Uma Iqbal
A suspenseful story of a possessed man who continues to haunt his niece beyond his death.
When I think of you, I melt into my earliest memory. I find myself cross-legged between Ma’s legs on her coarse wooden floor. The scissors in her hand are snipping at the ends of my hair. A warm memory that holds your tale in the shadow of my mother’s mouth.
Ma tells me stories about you when you were my age. How you enjoyed licking raw fish skin with its iron taste and chewing on razor blades, staining your shirt with blood. You kept to the shadows, pacing in a daze, and with a weeping tongue, cried that if people saw what sits on the branches from which we pick fruits, we’d never go out at night, and all fruits would taste bitter and dry.
It eventually occurred to Ma that a sorrowful jinn who lived in the murkiest corners, where filth festered and the mind throbbed in pain, had taken hold of you.
In this memory, I have a hand mirror; I tilt it toward Ma’s face as she speaks. The aging skin, the creasing dark shapes underneath her eyes bear the weight of a lifetime spent on edge.
I try to move my head forward, but her fingers are tangled in the strands of my hair. She jerks my head back and looks down at me. Her smile is childish, compelling me to giggle nervously.
"A boy can be healed from a jinn in a number of intricate ways, but my family knew that only tenderness could bring true healing to your uncle.” Ma reflects.
I feel her hand trace the base of my neck before moving her fingers into my hair again. “Suppose I say that the tenderness was not enough, suppose I say that my baby brother’s insides were already covered in too many blisters, she says.”
Ma’s face is softening, her eyes teary, projecting a distorted version of mine. She croons her words and I try to move again. The room is deprived of natural light, and the snips are too loud. She murmurs: “Forget the memories your body carries, forget the blisters, forget the second soul that resides within you.”
And just like that, I’m still.
In December, when it got dark by five, a fresh layer of snow burdened the thin branches every morning. When the lively colours came to an end, leaving the sky grey and opaque, and that phone call whispered the announcement of your death, I had managed to bleed through my salwar kameez.
The moment I felt the natural and familiar feeling of blood leak, I placed my forehead on the cool window that looked out into the snow-dusted street. I listened to the muffled voices of people mounting the few steps toward the entrance of our home. The door opening and closing and the sound of shoes stomping on the entrance carpet warned Ma of the magnitude of her grief. Your stranglehold on my body had loosened when you returned to the motherland eight months ago. Nevertheless, your death had brought you back here, and the blood rushing out was all that anchored me to this body—my body.
“What are you doing?" Bhai asked from the living room doorway.
I looked up and noticed that he had brushed his hair to the side, a white shirt clumsily tucked into his black jeans. His core was turned halfway, ready to leave. A boyish face masked with a scuff, and a broken look—more forceful than honest. "Come on," he hissed.
I felt you, the moment we began to grieve your absence. You were still here, your fingertips stretching towards me. I wished to stay by the window where there was air. Yet, Bhai’s look was sharp with warning.
I followed him to the kitchen where Ma, surrounded by aunties and uncles in beige and white clothing, wailed a song about her dunya coming to an end. Her hair white, her fingernails broken, Ma cried out, "Oh, my brother, my brother, how can my life bear anything but nothingness without you by my side."
I followed him to the kitchen where Ma, surrounded by aunties and uncles in beige and white clothing, wailed a song about her dunya coming to an end. Her hair white, her fingernails broken, Ma repeated her plaintive cry.
The snow from the yard forced a steady brightness into the kitchen. The men disappeared to the next room while some women sat with their eyes closed. Others stared down at the palms of praying hands and ran prayer beads between their fingers, the ends dangling in front of them. My mother continued to question, as a deep voice recited the last few words of prayer. The room became still, before everyone collectively signed,
Ameen.
Conversation tiptoed among the aunties, sometimes dwindling to a hush before slowly resuming. The women maintained attentive expressions, ready to adjust if Ma needed them to. The ritual's performance meant to shift her sorrow from its lonely, feverish place, by wrapping it in a blanket of hope for better times.
They skirted discussions about the rumours that your jinn had never truly left your body, deceiving everyone for years. “How could he have been in control of his own faculties when he took his life, if he was possessed by a jinn?”
With her orna loosely wrapped around her head, Ma sat on the leather sofa, her body slightly collapsing into itself. Her face was carved with lines deepening every time someone mentioned you. Tears slipped into the edges of her thin lips. The dried saliva with every swift lick made her appear delirious.
I splashed my face with nothing but air as words of prayer began again. The celebration of you attacked me like a bitter breeze against my skin. Your sweaty, itchy moustache and cigarette and soap cologne made time slippery. My skin crawled, my clothes suddenly too revealing. For so long, memories of you were blurry, details that had slipped through my grasp now haunted me like a wound I picked on mindlessly.
At that moment, a gradual pain spread underneath my stomach muscles, clenching and twisting as if the body I hid was choosing to reject me too.
The aunties who passed by made sure to touch the shoulder. Some squeezed it with skinny fingers that dug deep like table corners. Others quickly placed their cheek against mine, a nod of acknowledgement before making what they thought was small talk.
Yes, I keep him in my duas. Yes, I cried. Yes, I'm grateful. No, I haven't seen those pictures. Yes, I cried. Yes, classes are going well. This? It's from Bangladesh, auntie. Yes, he cared about me deeply. Yes, we'll look after her. Mashallah, Mashallah, Mashallah. Yes, I know he loved me. Yes, I know he loved me. Yes, I know.
For a long time, I thought there was something meaningful in this thin fabric we chose not to rupture. Now I see suffering seethes between the crinkles of carefully formulated conversations, the sinking shame hidden in fearful behaviour. If I didn't comply, I would be the soft blade of grass growing between the cracks in a damaged road. Instead, I can't help but feel like the damage itself. The reason behind the faded chalk outline people avoid. This one is drawn around my body, holding me, keeping me in its mould. The one that appeared when you made your way inside of me. Drawn, re-drawn, and re-drawn.
I heard the heel of Bhai’s foot hit the floor before the rest of his weight echoed through the room. He stood tall, shoulders back, living his life with loud sighs and slamming doors. His limbs moved in different directions, his mind convinced there was only a lack of room if he couldn't fit.
And even then, he’d push.
Yet, that December, Bhai became a cliff looking over the sea. Here, he didn't push, but hovered protectively—not for himself, but for me.
His musty-red eyes looked at me, beckoning me to approach the bubbling cauldron of water, tinted with the hues of steeped tea, blending with the creamy richness of poured milk. My gestures were slow, an unsteady hand stirring the chai, creating ripples that turned the tea into a silky liquid. Chai dripped down the countertop and stained the bottom of my top. A cloud of low chitchat hovered in the kitchen and the rest of the house.
"Shit," I said.
Bhai took the incense sticks out of the cupboard and placed them on the counter. He ignored the spill, while I started placing the cups of tea onto a tray.
"We can see your neck," Bhai said.
I touched my neck, confused, unable to see what he saw. "My neck?" I asked, turning towards him.
"Your neck," he repeated, his eyes lowered and his frame shrunk.
My look must have resembled a child requiring assistance, since he reached over and tossed one end of my orna across my neck, completing the loose noose.
"Cover yourself," he said.
And just like that, I felt myself slipping away from my body once more. This vessel, transient and beyond my control, drifted in and out of this world.
I reached for the napkin on the counter behind me and lightly brushed the bottom of my shirt before giving up on the effort altogether, realizing the stain was too stubborn to remove. I tried not to breathe deeply. The chest pressed tightly, making the stomach turn and the heart hollow, I hid. Yet, the warmth of blood continued to seep between my legs, a sensation I strove to enfold, as more people entered the room.
Your older brother perched close. With skin that hung loose on his arms, he placed one hand on my shoulder and another on Bhai's.
He uttered the solemn words, "We belong to Allah, and to Him, we shall return." An attempt to persuade me followed, insisting that you were a commendable man for stepping forward to care for my brother and me when Baba died.
My fingers tightened their grip on the kitchen counter.
"He was a remarkable individual, one indelible in our memories," your brother chuckled softly under his breath, the sunspots accentuating the contours of his skeletal cheekbones, catching the light from varying angles. His gaze shifted between me and my Bhai, registering my silence.
"We couldn't provide him with everything," he continued, his voice tinged with sorrow. "We couldn't give him what he needed, and we were incredibly tearful for this, yeah? He didn't have it easy, but he loved you two more than life."
A sigh escaped your brother's lips. "Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un," he murmured.
"Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un," I replied, and the torment continued to grow, digging deep into my belly. The pain was only a reminder of where my corpse was buried. The past, you, lodged deep inside me. You belong to God, and where am I supposed to go if memories that assemble who I am are beginning to heave in the grasp of your hands?
Even though I knew the blood had already stained, I didn't move, as I saw parts of you in your brother. He left, Bhai trailing behind him, and headed towards the space reserved for the rest of the men, who resembled you. I watched them go, the smell of cigarettes lingering behind them. Their dry hands, arms crossed authoritatively against their chest, and thick pious beards acting as a mask. I pushed out blood clots and moved forward with a tray holding chai that tipped from one edge of the cup to the other.
“They skirted discussions about the rumours that your jinn had never truly left your body, deceiving everyone for years. ‘How could he have been in control of his own faculties when he took his life, if he was possessed by a jinn?’”
The aunties hovered around Ma, who mourned, soft and childlike.
My body moved forward, and Ma’s eyes looked up at me.
I bent down and placed the tray onto the carpet where some women sat. I remembered setting down a cup near Ma's hand, brushing my knuckles against hers. She closed her eyes tightly and retrieved her hand furiously. Her already broken face unraveled in more profound injury. We have the hands with the ability to hold or to reject, and I risked feeling bare by reaching out, knowing she is only capable of the latter.
Ma grabbed her mug with both hands and brought it close to her mouth. She took a sip and kept the mug near her lips, even when she wasn’t drinking.
Her retreat made me numb, my resentment unclouded. At that moment, the belief that she might need me, too, had disappeared. The mind, the body, isn't unflinching. I flinched, and thoughts of you began to feel soft like water. I flinched, and time was now distorted. I withdrew or glitched or drowned with you up to my neck and walked with blood staining the shadow between my legs, my salwar and whoever sees.
I flinched and bled openly.
I stood back up, turned around, and saw your youngest sister sitting near my feet. She wore a black burka and tucked her legs in like a cushion. Her right arm was straight down, supporting her heavy body. The kind with heavy breasts underneath layers of black camisoles, tired, sagging knees, wobbling whenever she wanted to stand. She looked at me. Her eyes, alongside the other women, were wide and panicked.
“Are you possessed?” she snapped. At that moment the call for prayer began, and my heart thumped. A deep, internal howl engulfing me, taking control.
A woman with slender fingers and a slender figure rose to my side, offering a comforting touch. “Shona, my sweetheart, she whispered, you've bled through your salwar.”
The women looked up, some shaking their heads, others looking back to see if a man stood nearby.
Ma gaped at me and placed the mug near her feet. She reached for my hand, yanking it towards her and detaching me from the embrace of others. I peered down with a tight grin.
“Do you have no shame?” She spat.
A sudden surge of sweat and tremors overcame me, my grin disappearing, my eyes welling up as another woman rose from her seat and gently touched my hand. The air was heavy with the scent of incense, and the call to prayer seemed to agitate rather than soothe. Had your jinn found its way into me, making our home within my body? I longed to devour the memory, the loss I harboured, but my aunt embraced me, softly reciting verses from the Quran. A profound sense of tranquility washed over me as the room seemed to glow with a brilliant light. However, when I looked around, everyone stared at me as though they had witnessed something unsightly.
Later that night, my silhouette stood by Ma's open bedroom door, my back held by the hallway's light, and the room's darkness broke into pieces. I moved, looking ahead at Ma, who withdrew into the void, unaware that my presence loomed over her.
“Ma," I whispered.
“Ma,” she echoed.
The mattress groaned when I lay down beside her, staring at her curved-C back. While I focused on the scalp fragments visible through her hair, the streetlight played witness to our eyes. I reached over with purpose and stroked my mother's head. Recollecting the memory from when I was a little girl, and lice lived on my scalp, crawling, laying eggs, and bodies among bodies in black hair. Ma had dug with her fingers. The sound of nails searching to kill was soothing. She watched as I crushed their bodies with the back of my thumbnail. The shockingly loud tick felt vicious and powerful. The guilt was absent when you've always known how to seize the itch; you must overpower the louse's body.
My fingers became pinchers, grabbing a strand of hair, and—very gently—pulling downwards.
“Ma," I repeated, “you grieve so openly for him. He ruined me, and you grieve so openly for him.”
I took another few strands of hair, pulling a little harder. Ma sniffled. She drew out her hand and placed it on her scalp.
There was a prolonged silence that strangled us both. Ma wanted me to leave, and I knew it. I lay close to her, like a child's wet hand lingering over hot oil.
I found another few strands with her hand still protectively placed on her head. This time, I pulled harder, slightly jolting her head back, craving for her touch, no matter how it came.
She shifted her body and looked at me. Her eyes were wounded like holes carved in black cloth.
I retrieved my pinchers and placed them around my own waist. I asked Ma to hold me, but it was you she wanted. You, she wished to remember.
“When your uncle and I were children,” she began in her gravelly voice, “the scorching, motionless days would slowly fade into a delicate golden hue, and as night fell, darkness would envelop the village like a shroud. It was during Maghrib, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, that my brother would venture out and return with a hidden blade clenched between his teeth.” Ma let out a trembling sigh.
At last, her hand moved to gently stroke my hair. Her delicate, veined fingers conveyed an unexpected sense of comfort as they made contact with my skin.
"Your uncle," she whispered, "chewed on that blade as though he held dominion over his own mouth. There was no blood, not a single drop that fell to the earth. Isn't that odd?" She mused, a peculiar mixture of amusement and concern playing across her face.
My eyes felt heavy as if they were veiled, and her breath danced gently across my closed lids. This tenderness was occasionally punctuated by the cool embrace of the metal rings adorning her fingers. A delicate fragrance, a blend of ghee and lingering incense, clung to her clothing as she held me close. I nuzzled my face even closer against her neck, longing for the physical gap between us to dissolve, a silent plea for you to finally vacate my thoughts.
“The truth, my dear daughter, is that he was never under the sway of a jinn; he was merely seeking some attention.”
Silence tried to survive, but Ma had cut it in two. “You say he ruined you, that my brother’s hands have marked you, possessed your soul…” Ma's words trailed off, hanging in the air, and I couldn't muster another word.
Her breathing gradually slowed, her heart's rhythm settling.
“You are just like him,” she sighed.
The words hung in the air like wisps of smoke. Inhaling them felt like an internal scorch, stinging my eyes as I shifted my body away from her. I stared at the ceiling, her breath gently brushing against my cheek.
I had often waited for your heavy breathing to settle as I stared at my bedroom ceiling splattered in glow-in-the-dark stars. I was filled with a sense of repulsion and disgust whenever I recalled your penetrating gaze, the weight of your hands forging themselves into my memories, of your fingernails scraping my insides.
In the cold and empty spaces of my world, I searched for an embrace that would mend the fractures left by your touch. I longed for the warmth, the unconditional love that only a mother's arms should bring. Yet, as I reached out for Ma's embrace, it felt like grasping at thin air.
It wasn't your touch I missed, but the cruel irony was that, in the absence of Ma's comforting embrace, even your memory began to offer a twisted sense of solace.
The sky is beginning to ripen with light while the morning moon blooms between clouds. The room is dusted by the soft blue filtered through the curtains. I sit up, displacing Ma’s hand draped over my lap. Ma stirs, yet doesn’t wake. My back against the bed frame, legs stretched out in front of me, I stare at nothing in particular before slowly peeling myself out of bed and dropping her hand. Her hand, its open palm, what had seemed like the better part of her, was now a knife made of skin and bones.
The coarse wooden floor grazes my feet. My back turns away, and I close my eyes, my chest tightening. I listen to the sound of scissors snipping the ends of my hair. I see the hand mirror tilt toward Ma's face. The mirror that had once carried her reflection now holds yours.
“Don't move!” You gasp, your face softening, eyes teary. The room is suddenly deprived of natural light, making your touch seem uneasy.
“Or,” you mumble, “it might hurt.”
And so, I’m still, still, small and still. I stayed that way for so long, and I will continue to do so with you quietly shifting inside me.
Uma Iqbal, a Bengali Muslim writer from Montreal, holds a double major in Creative Writing and Religious and Cultural Studies. Her writing centers on the lives of women, particularly Muslim Bengali women, delving into themes of trauma, family dynamics, and resilience. Her work has been featured in Montreal Writes and Heroica Magazine.
Aliza graduated from the National College of Arts. With a foundation rooted mainly in sculpture, her artistic vision is expressed through a diverse range of mediums. Her refusal to be confined to a single medium allows her to experiment and innovate. Her paintings explore mood and atmosphere, aiming to evoke a deep emotional response through the careful balance of hues and tones.
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