Holidays with Ma
Zahirra Dayal
I’m six years old and it’s the school holidays. I’ve already packed my little suitcase with clothes to stay with Ma. She’s my paternal grandmother and I am her favourite. I’m so excited to be going on holiday to her house at No. 63 Wyvern Ave, Belvedere, Harare, Zimbabwe, Southern Africa, which is only down the road from where we live. When she opens the door, her eyes light up and the big brown mole on her face winks at me as she smiles. She takes my little bag and leads me in.
We spend the day eating salty popcorn and roasted corn and peanuts while we watch Indian movies. We laugh so hard we have to clutch our stomachs when the woman dances around the trees and her elaborate outfits keep changing, but the time passes quickly and soon it’s bedtime.
I jump into Ma’s double bed. She switches off the lamp and I wrap my little arms around her rotund body, falling into a deep sleep. In the middle of the night, I wake up to find she is gone. I feel cold and my heart beats quickly in my chest, but when I look across the room, I am calm again; she is on her prayer mat, transfixed. Her body is here but she is far away, and there are tears in her eyes as she lifts her clasped hands into the air. I don’t disturb her. I lie awake and wait for her to finish talking to God.
The next day, Ma has visitors. There are always people walking in and out of the house and she is always feeding them. I’m helping her in the kitchen and she tells me to get the rose syrup from the pantry, where it sits in a thick, velvety suspension in the long glass bottle on the top shelf. Ma’s tiny pantry is a treasure chest of never-ending, mouth-watering delights that line the shelves in colourful tins and jars. I have to stand on the tip of my toes or get a wooden stool to reach the things that I want when I’m in there.
Ma takes the red bottle and pours the luscious red liquid, and it glides gracefully out of the bottle into the saucepan of milk. She’s making kheer, my favourite dessert. The rose syrup is like magic; it turns the white milk into a soft pink. Then she throws the washed rice into the boiling milk and stirs. I watch the wooden spoon whirl around the pot and the steam rising from the cooker float upward and disappear. Ma adds almond slivers, desiccated coconut, cardamom, condensed milk, sugar and cinnamon, all sticking to the frothing liquid.
She watches over the pot attentively, listening to the sound made by each ingredient. They tell her when to lower the heat, stir more vigorously or take the pot off the stove. She gives me some to taste. The kheer is still warm when it settles in my stomach and I suck my lips with the residues of sweetness from the rose syrup.
After she serves the guests, I hide behind her on the brown sofa in the living room. Her friends all talk at the same time so I don’t know who to look at. Their mouths move in a pattern I don’t understand. I only recognise the anger and passion behind their words. They’re speaking Urdu and the conversation becomes more and more animated as hands fly up, eyes roll, and mouths drop open to reveal wide pink gaps where teeth used to be. When one of the ladies pierces me with her unkind eyes, magnified by her round glasses, I take Ma’s long, silver strands and wrap them around my face. I’m warm and safe here, nothing can hurt me.
When her neighbourhood friends leave, Ma says we can go out into the garden. I follow her like a shadow as she surveys her beds of green chillies and coriander, and her mango trees with trays of mango wedges drying in the sun for the pickles she will make. We go to the front yard and sit on the long black swinging chair under the avocado tree. We both love the magic chair; it squeaks as it lifts us up towards the sky, and we are flying. The sound of Ma’s laugh ringing out like the school bell fills me with warmth. The wind kisses my ears as we rise, and as we go down towards the bed of shiny grass, a little fairy does somersaults in my stomach.
“Go higher!” I shout, clinging to the edge of the soaring chair.
It’s October, the beginning of the rainy season, so we race inside when the drops start to fall on our heads. Ma lifts her orange scarf to cover her hair. I watch the pearl drops sliding down the window in the living room. It doesn’t rain for long, and the smell of wet earth floats in the air after the rain beats down like drums on the aluminium roof of the garage. I run barefoot on the wet grass.
The black chongololos climb up from the depths of the earth after the rain disturbs their long sojourn. I take a short, thin twig and stand it upright near a baby chongololo. It wiggles and then wraps itself around my twig like a wheel. I try to count the rings on its body, but it doesn’t stay still for long enough. The mummy chongololo calls it back to her and my chongololo leaves.
The doctor says Ma should exercise her legs every day, so we go out for a walk after she prays the late afternoon prayer called Asr. I wait impatiently by her side pulling at her scarf and jump up in delight when she rolls up her prayer mat twenty minutes later. We walk under the umbrella of Jacaranda trees that frame the roads around her house. They remind me of my younger brother; the purple haze makes his eyes itch, burn, and turn bright red. My mother always says, “Stop scratching or you’ll make it worse!” But he doesn’t stop scratching and it makes him look like he has been crying.
The Jacarandas will be leaving soon. Their purple blooms, just like these beautiful moments with Ma, are ephemeral. Too delicate to grasp, they will slip through my tiny fingers until, grown up, I recall them again.
Zahirra is teacher and writer based in London. She was born in Zimbabwe and has also lived in South Africa and The United Arab Emirates. Her stories have been published in various literary magazines including: The Mechanics Institute Review, Briefly Zine, small leaf press, Off Menu Press and more. She is a Jericho Writers bursary winner. She can be found on Twitter at @ZahirraD and on Instagram @zahirrawrites.
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