Останься, дочь / Stay, Daughter

The paddy field in Weeraketiya, she used to get a bag of rice once or twice a year, but the rest of the properties, nobody knows what happened to them.”

“What do you mean, no one knows what happened to them?”

Aunt Asiyatha leaned over and lowered her voice. “Don’t tell your father I told you, you know how he is when anyone speaks badly of his relations, but they say a man, one of our relatives, he brought your Wappumma all kinds of papers, got her to rub ink on her thumb and put it down, and one by one the properties were gone.

We think they were sold off.”

“But what was written on those papers?”

“Allah, child, how would your grandmother have known?”

My father’s mother could not read or write. She couldn’t tell time or make out a calendar. She needed help counting money.

“When were you born, Wappumma?” I once asked her.

“When was I born? My mother told me it was during Uncle Omar’s wedding. Cousin Fathuma was just learning the aleph, bey, thay of the Quran, and her little brother had begun to eat solid food.

That’s when I was born.”

“No, which year? How old are you?”

Wappumma knitted her brow and shook her head.

My grandmother’s life kept rhythm with the moon; she kept track of its waxing and waning. Every four weeks or so, when it seemed about time, she stepped out into the garden and searched the night sky. If she spotted what she was looking for – the faintest of crescents glowing in the dark – she hurried to announce that a new month had begun.

Her days began when the stars came out; she said her Friday prayers on Thursday night.

Though she fathomed little about things outside her home, Wappumma was convinced she understood the workings of the world. Someone envious had cast the spell that had taken her husband and comfortable life away. How else could it all have ended like that? But she protected her family now. She hung amulets on her son and daughter – sachets of magical charms tied with thick black string and secured around arms and necks and waists.

They warded off the evil eye and the evil tongue, and the many other evil vapors the whole village knew were waiting to enter the unsuspecting orifices of children. She said special prayers at nighttime, too, to keep away the demon jinns.

Once, she found a pumpkin in her backyard that no one could account for. Who had thrown it there? Maybe that same evil person who had cast the first spell.