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Swirling T-shirts
“IT’S A T-SHIRT-FOLDING contest,” Wapa says. He makes room for me on the sofa.
“They fold T-shirts?”
“They do. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
“Wapa,” I say, “why would anyone want to take part in a T-shirt-folding contest?”
“See for yourself,” he says. “There are all kinds of crazy people in this crazy world, my Minu.”
My mother laughs. “Including those who sit around watching those crazy people fold T-shirts.”
A whistle tweets. A dozen people on TV make a dozen rainbow-colored piles of T-shirts, their hands flying as fast as Anil’s karate punches. It makes me dizzy to watch those swirling T-shirts. The room spins around me and the air is full of T-shirts and there is no ground under my feet anymore.
I gasp and clutch at the sofa. Wapa pats me on the shoulder and the room steadies.
The whistle blows again. Everyone stops.
The winner has folded thirty T-shirts in sixty seconds. That is only two seconds per T-shirt.
“That is fast,” I say, able to breathe again.
“Blink of an eye,” says Wapa.
How long would it take me to do a thing like that? Many, many blinks, I think. Which reminds me of those doves and their king and the hunter. Where were these T-shirt-folding people with their flying hands when the doves needed help?
Wait. That is in a story and this ... is real? Give me a story any day.
Umma says, “You people want to practice folding clothes? There’s a whole clothesline full on the terrace.”
Wapa turns off the TV. The phone rings.
“I’ll get it,” he says. He picks up the receiver with a cheery “Hello!” But in a minute his face changes, so I know who that is.
When he hangs up, he says, “You know who that was.”
Wapa’s big brother, Rafiq Uncle, always has that effect on us.
“He’s coming to visit us?” asks Umma.
Wapa nods. “But he’s coming on business. Maybe he’ll be so busy he won’t have time to criticize.”
My mother shakes her head, as if she knows that Rafiq Uncle will always have time for a few well-chosen words to put her in her place. She goes into a flurry of worrying about all the things in the flat that will need to be dusted and mopped and polished. Suddenly the only tube of toothpaste we have left, squeezed half empty, that wasn’t even a problem until now, becomes just another sign of her bad housekeeping.
“I’ll get some more,” Wapa says. He escapes, leaving me to the mercy of Umma’s duster.