‘ Men said to them: “A great army is gathering against you”: and frightened them: but it (only) increased their faith. They said:
“For us Allah sufficeth and He is the best disposer of affairs.” ‘
The Holy Qur’ān – Surah Āl Imrān (3:173)
Transliteration: Hasbun allaahu wa ni’mal wakeel
Translation: Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Exhibit TZ1: A sample cubic hand span, dated 31st October 2009.
A huggable (panda/ giant canary) sized cube, in exploding vermilion, with smoothly rounded corners and softly bevelled edges sits at a fixed axis atop the desk. Clusters of brightly coloured flowers blossom in patches and cling to it coolly like ivy.
From the left, storms the beautiful horse like a mountain. Powerful and sudden, its reddish brown coat shimmers as it gallops with furious direction – its tail swishing up and splaying as if in disdain to what it leaves in its wake. It makes to leap over the cube.
Pause.
Behind the cube, above it, with its feet lightly resting atop it, is suspended a ladder of black rope and silk cord stretching up with its top merging into mist. There is no thunderstorm but a dramatic pitch to the sky’s shade of slate.
_______________________________________________________________
“Trick or treat? How brave of you to ask for either, given my darkened attire and sombre glare reflected out through the glass, illuminated by the glow of the monitor. Many a teen and other ghoulish creatures have passed by this porch in fear.
Well, I do not have any treats befitting you but I have mastered a small trick. I can measure your brain in cubic hand spans through a series of questions.”
[After ten solar minutes]
“Scratch out your words!”
He shouted sternly, pushing sheathes of virtual paper up around him.
“Au contraire, mon petit filous. Why are you like sour milk? You permitted me to show you a trick and my words, then, exposed nothing but your current state of mind. They cannot interfere with the ability of your Faith to supplant all things and your will to spur you on. And why should you think that they might?”
“It is akin to kihaana*!”
“What? … your current state of mind … not your tomorrow…! “
_______________________________________________________________
kihāna n. the art of divination, soothsaying, fortunetelling.
"My heart is heavy." He said. "Could you hold it for me?" "Here." I said. "Mine is lighter - let's swap a while." The rule is that you can only hold one at once and you must hold one at all times. [swap] Careful not to drop it, I dared not lift my gaze.
It was late when I did look up. He'd already left with mine.
Toobaa was flipping through her old journals.
‘… It is time to make actions my ink and the world my canvas.’
Toobaa tried to draw Dorian Gray but it ended up looking like Mr. Darcy. There is no need to quote Oscar Wilde but I’d like to, anyway.
“But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Ch. 1
As outlined in my previous post:
Face plant n. a serious fall which culminates in one landing on his/her face; the involuntary act of plant impersonation with one’s face as its roots; from the colloquial = ‘when trying harder does not make you a winner, but makes it funnier for others to watch you lose’.
* * *
This particular episode occurred by no means near the beginning of her search, and it is impossible to say that it was nearer to the end, either.
Despite the fact that Toobaa’s front door was fitted with a camera which, when activated upon the Knights in Various Armour ringing the doorbell, would show in each room of the house who was at the front door, obviously including how they adjusted their clothes and if they muttered to one another unassumingly, she still preferred to get a pre-preview by peeking childishly through the window at the top-most room of the house.
For fear of being accused of hastiness, she wouldn’t admit that this trailer was where she pretty much made her preliminary assessment: who drove the car; who got out first; how many times did they drive up and down the road before identifying the correct number; did anybody assist the elder lady of the house out of the car; what was their expression upon first seeing her un-selfishly giant abode, etc, etc.
Anyway, on this particular day (the particular-ness of which hasn’t actually been outlined so, one day), having already seen pictures of a new collective from Kent and dramatised the compulsory (and somewhat genuine) reluctance, Toobaa awaited at her lookout point and, everything short of laying her hair out the window, Rapunzelled the time away.
So, she existed at the window for a quarter of an hour. Then she noticed the car. It slowed as it neared the top of the hill. Needless to mention, Toobaa had by now moved to a more discreet spy-point and even held her breath for good measure. Then, three wheatish-brown complexions peered from the windows of their blue car. Blue is the only description Toobaa was able to register before she saw, quite clearly, two of the three jaws drop, a self-conscious hand waving at the house and then at the driver (unconfirmed reports on which member of the family this was). Then there was a chortling engine sound and the car spluttered off down the other side of the hill.
It is said that Toobaa’s abode was perhaps too big for the Knight of Kent. Or maybe they were actually the royalty of a long lost empire that continues to exist under the English Channel and our home seemed to them a chunk of seaweed or a cracked sea-snail shell – of the two it cannot be said. What can be said with certainty, however, is that that is no way to behave. The misfortune of presuming the beautiful to be arrogant or air-headed; the ugly as incapable of passion or being loved; the poor as jealous and crafty and the rich of being miserly and haughty falls both ways. This is probably how we miss the precious, hidden gems we pray to find.
Face plant n. a serious fall which culminates in one landing on his/her face; the involuntary act of plant impersonation with one’s face as its roots; from the colloquial = ‘when trying harder does not make you a winner, but makes it funnier for others to watch you lose’.
What excited Toobaa about Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s memoir, ‘Love in a Headscarf‘, was that she didn’t have to read it to know that it would be all the superb things it could be: witty, relevant and familiar. It was enough to know that an abundantly common experience and oft thought tedious process was being, by and large, universally acknowledged and celebrated. The story of many was being told – even a bit of hers.
Her own voyage was, however, hardly characterised by the austere head dress, although austerity was intended as a sort of obligatory form of transport from freedom to Freedom 2.0 (and a head dress was worn at all times). No, the prevailing flavour of her expedition was a fizzing in the nose, a scrunched up forehead and blotted out vision as she metaphorically, verbally and physically face planted her way (in an assortment of manners) through each and every alleged-able bachelor her Mother could filter through the customary barbed wire sieve. Until, of course, she ran out.
* * *
An unmistakable face plant.
JAINA
1971.
Perhaps her birth name was Zainab, but she was known in the dusty mohalla of Mohammad Iqbal’s Sialkot as Mai Jaina, or Masi Jaina. Jaina was a widow. She was also known, most respectfully, amongst the townspeople as a waliullah, or a ‘friend of God’. Every day, after Maghrib, the obligatory sunset prayers, she would humbly acquiesce to requests for her to heal her neighbours’ ailments, such as fevers and crying children, with holy incantations.
She had quite diligently raised her son alone and when he, tragically, departed from her world, he left his Mother with two small grandchildren, a boy and a girl, and his widow. In this account, Billu and Hajra’s mother is mentioned last and not as Jaina’s daughter-in-law because soon after her husband’s death, she flung the gleaming attire of widowhood from the window of carriage 4B of the Lahore Express, which reluctantly shuffled with nerves as it chugged out of Wazirabad railway junction and brazenly sped up, hurtling her toward the capital and a fellow named Abbas. She never returned.
Jaina was left alone to raise Billu and pretty Hajra.
One day, in a quiet pocket of this bustling city, a clan of four or five children, compelled to make mischief, decided to pull the string that rattled the doorknob of humble Jaina’s front door.
‘Kaun hai? Who is it?’ called out Jaina as she struggled with the door and trundled out. She saw nobody! Just around the corner of the next house, the boys stifled bits of silly laughter. They knew this could be so much more entertaining and so they did it again. They carried on doing this shaytani harkat nearly every day, sometimes more than once. Every time that Jaina came out they scattered.
Needless to say, with each knock, our good Jaina gradually became bewildered and again, with each day, more frustrated. One time, the children, rather than scampering to hide behind some wall or other stood not far from the door, appearing quite innocent, and asked if Masi Jaina was alright as she seemed troubled. Some days later, again, they stood outside and rather than ask what the matter was, one of the boys pointed and boldly proclaimed –
‘Jaina’s crazy!’
Some say that if you insist on labelling a person’s behaviour, or repeatedly call somebody a name, exalting or derogatory, that person embraces the energies in those words, good or bad, and becomes like those words. The boys continued to harass Jaina this way until she finally succumbed and lost her mind. She discarded her mild manner and, in her exasperated state, shouted and then swore. She began to chase people around, waving sticks at them. She forgot how to dress and sometimes to dress at all. Along with her sanity, those who had once approached her with requests for her advice, prayers and healing abandoned Jaina, too. Poor Jaina.
And, one day, she died.
This was a true story.
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