My father travelled a lot for work. I am not entirely sure what he did. We lived on an island inhabited by only a couple of hundred people. Nothing much happened there except for a ship coming ashore once a month, weather permitting.
I only spent the earlier part of my childhood at the wretched place. Just a handful of memories and blurs.
One, recurring: my Father telling me stories of his adventurous voyages, of how he fought a bear once and rescued an old woman, who, as a token of gratitude, gave him a magic mirror. He could watch one person at a time through the portal, no matter where they were.
‘Did you look for me in the mirror, Father,’ I asked.
He only smiled and lifted me in his arms.
‘Tell me a story, Father!’
Alright then, he said. Let me tell you a story, my son, and this shall be the last one I would ever get to. You must listen very carefully. You may not understand at your age, but one day you will, and that day, you shall narrate it to your son and ask him to pass it on…
Do you remember the story of Adam and Eve like I taught you? Father asked.
‘I do. The first two people to be created and then banished from heaven.’
You know why they were punished, my son?
‘They made a mistake?’
No, son, no. It wasn’t about them. When God created them, he injected their bodies with a fair bit of curiosity. Then, he decreed the curious beasts not to taste a low-hanging fruit. It was a trap. A trap, my dear boy! When the couple was demoted to earth, they thought the exile was the punishment. To live a life driven by petty needs, and to grow old and frail and have bad knees and stiff necks, to hunt like savages and eat as royalty.
And, one day, when they died, they thought that was that redemption earned, heaven conquered. They couldn’t be more wrong. They woke up again, both as someone else, in some-place else. To live apart, aware that their other half is amiss.
The two star-crossed lovers meet in a house on a bridge every hundred years, on the last day of the hundredth year, only to part once more for a century. Each time, the man pleads with his beloved to stay. And, without fail, the woman must always leave. You know what happens if she stays, son?
‘No, Father.’
The world ends. The trumpet blows, the sun explodes, the seas annihilate, and the worlds erupt.
‘But, Father,’ I asked. ‘What happens to their memories after they separate? Where do the memories go?’
What happens to the scent of jasmine? Does it die in the autumn? No. The birds carry it in their hearts. Father said that’s how they sing.
‘But, Father,’ I asked. ‘Is the world not supposed to end one day? Does that not mean they end up together?’
Yes.
‘How must that happen, Father?’
It happens when they realise there is no other way.
‘And, how must that happen, Father?’
When the hour of the separation is upon them, Adam must ask the right question.
‘And Eve, Father?’
Well, for the universe’s sake, we should pray that she never gives the right answer.
‘Have you ever met them, Father!’
To this, my Father smiled and put his coat on. You could say that, he said. Winds took my boat once to a house on a bridge. As destiny would have it, it was the last day of that century. The morning sun glittered under the long, lush eyelashes in her irresistible blue eyes. The light entered the small room through the picture window behind the bed. A tress of Eve’s blond hair slipped through the black scarf onto her face. She had countless moles on the right side. He tried counting. As a routine, Adam lost count after seven…no eight.
Eve sat at the edge of the mattress with her feet touching the floor as she skittered her thumbnail over the linen sheets. Her nails were longer than Eve had ever allowed them to grow. Adam often wondered why she clipped such a beautiful part of her. Eve said they made her hands feel occupied.
And, she never fancied any occupations.
She looked at him at once and asked, ‘What do you remember us by?’
A few things. A letter; a rose; an umbrella and the rain; a boat; a candle, yes, a candle—
‘A candle?’
We once met in the warehouse of a wedding vendor. The bridal throne, chairs, and carpets sat disorderly in the darkness of the go-down. We held each other’s hands. Then someone lit a candle. You thought it was the devil. I knew it was God. And I sat you on the throne, reposing to my knees. Our kisses echoed in the corners of the narrow space between the walls.
‘The letter?’ Eve asked.
Letters. We wrote many at the time of the war. They said you were kept captive in your own room. Were you? When the fighting stopped in the night, I covered myself in the blanket and read the letters in the light of a small torch. I could see the dried tears on all the pages. Were you crying when you wrote them?
‘No, I was not crying,’ Eve said. ‘It almost always rained when I wrote to you. I tiptoed to the balcony so they wouldn’t learn about us, again. You took my umbrella to the war. I remember.’
War is a happening place, Eve. Horrible things happen there. People die young and ugly. And the blood is so hard to wash off from the clothes. It is easier on an umbrella, the blood, I mean.
‘It is time!’ Eve rose up and took her beige leather bag from the chair.
He turned his back toward her and stared out of the window. The haze had taken over the evening. The droplets emerging at the top of the pane ran down the glass and disappeared at the bottom like snakes, returning to the hollows at the sight of a predator. As it drizzled, He noticed a boy fishing at the far end of the stream.
You see that kid fishing, Eve? He asked.
‘Yes.’
The stream comes from a lake east of the city, many miles from this house. The stream carries the water through the city’s heart to its west end. From there, many more streams are born, and these fishermen, generation after generation, live around these waterways to fish and survive. They never dream. No aspirations tingle in their hearts. The waters trap them in a circle of routine and poverty. Is it not in the best of their interest if the river changes its course, once and for all, for their freedom and for its own?
‘Not in the least,’ Eve said.
‘The relationship of the lake and the fishermen is borne out of need, as are all the relationships. The sun’s with the moon; the moon’s with the earth; the earth’s with its people; the people’s with other people and themselves. You mistake chaos for freedom. What if the water does change its course, and this young boy becomes a politician, a thief or a saint? What then?’
Adam said he would at least have a choice to become something other than a fisherman. And weren’t you there when they stabbed Majnun in the heart? Did you not witness Juliet when giving up her young life? You were in the room when the Potiphar’s wife sliced her fingers at the sight of Joseph? What part of Majnun’s heart, Juliet’s youth and Zulaikha’s blood died out of necessity?
By then, my son and all the fishermen had gone home. The roads were empty. Barring an odd one here and there, the shops had slept behind their crimson shutters, and the street lights were flickering. She held his arm and walked alongside him as they followed up the stream. They saw the lights in the distance: the railway station.
‘You know this is where we part,’ Eve said at the station’s gate. Trains blew horns. People came. People went. All, apparently, in a hurry. All of them are leaving someone behind, thought Adam. He held her arm and brought her closer for a hug. She didn’t resist. Before you go, he whispered in her ear, I must ask you something.
Where do the memories go when you leave? Adam said.
‘You know that’s not the question,’ Eve smiled, disappearing into the crowd.
As the story ended, the island had long grown dark. Father thought I was asleep. That was only half true. I saw him packing a heavy-looking brown hemp bag. He put the luggage around his shoulders. He reached for something under the bed. It was a blood-stained umbrella.
Father took it and left towards the shore. Through the window, I saw him boarding the boat, and then I never saw him ever again.
