Totems
- The Aleph Review
- Mar 14
- 4 min read
Aesha Munaf
The following is excerpted from a short story that first appeared in The Aleph Review, Vol. 4 (2020).
1.
It was quite simple actually, the reason Mohammad knocked down Dadi’s precious crystal bowl. He did it for me. The mottled, blue-green beauty usedto hold a mysterious, sweet-smelling concoction; tiny dried twigs that could splinter your skin, little bits of broken pine cones, strange pointy pasty yellow things and the pink and dark-red balls covered with fine hairs—my absolute favourite. I had stolen three tiny ones over time and hidden them in three secret places that even Mo couldn’t have imagined. Earlier that afternoon, I had announced that I needed the contents of the bowl to make a potion that would restore Mimi the doll from the laugh-crying fit. We had been in a long war involving rogue cloud fairies all morning when suddenly, Mimi—poor raven-haired, silver-dressed beauty—got severely cursed, so that now she would have to laugh till she died, bleeding from the mouth. I had worked myself up to a real frenzy; pounding heart, panic-stricken face, sweaty upper lip. Mo had assumed a serious face, talking strategy and plans, looking grim and old. I was too short to reach for the coveted antidote perched on the top of the cabinets, but Mo was pretty clever and loved climbing things. He had a great plan. He would slide open the drawers—each a little lesser than the next—to make a sort of staircase and grab the bowl. This did not work out, and we ended up in Dadi’s room after our soles were checked hysterically for any embedded blue-green dots.
I can see us; me in my denim playsuit, knobbly knees, fidgeting, and Mohammad, tall in his grey shirt and black shorts, silent and sulking. Our parents had abandoned us as usual. It was us against the creepy, curved creature. I reached out to touch his arm, but he didn’t move. He hated Dadi with a fierce sullenness, and she hated him back. There was no antidote for the curse that was Dadi. I knew that if it came down to an ultimate battle between these two, I would have to trick and kill her to save Mo. She asked a lot of hateful questions with no real answers (What the hell is wrong with you two? Have you been raised by bloody animals?), and doled out her usual insults (haraami, mentally insane, children of swine), crimson gleaming on her front teeth.
Then, her usual: you two will scrub the custard pateelas all night. I stood silent.
Mohammad stood silent. We pretended to be affected, although he and I were expert pateela cleaners and would usually go about the activity as the dhol walla and the mad monkey going on crazy quests and meeting strange creatures across a shared mental landscape. If I think about it now, most of our beloved rituals and games germinated from the shit Dadi piled onto our budding lives.
Later, when we were both safely in the garden, he winked at me and said, partners in crime, Leiloo.
I took it very literally, and loved it.
It was a cool ’96 winter evening the following year when Mo left Karachi. I remember the feeling of the cold black-and-beige mosaic tiles through my ice cream-scoop socks. Were we all in the hallway, or was it just me squeezing my eyes shut, trying to pause things? I was seven and Mo was eight.
2.
Where is Lahore? I asked Mama.
It’s far away, beta.
She emptied the remaining toast onto my plate. I stayed dissatisfied. I wondered if she ever really heard me. I started contemplating about how far ‘far’ was. I took to drawing two figures joined by a black-crayoned, double-edged arrow labelled ‘far’. The figures shared one yellow, bulbous sun.
On my birthday, I drew a girl-figure wearing a popsicle-printed frock like me and a boy-figure which was a sticky thing with no clothes since I didn’t know what he should be wearing. On top, I wrote ‘partners in crime’.
Later that night, after all the strawberry cake and aunty-hugs, my throat was sore from blowing on the colourful little hooters Mama had put in the pink- and-gold goody bags. She fed me a spoonful of honey dusted lightly with pepper and tucked me in. I brought the earlier drawing to my bed and coloured in a pair of blue pants and an orange shirt onto the boy-figure. The orange was the same as the popsicles, so we matched. I coloured the sun orange too and outlined the word ‘far’ with further orange. It seemed like a happier drawing now.
Author and artist bios from archival pieces are reprinted as they first appeared.
Aesha Munaf’s soul finds great joy in weaving stories that explore the potential for magic and connection in mundane, everyday life.
Noormah Jamal, a visual artist, divides her time between Lahore and Peshawar. She graduated with honours from the National College of Arts in 2016, majoring in Mughal miniature painting and minoring in printmaking. Since graduating, she has taken part in numerous shows in Pakistan, Dubai, China and Switzerland. Her work has also appeared in various magazines and publications. She was an artist in residence at VASL Karachi, for the Taaza Tareen 2019 cycle and was awarded the Imran Mir Art Prize for the most promising artist in 2019.
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