Cold Winds from the Clouds -- A short story by Ibrahim Shareef -- Hilath's Home Page

By Ibráhím Sharíf
(Nov 2004)

Prologue with a Verse for Children: The Old Man and the Cat

“Bao kaló nádhé, migé dhosha nádhe,”
the old, crooning voice
echoed through the silence. One night.
The little boy remembers it.
Once upon a time, there was an old man.
The old man killed his cat.
The little boy called him Bao bébe.
But that was a long time ago.
The little boy is scared of Bao bébe.
And that was a long time ago.

Salah and the Mechanical-Wind Up Dolls

When one is in misery, in sadness, it really allows one to think; in retrospect and reflection; about life. Here is a young man, walking down the road, as the waves splash against the tetra-pods of the thoshigan’du. The sky is unusually overcast, and the air is unusually cold; and it is five p.m. This young man is tall, lean, with a mess of straight hair; he is wearing a blue shirt. His limbs dangle by his sides, suspended from his slouching shoulders. His eyes are wide, as if lost into some thought. He is alone. And he was aware of that. And he despaired.
It is in such state of mind that a vague breed of masochism reigns. To dwell upon the pain, to feel it again and again, was it masochism? Or some psychological process of healing that the so-called scientific community is unaware of?
He sat down upon one of the brine-washed stones of the thoshigan’du. And he stared, but saw nothing. He scratched his unshaved chin. Not that he shaved, but even in his late teens, the hormones of adolescence played their role in the body's journey to maturity. Maturity, that was the thing—physical and mental.
Puberty, that age where the little children come to terms with their newly discovered sexual identity. They come to it, they are frightened by it, at first; then they accept it. Then, they fall in love. (Or lust, rather, depends on your subject and your perspective).
This young man had fallen in love, once upon a time, and now, he was spurned. Unwanted. Dumped.
His name was Salah, and her name was Aisha.
A band of motorcycles raced past, their riders laughing raucously and rudely. All male, of course, leaving behind the streaks of engine exhaust fumes and tobacco smoke. Their long, dyed hair flapping in the wind as they rode on. Smoking, laughing, and forgetful. Worshipers of ephemera.
“Memento mori,” one may say. “Memento mori” in this age we call “today”.

(…Injustice. Was it injustice? Freaky really. She just doesn’t care. Ripped me apart. I’m like tissue paper. Ripped me apart. Ripped me apart. Ripped me apart. Tissue paper stuck to the ground…migégai roa kujje núlhé…)

He sat there, the waves crashing behind him. A hundred or more metres behind him, a surfer, with an unlit Marlboro in his lip, was wiped out as he fell off his varnished surfboard and into the foamy brine. He went under, and came back up again. He felt a mild sense of relief and gratitude that he was still alive. He felt short of breath. Emphysema had already begun to take one of his lungs. One year later, he would be dead. Yet, he knew nothing about it.
The surfer glanced at the young man on the thoshigan’du wearing the blue shirt. He climbed back upon his board.

* * *

If Singapore was a real place, it was hard to believe. But it was a real place. Salah had lived there for a while—studying for some obscure and vaguely defined diploma. Although such a society is utterly peaceful to live within, the people were dead. Dead to the rest of the world, that is, as they walked about engrossed in their own mechanical, monotonous lives. It was as if there was a factory in Jurong Industrial Park where the real people worked. And there, they made lifelike (and life-sized) wind-up dolls of themselves. And therefore, whilst they sat around and loafed around, they let their mechanical dolls do their work for them.
(They had keyholes in their back, to wind up the clockworks within their bodies. They had stamps on their temples that said: Manufactured in Jurong…)
In Singapore: perceptions that never wavered, thoughts that never grew. As you walked through the crowds; nobody looked at you; nobody spoke to you. Nobody cared about you. You, to the rest of the crowd, were a speck, another person taking up oxygen and occupying volume within the space of the world. You were worthless. The systems, the meticulous functioning of the national infrastructure with the MRTs, the schedules; the glass-and-concrete jungles of skyscrapers, HDBs, condominiums and such that boasted of high-class development; their imported and exiled angmos with their Western ideologies and habits, and perversions strutting about on Orchard Road, muttering into their cell phones; ears hooked up to their iPods, CD players; whatever; playing Bach or whatever; investing, working, investing—all part of the Great Singapore Sale. A façade for the necropolis of the mechanical wind-up dolls that it really was. Salah was alone.
Now, all the joy he had accumulated on the flight home had disappeared. Disappeared leaving a swirling void, a maelstrom of his own loneliness, self-pity, and bitterness.

Salah lay supine, now, upon the cold, stone surface. He cared little for what the gawking passers-by thought of him.
Many thoughts passed through his brain, as if they were cars upon a highway at rush hour in some great metropolis. He contemplated, and reflected. And the neurons within the tissue of his brain connected. And connected. And connected.

The elderly Chinese man was sitting, reading some Chinese newspaper. A toothpick was between his yellowed teeth. He was sitting against the metal railing at the MRT platform. The LCD clock announced one minute for the train's arrival. Salah was bored. The Chinese man wore a clean, pressed white shirt, and grey trousers. His white hair was neatly combed back, and glistened with an oily substance. He sat there, alone. The train drove in, and Salah walked into the train, through and between the many people within the massive crowd.
He sat down, and looked out the window of the stationary train. The old man still sat there, reading his newspaper. He made no move to get on the train, or walk away from the platform. He sat there, his face as hard and rigid as it was before. He has no keyhole. And he is real. He had never been to Jurong Industrial Park.

* * *

Salah’s mobile phone went off. Nobody about him looked around, and he did not expect anyone to do so. It was a thing of modern society. “As'saläm 'Alaikum,” he grunted, not really meaning the peace he claimed to wish.
A zephyr moved across the air. It rustled the leaves of a tree.
“Wa'alaikum assaläm, Salle dho?” the voice on the other end crackled. It was Ali. Salah had met none of his friends after he went over to Aisha’s house. Yet, Ali was the sort of person who had his ways of knowing. Uncanny, yet not outside those that may be listed in a realistic sort of epistemology.
“Yes,” he said.
“I'm really sorry about what—”
“Please, don’t—”
“Listen...where are you?”
“I'm at the thoshigan’du...”
“Near Henveiru Park?” asked Ali, with a little light heartedness in his voice.
“Why should I be there? I'm at the thoshigan’du, near Tuscaloosa,” he said, a bit irritated.
“Basically the same place, Salah,” Ali said, “You, of all people, should know.” There was sarcasm. A hint. Like salt.
Before Salah could reply, Ali had hung up. And there was silence.

In Henveiru Park, a boy of eight was kicking around a football with his cousins. His mother had told him not to go so near the thoshigan’du for very obscure reasons. The boy has thalassaemia, and his mother knows it. So did he. But “THALASSAEMIA” was just a word to him; a word that adults used to describe him with. His mother had suffered much shame when her own mother had discovered that she was pregnant. She looked on from a nearby tree, she was young, and she covered whatever she felt. He was dying, and he himself knew nothing of it. The boy caught the football with his hands, he looked right to see a man sitting by himself upon the thoshigan’du. He was wearing a blue shirt. The boy kicked the ball and went on.
“Why did you start smoking?” Salah asked Ali. They were sitting on the thoshigan’du, now. The sky was taking that dark, bluish colour it normally takes when the sun had set. The sun had set.
“I was sad, man,” Ali said, “and I was sick unto death. Getting over it.”
“Why did you quit?”
“It’s harám. Plus, a waste of my good health.”
“Was it really?”
“What’s with the questions?" Ali asked, he was looking a bit stern.
“Nothing.”
“Just because Aisha smokes—”
“Ayya, I'm not planning on smoking!"
“Who said anything about you smoking?”
“Please, Ali, I'm not in the f—ing mood!”
“How are you feeling, then?”
“I feel like jumping for bloody joy...”
“That bad?”
“Yea...”
“Is it just Aisha...?”
There was silence. A slight drizzle had started.
“You know, I really missed you when you were in Singapore,” Ali said.
Salah grinned, a bit, “You know that that sounded so gay, right?”
“Ah!” said Ali, quietly, “talk about slips of the tongue.”
The waves went on gently in their rhythm. They seemed to be looking at Ali.
Salah chuckled. He did not want to. Yet he did. He went quiet again.
“It's for a good reason,” Ali said, looking back at the waves, “From what you tell me, I don’t really think that she’s your type.” He was mild and subtle.
“My uncle always said that girls were like buses...” Ali looked at him; and Salah's voice trailed off. “You,” Ali asked, peering at him, “heard from your uncle?”
“No,” Salah said, quietly.
Ali nodded. Ali understood. But not quite.
Ali was quiet. And Salah was quiet. And none of them spoke.
“Aisha was so…different before,” Salah exclaimed, suddenly, “What happened to her?”
“Aisha is dead,” Ali said, “Right?”
“How would you know?” Salah asked, looking down at the imprints of the raindrops upon the ground. “How would you know whether she's dead or not...?”
“I've kept in touch with her,” Ali said.
Salah scratched his head.
“Come on, man. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“Well, Ayya,” he looked up, “What if she wants to come back to me again?”
“Do you want her to?” Ali asked.
“Well—”
“Besides everything that she's said and done, do you still want her back?”
“Yes.” There was a hint of something in his voice. Like salt.
There went a time. None of them spoke; at least not to each other.
“Caecus amor,” said Ali.
“Eh?”
“Caecus amor.” And that was it. Caecus amor.

A baby is born to the world, screaming. It is blind to the world, although its eyes may see. Man is blind, with or without his eyes. He is a helpless little creature. And that is a simple truth.

There was silence. A couple of bats soared overhead in their journey towards some other island. The thalassaemic little boy was still playing football with his cousins. When in childhood everything seems beautiful. And everything seems dark and ugly. That’s something that, in a sense, follows into adulthood, dho? It is emotion; emotion that colours the paradigms of your perception; and it is emotion that links. Who on earth knew the mechanics of his own subconscious mind?

Wood?

Salah lay upon the bed, supine. His eyes were closed, and a streak of dried saliva had snaked down the corner of his open mouth. His crumpled clothes shrouded his frame, and his hair was ruffled against the dry pulp of the cotton-stuffed pillow.
There was a slight tapping against the wooden door of the room. The tapping was there, and had been there, for how long he had not a clue. It had melted away into the silent cacophony of the unnoticed.

The air within his room would reek of stale and stagnant air to anyone who entered. He kept the window closed, and the curtains drawn. His bed was covered by sheets, disarrayed, and in chaos. What else was new? His books were in a mess, pages thumbed through, but unread. The pencils in the cup upon his desk were blunt, and his wastebasket was bare. His desk was bare. Except for the square notebook that lay, alone, upon its wooden surface. With big, bold letters he had written, years ago: “el rey del islas maldivas”, in what was a fit of childish megalomania and exhibitionism. “The king of the Maldive Islands”. The yellowing pages of the notebook were greatly scribbled upon; scribbles in English, scribbles in Dhivehi. Scribbles. Sans meaning. The workings of a chaotic electric activity amongst the neurons within the human brain transferred to the muscle tissues and tendons of the hand and arm that gripped a pencil that left dark marks of its graphite on contact.
Caecus amor. Caecus amor.
He was bored, he was sad, he was
"Empty," he groaned, when one would have mistaken him to be dead.
Away, in Singapore, where many strands of his DNA lay abound, the mechanical wind-up dolls walked about in their emptiness. And the old man sat against the metal railing, reading his Chinese newspapers. He inhaled. ("Is it just Aisha..?" he had asked.)
His face twitched: there was an itch on his calf. It was the scar his uncle’s new cat had given him. He hates the cat, he hates it now more than before. Cats are predators, hunters. They hunt, and then they look at its prey, and now, at this very moment, you were the prey...and it looks at you: to analyse you, to play with you, to kill you, to eat you. To assimilate you into its system, to satisfy its animal needs.
(and he had said "Yes")
Salah opens his eyes. The room is dark; his mobile phone is turned on. It's not that anybody really called within the last few days; but he kept it on, because he (hoped?)
“Hoping can kill you,” he said to the ceiling above him. Dark, high, and brooding. Eerie in the light that streamed in from the bathroom.
Yes, it can, said the ceiling. Or at least, it seemed to say.
Salah's drowsiness left him, and for a moment he looked up at the ceiling. And the ceiling looked back down at him. All was silent. “Yes it can,” he said to himself. There was nothing more. Nothing more. Anger can kill you, said the ceiling. He slept. And dreamt that the housecat ate him. And dreamt of the empty box. The housecat ate him. It was his uncle. Salah was six years old. And his uncle ate him alive.
Housecats can kill you said the ceiling.

Salah opened his eyes. He closed his eyes. He opened them once more. The ceiling looked down at him. It disappeared. And it looked down at him once more. His discontinuous perception did nought to the staring ceiling. It stared. It glared. He would not know the truth, for what did man truly know?
Nothing, said the ceiling. You know nothing. And neither do I. For I am a ceiling.
How can you talk, if you are a ceiling? asked Salah.
The ceiling was silent. And it did not speak. And it never had.

Friends

It was seven o’clock in Malé. And at seven o’clock in Malé, things were silent; the faithful sat in their homes or in the mosques, praying or reciting God’s Word. The shops stood closed, darkened save for the solitary lamps they keep running through that one hour. The main road, Majídí Magu, was almost deserted, save for the few taxis that still moved about, either On Call or Hunting. This happened every day, almost always at seven o'clock. Placid, quiet, it is Malé, at seven o’clock.
It was during this time of the day when people (particularly the youth below the age of twenty-five) became more sociable. The night, with neither the heat, the light, the workload, nor the lack of privacy of the daytime hours. The latter, to some, being the hours required to sleep off the fumes and the fatigue of the previous night’s debaucheries, to awaken freshened, anew, and ready for another round.
They were waiting for Asaf to arrive. Neither of them liked Asaf, but for the time being, neither of them cared. “Do you really expect him to come?” asked Ali.
“You mean, on time?” replied Nizar.
“I mean, on time,” replied Ali, flatly.
“Come on...”
“Well, its no biggie,” said Ali, “He can go almost as soon as he leaves.”
“Well, knowing him,” said Nizar, “That assumption can’t go far.”
“I don't know him, man,” said Ali, “Never did, and probably never will.”
“Be nice.”
“I’m a nice guy; it's in my nature to be nice.”
“OK…”
“Defiance…” smirked Ali.
“What?”
“Defiance to the truth that I am indeed nice; a root of envy, I believe,” said Ali.
“Stop acting all bloody intellectual on me, man.”
“Ha!” said Ali, “I am intelligent, not an intellectual. Intellectuals are people who run around playing with big words and continuously citing bird-brained philosophers.”
“And you don’t?”
“I quote myself, don’t I?”
There was silence. Ali slapped Nizar on the back. Nizar chuckled. He did not find it funny, but it was in jest; and it wouldn’t be proper of him to be offended because of a harmless jest, would it?
“What is with that Salah?” exclaimed Nizar, suddenly.
“What about him?”
“He flies into Malé, and he acts as if he doesn't even know me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Has he dropped by? No. Has he called me? No.”
“You see,” said Ali, “Aisha broke up with him.”
“Oh.”
“He was really screwed. I mean, he was really depressed.”
“When?”
“Today, an hour or two ago.”
“Well, I'm not surprised.”
“He was with her for a lo—”
“It's not that,” said Nizar, cutting him off; finding a little piece of aluminium foil on the ground very interesting. They were sitting at the thoshigan’du. And the nightly health-conscious crowd of joggers and walkers passed them. As if rush hour in some metropolitan necropolis.
“Its just that I’ve seen Aisha around... quite a lot.”
“And...?”
“She’s always with this guy...”
“Whom?”
“Do you know Ahnaf?”
“Dhon Gaburey?”
“I think that's what they call him. Not sure.”
There was silence.
“How on earth does she know Ahnaf?”
“You know her sister? Elder one?”
“No.”
“Well, never mind, the thing is that she’s not exactly a paragon. And Ahnaf is a pretty close friend of hers.”
“I see.”
“Are they getting along, or something? Aisha and him?”
“I just observe.”
“Come on, Nizar, stop it.”
“I think that they are.”
“How long do you think?”
“I don’t know... a month or so. Not sure.”
There was silence.
Ali exhaled. “She couldn’t wait one month...”
“The thing is the context...”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I guess that it isn’t so bad if we take Salah like we do Ahnaf, and Ahnaf like Salah.”
“Oh. True.”
“Doesn’t sound as bad, dho?”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“But now it does.”
“Poor Salah...”
“Is he really?”
“Well...”
There was silence. And Ali coughed. Nizar fidgeted his pocket.
“Do you have your mobile phone with you?”
“How come?”
“I wanna know what’s taking that Asaf so long.”
Bats flew above. And the moon moved, just a little, in its apparent climb to its peak at midnight.

Obituary

“My beloved brother, Ahmad Adnan Maniku, has passed away following several days…”

Epilogue: Salah and Real Life

A week had passed. It was two hours, really.
There was a slight knock upon the door. Salah stirred, slightly. His eyes did not open, though; and his body lay upon the bed.
"Ey! Sallebe, wake up!" called a high-pitched voice from the other side. Salah was awake, and in that split second, nothing made sense. The world was there, people were there, the fan turned, and turned, the bed was there, everything was there. The world, such a curious place as it is, was there. In that second he believed that he had a doctorate in Polynesian Literature. A study of the clockwork that made Polynesian literature “tick”. Literature produced in Industrial Parks.
"Sallebe, wake up!"
No, he did not have a doctorate degree, he realised... And he knew, or rather, re-discovered the world. The knocking persisted, growing a decibel louder by the second. He got off the bed and opened the door.
A wave of bright light swept over him, so bright that he squinted as his retinas broke down the saturation of rhodopsin they had accumulated.
A little girl stands in the doorway. Not older than nine, she has a water-filled plastic bag that hangs from her small, clasped fist. A wide, toothy grin has cracked open in her face. “Look at the fish!” she says, ecstatic. A small, red organism—much like a painted tadpole—swims in the clear water. Its wide, fishy eyes moves about, as if in panic, as it swims to and fro within its plastic confines. Salah looks at it. And it looks back at him. He exhales. “Where’d you get it?” Salah asked, with a slight smile. His little sister shakes her head. “I’m not telling you!” She breaks into a girlish giggle. Salah shrugs. The fish swims. “How is mamma?”
“She’s not home yet, she’s still with bao bébe,” she says. “I’m hungry!” she interjects, suddenly.
He was eaten alive at the age of six by the housecat. And he had a doctorate in Polynesian Literature. And the fish swam.
Masks fell. He cared little.
His mother called later on. She was crying. That was all. And Salah cared little. The little goldfish in the plastic bag swam, and swam. And so did Salah.