karate Samuel because he’ll help Book Uncle and Mayor SLY won’t.
Wapa turns away from the steaming rice. He leans against the kitchen counter and looks at me. He looks and looks. He looks at me as if I have suddenly grown wings and am about to begin flapping around the room.
I cannot tell if Wapa is smiling or serious. Is it possible to be both?
“Yasmin,” he says at last. “Election day is almost over. We’ll know the results in a few more days. There’s nothing else you can do.”
He is right. But still I go to my room and count the books on my shelf as if they’ve hatched into chickens.