Renz Christian Torres

The Owl and the Hoopoe

IT HAD BEEN raining for days in the city of Doha.

The port city had experienced regular flooding ever since the Persian Gulf Tsunami of 2192, with the tides coming in as high as three of the sailboats which dot the briny sea along Doha’s coast, stacked on top of each other. It was fortunately a resilient city, although it did help to have a high budget for reconstruction. The government had since redirected its programs to morphing the desert city into an amphibious metropolis, accommodating the rainwater when it came, rather than flushing it out.

At night, despite the heavy mist that had come to surround Doha’s desert air, small lights still glowed sparsely across the skyline. One of these lights belonged to a rooftop café owned by Aling Dorita, who served up a variety of delicious yet inexpensive cuisine, offering a small haven for the expatriates that made up the majority of the capital’s populace.

Hasna, Aling Dorita’s stepdaughter, trudged outside to shut off the lighted sign of their little café. It was one of the small things she would do for the last time in Doha.

A camel, wrapped in threadbare scarves and golden trinkets, jingled, as she stood up from her seat. “I hear you’re off into a well-endowed future,” the camel said to her. She gave the young woman her payment for the chicken samosas.

Hasna nodded, smiling shyly as she wiped the countertop. The camel lifted herself from the table, gave Hasna a little wave, and then disappeared.

Hasna shook her head, as the overly-decorated spirit faded away. Spirits had been popping up regularly, ever since the tides started to come in. They’d been quite benevolent, coming in and going out like regular humans, only in the skins of animals. Still, Hasna didn’t want to believe in such near-impossible things, like seeing spirits; it was not part of her faith.

Yet she had to believe they were real, didn’t she? The coins in her palm were real, rattling now in her grip, just like the camel she had served. She shrugged and went inside the shop.

“Ibu, Aya.” She spoke to the two pictures on the side table near the door. “I guess it is time I start packing up.” Hasna released a great sigh, as she entered the camel’s payment into the cash register. She was to leave for medical school in Jakarta, her father’s home city. She had passed all the entrance exams, and was only spending the summer at the house of her stepmother.

Aling Dorita, busy cook and captain of the Single Bite rooftop café, yelled from the downstairs kitchen, “Hija, can you please take the plates down here? I need to wash them.” A stack of greasy dishes was set up in a basket by the corner of the rooftop, and as Hasna reached out to take it, she remembered that the last customer hadn’t taken her plate inside. So she braved the rain and ran to where the camel had sat, which was at the farthest table from the doorway, nearest the metal railings.

THE YOUNG WOMAN skipped across the wet concrete floor – painted coral like a canyon – and ran to the table. She took the plate and shielded her head from the rain with her free arm, glimpsing the sparkling city below her. It was late at night, but the lights, even in the rain, still shone like glittering fireworks; it had been like that every night, for all pedestrians and spirits to see.

Her father used to take her up on his shoulders to see more of the city lights. Hasna remembered sitting there on the metal railings, clasping hands with both parents – before her mother could no longer join them, before the bed and the medicines. Now she felt herself melding with the raindrops, and felt a tear slipping down her cold face. “How I wish I could say goodbye, one last time,” she said.

“Seems you have a troubled soul, dearie.”

Hasna turned to look for the source of the voice.

By the railings, just beside her, were an owl and a hoopoe. The hoopoe looked neat and crisp in his navy suit, his chest feathers held back by his stark white shirt. The owl had a necklace of pearls draped around her neck. She wore an olive-green bodice and a peach hijab, just like Hasna’s, though designed with more elaborate stitching.

“I – I’m sorry,” Hasna stuttered, “but we’re closed for tonight.”

She clung to the plate, clasping it near her chest, almost staining her apron. She quickly looked around for shelter from the rain and ran a few steps away, under the canopy of a juniper tree growing at the side of the building.

The hoopoe gazed into the distance, smoking a cigarette. “Oh, we’re not here for the food,” he said. He closed a tin of spearmint gum, a makeshift case for his cigarettes. “We just happen to know how you can say goodbye, one last time.”

Hasna’s eyes widened, and she gulped. Her heart was pounding. Her grip on the plate grew tighter. “There is no way you can talk to the dead,” she said. “And if you do, you never come back...”

She paused, thinking of how happy she should be, now that her mother and her father were in Paradise – jannah – and how well-provided-for they were in the Garden.

The owl flicked the hoopoe’s lit cigarette into the dark street below. “We’re only trying to help, dearie,” the owl said. “If you do want to see them again, go to the top of the spiral minaret.”

Hasna looked far into the foggy cityscape, and could barely see the top of the Kassem Darwish Fakhroo, where her father used to pray. “Are you mad?” Hasna asked the spirits. “Going out into this rain is suicide.”

The hoopoe leaned back against the railings. The owl preened at her green dress.

“Well, they will be waiting for you there, either way,” the hoopoe informed her.

“And you only have until midnight,” the owl added.

“Good luck,” the spirits said together, and they faded away into the misty air.

Hasna let out the heaviest of breaths. She ran inside, all wet, and sat down on the straw lounger in the living room.

“Hasna, can you please bring them down now?” Aling Dorita was still asking, still waiting for the girl to finish her chores. It was the end of evening.

But what was far from ended was the stirring in Hasna’s gut. The young woman tried not to think about the spirits’ offer. She was shaking, while she sliced the pomegranates for tomorrow’s salad. She didn’t think at all of the Greek crocodiles who usually ordered it for their regular Friday nights out. Each slice she made with the knife was paired with a hard exhalation.

Four pomegranates in, and she tossed her knife in complete exasperation. She rubbed her forehead and took a glass of water to her room.

HER BEDROOM WAS a converted attic, covered in lights and tiny mirrors. It held her little boating trophies, as well as her mother’s, from when she had still coasted the Javan Sea in her navigating days. In her room, Hasna was surrounded by mementos of her parents. She sat down on her bed, feeling defeated.

A drip of rain fell from the ceiling and into her glass of water. She looked up, and she saw the canoe her mother once used to catch fish, back in the old country. Hasna and her father had used it to cover the gaping hole in the attic’s ceiling. This was before Aling Dorita met her father, and before Hasna called it her bedroom.

As she gazed upward, a strange determination replaced the churning in Hasna’s stomach. She rushed two floors down, to Aling Dorita, and found her simmering a pot of pork stew.

“Mom?”

“Yes, hija?” Aling Dorita answered, while removing wilted leaves of Chinese cabbage from the stew.

“Can I take out the boat in my room? The one that has been covering the hole in the ceiling? I’ll be sure to cover the hole with the emergency tarpaulin instead.”

Aling Dorita let out a bemused giggle. “But what are you going to use that old thing for? You’re not going to row it through the flood waters, are you?”

Hasna licked her dry mouth and nodded.

Her stepmother’s eyebrows shot up. She set aside her onions, and motioned for Hasna to take a seat. “Hija, where are you going with that thing?”

“It’s important,” Hasna replied. “I – I need to go out to the spiral minaret.”

“In this weather? What for?”

“I need to know something,” Hasna said, in a shy, pained voice. The shame was painted all over her face.

Aling Dorita softened her expression and brushed a work-worn hand over her stepdaughter’s face. “You are just like your father,” Aling Dorita said. “Always astoundingly curious.”

She lifted Hasna’s chin up. “Go. But take the umbrella with you.”

Hasna embraced Aling Dorita with the conviction otherwise shown only by young children.

Aling Dorita returned the gesture, and watched Hasna, her daughter by heart, rush up the stairwell. “Oh Lord,” she muttered, crossed herself, and wished the girl safety in the downpour.

Hasna took off her apron and replaced her soggy clothes. She wrapped a beige hijab – her mother’s – around her head, and secured it. She tossed the ropes of the emergency tarpaulin across the ceiling of her room.

She then took the giant oar sitting ornately in the living room, and went outside, into the rain. She used a ladder to get to the canoe, which was perched on top of their building. She nudged the boat with the oar, pushing the boat closer to the edge, until it finally slid down the side of the café, into the galley, knocking down a few chairs and tables in its way.

Aling Dorita watched her. She had seen Hasna passionately read through her cookbooks, and her father’s medical books, and her mother’s navigation books, but she had never seen her daughter fulfill her curiosity in this hasty, abrupt manner. She could only offer the protection of an open umbrella, which Hasna politely grabbed from her, before kissing her on the cheek.

“You keep yourself safe, okay?” Aling Dorita told her.

Hasna nodded.

Aling Dorita secured a rope ladder – a souvenir of her husband’s first wife, from a ballooning trip – on the hand railing, and watched Hasna lower herself onto the rickety canoe.

HASNA HADN’T RIDDEN a boat in a long time, much less piloted one down flooded streets. Those boating trophies of hers had been won in childhood, and riding a boat wasn’t exactly the fastest or trendiest manner of city travel. The sailboats and yachts that surrounded the port of Doha were mostly for show in recent times, owned by the rich, the famous, and the enthused.

Hasna paddled her way through the streets-turned-canals. The city seemed like a Venice-in-the-making, its buildings towering over her like grand cathedrals.

The flood tides rose steadily, engulfing whole floors of buildings. The Qataris had grown accustomed to the floods, and only used their first and second floors as empty caverns, to hold the waters. Hasna’s canoe bumped into canvas canopies and old street lamps. It rocked and tossed with every nudge, as Hasna tried to gain her bearings.

The rain proved to be another obstacle. It poured like an infinite fabric of water, bombarding the city, easily filling the canoe. Every few minutes, Hasna had to bail water out of the boat in a bucket, wasting precious time.

But she proceeded still. As the hours crawled, she regained her capacity to navigate the boat, as her mother once had. A sudden gust of desert wind propelled her closer to the minaret, and before much longer, her boat seemed to aim straight toward it.

When she placed the oar on the canoe’s floor, she knocked away an old metal box, hidden under her seat. Its metal casing was wet, but the water washed the covering rust away. When Hasna took the box, it rattled.

She held up her stepmother’s umbrella, and with one hand, she tinkered with the lock of the metal chest. The box soon popped open, and she held it carefully, so as not to let the contents fall onto the boat’s wet floor. She wiped her hands with the dry parts of her shirt, and then started to scour through the box.

Inside were photos, letters inside envelopes, and other knick-knacks. She sat back under the cover of her umbrella, and rummaged through the items. She found a handful of tamarind pods, which were dry and flaky. Her father used to grow tamarind in his backyard back in Jakarta, before they had moved to sandier lands. She remembered how, every time she had a cough or a bad fever, her father would pick some ripe brown tamarind, heat it up in a pan with water and sugar, then make her drink it, iced.

The aroma of the tamarind always brought her back to a memory of the tropics, where Aling Dorita was also from. She remembered what had drawn her father and her stepmother together: a familiar glass of agua de tamarindo. Her father had met Aling Dorita in her Doha cafe. She had a chalkboard sign outside Single Bite, advertising a fresh batch of the tamarind drink, and he had been drawn in by it.

After a few swigs of the bittersweet refreshment, they began exchanging recipes, and soon were exchanging contact information. Both easily reminded each other of home, though not en pointe, which made their nostalgia more personal and more refreshing. Aling Dorita was not from Indonesia, not like his previous wife, but she was from somewhere very, very close. So they had their similarities and their differences, and that dynamic was what stuck.

Hasna rubbed the tamarind pods with her damp fingertips, which were now wrinkled from the cold rain. Soon, the spiral staircase of the minaret came more and more fully into view.

But she wasn’t quite there yet, so she continued her rummaging, and found an old golden rose necklace. Its box chain was tangled and tarnished, and Hasna could not push open its lobster hook. She remembered how her mother used to wear this necklace on sunny days, when it was hot enough to wander about the city without having to cover up too much.

Hasna’s mother was a little fervent in preserving her aurah – the intimacy of her naked skin – but on blistering days of her youth, she would go out in public with sleeves shorter than usual, with necklines wider than usual, often much to the chagrin of elders and the pious. Her mother used to bring Hasna around the city, to window-shop at the Pearl, or to stroll down the long Corniche beside the wharfs and the port, the yachts in sight.

Sometimes she would give little Hasna treats to quench the heat. Qatar drew people and trade from across oceans, so Hasna could sample tiny tastes of things from every corner of the globe. She loved the aroma from the mango lassi cart near Education City. She loved the multitude of flavors of the halo-halo near the Museum of Islamic Art. Whenever they went to the Pearl, Hasna would get gelato in a small paper cup, and always in different flavors. Traversing the labyrinthine alleyways and avenues of Doha in the summer with her mother, to look for a particular store or a food coffee house, had always delighted Hasna.

The canoe came to a sudden stop. Hasna looked over the starboard bow, and saw that the slack of rope from her boat had caught on a loose nail on an old date palm. She leaned over to lift the rope, and the boat soon went on its way to the spiral minaret.

Hasna continued rummaging through the contents of the box. A handkerchief had snagged on the hook of her bracelet. She lifted the delicate satin cloth and examined it carefully, like a mother would her children. The handkerchief was embroidered, its golden edges in a scallop. There were initials sewn on one corner.

She remembered the stories her parents told her about their wedding, how various family members pushed and pulled them days before the grand celebration, how her aunts fixed the bride’s hair and jewelry, how her uncles dressed the groom for pictures, how they argued about the costs and the venue, and how the chaos somehow brought them even closer together, even more than the wedding did.

Hasna remembered. She went through the items inside the metal box, and remembered. And for once in her life, she didn’t feel at all lost.

AT LAST THE boat came to a stop. Hasna hid the metal box in the driest part of the boat’s hull, and then paddled the rest of the way to the minaret, which was shining bright under the downpour, from the orange lamplights around it.

With the slack of rope, she tied the boat tight to one of the lamps that made the minaret glow. Her stepmother’s umbrella at her shoulder, she trudged carefully up the tower, already half-blind from the lights. Hasna covered her eyes with one hand, and with the other began feeling the minaret’s walls, guiding herself carefully along the slippery steps of the staircase.

It was a long climb. When she found herself at the very top of the tower, she saw that it held a gazebo, its dome supported by eight pillars. By then, her vision had blurred into misty blueness. She eventually reached the apex of the spiral minaret, and began looking for her mother and father.

She looked and looked through her blurry vision, but she didn’t find them. In their stead were the bird spirits from the café. The owl and the hoopoe stood in the midst of the dome’s pillars, garbed as they had been earlier. They waited with some nonchalance, as Hasna trudged up the tower, recovering still from the blinding glow of the tower’s lamplights.

Hasna did not sigh with anger or despair. Her breath neither grew hot or cold. She breathed, and then smiled. She crossed her arms and then leaned on one of the pillars.

“You don’t seem too disappointed, dearie,” the owl said, while her wings toyed with her pearl necklace.

Hasna looked at the pair. Her eyes held a tiny glimmer that rivaled the city lights. “They weren’t going to be here at all,” she said.

Hasna swallowed a lump down her throat. “But the last time I maneuvered a boat was when my mother was still alive,” she said. “And that boat that carried me all the way here? It had a box full of mementos left by my parents. It was like they were with me on that boat ride.”

The birds stared back at her.

“So it was like I finally had a chance to say goodbye one more time,” Hasna continued. She bowed her head to the two spirits. “Thank you,” she said.

The two spirits came closer to Hasna.

“No, we should be the ones to thank you,” said the owl.

“To see our daughter, resilient and strong, one last time,” said the hoopoe.

Hasna raised her head, tears in her eyes. “Ibu? Aya?”

The spirits raised their chins to give her a quiet nod. “Selamat tinggal, Hasna,” they said.

The pair of spirits, the owl and the hoopoe, faded into the heavy rain. Hasna bent down, covered her face with her shaking hands, and wept.

 

 

Renz Christian Torres needs a breather. If he's not running college organizations, helping run the school newspaper, or just plain running, he's scribbling tales of fiction on his laptop. A child of the Silliman University National Writers' Workshop Batch 53, he tries his best to involve himself more in the local literature scene. Although his publishing milestones may be small as of now (Silliman Journal and Philippine Speculative Fiction volume 9), he doesn't plan to ever stop.