When she said, and he did not reply
Heena Khan
In her galaxy of sun and stardust, they had united amid the cackle of wild geese. Their life was weighed down by three decades of separation and stink. Today, it afforded a handshake if not the ardor of desire. Their moments stood complete amid the gaps of rupture and the unspoken. A rain of the pent up enveloped their meeting eyes, even as the pandemic was lurching the living into the underworld.
“Hi,” she said.
He did not reply.
The sun shone in its majesty over their contrasting frames. She was tiny. He was big. She was forever smiling. He had a perpetual frown in his eyes. She was discerning. He was guileless.
Today it did not matter what they wore. It did not matter how they smelled. It did not matter if her hair was combed. Or if his shirt was tucked in and sleeves rolled up. What mattered was that they were meeting, to slice into their squeamish of fate, what could not be, what was possible, what could be saved, what could be made.
“I am sorry,” was all she said.
“I did not know what was slipping through my hands all these years,” she added.
He had no words to offer. Coronavirus was sucking at the lungs of their earth, wrecking its thick into smoke of death and disease. Suddenly nobody was breathing, and everyone wore a respirator to shield their failing breaths. Life was never more fragile, and death seemed never more inevitable.
And in their passing through life, they had lost many years to an unspoken love. And in the face of death, in the twilight of their lives, in the apology of the moment, and regrets of their story, they stood watching each other. This was not a love for the longing, but one that Plato had spoken of. Of acceptance, and friendship, a wild laugh after a gush of agony, of smacking the bitch on its rear, and a bark that had to wait half a life.
Kite and the Moon
Heena Khan
It was a twilight of full moon peeking from among the slippery ribbons of a banyan leaves stretched to the skies, its scaling roots shrouding the magnificence of the silver, sometimes poking at its blood clots of reverie and regrets. And a kite, a red, ordinary kite of modest length and sway, tethered to the roots of the banyan, came to its kissing distance, falling short by a fickle, and yet a margin of destiny.
Moon: You are trying to fly too high.
Kite: I am chasing my dreams.
Moon: What if your string snaps.
Kite: I would be free of all pretensions.
Moon: You would not be in control of yourself.
Kite: I never claim to be. None of us are.
Moon: I agree. I stand in the middle of the galaxy, suspended by a force I do not fathom.
Kite: And I am tethered to the earth by a lesser hand I have forgotten.
Moon: We sail in the same boat.
Kite: We need to stop sailing to know the depth of water.
Moon: I would need someone to free me of gravity, to know the depths.
Kite: And I would need someone to snap my roots too.
Moon: We are not even free to gauge our bondage.
Kite: Acceptance of our subjection is the first step.
Moon: And submission is the next.
Kite: I feel peace in the sailing wind. I do not control them.
Moon: I feel peace in the rising tide. I do not cause them.
Kite: Let us shake hands then, we are equal.
Moon: We are equal in our vulnerability.
3. The tree, the sparrow, and the missing children
They had spent many summers together, atop that cabin on the hill watching children play under the cloud of a genie with a trumpet. The genie was always ready to blow into the trumpet for that time and moment when the surrounding mountains would rise and fall, and circle in a menacing dance of nature. But so far, the trumpet stood waiting for the blow of air. The sparrow was unusually quiet today even as the tree was perfumed pungent in ripe citrus.
Sparrow: These are quiet days… no honks, no humans.
Tree: Humans are saving their breaths. Evan as we are filling up our lungs.
Sparrow: It is eerily quiet. Is it time for the genie to blow into the trumpet?
Tree: I do not know.
Sparrow: The classrooms are empty. No longer do kids talk to me from their class window.
Tree: I find no children plucking my fruits.
Sparrow: Angry elephants are coming out of the woods. The silly geese are crossing road walks.
Tree: Perhaps, the silence will be broken by the trumpet.
Sparrow: I would rather, it gets broken by laughing, playing children.
Tree: I am tired of hearing myself talk.
Sparrow: Mother Nature is not as happy as humans think she is.
Tree: How can a mother be happy when the child is suffering.
Sparrow: My song has lost its chirp.
Tree: And I am pungent with over-bearing fruits. I would rather someone steal them.
Sparrow: Nature belongs to an imperfect earth, round but not quite.
Tree: I would rather return to my cycle of stealth … the circle of life is choking.
Sparrow: And I miss the dreaming, wandering eyes. Now they are all cooped inside their homes, perhaps fixed on the books of rote learning.
Tree: There is no one to stand and stare. I miss my audience.
Sparrow: Mother nature would delay the trumpet. I have full faith.
Tree: The children need to play.
Sparrow: The children need to play wiser this time.
about the writer
Heena Khan is a third-year doctoral student at Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, USA. She was also a part of the inaugural cohort of nine-month long seminar, Muslim Women and the Media Training Institute, organized by University of California, Davis. The Institute is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Heena Khan completed her Bachelors of Arts from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, a Masters of Business Economics from Delhi University, a postgraduate from Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and a Masters of Arts in English from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She now studies the Oriental and Occidental assumptions about the veiled Muslim women, and is particularly interested in the Muslim women’s perceptions of the nature and role of fashion in their communities and the extent to which women use the hijab to assert or reframe their gender and Muslim identities. Previously a journalist based out of New Delhi, India, she is widely published with The Hindu, India Today, Platform Magazine, DailyO, and Hindustan Times. At Hindustan Times, New Delhi, Heena Khan was the books editor for their entertainment and lifestyle supplement. Being a worker of word for a brief span, she has recently completed a certificate course by Iowa State University on 'Writing Identities and Social Issues in Poetry and Plays.' She has also found print space in various international literary journals such as Ordinary Madness by Weasel Press, Tweet Lit, and Ripcord, among others. She is also a member of The International Women's Writing Guild.