My Aunt’s Sacred Lies

Writer: Saqib Vazeer

STORIES are intoxicating, dear friends. They dull my senses and numb my body. They make me feel afloat, moved about in space and time, losing contact with reality, carrying me so far that my own self becomes intermingled with the characters of the tale. I fall into a lap of warmth and intoxication, and a touch I long remember fondles my skin.

“STORIES are intoxicating, dear friends. They dull my senses and numb my body.”

I open my eyes, and after a moment, I come to know everything, comprehend every bit of my trance that stories are memories, real and imagined, of lost men and women. The memory of my aunt too, the one who helped me build my feathers to traverse across storyland, I find staring at me. Once more. After a long time.

“Stories are memories, real and imagined, of lost men and women.”

When I was a child, a little child who did not know the seriousness of life, the harshness of reality, I mostly lived by stories. We had an aunt, my father’s eldest sister, who brimmed with infinitely many stories. When she would visit us, it would turn into a moment of great pleasure, much like the morning of the first day of Eid.

The nature of her stories walked a fine line between tales and truths. She never told us she was weaving stories, telling us lies, and we never could have known.

All those stories she told us had always heroism as their beating heart. For obvious reasons, she would represent the heroine in those narratives, weaving herself, quite unmistakably, into her tales. We could see her in those stories traversing the mountainside, the valley of the beasts that, she told us, lay out beyond, and where she collected wood and sometimes fell into fights with the beasts of the valley.

“All those stories she told us had always heroism as their beating heart.”

Sometimes she would also tell us stories of men and women. “There are animal beasts and there are human beasts, I have fought both of them,” she would lean back, a proud smile on her lips. One day she told us one such story that still clings to memory.

“When I was coming here, someone swerved his car aside ahead of me, blocking my way. A gentleman craned his head out, waving for me.

“Where are you going lady,” he told me. 

I creased my forehead, furrowed my eyebrows, and told him my destination. He then came out and, with a smiley face, opened the passenger’s door and let me inside. We traveled in silence, a silence that I religiously kept, much to the disappointment of the driver, because he surely wanted to talk.

“When I was at my destination, I gave him a signal to stop. The driver tightened his grip on the steering and floored the accelerator.

I yelled at him, ‘Stop!’ He did not listen, reaching his hand for the glove compartment. The latch fell, and a shiny pistol dropped into his palm. He cocked the pistol and pointed it up at me. He was up to something; I could tell that by the whiteness in his eyes.”

“Bring me a glass of water,” she said, her hands making strange motions. We fetched the water instantly. She drained the glass and took a long breath. “Then it happened,” she closed her eyes, her tone lingering.

She did not talk for a moment. We held our breaths, wondering what would have happened next.

“I stopped him,” she revealed.

“How?” we asked, having trained our eyes unflinchingly upon her.

“Do not ask,” she waved her hand. But we insisted. We pushed her, bringing her ultimately to her knees.

“I jumped at him, kicked his head, took hold of the pistol, and trained it on his head,” her words came one after another, fast and furious. Silence landed around us.

 

My eldest brother stirred and then had his hands up in applause. We joined in, and the chorus of our clapping awoke our mother. She shifted in her bed and glared at us. We knew the sign: it was bed time. Therefore, we did not wait for the ending. We knew it. She would have forced him to push the brake, and the car would have staggered to a halt, and she would have come out victorious, chin high, eyes beaming.

We would have spent many such nights of storytelling. In my earliest memory, I remember I would mostly listen from the shadows, sitting to a side, or sometimes laying with my mother in a nearby bed, because my mother wanted me to sleep. I would close my eyes but I would keep my ears open.

Fast forward to when my brothers had grown into men, and my sisters were married, I, for most of the time, would steer the storytelling recitals. When my aunt and I would sit, she would look at my brothers nostalgically, who were no longer interested in stories.

“I hate that they do not listen to my stories now,” she would complain. “How can they be so tasteless?”

“Aunt, will you not tell me stories then?” I would make a face. She would wait and then hug me, saying, “No, my child. You will have a story and a bonus story too.”

We laughed, and she held her hands out for me, and I fell into her motherly embrace. The bonus story was the one that was not on the list. If we behaved, then she would reward us with an extra story, a story that I would often win.

The river of time, they say, flows unstopped and uncaring. It leaves in its wake nothing undisturbed. Time took me to a city for further education, away from my home, away from my aunt, away from the storyland. Sometime, I would call my aunt, and she would insist to come back sometime and visit her.

“The river of time, they say, flows unstopped and uncaring. It leaves in its wake nothing undisturbed.”

“Aunt, I love to be home,” I would say, “just as these exams go away.”

Then she would turn to the last weapon in her arsenal, “Come home soon, son. I will tell you a story and a bonus story too.”

We would laugh, and we would end the call.

For some time, I did not talk to her. One day, I fell asleep after the predawn prayers and put my phone on silent. When I woke up, I turned to my phone and saw a message from my cousin. The letters seemed vaporized, merging into one another, blurring the screen, “Your aunt wants to see you.”

I held my breath. I felt my palms feeling cold. A little while later, another message came, “We are at the city hospital.”

“No!” I muttered, turning around in the bed. I staggered, struggling to enter into my slippers, hurrying to reach for the sink. It would not be her casual visit to the hospital, I knew.

It was a year ago that I took her to a doctor. In those days, she would complain of shortening in breathing and swelling in her feet. 

After the diagnosis, the doctor whispered to me, “Who are you to her?” 

I told him.

“Well, in that case, I must tell you the truth,” he held nothing back. “Her days are numbered. It could be now, tomorrow, or a year later. She suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy, a fatal heart disease.”

He said nothing further, and I did not want to listen to him anymore.

I told her warmly when asked what the doctor said, “The doctor said that she is alright. Just keep telling stories. Many many stories.” We both laughed, but the revelation kept me awake for many nights. My cousin took me to her room. The hospital’s room was awash with the smell of antiseptics and drugs. I padded across the room to her bed, while I could listen to the machine beeping in the background. My mother had sat beside her on a chair. My aunt had closed her eyes. She looked ashen.

 

“Mom, it is us,” my cousin whispered into her ears. She opened her eyes instantly, and her lips widened into a weak, warm smile. I came down on her and kissed her many times on her withered cheeks.

“Finally, we met, son,” she smiled. I struggled to hold back my tears. I had failed her, in a way, by not visiting her in good times.

“Yes, we met,” I said, my voice choking. “I did not want to meet you like that.”

We talked for a while, and then she gestured to bring myself near to her. Then she whispered into my ears, “Want to hear something?”

I shook my head.

“But you would not tell your siblings,” she whispered as if revealing a lifelong secret. “I do not want them to know this.”

“I promise you, aunt,” I said. I could feel her smile.

“All those stories, all those moments of heroism, all those things. They were lies. I did nothing like that. Nothing like that happened to me,” she ended with a chuckle.

“All those stories, all those moments of heroism, all those things. They were lies.”

I arose and looked at her incredulously. “No, they were not lies. You are very brave. You are a heroine to me, to us all.”

“No, those were lies. All the heroism. Only a man could do that. A man like you. A woman like me would just make these up.” She shook my arm. I turned my eyes off her in an attempt to hide the pain in my eyes.

I told her that those were true stories; however, deep in my heart I knew everything. It was a pretention, an innocent pretention that we all kept. Sometimes the lies are so sweet that we do not want to sour our tongues with the dullness of truths.

I crossed over the nurses’ counter which was a few meters away. I was talking to the nurse to let me meet with the doctor that I heard my mother. She was crying. I felt invisible nails piercing through the flesh of my feet, pinning me to the ground. From my legs and up my body, a rush of coldness crept, making me frozen. I groped in the air for support to hold my swaying body, sat down disoriented, and leaned against the wall. The marble floor felt harshly freezing, tingling my skin.

“I felt invisible nails piercing through the flesh of my feet, pinning me to the ground. From my legs and up my body, a rush of coldness crept, making me frozen.”

I wiped my tears and looked up. My cousin had come, his eyes creased with red lines, his cheeks awash with tears, his voice choking. I did not place his words. But I could read the signs.

The heroine of our storyland had breathed her last. The passing of my aunt dragged me into a dark abyss of unwavering grief, unbridled mourning. I felt an invisible screen of aloofness surrounding me during the day, and during the nights, my ears built up a heightened awareness of the ticking clock, keeping me awake through the night.

“I felt an invisible screen of aloofness surrounding me during the day, and during the nights, my ears built up a heightened awareness of the ticking clock, keeping me awake through the night.”

When I could not sleep, I would sit by the window of my room, staring up at the flickering stars, sometimes at the yellow dim streetlight. I could sense the blankness of my mind, submerged only in her memory, in the stories she told us. All those nights of storytelling, of wonders, suspense, and laughter played in my head, bringing me sometimes a sob. And sometimes a smile.

But the wheel of time turns unstopped, it wears everything off. Slowly, just slowly, histories are forgotten, memories fade, and we move on. In a no different manner, I felt slowly, just slowly, coming back to normalcy, going back to my life. I could stay aware during the day and sleep at night.

“But the wheel of time turns unstopped, it wears everything off. Slowly, just slowly, histories are forgotten, memories fade, and we move on.”

But even then, even after a long time, sometimes I still sit by the window, stare up at the flickering stars, sometimes at the yellow dim streetlight, and just like that, just like revelations, all her stories, all those nights visit me, and once more I feel a touch of her presence, a caress of her stories.