the bird that got away

Manne'-kaak sat by his favorite window smoking hookah. The gray outdoors were slowly seeping into his soul.

A thick whorl of smoke swirled from Nazir Mohammad’s chimney carrying the acrid smell of cow-dung mixed with straw burning. It wafted over the ledge of the bordering red-brick wall, whirled down the young pomegranate tree's tender branches and dipped into the old stone-well's darkness, only to re-emerge its ordure narily dampened.

MK's gaze and thoughts lifted above the smoke. One day out of so many lived appeared in his mind’s eye.

It was hazy but strangely alive. A dusk on a day like this one.

He was walking holding grandfather's hand across the kaedal. They were returning from the fish-market weaving through faceless throngs of pheran-bearers. The broad back-streets on the way home were strewn with stacks of dried firewood heaped alongside narrow runny drains. Neighborhood Musalmaan urchins with runny noses were shepherding old pumped-up bicycle tires with misshapen reeds torn from oddly-elbowed tree-twigs. Low-hanging power-lines sagged under the chorus of cackling crows and sparrows  (he would imagine them exchanging stories about their day in the city). The speckling and splotching of their deposits were blotting out entire street tiles below.

Bai-toth had bought him a brightly-colored patridge covered in soft cloth and sequined with little shiny beads for eyes. It was stuffed with what felt like grain or sawdust. Squeezing the texture between his thumb and fingers had brought new sensations.

His sister Behne must not have been born yet or was perhaps an infant still. It was almost dark outside.

Manne' leaned against the low mud wall layered under a wooden beam (that served as base to the kitchen entrance) he rested his elbows upon and beheld the toy. His lips curled into a half-smile of boyish anticipation. How long he played for he couldn’t recall for time was of a different grain then;  a boundless sea of moments.

It was then that he began his long intimation with inner warmth borne of solitude.

His senses slowly sating with impressions of the lifeless bird, his spirit was becoming still too. Gradually recovering his surroundings,  he gently pushed the toy into his favorite cache; a cavity in the mud wall that he thought resembled Bai-toth's ear canal.

One cold and sunny morning a few days later, Manne' excitedly reached into the orifice for a ritual sensation of his new companion. His fingers only wiggled blindly inside in growing panic. All they felt was a slithering column of cool heavy dank air.

Thus arrived the primal moment of loss in Manohar’s many days on this planet. The question of who or what had robbed him (and his incipient faith in permanence of objects) had not even been conceived. Not to speak of why.

He would never find out.