The Opium Eater and Other Stories [a potpourri set primarily in India]

14. Mother

This story is dedicated to nehagop who has been extremely supportive of my own book. As I haven't been able to dedicate a chapter (of my book) to her yet, I'm dedicating this story, which I find one of the most moving ones in the collection. Thank u so much, Neha—hope u enjoy it :-)!

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They were in the middle of their supper when the telephone rang. The boy got up to attend to it in the living room.

'Dad, it's for you, from Karachi,' he called.

Safdar Beg pushed back his chair, stood up and went to the phone. It was his sister speaking, and she was crying.

'Mother died an hour ago,' she said. 'Burial is today; soyam will be after three days.'

His wife and two children, eating at the kitchen table, heard his monosyllables and silences.

'What is it?' his wife enquired.

'Mother died,' he said. 'Najiba is on the phone.'

His wife repeated the Arabic formula for the departed soul to rest in peace.

Safdar was not grieved by the news. In fact, he was immensely relieved. He had prayed many times to the God he did not believe in to let his mother die. He wanted to tell his sister that it was good that Mother was no more, that at last her suffering had come to an end. She had been in a coma for almost a year, and for six months before that she had been completely paralysed. She could still see then, probably without comprehension, but she could not speak or move. He wanted to tell his sister that death was a mercy, but she was crying so piteously that he could not say anything. The intensity of her grief overwhelmed his intended consolation.

When the call concluded and he put the receiver back, he did not return to his meal, but kept sitting by himself in the dark living room. The sound level in the kitchen had dropped perceptibly and the supper had ended prematurely.

In a few minutes his wife came in, bringing him a cup of tea.

'Have something to drink,' she said. 'You didn't finish your supper.' Placing the tea on the corner table, she snapped on the light. With the light his mind emerged from its hold of darkness, and he told his wife all that he could not tell his sister: how meaningless and ruthlessly tenacious the habit of living was, that it took almost two years to cut an aged throat, fibre by fibre. He was angry.

"Oh! How she suffered!' he said.

"Yes.'

'Why?' he demanded more loudly.

To this she made no answer. She heard his further comments also in silence. Suddenly she said, 'You should go to Karachi.'

This was out of the blue for him. 'Why?' he asked, 'she'll be buried today.'

'No, for the soyam,' she said.

Again his mind could not follow her reasoning. Was he to travel to the other side of the globe just to attend a ritual prayer meeting for one dead and buried? Yet he offered no resistance to the suggestion. In fact, he readily agreed.

'All right. I'll go,' he said, and deep down in some obscure way he was pleased that he was undertaking this pointless journey.

Half an hour later, his son said, 'Your reservation is for tomorrow evening, Air Canada, Flight 601.'

'What?' he said, not by way of objection, but in surprise. First, it hadn't occurred to him that he should go to Karachi, yet he was going. Then, it didn't occur to him that all it would take to arrange his travel was to pick up the phone and, now that it had been done so promptly and easily, he was pleasantly surprised.