Chapter 25

BIRTH

3rd of Shabanul Karim 1417

(December 25, 1996)

Pain. A knee in the groin. The ankle twisting on a misshapen rock. The fingers caught in a car door. The toe which bangs against a table leg. The elbow which can no longer swing the tennis racket. The whiplash from a tailgating taxicab. The stomach after spices. The heart pumping through hardening arteries. The liver diluting whiskey. Coughing from blackened lungs. The lower back straining upon a lumpy mattress. The hip which fractures while slipping on ice.

Or is it a splintered paddle against a warm rump? Needles poking a vein. A bone shooting through the thigh. The skull cracking from a lead pipe. A razor slicing the wrist. A bat shattering a knee. A whip stripping the skin. An ax falling on a tender foot. Scissors across a nervous tongue. An intruder ripping the hymen. A hanging from a leather belt. A bullet through the fleshy brain. A cold spike through the eye. Electricity burning the cytoplasm of cells. Fire eating the skin. The cleaver dismembering the hand of a thief. Beating the chest on the holiest of holidays. Shrapnel from a bomb blast.

Or is it a woman giving birth?

“A boy,” whispered Mama Khadija into her ear.

She held up the baby covered with vernix.

Later Fatima awoke in the darkness, ignorant of the time. She intended to hold her baby. She switched on the dim light, and saw beside the bed a small cushion made to hold his tiny body. But no baby. To her left Mama Khadija snored within the comforts of sleep. Fatima opened the door and found the household dark. Her shadow stretched along the dark corridor. She walked to the next room. She felt for the light, flicked it on, but no Abbas, no newborn. She could feel her heart beating, then pumping like a steam train on its inaugural run. Pumping harder as she entered the kitchen. Still no Abbas, still no baby. She checked the clock in the empty bedroom. Three in the morning. Her heart pumped faster. She checked the entire household a second time, then a third time, turning on and off familiar light switches and canvassing each area. In a wave of profound fear which comes from crossing the land of the dead, she shrieked in the hot darkness:

“Where’s my baby? Oh God, where’s my baby?”