Fiction
don’t feel obliged to be completely honest when leaving a comment: the truth hurts my feelings.
Chapter One: Mrs. P & The Virtues of Television
“Quack-Quack!” she called out for her son. “Quack-Quack!” she yelled out for her son. No duckling came waddling forward. Not a beak in sight. Her duckling had disappeared without a single trace of a feather.
“Mother Duck is at it again,” remarked Mrs. P, cigarette dangling from her mouth, ash snowing onto the front of her nightgown. The living room window of Mrs. P’s flat opened straight across to that of the Mother Duck’s and since Mrs. P didn’t own a TV, she entertained herself by spending countless hours sitting by that window, watching the soap opera that is Mother Duck’s life unfold before her. Mother Duck seemed to have misplaced her son, “Quack-Quack” and Mrs. P says to no one in particular, “Serves her right for naming her son Quack Quack. What boy would want to return home to the person responsible for the tragedy that is his name? Call your son a duck and he’ll fly away, that’s what he’ll do, he’ll fly away….”
In truth, Quack-Quack’s name wasn’t really Quack-Quack. He had a beautiful name at birth. Unfortunately, he was such an ugly baby that the beautiful name wouldn’t stick. When he was born, the doctor didn’t know whether to tell his mother that she had given birth to a healthy baby boy or merely a mouth. It was a mouth that was entirely too big for his tiny baby face that the nurses, they laughed themselves silly over jokes that the baby’s mouth had swallowed his face before birth. When little Quack-Quack was presented to his mother shortly after birth, she started demanding a C-section, screaming wildly, “Get the rest of my baby out!”
Another patient at the hospital, catching a glimpse of the newborn Quack-Quack said in horror, “My god, now that’s a face only a mother could love,” to which the patient’s husband added, “That is of course, if it actually had a face.”
Friends of Quack-Quack’s mother remarked, “Ohhh, the little guy has your mouth......Now if only he could get the rest of him from somewhere, anywhere.” And then one says, “It looks a lot like a duck’s beak, doesn’t it, his mouth?” That was when Quack-Quack started crying, for strangely enough, despite the size of his mouth, Quack-Quack was a silent baby and did not have his first cry until he was six months old. Even then, his cry came out sounding less like a typical Waaaa…Waaa and more like a quack quack. And that, ladies and gentleman was how he became known as Quack Quack.
Nevermind that Quack Quack later grew into his mouth or rather, the rest of him grew out of his mouth and his mouth finally became proportionate to the rest of his face, though just like his mother, it retained its duck-like quality (But then, admirers of Mother Duck and she had many, mind you, tend to describe her mouth as ‘sensuous’ so we may now arrive at the conclusion that ducks are rather sensuous). The problem now was that, in terms of design-aesthetics, was that his body had grown in height but not in width giving him the fragile appearance of a rubber band that had been stretched far beyond its limits and was ready to snap. Then there were his eyes, which started becoming disproportionately large when his mouth shrank to its rightful size. They were further emphasized by thick, long, curly dark lashes that seemed to have been stolen from a girl. And though his eyes were dark at birth, it became afflicted with a rare disease known as the “Eye Version of the Michael Jackson Syndrome” and quickly faded into an eerie shade of pale grey with each birthday - “the color of a ghost,” according to Mrs. P whom many suspected would know a thing or two about ghosts herself.
You see, Mrs. P was older than old because no one, not even the 80 year old grandmother who lived next door to Mrs. P for 30 years can recall a time when Mrs. P was young. No one knows for certain how old Mrs. P was, only that she was too old to be alive and the fact that she was still walking around her apartment and this earthly plain must be due to the fact that she was indeed, a ghost, albeit a rather solid one still bound by the laws of physics that govern the living. She was neither a benevolent nor a malevolent spirit, just a nosey one which didn’t require elaborate spells and potions, religious scriptures and crucifixes to keep out, only a drawn curtain and a closed window. Nobody knows what the ‘P’ in her name stands for but then no one ever really bothered to ask since the chain-smoking Mrs. P had breath that smelled like exhaust fumes from an old, diesel truck and to speak with her face to face (she didn’t own a phone) was to risk carbon monoxide poisoning. As for the ‘Mrs’ in ‘Mrs. P’, well, who knows where that came from since apparently, there isn’t a Mr. P, not in the last 300 years at least.
Mrs. P, sat by her living room window, always in the faded floral nightgown that was perhaps, as old as she was and went all the way down to the floor and covered her feet, and when she moved, it looked as if she was drifting in the air, much like how one would expect a ghost to move. She opened a new pack of cigarettes and laughed derisively at the Surgeon’s General Warning. “Smoking may lead to premature death,” she read out loud to no one in particular for there was never anyone but herself in her flat, not even a cat although occasionally, the sound of loud mewing could be heard coming from Mrs. P’s flat (it was rumored that Mrs. P drank the blood of a 100 cats each evening to keep alive). “Bah! At my age, no death is premature.”
Mother Duck was on the phone yelling to someone about her missing duckling. “He’s … I don’t know… 16..or 17… What does it matter?!! He’s missing!” Mrs. P heard her yelling.
Quack Quack however, was not 16. Or 17. He had only just turned fifteen.
“Are you calling me a bad mother??!!! How dare you! How dare you!” screamed Mother Duck into the phone before the phone went flying out her window, crashing right through Mrs. P’s window and hitting the older than old lady square in the head. As Mrs. P lay on the floor, blood gushing out of her forehead, struggling to hold on to consciousness, she thought she said out loud to no one in particular, “My, I should’ve gotten break-proof glass for my windows…….”
Of course, what she really should’ve gotten was a television set. No telephone ever went flying out of a television set.
We are often told that part of the pleasure of being young is that we are free of responsibility. This is of course, a half-truth. The young are free of all responsibility but one: the responsibility of keeping quiet. Remember that old saying of ‘children should be seen not heard?” Well, Naima was heard before she was seen. Unlike her neighbor, Quack-Quack whose vocal chords, like an old car, took half a year to warm up into producing a convincing sound, Naima, if we are to believe the claims of her mother, had been talking since before she was born.
The day Naima was conceived, her mother had heard what seemed like an “Uh-Oh” coming from her belly. Her parents were firm believers that all children were gifts from God and was more than grateful that God had saw fit to bestow upon them six gifts over a period of ten years. Naima however, was the seventh and it seemed more and more that if she was a gift at all, she was one of those “My ___ went to ____ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” type of gift.
When the pregnancy was confirmed, Naima spoke again from her mother’s belly saying, “I told you so” and frequently interrupted the gynecologist’s sentences with “Well, I could’ve told you that” and “Don’t you know this already? Can we go now? Can we please please please go now?” Driving home from the doctor’s office, Naima’s mother heard her belly say, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” This was the first time Naima was told to be quiet. It wouldn’t be her last.
She came out of her mother’s womb with a cry so mighty that it was said to have awoken a patient in a neighboring hospital, a diabetic who a week before had gone into a state of irreversible coma. “What is that noise???” were the patient’s first words upon regaining consciousness followed by, “Shut that thing up, I’m trying to sleep here.” Of course, every time someone tried to shush baby Naima, she would become violently ill and throw up all over their shoulder. Her pediatrician reckoned it was because babies were “as yet unable to swallow and digest their own sounds and words. Stick to breast milk or baby formula for now and try again when she’s older,” he advised.
And so they did, 6 years later, by sending her to school which should have stupefied her into a state of silent obedience almost immediately. But alas, her parents had made the mistake of telling her to “stand up for what you believe in” and as a result of that, Naima was frequently made to stand in the corner of class, facing the wall, isolated from the rest of her peers with an index finger placed over her lips. “Miss, what is the purpose of having my finger over my lips?” Naima asked her teacher. “So you’ll be QUIET, Naima,” replied her teacher. “But I can still talk!” Naima pointed out with her index finger still pressed firmly against her lips.
It was only much later, after many hours of one-sided conversations with the class’ southeast corner wall that Naima realized the ability to talk did not necessarily come with the privilege of being heard. The phrase ‘children should be seen not heard’ rang in her ears and for the first time in her life, she was overcome by words louder than her own. “Perhaps, I’ll try again when I’m older,” said Naima to the wall which remained as unresponsive as a pile of bricks.
It didn’t occur to Naima, until she hit puberty at the age of 12, grew breasts and became distinctly female that her sex, like her youth, came with the responsibility of keeping quiet. But while youth could easily be grown out of, a change of sex was a different matter and required a lengthy explanation that of course, no one would ultimately be bothered to listen to. Despite the progress various women’s liberation movement have made across the world over decades and centuries of struggle and negotiation, vocal women are still socially assigned labels with negative connotations – nag, bitch and man-hating-hairy-sexually-frustrated-ugly-feminist. Naima’s teacher at school, confusing the looseness of Naima’s lips with another type of looseness, even went so far as to say that Naima had failed the class because she was “too busy fooling around with boys”. (This was of course, the very same teacher who answered all of Naima’s questions regarding the subject with nothing more than a, “Don’t question! Questions are for those who lack faith!”) No, I failed the class because you made me spend most of it in a faraway corner faced to a wall, thought Naima and here was yet another first for Naima: here was the first time she thought of something that didn’t manage to escape her lips.
The transformation was complete. By 13 years of age, Naima was silent and sullen from being made to swallow words and opinions that were never meant to be eaten in the first place. These words, they acted like poison in her system resulting in a 100 tiny pinholes in her brain that not only affected her cognitive ability but also caused gradual paralysis of the mouth. By the tender age of 15, her speech became limited to two words contracted into one: “Dunno”
“Dunno” was exactly what Naima said when questioned over the death of Mrs. P by a flying telephone and the disappearance of her neighbor, Quack-Quack. Nevermind that Naima had indeed seen the flying telephone take off from Mother Duck’s living room before crash landing upon Mrs. P’s head. (Mrs. P’s head was cracked open when they found her. On the autopsy table, they discovered that the old lady’s bones had turned to petroleum.) Nevermind that Naima also knew exactly when and where she last saw Quack Quack - she had been taught by a brick wall that the best way to stay quiet is to feign ignorance hence, in accepting the responsibility of keeping quiet, she had inadvertently mastered the art of lying.
Naima had last seen Quack Quack three weeks before Mrs. P’s fatal telecommunications accident, kicking a ball around the local neighborhood park. Of course, by the time of Mrs. P’s death, the park had been bought over by a corporation owned by a certain Lord Hescham and almost overnight had been turned into Le’ Hescham Luxury Lifestyle Central – a towering, glittering complex designed by two overpaid foreign architects and built by an army of underpaid foreign laborers. The complex offered 30 floors of luxury apartments valued at 5 million each, complete with gold plated bidets that spout Evian water with the flush of a toilet and an impressive 360 view of surrounding urban poverty and unplanned, overzealous development. There were high end designer shops on the first three floors, shops with names like Houis Vuittoncci, Giorgious Chelamelni, Influenza Schouler, manned by immaculately groomed retail assistants whose noses frequently pointed North, like the needle of a compass and would be stained in brown at the drop of a Visa Platinum. And where once, there was the horror of an open field where anyone could run and play for free, now there is an exclusive, fully-equipped state-of-the-art gym where we can make like hamsters for a fee and debate the virtues of Hot Yoga as opposed to Room Temperature Yoga while admiring eachother’s sculpted, media-approved bodies. Let us also not forget the swank rows of be-seen-at clubs, bars and restaurants that take pride in their expatriate clientele who never had it so good in their home countries. And last but not least, the best feature of Le’ Hescham Luxury Lifestyle Central: the chronic lack of parking space which sees the best of European-engineered cars parked haphazardly and illegally along the road, reducing two lanes to one, creating a permanent traffic congestion that apparently, only goes to show the success of this particular Le Hescham development.
Stuck in a 3 kilometer-long traffic jam on a road leading towards Le Hescham Luxury Lifestyle Central, Lord Hescham sits in one of his humbler cars that comes with a logo that is often confused with the peace symbol.
Now, before we go any further, we must make it clear that Lord Hescham is not really a Lord nor is his name really spelled as H-E-S-C-H-A-M. Long ago, his grandfather who came from a long line of monarchists contracted a socially-transmitted disease known as Anglophilia, symptoms of which include class-snobbery and a fascination and desperate mimicry of British Aristocracy. And just as children of alcoholics and smokers are more likely (although not condemned) to drink and smoke, the descendants of monarchists and Anglophiliacs sometimes, will give their names as much of an Anglo-twist as it would allow and after accumulating much power and money, tend to think of themselves as ‘Lord’. Not that we should hold this against, Lord Hescham – after all, the right to re-invent oneself should not only be limited to popstars.
While Lord Hescham (who in his adulthood caught a bout of faux-Francophilia) inherited his title from his grandfather, the seed of philanthropy was planted in him by his father, a former senior civil servant who had tirelessly and successfully served his country for 30 years with paltry pay before trying his hand at setting up a ‘socially and environmentally-conscious’ business…..and losing it along with half his life savings and Lord Hescham’s education fund. “The problem with how the world works today is that authority is for sale and commerce is politicized,” Lord Hescham’s father said to him, “People are no longer interested in great ideas because great things take too long-a time to come into being. These people; they’re impatient. They can only see as far as short-term profit for themselves. And they’re all corrupt! Corrupt, I tell you and I refuse to be part of it. These people; they’re not interested in what’s on the table; they’re interested in what’s under it.” This speech might have turned Lord Hescham into a crusader against the injustices of the world had it not been for the fact that his father ended it with a defeated, “But such is life…what can you do?” and his mother answered, “The problem with you is that you have too much of a social conscience to be good for doing business in this country. So what can you do? You can retire.” But of course, depleted savings meant that Lord Hescham’s father had to continue to work in the tireless fashion all honest people were accustomed to, unaware that hard work carries with it a myriad of potential health risks including heart disease, stroke and worst of all, invisibility. Lord Hescham’s father worked till he disappeared out of the sight, hearts and minds of his family members. He did not leave a gaping void; no, in his place was money and the unfulfilled promise of more.
Lord Hescham’s mother, lonely and bitter at her invisible husband told her youngest son, “Don’t be like your father – don’t work hard; work smart.” It is said that the sins of the father is often revisited upon the son but Lord Hescham set out to prove himself to not be his father’s son – that this apple fell so far from the tree that it was almost an orange. If everyone was interested in what’s under the table rather than what’s on it, then unlike his father, he would offer the world beneath the table, right by his feet that these people would soon be licking his Prada shoes as if it was mom’s home cooked food.
Years after his father’s crossover into the realm of the invisible, Lord Hescham had become not only a highly successful property developer and a self-fashioned English aristocrat; he had also become a philanthropist who helped many government officials, authority figures and politicians achieve the dream of living far beyond their means and in return, he was blessed with good karma that ensured fast-tracked approval for his company’s many development projects and won him lucrative government contracts.
It is true what they say: a good deed is its own reward. (And so it must be that a reward is a good deed).
Being rich is better than being great, Lord Hescham had once thought in the privacy of his own mind. Wait, no, in this country, being rich is greatness. Lord Hescham, along with his friends in government had a vision to turn this developing country into an “international luxury hub”, the “
Unbeknownst to Lord Hescham, his own business partner who definitely earned more than 125, 000 annually was embezzling company profits and manipulating shareholders into thinking that the company was doing better than it actually was. Unbeknownst to Lord Hescham, one of the luxury condominium blocks he built on a steep hill slope against environmental regulations using unsafe yet cost-saving (hence profit-maximizing) material would in five years time, collapse into a pile of rubble, killing 73 people and two kittens. Unbeknownst to Lord Hescham, he would be faced with legal action and be forced to file for bankruptcy. Little did Lord Hescham know that in five years time, he would become the type of person his own PR people labeled as ‘of no quality.’
But for now, Lord Hescham was one of the country’s leading, most prominent corporate figures, a role model for aspiring entrepreneurs, succeeding where his own father had failed. He took great pride in escaping the fate of invisibility which befell his father while seemingly oblivious to the role he was playing in the gradual disappearance of a thousand other fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers.
Lord Hescham looked out of his car window and saw parts of the city he had not yet bought over and turned into one of his luxury hubs. What he did not see, were the people. Because far from being your average millionaire property developer, Lord Hescham was also, in his own way, a philanthropist, magician and an all-round quality guy. One might say that Lord Hescham had assisted the nation in the huge task of eradicating poverty by helping to render the poor invisible. After all, how would anyone know it’s there if they can’t see it?
