The Inherited Custody

CHAPTER VII

Rumi couldn't muster the courage to carry out the rites, or to even remove her from the house, to do whatever it took to perform the final formalities of a dead person. Long after all was done, by his father, who hadn't shed a sheer drop of tear, Rumi still sat at the corner of the bed, on the cold, tiled floor, his bones rippled and cramped, unfed and unslept.

It only gathered the fact that one only dies when one dies, when the breathing stops, the lungs stops blowing, the heart stops pumping blood, the veins dry cold— coagulated, the light leaves the eyes. And he couldn't separate the worseness of which kind of death peaked— the one while breathing or the one with a still heart. It took him an unimaginable amount of effort to even speak or move from the place, three days after everything had vanished and gone. To confirm that she was no longer here. And when he realized it, he finally felt all of that lift from his body. His mother was gone, gone.

About a week ago, she had been complaining of migraines to him. She was feeling restless and tired. He gave her a pain-killer from the kitchen-cabinet. He simply forced her to sleep.

He imagined her shrunken, damaged face and smiled. He walked to the hall and saw Rustom with hunched and tired shoulders. He never saw his father cry. But he didn't seem happy either. Something had broken inside Rustom— something that shadowed the entire house, the rusting and peeling walls, the colorless rooms, the air sucked out.

He saw his father go to work at the cafeteria and return like clockwork. Things had changed and they didn't.

His mother's death seemed to be left hanging in the air, like coat-hangers in an empty closet.

***

There were times when Rumi would lay his body against the walls of the suffocating house, beating it and dread in it's solitude. He would sit outside in the veranda and stare at his feet— only his toes peeking out, the heels drawn back beneath the space of the seat, his nails cut yet prickly. He would watch a line of marching ants, in perfect synchronicity, walk by the walls of the building, the flowers that wilted on the outside. He chewed his nails, burnt cigarettes, read and read mercilessly— as if every book in the world was burning out, turning to dust or ashes to fly away by the wind.

But then, other times he'd rush to the cafe and rush back home, scream silently to his own, and close his eyes to travel.

He would ask Rustom to go for walks, but even he sulked. So Rumi would invisibly go out and stride against the heavy ground, in the brightly humid sky. The neighbors would watch him walk and go, or come, from their balconies, from their windows. No one ever spoke to him. He always felt as if he was being stalked by them, and then, at any moment, would be pounced upon and hunted down— trapped. The non-existence of his existence was common knowledge. And there was always curiosity. When people heard his absence at his mother's funeral, their faces shrunk, questioning how could a child not attend a mother's funeral? It must be the father, some said.

While he walked, anything could happen. Someone could push him, attack him, ask him for some time, beg for money, hurt or kill him, rob him of his nothingness. And it showed in his body, the language of his posture was too defensive. People inevitably noticed it. A body shrunken by thoughts. A gaseous absurdity clouded around him that prevented people to make any sort of contact. Not even mental.

How could anxiety not be fixated to anything physically concrete, rather just by an absence— relating to nothing but a void? That when the world fell silent, everything would trigger. No longer the chaos outside drowned the inner-voice.

In a world where people often fended for themselves, and in the midst of it tried to trace fragments of compassion, there were people like Rumi who confided in themselves. Compassion was only in literature or art. Nothing could ever satisfy that yearn.

***