The Knotted Kerchief

The evening call to prayer from the mosque was fading away into the city noise. In the lane of their neighborhood in Lahore the smell of fried food from a neighbor's house mixed with the dry hot smell of summer. Inside their rented house the air was thick with the quiet worry of a family waiting to see what would happen next.

Nasrin, the mother, was in the kitchen scraping the last bit of lentils from the bottom of the pot. The food was not enough for the four of them. She added a water and salt to make it taste better. She learned this from her mother.

In the room, which was used for everything, from sleeping, dining, and studying, a single fan was struggling against the heat. Amna, the daughter, was studying for her final exams. Her eyes were tired from studying late at night.

“Ammi do we have milk for tea?” she asked, not looking up from her book. Her voice was flat like she did not really expect an answer.

“We do not have milk, beta,” Nasrin replied, trying to sound neutral. “But we can have black tea.” She looked at a worn-out purse in the kitchen. It had their savings, a few thousand rupees that had to last until the end of the month. Her husband, Asif, would send his paycheck in two weeks.

Zara and Hira, the two daughters, were in the small backyard whispering and laughing. Zara showed Hira a pair of earrings she had bought. “Look what I got from the market,” she said. “They look like Ammi's ones don't they?”

Hira's eyes widened. “They are pretty, but Ammi will be upset if she knows you spent money on them.” “They are just for a hundred rupees,” said Zara.

Every afternoon the neighborhood children would come to their house for tuition. Nasrin and Amna had been teaching them for two years, charging a fee to cover some extra groceries.

As the children arrived Nasrin watched them with a heart. They were the children of laborers and street vendors. Their parents trusted Nasrin with their kids believing that education was the way out of poverty. Nasrin was teaching others children while struggling to afford fees for her own.

The children settled down. Amna started writing on the small blackboard. For two hours the house was full of laughter and learning.

In the kitchen Nasrin was sorting dishes while the tuition was going on. She glanced around cautiously. Took out a secret bundle from a small clay pot. It was wrapped in a cloth and tied tightly. Inside were her family's precious belongings, a pair of earrings, two simple gold rings and a plain band. She touched each piece reverently, praying that they would be enough for her daughters' futures.

She wrapped the jewelry back in the cloth. Put it back in the clay pot, hiding it beneath the dried chilies. No one would think to look.

The afternoon sun was hot, making everyone sleepy. The tuition session had just ended. The children had left. There was a knock at the door. Amna got up to answer it. Two women stood there smiling warmly. “Beta, are you the family that gives tuition to the neighborhood children?” one of them asked. “We've just moved in. We want to enroll our children in your tuition center.”

The girls welcomed them in. Nasrin offered them tea, and untied the corner of her dupatta, where a single folded fifty-rupee note had been tucked away for small emergencies, and gave it to Zara to bring some milk.

The women chatted about the importance of education, and complimented the girls on their manners.

Nasrin showed them the house, of the small space where the children learned. The women admired the courtyard, the blackboard and the books. Then one of the women's eyes lingered on the kitchen doorway. “What a kitchen, Aunty,” she said, her voice sweet. “May I take a look? I'm always looking for ideas to organize my kitchen.”

Before Nasrin could say anything the woman had stepped inside; her eyes darting from shelf to shelf. She paused at the clay pot in the corner, the one with the dried chilies. Nasrin felt an unease, a cold prickle, at the back of her neck.

“Ammi, the tea is ready,” Amna called from the room, breaking the tension.

The woman's hand dropped. She smiled, a smile. “Lovely,” she said, stepping out of the kitchen. “You have such a home.”

They drank the tea. The women asked about the girls' studies.

The slender woman shifted in her seat. “Aunty, may I use your bathroom before we leave?” she asked. Nasrin pointed down the hallway, “It's the door on the left, beta.”

The woman was gone for a minute. When she returned she was putting her dupatta back into the place. “Thank you much for your hospitality, Aunty. You have been so kind. We'll come back tomorrow with our daughter and the admission fees.”

The women rose to leave. Nasrin walked them to the door; her heart was lighter than it had been in weeks. New students meant a little more money.

It was only after Nasrin had washed the tea cups and settled back into her routine that she felt an inexplicable urge to check the clay pot. A mother's intuition, an alarm that had been quietly screaming in the back of her mind since the slender woman had visited the kitchen.

She walked to the kitchen slowly, her feet heavy. She reached the corner where the clay pot stood. Her hands trembled as she lifted it. It was lighter. Much lighter. The dried chilies were still there.

She thrust her hand inside; her fingers frantically scrabbling through the flakes. Nothing. She turned the pot down and the chilies spilled onto the floor. The clay pot rolled away, spinning in a lazy mocking circle before coming to a halt against the wall.

The knotted cloth was gone. The earrings. The rings. All of it. Gone.

Her scream was not a scream at all. It was a guttural wail that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her soul, a sound that Amna and Zara and Hira had never heard their mother make. They came running, their faces draining of color as they saw their mother on her knees in the sea of scattered chilies. Her hands empty. Her eyes widened with a consuming horror.

Amna's face went white. “Ammi, the pot... Where is the cloth?”

Zara was already sobbing, her cheap earrings swinging violently as she shook her head in disbelief. Hira stood frozen, her hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide with a terror that made her look like a frightened child.

Nasrin ran to the door, throwing it open. The lane was empty. The oppressive afternoon sun blazed down on the street. A stray dog was sniffing at a pile of garbage. The women were gone. Vanished. As if they had never existed.

She stood there for a moment; her body trembling, her breath coming in gasps. The neighbor's houses were silent. The children who had come for tuition were long gone. The lane that had been so full of life hours ago was now a vast empty chasm. There was no one to call out to. No one to chase. Just the endless oppressive silence of a world that had already moved on.

Her mind was a storm of images. Her mother's face as she placed the earrings in her hands on her wedding day. Her husband's eyes as he slid the ring onto her finger. The countless nights she had picked this very cloth just to touch the gold; just to remind herself that there was still something.

Slowly she turned back. She walked past her sobbing daughters as if they were ghosts, as if she were a ghost herself. She made her way to the kitchen. Stood in the middle of the scattered chilies, her feet crunching on the dried red flakes. She picked up the clay pot, cradling it in her arms like a child, and placed it back in its corner, as if by some impossible miracle the jewelry might reappear.