Landed back and managed to get online just in time for the Write...Edit...Publish monthly challenge hosted by Denise Covey. My entry is another snippet from my novella, because offline life has been more than hectic and I couldn't manage anything fresh, though I wanted to. Way over word count too and not much of an attempt at editing, for both of which my apologies.
Moonlit Waters III
Umm
Mahmoud crossed the road and climbed up the few wide but shallow steps onto the
lobby. She was the charwoman for several
flats here in this high rise next to the river, she had been coming across to
clean these homes for years. The gateman
came from the same village, a friend of her brothers, though all of them had
left their respective village homes long ago.
Umm Mahmoud had no close relatives, she had come to the city with her
husband who died untimely, leaving her with a single son to raise.
She
raised him as best as she could, but he grew up to be wayward and demanding, hopping
from one job to another and then finally leaping into a permanent, nagging unemployment;
waiting for the right break to come along, and meanwhile used up his mother’s
meagre savings to chase one foolish business idea after another and never made
a go of them. Messed up his life and
blamed his mother for being a drag when she refused to fund the next venture. Nothing at home was good enough, and then
when all the unrest started, he used that as a front to just disappear one
day. She preferred to think that he was trapped
in one of the prisons, and still went to check periodically for news, though it
was now amply clear what exactly had happened.
The
doorman Ahmad gave the keys to the flats she cleaned but pointedly did not ask
her for the son’s news, the exchange of greetings was short. She sighed and got into the lift after the
briefest of chats, she knew not to impose on people’s patience. She knew that people tire easily of a lone
middle-aged woman’s misery, she had learnt to keep her problems to
herself. Her routine was to start with
the top floor and work downwards, and she let herself into the flat with the
large terrace, where she had watched her employer try for a container garden
and fail repeatedly.
She
had a soft spot for this agnabee,
this foreigner who could be her own son give or take a year or two, but so different. He did not treat her like she had no
feelings, though he said little and smiled even less. He always left the flat tidy, the dirty
dishes stacked neatly in the sink, the laundry cleanly sorted into piles to wash, his slippers aligned next to the door, the newspaper folded crisply on the
table. To her it conveyed a sort of
respect, one that a young man may show to a distant aunt, he treated her more
like an elderly family member than a cleaning woman. Called her aunty too, not Umm Mahmoud. He was a strange one, this man. He had a hurt child’s eyes in a taut face
that looked much older than he was, and it was that way even when he came
first, before all that business of the wife coming and then leaving and then
the sudden divorce and the flat being back to a bachelor pad.
She
had been a quiet sort too, the madame, but
it was not the same quiet as her husband, more a dismissal, a reluctance to
mingle in case something within her lost its integrity by the interaction. Umm Mahmoud did not like her much for all that
she was beautiful, ma’ashallah so
beautiful, almost like a film star. She did not interfere much in the work either,
let Umm Mahmoud do it the way she has always done, but she was difficult in inexplicable
ways. She was glad the lady was gone, though it was not
in her to rejoice at someone’s misfortune.
Neither of them seemed happy, the new groom nor the bride, and what was
the point of prolonging the hurt? Better that they make an end, cut their
losses and gain some peace. Only thing
was her agnabee had gained no peace,
even after everything was neat and clean, cleanly cut. She could tell somehow, though on the surface
nothing changed. All those frantic
attempts at growing herbs and flowers and things, again and again like some
kind of gardening epidemic had got hold of him.
That was not a man at peace.
In
the bedroom, Umm Mahmoud noticed the canvas on the easel was done. It had been set up after a long time, he had
not painted a picture since the madame
left. Suddenly up with a pristine new canvas and all that paraphernalia of
paints and rags and brushes, though typically neatly arranged on the table. When she had seen him paint earlier, she had
never understood the paintings. He did not
paint anything that looked like anything, not birds or flowers or people, just
odd globs of colour blending into each other, and she had to squint hard
to find a shape that she could recognise as a man or house or tree.
He
had seen her trying to puzzle it out, and explained – look, this was a sail, and this was a heron, and a bit of a building sitting next to an old
temple. She had not understood. But he had not stopped. He had gone on in that quiet voice of his,
his accent only slightly foreign, as though she had brains enough to understand
every bit. She had nodded without
gaining any insight, but had been pleased at being treated as an equal in
cultural discernment.
This painting seemed different, though there were odd things about it too. She looked at it and wondered if he had met
someone new, if there was a woman he was thinking of bringing to the flat,
maybe getting married again. She felt glad for him, but a little apprehensive as well. Who knew what this one would be like? The
previous week, when she had seen the easel last, it had looked like all the
others he had done, blobs of colour running into each other, but he must have
worked over the weekend and it was finished now. At any rate, she could recognise the images,
and it was very different from the pictures that he had once explained. This one needed no explanation because she could
see for herself what it was.
A grey lake, the waters deep and still, and the sunlight was bright but with a disturbing slant that made her
feel hollow inside with sadness. How could
light make a soul feel sad? The painting was lit up with light and colours and
contrasts between the denuded and detailed, and yet the whole effect combined
to make her vaguely uneasy. There was a lonely boat bobbing empty in the
distance, and on the horizon a blur of mountains and sand and dark little shadowy
spaces. In the foreground, a large red-black
wool cushion had been thrown down, with the stripey design depicted in perfect
detail. An empty tea-glass sat a little
shaky on it, the dregs reflecting a sky with ribbons of white clouds.
Maybe
the woman had left it there after she finished.
The woman who now stood on the lakeshore, almost stepping into the grey
waves, in black robes with her face turned away featureless, just a delicate
curve. Only the brilliant colours of her
scarf showed up against the grey-blue waters.
On her wrist hung a pair of royal blue shell bracelets, exactly the same
sort of bracelets that had been twined around the bedpost for the last
fortnight.
WC - 1250
All feedback welcome.
Read the rules and the other entries here.
The previous excerpts from MW presented for the WEP challenges are here and here.
