By Cyril Dabydeen
He wavered, he kept thinking– imagining, Dr Aziz did, hoping to meet his wife somewhere after, and he began to love her only after being married, now thinking with an English sentiment… being a medical doctor.
He amused himself thinking about this; she was gone, and there was no one really like his wife; over time he began to feel she’d sent all the beauty and joy of the world into Paradise! Would he meet her again beyond the grave?
He’d lost the sensuous feeling gradually,
for his relatives had chosen her to be
his wife; but, you see, the feeling would
have disappeared after a while in
nature’s way; and being himself only,
in the Muslim manner.
Belief in the life to come, almost like
Christian epiphany, which paled to a hope,
then reappeared in a dozen heart-beats:
the corpuscles in his blood deciding
which opinion he should hold long–
as nothing ever strayed, nothing passed
that didn`t return, the circulation being
ceaseless, it kept him young, for he truly
mourned his wife, her selfdom.
She became a mother to his son– and in giving him a second son she’d died; Aziz realized what he had lost, and no woman could ever take her place; now what is the uniqueness of love anyway? Could Miss Quested tell? Mrs Moore…let her be!
Ah, let Mrs Moore be her own self –an echo divine, and oh, let it be a declaration, about where we go from here, not to the Marabar caves again, you see. Aziz will keep asking with tremor in his veins; with Professor Godbole saying “Come, come,” in his Brahmin`s way! Adapted from E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.
LEAVING
I kiss you my chair, table, typewriter, I kiss you all; I take offence at this leaving, a feeling bursting in my heart with words alone I cannot tell.
Artefacts, signs of creativity– compelling moments really sharing parts of myself & asking you to forgive me for not giving of my best.
Momentum of blood & bone, a bleeding heart in my archive of feelings with wood & plaster I bring to you, the years’ testament only.
Cyril Dabydeen is a recent prize winner in the International Short Story in English Conference and the Strands International Flash Fiction contest. His stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, e.g. Prairie Schooner and World Literature Today/USA. His short fiction books include My Undiscovered Country, Play a Song Somebody, My Brahmin Days, and North of the Equator. He is Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus.
