My mother and her sisters were born at a table where harm was never too far. It has been an eight seater for as long as I have been here. My grandmother used to sit at my grandfather’s left, just enough distance between them for a thrown cup to cut through her skin, just enough distance for her daughters to not reach forward in time to prevent the final memory of a wound. When guests are over and the seats run low, it is the sisters who get up from their chairs. The marks of late dinners have turned their backs ash enough to not let new fires cause too much damage.
The table does not give in. The entire day the two sisters that are left back there think of the table. The hungry monster at the head of it, is always found sitting with a mouth wide open. So the two women think, and prepare, and feed, and then go to their beds, blocking all sound and sight except for the other’s. My mother visits often enough to think of that table, at every other table she touches.
But sometimes, the monster at the head of the table leaves for a trip back to the good old homeland where he opened his bloodshot eyes. And as his feet leave the threshold of the room, the room is then a house. Around the table, curtains grow, releasing a sigh. Follow their trail and they lead you to a new room. There is a takht that does not belong. The sisters get up from it as if it is fire. And the curtain rod is tilted in this room, and the curtain rings are falling apart. One of the sisters rubs oil on her cuticles worn from too much dishwashing. On the takht, the talai is sunken enough for the wood to make your back ache. The monster should get a taste too but it is considered unfortunate. Go in a little further, the pipes of the bathroom are rusting. The other sister’s hair is screeching for a shower that’s not salty.
Trail your steps back and move in another direction this time. There are two queen beds in a room that are now beds again because one person is gone. The sisters invite my mother and I over and we all sit on the same bed. They sometimes call me one of the sisters too because I have frequented the table and everything around it as much as they have wanted, and more. A witness becomes the performer every once in a while. The lullabies they sing me to sleep are vows of protection.
“The monster shall never harm you.
Not you too.
We are always watching.
When we’re not, you see from our eyes.”
And I always make a vow in return. Always hold them gentler in the moment. In no universe can I not.
My mother hesitates at the vows. “You always have a home to go back to.” Her fists clench when I cry. So I go to the rooftop to gaze at the moon at four in the morning; something I don’t get to do back home.
The next day we go to an amusement park, somewhere we would never go with the grandfather. I walk with one of the sisters on the sand, walk with the other on the grass, sit with mom as the sun sets. Our laughter is painted thickly on the air that day, its hues deeper than the ever watching lines of our faces are used to. We walk through bustling roads hand in hand then. I have grown up with the knowledge that my hand will always be held tightly on dangerous roads if a sister is beside me. My sisters and my moorats; their hands are my mosque.
On the days our feet touch our land unrestrained, even the doorknobs back home look as if painted in gold, shimmering brighter and brighter until you touch it with a finger, some caution still there, and the finger goes right through the keyhole and there is a silent click before your feet touch the warm leather of the chairs around the table. On that chilly Saturday morning, me and my mother and the sisters float on a ray of sunshine that falls on only one side of the table. With the sun drawing little halos on our heads, we yawn and stretch drenched in laughter that no longer belongs to just one throat anymore. There is now a home to build in the now house, so you must see us as one voice drifting along the walls. The sister never hesitates to mould the house to her liking.
Beneath one of the tilted curtain rods, a hook hanger is about to fall any day now. It catches the sister’s sight first, and then she is sitting cross-legged beside the chest of tools, handpicking the best nails to make it stay put. Her hands don’t shake the way they do when choosing what would make sense on the table the most for the monster’s hunger that day.
Over the stove, the sister dances slowly as the sponge glides smoothly over the hard metal. The muscles aren’t stiff and it doesn’t feel like driving on a bumpy road. Her laughter echoes past the table as she squeezes the sponge in the sink without her hand forming a fist.
Under the now cloudy sky, sitting on a sofa taking up most of the balcony, the sister hears the laughter and turns around to wave a piece of cotton in the air affectionately, putting it on the floor in the sea of discarded cotton. Hallelujah, the sunken talai is going to see the surface once again. The guy at the shop will ask why she carried the pand of cotton herself there but she will smile at him and return home to double over laughing. Poor guy cannot fathom that she has a home to build.
Another guy will come over to fix the tilted curtain rod and this time the sister will be the watcher too and not just the one calling him over. He would squirm under the knowledge of her occupying the space as more than a phantom, but she will see to the completion of her corporeality, sitting on the takht placed in the corner she wants it to be in.
Later, when the night falls and the fatigue sets in, the sister will carry over snacks to the table without a dupatta carefully hiding them. She will talk loudly as she eats and when the taste of that one cookie hits the taste buds just right, she will not think twice before exclaiming her joy.
Around the table, we throw our heads back in laughter as the dinner witnesses the voice of every mouth it lands in. When we sprawl on the queen beds, the space unfolds in vastness the likes of heaven itself.
We wake up the next morning with the knowledge of having built a home ourselves making our eyes shine a little brighter. It’s time to dance without abandon in our house before it shrinks back to a table for a long long while again.
With enough freedom in the moment to testify to the past as is usually hard to hold on to, we just change the steps of the dance, just do it behind closed doors or with the lights off. We never stopped. We never will. We will always remember the existence of the homes we have built. The walls will always remember our sweat and our repose.
