two stories
last week in NC my parents told me two stories that left a deep impression on me - pictures that stayed vivid in my mind long after. nothing terribly special but still...
my dad, for whom i have long cherished a plan to spend a two-week vacation with (preferably in ireland) with a tape recorder and notebook to interview for a biography, told me a little story - don't remember how it came up - ah, now i remember. my father - who will turn 73 this october inshallah - has a very old black-and-white photograph, framed in a dun-colored matting, of himself and two older siblings posed in a portrait photographer's studio. he is six months old in the picture, and wearing a sort of dress, which he said they put on all babies, boy or girl, in those days. (this is, of course, in india, in sagar, 1934). he and his sister are seated in chairs next to each other, and an older brother is sitting on a stool behind them, wearing a white pagri. behind them is a lushly painted backdrop, and the floor has an ornately patterned rug. i have seen this picture many times before (we were trying to see how much musa resembled my dad's baby picture), but this time i noticed, on the floor between my dad and phupho, a tiny doll in a seated position, dressed much the same as my father (a dark outfit with glimmering gold gota outlining it) and a painted head. my dad told me it was just something the photographer had used to get kids to smile, or at least not cry, for photos. this tidbit suddenly opened up the photographer's studio for me - instead of just a picture of my dad and aunt and uncle, it was a window into an old house in colonial india, where somebody had the same occupation as a photographer at any sears portrait studio today - trying to get kids to smile for photos.
that's not the story though!! my dad, in his typical fashion, then suddenly remembered how later on, he and his sister used to walk past the photographer's house every time they went to feed the fish in a nearby pond. my grandmother - whom i never met - would roll tiny balls of flour in oil and the kids would take them out to the pond and toss them into the water. and this window suddenly opened even further - i could picture them walking on a dusty path in the bright sun, rolling the little hard flour balls in their hands, passing by the house of the village photographer. i wonder what they would talk about... bet my dad remembers that, too. his long-term memory is astounding...
on the way back to maryland, when my parents were driving, my mom was telling me about her job. she's a retired psychiatrist, but - in her own typical fashion - she can't not work, and has taken up temporary positions at various hospitals. the current one is a trial for her because it's hectic, lacks resources but has so many new admissions, and the AC went down on the hottest day last week. in her 40-year career she recalled one incident in particular that shook her so much she still remembers it... she was going on about how difficult some of the patients can be (she generally deals with schizophrenics), and remembered one paranoid patient who had simply hit rock bottom. the man was weeping with abandon, she said, utterly emotional, and at one point he turned to her and asked her, "if you were God, what would YOU do with me?"
imagine, being the doctor in charge of this patient - in so many ways, so much of his life is in your hands - and then he throws something like that at you, from the pit of his broken soul. Allah sends you reminders in so many different ways, but it is seldom so stark... i think, for my mom, it was a reminder of both her own responsibility for her patients, and her powerlessness before the true Power.
for both of these stories, the writer in me (is it a bit of the journalist, too?) immediately thought of using these moments in some way, in some story... the first short story i ever wrote in college came from a story my dad told me, about a man in his village who had been bitten by a rabid dog, and the villagers had no way of treating him but could not kill him outright, so they locked him up in a hut and left him there... just left him. to be honest, i can't recall if this is exactly how my dad said it happened, but it made a great story, especially from the point of view of the kids in my story - i made the rabid man a sort of village outcast who happened to make really good toys. ah, fictional license...
anyway, musa has finally gone to sleep (although he has this irritated look on his face, with his eyebrows furrowed) so i am going to try to get a shower in while i still can...
my dad, for whom i have long cherished a plan to spend a two-week vacation with (preferably in ireland) with a tape recorder and notebook to interview for a biography, told me a little story - don't remember how it came up - ah, now i remember. my father - who will turn 73 this october inshallah - has a very old black-and-white photograph, framed in a dun-colored matting, of himself and two older siblings posed in a portrait photographer's studio. he is six months old in the picture, and wearing a sort of dress, which he said they put on all babies, boy or girl, in those days. (this is, of course, in india, in sagar, 1934). he and his sister are seated in chairs next to each other, and an older brother is sitting on a stool behind them, wearing a white pagri. behind them is a lushly painted backdrop, and the floor has an ornately patterned rug. i have seen this picture many times before (we were trying to see how much musa resembled my dad's baby picture), but this time i noticed, on the floor between my dad and phupho, a tiny doll in a seated position, dressed much the same as my father (a dark outfit with glimmering gold gota outlining it) and a painted head. my dad told me it was just something the photographer had used to get kids to smile, or at least not cry, for photos. this tidbit suddenly opened up the photographer's studio for me - instead of just a picture of my dad and aunt and uncle, it was a window into an old house in colonial india, where somebody had the same occupation as a photographer at any sears portrait studio today - trying to get kids to smile for photos.
that's not the story though!! my dad, in his typical fashion, then suddenly remembered how later on, he and his sister used to walk past the photographer's house every time they went to feed the fish in a nearby pond. my grandmother - whom i never met - would roll tiny balls of flour in oil and the kids would take them out to the pond and toss them into the water. and this window suddenly opened even further - i could picture them walking on a dusty path in the bright sun, rolling the little hard flour balls in their hands, passing by the house of the village photographer. i wonder what they would talk about... bet my dad remembers that, too. his long-term memory is astounding...
on the way back to maryland, when my parents were driving, my mom was telling me about her job. she's a retired psychiatrist, but - in her own typical fashion - she can't not work, and has taken up temporary positions at various hospitals. the current one is a trial for her because it's hectic, lacks resources but has so many new admissions, and the AC went down on the hottest day last week. in her 40-year career she recalled one incident in particular that shook her so much she still remembers it... she was going on about how difficult some of the patients can be (she generally deals with schizophrenics), and remembered one paranoid patient who had simply hit rock bottom. the man was weeping with abandon, she said, utterly emotional, and at one point he turned to her and asked her, "if you were God, what would YOU do with me?"
imagine, being the doctor in charge of this patient - in so many ways, so much of his life is in your hands - and then he throws something like that at you, from the pit of his broken soul. Allah sends you reminders in so many different ways, but it is seldom so stark... i think, for my mom, it was a reminder of both her own responsibility for her patients, and her powerlessness before the true Power.
for both of these stories, the writer in me (is it a bit of the journalist, too?) immediately thought of using these moments in some way, in some story... the first short story i ever wrote in college came from a story my dad told me, about a man in his village who had been bitten by a rabid dog, and the villagers had no way of treating him but could not kill him outright, so they locked him up in a hut and left him there... just left him. to be honest, i can't recall if this is exactly how my dad said it happened, but it made a great story, especially from the point of view of the kids in my story - i made the rabid man a sort of village outcast who happened to make really good toys. ah, fictional license...
anyway, musa has finally gone to sleep (although he has this irritated look on his face, with his eyebrows furrowed) so i am going to try to get a shower in while i still can...
posted by Ayesha | 11:19 AM
1 Comments:
Oh how lovely the imagery is. You should develop these stories for sure!
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