Chapter Three

Chapter three

When morning broke on Tuesday, Anise decided there was no way she could face school. She faked being sick as best she could, refusing to eat her breakfast of upma, and then lying on the sofa when she was expected to already be out the door. Her brothers, Agave, Mohan, and Rahul, had already left, and Akbar had a doctors appointment. And at last, after much fuss, her mother relented.

“Drink this and rest” Ratana said, giving Anise a cup of cardamom tea and looking displeased.  Anise nodded her head, accepted the hot tea, and said “Thank you”. 

“I’ll bring you some medicine later” Ratana said. “After you’ve had some sleep”. But Anise had already begun to climb the stairs to return her room. She opened the door, went in, and locked it, then checked it again to make sure it wouldn’t open.  She took her piece of tattered fabric with image of Lakshmi on it, that she was given long before she could remember, and slipped it in the gap between the door and the wall

“Shri Lakshmi” she said quietly, bowing.  Anise hoped the goddess would come through for her again, as she had so many other times.

The day was wet from when it rained last night. She put on the grey phrian with yellow embroidered flowers she kept for around the house, and took to the apple tree beside her window that looked like it might have bore fruit once. She couldn’t forget her brothers climbing up it to scare her in the middle of the night, and then the terror she felt when they had made noises at her like some great sea monster. And she wasn’t sorry when one of them finally from it fell and broke their arm.

“Assef, please” she said to herself.   She had never visited Assef at this hour, but she felt certain, him…or something, would be there. He must have left a note if he had truly gone, and if he hadn't, Anise was still sure he’d have left something behind. She simply hoped she’d be the one to find it instead of a trespassing straggler or a vagabond that she thought could have come.

When she finally came to the house, she saw that Assefs tent was demolished. The makeshift steel pikes that usually held it up were scattered around the wreckage, and it was drenched by rain the night before. She pulled the soaking haul of cloth off, and saw that his belongings lay scattered about like garbage, a stark difference from the usually neat and orderly arrangement he usually kept. But at least they were dry.

“Why are you so dirty, Assef, but your things so neat?” she remembered asking him once

“Because, I’ve always been neat” he had said.  “I had to be, but I never had to be clean”

Anise, sifted through his belongs desperately, a few photographs of people she didn’t know, his pan, his pots, a cooking utensil that he used as either as a spoon or a fork, his tattered blue kurta, a blanket, and of course, the mysterious keyless box. Assef insisted that the box would never be opened, and that one day he would throw it into the Jhelum river, and that it would wash out to sea, washing away his hopes, his dreams, and everything else he ever cared about.

“But why???” Anise had asked

“Because I promised I would” he said to her

“Promised who” Anise said

“Myself” he said.

“The strongest sort of promise you can ever make is to yourself. If you promise others, they can always change, they can always betray you, or become unworthy of the promise, but you…” he said in the slow and purposeful way he spoke when he was trying to teach her a lesson “You can only betray yourself, and you have only yourself to answer too .And you can never run from that. Never”.

But it was only much later that Anise would begin to finally understand what he meant. “Far too much later” she would say.

Anise picked through the photographs quickly, some of them were burnt, others seemed deformed by moisture, and their colors ran into each other. A few had things written on them in Urdu, names and dates.  One of them showed what looked like several burnt bodies cast in an open pit, with three grim looking men staring with guns into the camera. Another said:

To Assef with all my love,

Yours, Pashmi

And showed a picture of a pretty girl smiling. For some reason, this made Anise feel very sad, she thought it could be Assef's mother, or maybe his wife? He wouldn’t speak of his family, and Anise would wonder if he even had any. Or if he was an orphan like her.  Now she wondered if she would ever know.

 Anise tucked set the photographs and the keyless box aside. The box was much heavier than she imagined it being. It was made of wood, and clunked noisily as she placed moved it. Assef said that the box never had a key. And that some things should never be as simple as simply using a key to open them.

“So where’s the key?” she had asked

“Indeed, where is it?” Assef had retorted, in his usual way of indirectly dodging the question.

“Some things are too precious, and much much too important, for something as simple as a key to open them” he had said.

Once Anise had gathered all of Assef’s things, and put them in the bag she usually used for school, she took one last look at the abandoned house that once was the home of the old beggar. It seemed so unreal to her that something so important could disappear so quickly. Before she had left Assef the last time, she still held a half hope that she would see him again, that friends so important and so loved, that were known for so long, couldn’t simply disappear like that.

 But turning around to leave forever, leaving all the things she knew were so precious to him scattered about like worthless trash, and without even a goodbye note or just some acknowledgment of his importance to her, Anise would not do.

“Assef, you are not gone” she said, turning back, as tears came all at once to her reddened eyes. She felt like running back and hugging the tattered, stinking, blue kurta he had left behind, that he always seemed to wear and never wash. She felt like drawing pictures in the dust of ships and sailors, and then asking him if they were accurate depictions. Or even, in lieu of all that, of just hearing a simple goodbye.

“Goodbye Assef” she bawled, pulling the soaking tarp back over his neatly arranged remaining items. She folded his kurta neatly the way he always did (cuffs folded back, three folds in the front, facing downwards). Folded his blanket five ways, stacked his pots and pans from small to large, and then put his utensil in the bottom pan. Only after all that, did she wipe her tears away, take the box and the photos in her bag, and begin to leave.

But she could not stop thinking about the box. 

Author's Note

Any critique is so appreciated!!! I'd like to know, for those who read the previous chapters (and if you have, Thank you!!!!) if the story still has momentum (is it still interesting if not tell me). Is it confusing at all? If so what parts? And if the language does'nt sound natural at any points. Or is confusing. Please be honest! And thank you for reading!

Reviews

[Lavorther]

For me, the story is still interesting. I knew that when i saw you had uploaded the next chapter and i immediately wanted to read it. The chapters up until now do still feel like a kind of introduction, but this one started to get the plot going a bit. (at least i think it did, with Assef disappearing).

I feel like you should keep this line going, and make the chapters increasingly eventful.

There were a few small grammatical mistakes:
"... when one of them finally from it fell and broke their arm."
The words "from it fell" sound a bit unnatural, i would change it to "fell from it".

"... but she felt certain, him...or something, would be there."
I am pretty sure "him" should be "he" here.

"... a stark difference from the usually neat and orderly arrangement he usually kept."
You have 2 times "usually" in this sentence.

"... and clunked noisily as she placed moved it."
You used both "placed" and "moved" her, probably left over from editing.

"Only after all that, did she wipe her tears away, take the box and the photos in her bag, and begin to leave."
This sentence starts in past tense, and changes to present tense halfway through. As the rest of the story is in past tense, i would change "take" to "took" and "begin" to "began".

Besides that, it was a good chapter and i look forward to the next.