LIKA - PART III
By Lasheen Yusuf
Read Part I & II HERE
2 a.m.
After making myself another cup of black tea, I sat up at the table by the window in the glow of my laptop.
My own motions of getting up, going to the kitchen and making tea seemed intrusively loud in the dead of
the night. It was quiet again. The old wooden chair creaked as I put up my feet on the table. The chair
would have borne the weight of emotions of so many of its occupants. Some would have sat in thought, as
I do now. Some, in fear. Others in joy or sorrow. She would have sat in hope, then despair and finally resignation. I don’t know if she did but I would like to know.
The sound of Anita’s soft breathing was intensified by the duvet that rose and fell with her chest. As I paid
attention to that, I heard a slight sob. Or maybe I thought I did. And then I heard it again. It wasn’t the
crying sob that was strong. They were spaced out and long. It wasn’t Anita because she wasn’t capable of
that. She never sobbed. She just got even. Creatively, at times. I went closer to the window to locate the
source. It was so soft that I couldn’t say where it was coming from. Finally, I walked out of the room softly.
It is difficult to be a cat burglar in this house with the floor creaking under every step. I walked past the
Masai warrior and the grinning kids, into the foyer. The sobs came from her room.
There could have been an argument between them, or maybe she is just crying for the countless reasons
women cry for. It is not proper for me to console a stranger. But the religious school teaches precisely the
opposite. They haven’t put in the caveats. No fine print. Probably because all those Books are in fine print
anyway. Those Books ARE the fine print of life. You know its there, everyone accepts them without reading
them. You are slapped with it when there’s trouble. I have read my own Fine Print and there was nothing
about consoling a woman in the dead of the night in a strange country, or even a familiar one for that matter.
I step closer to the door and see that it is ajar. I peep through the gap. As my eyes adjust to the zero-watt
night lamp in the room, I see her curled up on edge of the bed, facing the door. She looked up at me slowly. I froze. I didn’t expect the voyeur to be spotted. As I step back to leave, I saw an arm extending out of
the cocoon. This was not only absent in the Fine Print but wasn’t mentioned in the Book of Convenient Interpretations either. I sat down slowly, looking at her face all long. She beckoned. Leap of faith. I pushed
open the door, enough for me to creep in. I sat by her on the floor and held her hand. It was small and it
nestled into my palm comfortably. Her husband was snoring erratically next to her.
There was an acrid smell of old alcohol in the room. He kept shifting and grunting occasionally. I was
scared. He would be scared too, to see a brown man sitting next to his bed in the middle of the night. Finally he turned and faced away from her and settled down. She seemed calm all along and I took some
comfort in that. I raised my eyebrows and craned my neck toward him. She smiled and closed her eyes,
gestured me to calm down.
“You are from India”, she whispered with a smile and a tint of mischief.
I nodded. I cocked my head to the right to match her. There is so much I want to know. About her, the
cups, the pictures, about him, about her children, what they do, why she was sobbing… Not a word would
come out of my mouth. I would like to say I couldn’t find the words. But truth be told, if was mostly fear.
Fear of waking the giant Englishman, fear of a loud confrontation, fear of a lack of explanation for my presence, fear of shame and fear of misunderstanding by Anita.