Fated To Follow - a short story

Fated To Follow

 Ghalia was standing just above her future grave. 

That morning when she awoke she had been reminded of her father. Throughout their Cairo summers, he would involuntarily allow the sounds of a waking city to rouse him every morning. As they seeped through the windows he would grudgingly sit up on the bed and remain there for the longest time. His bare feet, sticking out of stripy pajama bottoms, would be placed firmly on the floor and his barely open eyes would seemingly study them. His face, always the face of an old man to her - would be set into a particular kind of resolve: must keep the day at bay for a little longer, shut life away for just that short while longer. 

She had done the same that morning. And as her own feet, veined and masculine and a source of horrible teenage anguish, sat on the floor awaiting orders, she wondered what her father would really be thinking at times like these. He obviously was never that interested in his feet, or in the wooden floorboards. She knew that much even as a little girl.

That morning, her own eyes were not seeing beyond the floorboards that her father had gazed at before her. Instead, you could say she was viewing some sort of house. It had a chamber that was really not a bad size at all, that shouldn’t be claustrophobic or deathly at all: its ceiling was a good two metres high. Except the room was windowless and entirely underground. In theory, you, the living, could walk on top of that ceiling as you would on any other piece of land. Of course, you wouldn't really do that - out of respect for the three bodies that lay underneath. Next door was the only other chamber in that most extraordinary of homes; the female chamber. She took it in slowly, noting the absence of bodies in that one. It was vacant - for now. Soon enough its first occupier would arrive, and she could be it. She saw the two-chambered home clearly that morning. She was breathing in the stale airlessness of it and tasting the rottenness on her tongue when to the world she was simply examining her feet.

One thought had filled her head as their car made its way to the cemetery through manic Cairo traffic: She was definitely taking the plunge this time. There was no way she was going to indulge in procrastination: her wounds needed to heal. As soon they arrived and took their seats she was going to ask her mother The Question. You see, she was convinced that if there was anyone at all on the planet who knew The Truth it was her mother. She realised, of course, that the question would sound strange, that she would not come across as entirely sane just then – no matter how carefully she chose her words. But she was willing to take the risk. She was prepared to implore her mother to ignore any misgivings and JUST GIVE AN ANSWER. The answer. Just do it, she would beg; get on with it and you could call me a crazy, certifiable crackpot later.

When they arrived the cemetery was busy. In the space of the few minutes it took them to drive from the main gate through to her family’s graveyard, they’d already passed two funerals. The place was buzzing with life in the very way it should not be. People were everywhere, weeping fresh tears, digging fresh graves, frantically reciting Quran, and driving her mad. It had been better – as in less awful - on her previous visits, when the dreadful silence had muffled all her senses.

To make things worse, this time around they had ignored the common sense approach of Never Visiting On A Friday.Whatever were they all thinking? Didn’t they know Angels registered the visitors' names  all day Friday, earning it the title Most Popular Visiting Day? How could she forget what she had been taught in her childhood: that anyone who wanted their dead to know they paid them a visit had 'to brave the crowds and go on a Friday' as her RE teacher had said to a class of scared year fives. 

She reasoned with herself: It was nice to know that tonight her name would be boomed out into the heavens in angelic voices that only the dead could hear, (as a small compensation for the countless things the dead could not do, they had certain privileges). 

But it was no use. Ill-temper was steadily welling up inside her. It just wasn’t right, this hubble-bubble. She could take the inescapable pre-noon sun and the sticky August heat. But the digging thuds and the little children running around barefooted in the dusty alleyways wearing bright, loud, agonizingly coloured Friday clothes – that was too much.

Astonishingly, they did not get lost in the labyrinth of alleyways.  And in record time there they were, in front of  the graveyard that carried her family name in beautiful Arabic calligraphy. She wordlessly declared her lot Official Experts On The Place. They were now entitled to look down on the crying relatives of her father’s brand new and still intact neighbours. And if anyone dared to challenge their claim to superiority she would invite them to watch as their car neatly beelined to its destination.

She took her time getting out of the car, thinking: ‘I’ll  just wait for the icy hand that's gripping my guts and squeezing hard to let go a bit.’

Remembering her mission, she got out. It was imperative that she catch her mother in this most unparalleled place, in this strangest of situations, and whisper Her Questions to her. She was betting that the unreality surrounding them would make her craziness sound less crazy.

A surprise was awaiting them: the graveyard was filthy. For the first time ever no one remembered to call the caretaker the day before so he would clean up a bit. And she saw her final resting place as it usually looked. A thick film of dust covered everything: the tiled floor hid underneath it. The originally milk-white marble seats were black with loads of it. It was not just that the place was not cleaned beforehand: it looked like someone had taken the trouble to empty bucketfuls of charcoal powder everywhere. It blanketed the surfaces in geometrically straight layers ironing down irregularities. It gathered in neat little heaps in corners. It very quickly entered throats and eyes, proving while it may be dreadful, dust was in fact not thick at all, that it was really fine enough to be stirred by the lightest disturbance.

 

Incredible bugs were crisscrossing the red brick walls in broad daylight, safe in the knowledge that nothing could harm them. Now, when it came to insects, she had a theory: if Life was a thriller (and it would be a poorly-written one at that), bugs were its ultimate villain. It was true that she had come across the odd desert spider in the graveyard before, and it had convinced her that no creature that looked like that could be anything but evil – in a moral sense. But this time it was a different matter altogether. The bugs, undisturbed for so long, were acting like proper owners of the place. She and the others were the trespassers. Her imagination ran wild with thoughts of what could be lurking down there, where her father and two uncles were, if what was up here was so unspeakable.

Raw Ugliness spoke to her. ‘You have always known’, it hissed. ‘You have always known about me. Everybody does’. 

This is it then, she thought. What you see is what you get. After today, no number of  green palm fronds strewn by the caretaker’s wife across the graves could help them escape the reality of death. What was the use of sweeping all the dust away? Or sprinkling water on the floor? How, exactly, did the visibility of the tiles’ borders help anyone? Here was a suggestion: just give in to sweet despair.

The caretaker’s son kept them entertained over the following silent minutes with what must be his Famous Disappearing Act. It featured him appearing in the entrance, looking at them vacantly, disappearing and then reappearing with a few plastic chairs - then, finally, disappearing again. He was a novice and the chairs he brought were too few. One was even broken. Awkwardness flapped its wings over their heads as they all pretended they didn’t really want to sit down anyway, vaguely pointing to the blackened marble benches – as if any of them would touch those.

That isn’t how it’s supposed to be going, she screamed inside her head. She wanted to stand right in the middle, hands on hips and one foot impatiently tapping the floor. She would have liked to inform everyone that by now she was meant to be sitting, reasonably comfortably, right next to her (teary) mother, out of everyone else’s earshot. And she was meant to calm her mother down and urgently pour insane questions into her ears. Oh, and she would have needed to add that nowhere in that scenario did pre-historic bugs feature.

She didn’t, of course. Instead, she swallowed her peevishness and walked forward to the edge of the tiled patch. She stood at the very end, where the tiles met with the beginning of the slightly raised ceiling of the chamber/grave forming a little single step whose surface went on to the brick wall at the end. If she faced the direction of Mecca, she would be the upright equivalent of her father who lay two meters below. That would make him her shadow at this shadow-less noon moment. That was what they had told her on her first visit, when he’d been buried for merely twenty minutes. He had now been buried for four long months and she still barely managed not to scream BUT THERE ARE NO WINDOWS DOWN THERE THERE’S NO AIR CAN’T SOMEONE PLEASE HELP HIM.

She shut her eyes violently to stop seeing the maggots and the remains. Next to bones, teeth and hair last the longest, it was said. The others all seemed to be deep in prayer or thought. She tried to greet him with the usual, simple words: ‘Peace be upon you. You went first. We are fated to follow.’ But her lips were dry and troubled. She was having an Angry Day today.

She glanced at her mother. Would she be crying like never before? Unlike the others her mother hadn’t visited since the funeral. Her mother believed visiting the dead was overrated: you could pray and bless your loved one from anywhere on earth. ‘And when I’m gone’, her mother often said, ‘don’t bother to come visit me. Just say a prayer for me whenever I cross your minds’. 

The mother’s eyes were on fire, but dry. They were fixed on the spot where he was meant to be lying. Her lips moved furiously with Quran and her fingers clutched at a shiny black rosary for dear life.

No, this was not going the way it should be. Someone definitely mixed the script up. Surely she, not her mother, was supposed to be the collected one, the elegantly composed one, comforting her mother and drawing her attention to some most vital questions and getting her to answer no matter what. Her hands were not meant to shake uncontrollably as they did now, but rather to gracefully reach into her handbag and instantly find some scented tissues (although she never bought that kind) to give to her mother. All the mother needed to do then was wipe her (non-existent) tears and answer with a yes or a no. Whatever her answer was it would be accepted as The Truth.

She saw someone by the gate and went to check. A man in a jilbab was slipping inside. She knew who that would be: one of those Quran reciters. They were after some money. The species’ only survival skill was having been beaten into learning (some) Quran as children. Then it became their way of making a living: physically able men in their prime doing nothing all day except closing in on mourners to spit incorrect verses at them and then bully them into paying for the service. Professional beggars, in other words. But she learnt from experience that some of them possessed quite beautiful voices. Some of them acted like they cared.

'Ghaffer, ya sheikhna. Recite us some of Ghaffer', she said to him. He looked up at her as he descended to the ground, his eyes brimming with infinite wisdom. Nope, there was no escaping it: they were entirely luckless today. 'Can’t do that one', he grunted. He then entered a fake trance and started reciting - incorrectly - some other surah; his voice thin and broken.

Worried glances were exchanged between her and the others as the shadows of other men in jilbabs, more bullies/reciters, darkened the entrance. It was Friday after all: peak money-making day in their world and the worst day to visit in hers. And the caretaker was not there to do anything about it. He was probably busy with another major money-maker: the burials taking place right now. 

She watched as several of the others in her company seemed to glide over to the gate to block the intruders. She noted the funny, weightless way in which they moved but ignored it. Recently, people had seemed to glide quite a lot. They seemed to do other crazy things almost all the time now. Like that silly temp at work, who suddenly floated in mid-air five minutes into a meeting only the other day. Or that tramp who stared at her when she was stuck behind the wheel of her car at an epic-red traffic light last night. He stared and stared till his eyes took over all of his face. She had come to accept that some things just did not make sense anymore.

Determined to join in defending the graveyard, she opened her mouth to shout out something (hopefully a devastatingly street-smart obscenity). But nothing came out. She gave her legs an order to move but they declined. Intrigued by her limbs’ rebellion, she decided it might be wiser to sit down - only for a minute. She really needed to get on with asking her mother, right here in front of the grave.

Panic, then, made an appearance. It emerged from the very depth of the graveyard, casually strolling towards her. It had one hand in its pocket while the other gave her a single shy wave. She looked it in the eye and realized she couldn’t imagine leaving the cemetery with her questions unanswered, let alone unasked. Bizarre as they were, they would only sound even stupider in her mother's air-conditioned, wi-fied living room.

She knew the closest chair was the broken one, but couldn’t guarantee safely reaching any other. She called out to her son but he didn't seem to hear. At first she thought he was engrossed by the crackled voice delivering the words of Allah. Then she noticed that she hadn’t heard her own voice calling either. She sat down carefully and the chair stood its ground. She hoped that meant she was - for all her seemingly budding mania - at least thin, light as a feather, fragile like a heroine in a bad romance.

Proper, all-out commotion was now taking place by the gate: The men in jilbabs really upped their game; elbowing each other in their stampede to set foot in the graveyard. Some even started reciting before managing to fully squeeze in. Then, the unthinkable happened: her mother stood up and said: ‘Khalas, I’m finished. Done what I came to do.’ And the mother walked out, regal as a queen.

Just then the broken chair gave way. She found herself tumbling to the very earth in which her father and two uncles lay decaying. In flagrant disregard of the laws of physics, the ground decided it would accelerate things by rising to meet her half way. She smiled as she watched it approach in slow motion, black dust, horrific bugs, unasked questions and all.