Nijhum looked at her mother, who seemed to be lost inside a trance. Her eyelids vibrated ever so slightly, and her lips quivered a few incomprehensive words. She was lost in the silent syllables she uttered in between the isles of the supermarket.
They had been out after almost 4 months of isolation from the Coronavirus. At that point, the glossy shelves with their half stacked local goods were a thing of a distant planet, an alien almost. The packets of Bombay chips, fancy bottled kiwi juice from some foreign brand no one in this country could pronounce, the cheap Mr. Cookies sugar biscuits - were all enveloping them as nature does. In between the packaged artificial goods was newness, and a divorce from the mundane. Had there not been CCTV's everywhere, Nijhum would have hugged the dusty shelves. Who would have guessed that going to super shops would make one's heart flutter with excitement? Everything around was a wonderland, and Nijhum was a fascinated child with golden tickets in her hand.
She almost began to shake in excitement, and her vibrations bounced off of her mother's lips. Nijhum quietly asked her mother something she could not recall any longer. Her mother, Sabina held her palm up in a sudden bolt. There were foreign words passing through her silent lips, almost as foreign as the imported drinks on the shelves. If she did not keep a track of them, they would be lost into the void. Nijhum waited patiently, like she always did. Sometimes she wished she wasn't so patient all the time. There was an invisible bubble around her mother, she could see it - even though the CCTV's would never pick up on it. It enveloped her, doused in foreign syllables and intonations. There wasn't a single crack in the bubble her mother was enveloped in, there was no entry point for Nijhum. She had to wait for her mother to unleash herself.
Nijhum's hand kept hovering around the imported kiwi fruit juice. She looked at it, looked at the price, 'absurd' she thought, 360 taka for ten sips, put it down, picked it up again. All the while she kept observing her mother through her peripheral vision. She awaited her mother's lips to stop quivering. A woman engulfed in vanilla scented perfume crossed them, a child with a tiny container of Pringles darted past them, and a shop helper asked them to buy their 2 for 1 deal on Dove shampoos. Nijhum saw them all, without seeing them. Her eyes only saw her mother's lips.
Her mother's lips stopped quivering and she blew onto Nijhum's neck. Her breath smelled of warm yogurt and milk. The blow on her neck felt serene and yet piercing. Sabina asked, "Do you read Surah Kahf every night like I asked you to? The last 5 Ayats?"
"Sometimes" Nijhum lied. She hasn't read anything in months, no books, no newspapers, and certainly no Holy scripture.
Sabina looked at Nijhum and the Kiwi juice in her hand with indifference. Nijhum tried to engage her mother in a pointless conversation about Kiwis. She knew nothing about them, apart from a few fragmented Facebook videos she watched in several timelines of her life. Nijhum described the colour on the Kiwi bottle, the texture, the prediction of its taste, the absurdity of its price. Her heart swelled in delight around the artificial flavouring of swirling kiwis. But her mother heard through her like a pane of glass.
"Are you going to buy that? If so, then put it in the basket and let's go, we're getting late." Sabina seemed to howl, disconnected.
Nijhum thought about a million infinite strings of thought at that present moment. The strings of her thoughts seemed to pull at the strings of her heart. She put the Kiwi back on the shelf, she hated Kiwis anyway - even though she had never tasted them, and neither will she ever attempt to taste them again.
"But the store doesn't close for another two hours and we just got here" Nijhum says, after four months, she said silently in her thoughts.
"I have to pray. And I haven't read Surah Yunus yet. Remember that not a single leaf on this planet moves without the command of the Creator. The Surah's first five Ayats say..."
Nijhum looked at her mother's lips, quivering again, not really listening. It wasn't that she wasn't listening, but rather that her mother's words sounded foreign to her. They were difficult to decipher. Her mother had stopped talking at one point in time, and they had checked out, and on their way home. Inside the enclosed car, Nijhum could not hear any of the sounds outside. A bubble separated the noise into silence. She looked beside her to her mother, grocery bags on her lap, eyes half awake and lips quivering. Nijhum couldn't tell what her mother was saying, but then again, she never was all that good with languages.
YOU ARE READING
NIJHUM
Short StoryAnd Nijhum sat in the middle - with the croaking, the whistling, and the grains of rice between her fingertips.