'Aylaan, your mother misses you. All this time, since we left, she wanted to be a mother: let her be one, these last years before your adulthood. Me; I am tired. I can't do it anymore.'
'No !' Aylaan shouted with his dream voice. In real life, then and now, he remained quiet, though unlike then he shed tears.
'It's not her fault,' he said to himself, clear in thought like he hadn't been asleep at all. 'She's been waiting and she's my mother. And my father, he's tired.'
His heart wrenched in pain and loss. Love for your parents should be distributed equally but he had no love for one and only love for the other.
But some fires put out waters. His fury burned his eyes dry.
'Has anyone ever been dealt with like me ? Thrown from one uncle to an aunt and now, to a mother that I don't know?'
After a struggle he attained calmness and walked quietly to the bathroom to wash. He heard his mother busy in the kitchen and tried to avoid her.
He looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were crimson. He splashed water on his face so that he could blame water going into his eyes rather than water coming out for the inflammation and the redness.
Aylaan was a slim fifteen year old with all the hallmarks of the Somali ethnicity. Slim, large forehead and prominent teeth which called out for the metal of braces.
Stepping out of the bathroom, he walked back towards his bedroom, because he had forgotten his towel.
'Waraya!'
Aylaan stopped to look at his mother.
'She put on her wig early today,' he mused to himself.
'Come and eat.'
'I'll come in a minute.'
'Eat something, waraya.'
'Ha. Am I some kind of anorexic? I said I will come. You see my face needs a towel...'
In his bedroom, Aylaan smiled at his mother's idea of motherhood, shouting at him to eat when he had just woken up.
He has been living with his mother in Newcastle for a week now ever since his father had found the double stroke of clearing his conscience and throwing off the burden of family too much to resist.
'I should have said no, then. What is this woman to me? I don't owe her anything. A couple of weeks ago she wouldn't have been able to pick me out of a line up if I hadn't been introduced to her as her son.'
He wiped his face dry and went to the kitchen where his mother was standing with a ladle.
His mother was a short chubby woman with a square face, and a black birthmark on her lower right jaw. Her face had started to sag and her lips began to be sucked inwards rather than pushed outwards.
'Are you going somewhere?' Aylaan asked his mother. 'Why do you have that wig on?'
'You want to eat something?'
'You're obsessed with food.'
To Aylaan his mother's voice had an odd quality this morning. Then his mother turned towards him. He gasped with amazement.
'Oh my - where are your teeth? How long - what happened to them?' His mother laughed.
'Wow I never even noticed.'
He saw the fake teeth on the counter of the kitchen.
'I don't have any teeth.'
'Thank you for bringing that to my attention, mother; thank you for telling me because I did not just see that. Why did you put that wig on instead of the teeth? It should be the other way around.'
He turned towards the pan with both bemusement and disgust.
'I've seen this type of pancake before,' he then exclaimed with a mood switch and turned towards his mother again. 'Are you putting your teeth in or must I walk away?'
His mother laughed again, a sweet joyful laugh of a mother talking to her son, and this time put her teeth in. Her name was Najah.
Najah scooped out one of the pancakes, put it on a plate and sprinkled some sugar on it.
She gave the plate to Aylaan. Instead of taking the plate to the living room, he watched his mother make a pancake, this unusual looking pancake.
The mixture she used was watery and made the mix spread wide, across the width of a large pan. She made it go quicker by using the ladle, and made circular motions from the centre, to make a white whirlpool. Not too long after, when it became slightly solid, she flipped it, left it for a minute, and then put it on another plate.
'Go call your sister.'
If Najah could squeal with decorum she would have done so. She felt the most intense joy and a sensuous pleasure in telling her son to call her daughter to come eat the breakfast that she had cooked for them - words that she had been deprived of for so long. She felt a relaxation that she had not felt when she was without her children.
Aylaan went to the living room but did no such thing as calling his sister. He had a little nibble of the pancakes. He liked the fluffy parts where the ladle hadn't been impressed to make rings in the pancakes. It had a slightly bitter taste in the sections that didn't have sugar, towards its edges, and it smelled of burning vegetable oil.
'Yasmine ! Naya!'
Najah came out of the kitchen to bellow the name again. She saw Aylaan grimacing slightly while eating the pancakes and forgot about his disobedience.
'How are you eating that?' she asked bemusedly.
She went back in the kitchen and brought back the tea that was prepared for him that he hadn't noticed.
'Put the plate down, waraya,' she ordered.
Aylaan did as he was told, looking apprehensively at the tea in his mother's hand.
She poured the black tea on the plate and before Aylaan could protest, she massaged the darkened and soaked pancakes, mushing it with her fingers.
'Like this,' she said as she put a handful of pancake sludge in her mouth.
Aylaan jumped from off the sofa.
'Oh my God, did you just do what I think you did?'
He put his hand on his mouth and squeezed, staring at the corner of the ceiling.
'Did you just…'
'Eat something, waraya'.
He collapsed on the sofa in mock desperation, and looked at the pancake sludge through the gap in between his ring and middle finger.
Najah looked at her son and thought he was joking, giggling slightly. Aylaan then looked at his mother and contemplated his new future with a new parent. She was eating slowly because of her false teeth and still had her fingers near her mouth, nudging him with her thin lips and her eyebrows to the plate.
'Eat.'
Aylaan couldn't help but laugh at the ludicrous situation he was in.
'In what world has this woman given birth to me? Thank God, at least, that she didn't raise me,' he said to himself.
At this moment his sister came out of her bedroom. She entered the living room which was massive but had only two small sofas, both of them the same make, and both of them the same colour, the colour of the dreariest blue.
It matched the same dreary blue carpet. It also had a small table on which currently rested the tea drenched sludge of what were Somali pancakes.
Yasmine did not look like Aylaan, apart from the big eyes. Both had the same big eyes their father had given them. She was big boned, broad shouldered, with an unfeminine body that had straight lines on both sides. Her face however was a marked improvement as she was pretty and the big eyes suited her full face. She had thick, shoulder length hair that was similar to the Jewish wig their mother wore. At fourteen she was a year younger than Aylaan.
When she entered the living room, Yasmine stopped in front of the table with the pancakes and threw a quizzical look at her brother, who, by now, was no longer prostate, but sitting on the sofa.
'She put her fingers in there and created this...artwork. A self portrait.'
After letting out a childish eww, Yasmine looked at her mother and asked:
'Why did you do that?'
Najah was surprised at the reaction her actions caused.
'Why can't a mother eat out the same plate as her children?'
'Not with your fingers,' Yasmine responded, with a bewildered stare at her mother. She was at least a head taller.
'In the same way I put these fingers in the food, and then in my mouth, I used to do the same to you when you were babies. You don't remember me feeding you like this when you were babies?' she said incredulously, looking from one to the other, like she couldn't believe they didn't remember their infancy.
The reference to infancy put Aylaan in a spell of remembrance. His eyes glazed and tightened as for a microsecond he remembered his first memory.
Though he had, by then, done it many times before, he felt like he was opening his eyes for the first time. He was looking out of the huge glass buildings of an apartment in Abu Dhabi. He was around one at the time, sitting on a sofa like he was doing just then.
He felt like he had awakened from sleep, disturbed by some commotion. He turned his head to what was causing the disturbance and saw his mother shouting something to his father and his father replying. His father had an afro then where now was a bald pate. His mother however looked exactly the same having then as now the stockiness of motherhood.
What they were talking about he didn't know, he couldn't understand, but suddenly his mother lashed out. She struck his father but it was more of a stroke of his chest. His father however took it as a blow and put his falling sarong in between his teeth. He then grabbed her flailing arms at the wrists. While he was holding them, he inserted slaps to her face that looked razor sharp, and then quickly grabbed her arms again. He was deft and precise.
Young Aylaan turned away from the commotion, like it wasn't interesting enough for him to grant it his attention and looked out the window again to see towers of glass buildings, to be in a natural seated state without bending his neck. He closed his eyes again. The commotion wasn't that loud after all and he fell asleep.
The vividness of the memory was an intoxication that stilled his entire being, until he took a breath. The spell broken, he looked at his present day mother and wondered what his parents had been fighting about.
Yasmine came out of the kitchen with a bowl of cereal.
'Why are you eating that, when I cooked for you, naya?' she demanded angrily.
Yasmine ignored her and went back to her room which she shared with her mother.
'Ya, what is wrong with her?'
The vividness of the memory was still in his senses. He took the fork and ate the pancakes, surprised that they tasted better than he would have thought.
*
'Put your clothes on, let's go, naya!'
Aylaan was waiting on the sofa, fully dressed.
'I told you I'm not going,' Yasmine shouted. 'How many more times do I have to tell you.'
They were screaming at each other in Somali. Yasmine had not been as anti Somali as Aylaan had been in their childhood, because Aylaan had firmly nailed his cultural mast to the country he resided in and not the country of his parents. As such, whereas Aylaan could only understand and not speak Somali, Yasmine could.
Yasmine had a mobile phone in her hand, trying to ignore the orders of her mother. Najah snatched it out of her hands.
'I said dress.'
Yasmine first stared stupidly at her mother, but then quickly flung herself at the phone and by brute force took it back off her.
'Ah. How dare you! Aylaan, come here!'
Instead of waiting until Aylaan came to the room, she came out and stood on the threshold of the living room door.
'She beat me,' she said in English and then continued in Somali, 'How dare she! Who heard of such a thing,' shocked by what in her mind was close to matricide, stalking the two thresholds of the two rooms like she was looking for something.
Aylaan remained seated, staring into the future, knowing for certain that this would be the final form of their family unit, and wondering how much he could take.
'Is this what you did with your father? You beat him?'
Najah always said the sentence containing the word 'beat' in English and everything else in Somali, like it was too foul a word to utter in her native language considering the context.
Yasmine came out of the room and denied the accusation, her big eyes glistening with incredulity, for she didn't blink as she heard the accusations. And then she said coldly:
'Don't mention my father. At least he was a parent.'
'What? Wasn't he the one who stole you from me? Did he not steal you from me?'
Yasmine ignored her and went back to her room.
Najah was on the verge of hysterics.
'Naya, didn't he steal -'
'Can we go now please? I'm going,' Aylaan said, irritatedly, knowing his words would shake her out of emotion's stranglehold.
He got up and went to the door.
'Waraya!'
Najah wiped her eyes, which were as small as an Oriental's, and followed.
'Naya, you will go to school, Yasmine, you hear me? When you break out of your madness, we will register you.'
Aylaan and his mother stepped out and went to register at the local school. Their registration and attendance would complete Najah's motherhood in her eyes.
This was early autumn and the school term was just about to start. They walked in mild grey weather where the skies were desolate, but the temperature warm. Both Aylaan and Najah, were wearing late summer clothing because the clouds were too light to promise rain. Aylaan wore a dark t-shirt and dark jeans. Najah was wearing long grey and a light blue top.
Two weeks prior Aylaan had been in America and wasn't too familiar with Newcastle and so was preoccupied with looking at his surroundings, marvelling at how small everything was, in particular the roads.
'Why do they have such small roads here?' he asked himself, being used to the American roads which looked like landing strips.
He heard some noises in front of him and turned his attention to the commotion.
His mother had caught the attention of an admirer. A Middle Eastern man with greased hair, combed backwards and a strong physique, was next to her whispering something in her ear, intently trying to make eye contact.
'Are you crazy? Yah,' she asked him in Somali.
'I don't know if you're single or not, but I see you have no man walking beside you. I want to be that man. Can we get some coffee?'
She started laughing and looked back at Aylaan. Her son wondered how long this tete à tete had been going on. He could see his mother trying to manoeuvre away from him but the admirer was blocking her path.
She stood still and looked him in the eyes.
'What do you want ?' she demanded in Somali. What was she hoping to achieve by asking a question to someone in a language that she knew would not be understood? Perhaps she wanted to reach a perfect level of disdainfulness. The man however was unperturbed.
'Can I love you ?'
She snorted in contempt and again tried to pass him. The school was in front of them now and she wanted to go into the courtyard.
Aylaan was unsure as to what to do. In the beginning he tried to play the polite observer who didn't want to mix with the love affairs of others. He didn't see it as an insult that someone would approach his mother in this manner; attempting a pick up on the street like she was a common girl, when she had teenage children.
There are plenty who would be offended by such an approach. The man furthermore was at least ten years younger and in Aylaan's mind it was a compliment to be approached by a younger man. It didn't cross his mind that the man might think his mother looked like a woman of easy virtue.
Now however this scene looked more like harassment than courtship. Najah kept looking at Aylaan and Aylaan initially thought it was out of embarrassment but he changed his mind and saw the looks as a plea for help. At fifteen what was he supposed to do? He was spurred into action however by an exhortation.
'Aylaan, get this lecher away from me,' she asked. 'This demon.'
'Excuse me, sorry, sir. Excuse me!'
He tried to get his attention. The man turned a confused look at Aylaan, and then approached him.
'Yeah, sorry I don't think she's inter -'
'She's nice, man. Wow. Who is she to you? Is that your mother? She's nice, man.'
'Yeah,' Aylaan for some reason said apologetically. 'She's my mother,' he added, like if she wasn't he wouldn't have a problem with his aggressive declarations of love.
At this point Najah had already entered the building and was calling for Aylaan to come inside too.
'Sorry, I have to go. But I wish you better luck.'
Aylaan went inside. The man made movements to enter after Aylaan but his mother closed the door behind him. She in fact tried to slam the glass door in his face but couldn't as the door had built-in mechanisms to prevent such a thing.
'Get away from me. Fragment of the devil!' Najah rasped in Somali.
She looked around her trying to find something that would lock or directly bar him from entry. The man seemed to get his senses back, perceived the building and the various people inside it, and walked away.
Aylaan watched the goings on with distinct embarrassment. At first he was afraid that the man might continue his attempts to persuade his mother inside. And then what?
'You see that? Like a dog,' his mother said to him as she walked up.
'What I saw was a man and a woman. I don't see what the problem is, if you're single and he's single. It could be a good match,' he said a little strongly, feeling a little offended that she should reject a man for no reason. Aylaan empathised with the admirer, a man like him.
'Quiet waraya. What do I look like? Don't I have children?' she asked him bewilderedly, even accusingly.
'I don't know what you mean by that,' he said laughingly. 'Anyway, let's finish our business here.'
He turned around to face the receptionist who had been watching them, leaving his mother to stand and follow him with a searching look.
After the particulars of the registration they went back outside. Both of them checked to see if the admirer was still there. He wasn't. Dread and angst was building up in Aylaan as they travelled back to the house. Suddenly he stopped.
'Mother, I can't live in that house anymore,' he said resolutely.
'What?' she said fearfully, grabbing his arm like he would run away, dragging his arm towards the house. 'Let's go. Why?' she asked looking up at his eyes directed at the sky.
'If I have to live there, I don't want to think. I want to forget that I'm there.'
'What are you saying? Let's go.'
'I'm serious.'
'Tell me what you want.'
'I just said that I need something to make me forget.'
'You want a playstation?'
Najah thought nothing of it to buy her son's love, like men buy women or women buy pets. She did it on impulse, even if she didn't buy love but merely presence.
*
When they came back he was mildly calmed. He had already decided that he would stay in his room and play videogames all day until he was sixteen, which was in a month or so, and then he would get a job and leave the turmoil behind.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not stand being with his mother because she was the reason he wasn't with his father anymore. Try as he might he could not forgive her. In this sense he was the same as his sister, who called him as he came in with the shopping bag. He went into her room.
'What's that ?' she asked him, speaking to him in the language of their childhood, Norwegian, as clouds of thunder hovered over her. He knew she would demand whatever the gift cost, in cash value, from her mother for the sake of parity.
'Cheap little thing, you don't want to know. Something to kill the time.'
She was about to bellow rape and murder but to the surprise of Aylaan she calmed down.
'Guess what? Our father is coming next week.'
Aylaan dropped his bag.
'Why is he coming?'
Yasmine radiated with joy.
'I told him I can't stay here anymore and he said okay. In one week he'll come and ask if we're happy and see then.'
Once you entered this room, Najah's bed was on the right hand side. Yasmine's bed was adjacent to the door. So if two people were absorbed in their conversation, a new entrant to the room could come in unbeknown to them, which was the case now, as Najah came in without either realising. She didn't know the language and just watched them talk for a while. And then she undressed, wishing to put on house clothes.
'I can't believe you would lower yourself like this, Yasmine. After he dumped us here ! He doesn't want us anymore,' Aylaan said to his sister, the words like a dagger in his heart. 'Whisk you from one country to the next; dump you from one relative to the next because he has no clue what to do with us? I don't think we've lived in one place longer than one year in the last four years.'
'I don't care. I don't know this woman and I can't live with her for the next couple of years.'
'I'll be sixteen in two months and I'll get a job then so I can move out.'
'But I won't be sixteen for two years.
What am I going to do?' A thought struck Aylaan.
'If it's so easy for him to take us back again, then why did he leave us?'
'It's because of her,' she said in disgust as she noticed that her mother had entered the room. Her revulsion deepened as she took a good look at her mother.
'Two years of this ! Look at her!'
Aylaan looked over his shoulder and yelled :
'Oh my God, no! What are you doing?' and turned away quickly.
'What?' their mother said. 'What happened?'
'I'll never forget this. Why ?!' Aylaan moaned.
Najah had taken her top off to change and was so enchanted by the conversation of her children, even if she couldn't understand, that she had stopped before she finished dressing. Her breasts were exposed.
'He's seen these before. You don't remember when you sucked this?' she said, patting her nipple. She was bemused at the uproar.
'One week is too much,' Yasmine said, laughing now. 'Does she think we're children still?'
Aylaan snatched the bag.
'She's confusing us being her children with us still being children. I need escapism before I go crazy.'
For the next week all Aylaan did was play video games, fend off exhortations to go to school by claiming he was sick and think about whether or not to join his sister and go back to his father. The pain he initially felt had given way to resentment at being placed with a stranger. Now it turned out that he was ready to take them back any time. So what was the purpose of this?
Initially he was convinced that his father was tired of struggling to raise them, with financial difficulties, working low paying jobs only to be able to keep the household afloat, and nothing else. But now he thought it really might have been his mother's love for her children, and the desire of hers to be a parent even only for a few years of their teenage lives, that swayed him.
To him, he saw no difference between the value of the child to either parent. Both parents loved their children equally, even if they weren't there to raise them. It was clear that their mother still saw them as the children she did once raise, when they were infants. But even if a mother can retain their love for their children, without their presence, children need their parents' presence in order to truly love them.
For the one thing that adults have over young children, is their memory. She remembered her children as they once were. Their children didn't remember her. Aylaan and Yasmine didn't love her like she loved them. In fact, they didn't love her at all because they couldn't remember her and to them the first time they met her was three weeks prior.
Even though Aylaan didn't have love for her, he still felt a duty to her and an increasing antipathy towards his father for putting a mother's love for her children over the love their children have for the one that raised them. He even thought this experiment was a test to see which parent the children loved most. An ego stroke at the expense of his emotions. This thought infuriated him.
Once, he heard a noise as he waited for his game to load on the screen. A strange noise that sounded like the hoot of an owl. The sound made him hold his breath and listen closer. He then breathed out again for he realised what it was. He went out to the living room and saw his mother crying. Her crying was affected in sound though the tears running down her face were real, but it was obvious to Aylaan that she had done this solely for attention.
'What's wrong?' Aylaan asked his mother who looked up to see her plan had succeeded.
'You're leaving me,' she accused him, with the whitest eyes he had ever seen shed tears yet he could see the tears coming out.
Stunned for a minute he looked at her.
'Why are your eyes so white when you're crying?'
'What?'
Her confusion stopped her tears and moaning.
'Nothing. Listen, I'm not going anywhere.'
'You're staying ?'
'Yes. But only one condition. That you keep your shirt on around me at all times and that you keep teeth in your mouth. I don't want to see your naked gums or your naked breasts.'
The next day his father came. Nothing had changed with Yasmine and she left without saying goodbye to her mother. His father came in Aylaan's room and Aylaan expected it and had been waiting.
'You decided to stay?'
'Yes,' Aylaan said as nonchalantly as possible. He had to hold the controller to his game's console tightly to hide his agitation. Whatever fury he had before had dissipated and he wanted nothing more than to leave with him. But his pride nor the duty he felt to his mother would allow it.
'Ok. It's your choice. But go to school, you hear me,' he said suddenly a lot more sternly than the tenderness he displayed earlier.
'I am. I registered last week,' Aylaan said defensively, the father son relationship reestablished in no time.
'Good. I'm now leaving with your sister.
I'll call you, okay?'
He kissed Aylaan on the forehead.
He walked them out. This had the feeling of farewell, as if to say, 'she didn't interfere when I raised you, I will not interfere when she does the same.'
As they left, Yasmine asked their father:
'You're never going to see Aylaan again?'
'Go on, keep walking,' their father said, ushering Yasmine on while carrying her suitcase.
'You're not going to see him again?'
Aylaan closed the door. He passed his mother's room which belonged solely to her now, and saw her sitting on the bed looking at him with a fierce look. He walked back in the room knowing exactly what he would hear next. Sure enough, he heard what sounded like the hooting of an owl. And this time he joined it with his own silent cries.
*
'Look,' Najah told her son with a triumphant giggle. 'KFC.'
Aylaan looked with disbelief at the dark brown chicken breasts sizzling in the pan.
'She was laughing but she was dead serious,' Aylaan said to himself with a smile as he looked at the round clumps of shallow fried chicken. He smiled because he remembered the day before, when he bought KFC, smiled because she cooked not to save money, but because she wanted to make him something as a mother, as a mother's nature is to feed her child with what she produced herself. He smiled because he knew he would not eat it.
'You better eat something.'
'I'm not eating that.'
'But I cooked this for you. You better eat.'
He turned away from the desperate sight, the rank smell, and went to his room.
His sister had left a few weeks prior and his plan was in tatters. Very quickly he saw how ridiculous it was for a sixteen year old to be able to fend for himself in a major and unfamiliar city. He was sinking further and further into the black pit of loneliness and thought that he had made a mistake in staying with his mother.
Neither escapism nor the love his mother had for him, could counteract the desire he had to be with the people he loved. He was thinking of ways of getting out while satisfying everyone's egos. He thought the best plan was to widen the gap between himself and his mother, to make it seem that there could be no bond created deeper than that of an acquaintance. In this way, if his father were to come and collect him it would not be because Aylaan asked him to come get him but because his mother thought it best for him to go. It would not be the abandonment his sister had inflicted upon her mother. Aylaan's conscience would be clear, as he would have done his duty towards his mother. His father's conscience would be clear as he would have done his duty towards his son and the mother of his children. And his mother would have done her duty towards her son, though her pain would still be there, but that was unavoidable.
Throughout this plan's execution, there were no arguments and nothing to shock the system. He stayed in his room for the most part and only came out if he needed money to buy a new game. He would do silly things that showed he had no real affection for her. It was during this time that his mother's strangeness started to show and his desire to leave reached desperation.
She came into his room one time announcing that she would visit a friend. She had powdered her face and powdered it in such a way that she would have looked grotesque even in a Victorian England ballroom. Only a child would have put this kind of makeup on.
It was evident that she came into Aylaan's room to get his opinion of her makeup, not as a test to see if Aylaan would spare her mortification, but genuinely thought she looked appropriate and just wanted Aylaan's praise and for her son to note how beautiful his mother could look. Aylaan simply stared at her, dumbfounded, for a second and then wished her a nice time, knowing full well that she would look like a laughingstock. Najah walked out smiling and confident as a teenager who put makeup on for the first time and thought she had perfected it.
When she came back, she cried but not because she was mortified, she didn't care what people thought of her, but because Aylaan would let his mother go out and look like a fool. She remembered the reaction he had when the admirer approached her and thought that he didn't care about her at all because he didn't care about how she was perceived. Who would want someone they love disrespected or laughed at ?
If she was out of the house Aylaan would take some of her jewellery and hide it someplace and make it seem like he had stolen it.
The owl hoots that would have taken him out of his room before, didn't move him anymore. His mother would come to him instead; opening the door to his room, hooting and crying. She would simply stand at the threshold and look at him.
Unnerved by her act as a crying statue, staring at him with her running white eyes, he was compelled to ask what was wrong.
'I miss you.'
'How can you miss me? I'm right here. Close the door please. I don't want to see you crying.'
Unmoving, she continued looking at him, hooting from time to time.
'Close it, ' he said imploringly.
He didn't know a crying woman could frighten so much.
She finally closed it.
Najah tried buying his love, and to her son this was evident and not exactly antipathetic, but now he thought that she might even try to kill him for the love that she couldn't purchase. He slept uneasily after this episode for a little while and then the fright left and the despair came.
No matter where Aylaan was, or with whom, if he knew his father would be around, whether sooner or later, he would feel a type of comfort that he wasn't even aware of, until he started living with his mother. Now he could feel the full force of what his father meant to him even as a late teen, as he was deprived of it.
It was coming to a point when every time he wasn't playing a video game, pushing the buttons harder, squeezing the controller tighter; or when he was looking at his mother, cringing at her maudlin features, dismissive of her silent pleas - it was then that he felt the deep anguish of loss and didn't know what to do but hate her.
Najah felt the distance between them growing and the owl hoots lost its affectation and found its exquisite desolation. When they were apart, at least she could imagine that her children were thinking of her, that their spirits touched even if their bodies were separated.
This illusion was over or at least took severe blows that in the future would be softened by the revisal of history. But for now what was she to do ? What was her preference? Close but distant or distant but close?
One day, Aylaan heard a familiar voice; searing shut the open sores his wretched mother had inflicted upon him. His father entered the room like a balm of love and the first thing he said was:
'Aylaan. Are you going to school?'
'No.'
Aylaan could see that his father had summoned storm clouds for sternness but this was like a tropical tempest. No matter what his father wished to do, Aylaan could feel only the warmth around him.
'Have you been stealing from your mother?'
Aylaan said nothing.
'Pack up your things. We're going. I'll sort you out!'
Aylaan's ego wasn't fully healed so he protested:
'Wait. Did I accept-'
'Aylaan, I'm not telling you again.'
He looked at his father, saw implacability and severity in his red streaked eyes and climbed out of bed, to take up the mantle of burden once again, a burden that he didn't know he loved being.
In an hour he stood with his suitcase in hand and looked at his still mother, sitting on the same bed, in the same manner as when her daughter left her. But her son didn't leave the same way, acknowledging that she sacrificed herself for him.
'Bye, mother,' he said as he kissed her, feeling the tensed muscle of a clenched jaw, realising why she had lost her teeth. He could see only hurt and sadness in her face.
Aylaan's own happiness however was inexpressible.
