City Smells

Wintry midnight; a nostalgia wells up. A perceptible whiff tickles the nostrils through wispy air. Dimly lit street lamps bestow light on strays lying on an alley’s concrete shell; thick fog hides its dark debris, rendering it invisible to the naked eye, but a smell heightens sensory perception; a city sleeps, unhinged like exposed skeletons by a mossy wall of a welding factory. 

A green pond centers the factory—nature’s blissful basin, which is the last of the seasonal water lilies garlands. The factory labourers bathe here in the bitter winds each afternoon. Soap-soaked bodies dip into the pond, refreshed before lunch. A wholesome hot meal is cooked on gas stoves by the pond. 

Already in the grips of the alley smells from open dustbins and pungent stray smells, an overpowering third smell makes breathing hard; terrified barks and human squeals tear up the skies. A groggy, shell-shocked alley wakes up to a veiled fogged-up midnight—smokes hang large; noisy buckets drop cling-clang on the ground in haste; sirens of fire trucks, and a few explosives sound off an alarm. 

The strays stop barking; squeals quieten down. The burning dissipates. The morning fog falls long on a singed city. All the city’s smells are now buried in the ground. The livid labourers jostle on the far side of a still, solemn pond; where half-submerged charred bodies emerge. On the edge of the pond, a gas leak is the cause. 

Much is lost in the heat of the moment. No hot meals on tame heaters; or soapy jumps into the green pond—a hotbed of water-burial of a singed city.  However, at a gentle nudge of the pond, water lilies re-group, and re-gather with a promising new dance. A dove flies low kissing the green pond below.

Ghazal

I only remember the last two lines. Humming them repeatedly, rummaging through my memory to find the whole song. I wish to remember it, to sing it all. But I must contend myself with a partial two-line, because the rest is history. What I hum all day is: ‘heart’s desires always remain unfulfilled, where are you, where are you, my love?’

The more I sing, the more abundant is the yearning; the more the broken lines beckon me to sing them. Engulfing a part of me; until the lines become me like the mourning Electra—enduring; forever searching; forever restive.

Cage

He sits in his dark room like a caged beast. Only a window is his opening to the outer world. His interaction with birds and flower satisfies him. No one chains him as such. A master of everything he beholds, his world isn’t small in his isolation until one day, he hears a song, not the singer, is when he feels passionate to seek her. The melody knocks him over. Only then he realises that he has a life and what he misses by not being out there. When he rises to go out, though, he can’t.

…

Mehreen Ahmed is an internationally acclaimed Australian novelist. She has won contests and awards also, nominated for Pushcart, four botN and James Tait.