Even Gold Rusts

I am pensive during the drive to the hospital. I lean against the open window, enjoying the movie of rushing scenery and sweating pedestrians before me. Eventually the familiarity of the view and the gentle humming of the car lull me into introspection. Dreams half remembered creep into the fore of my mind.   

Dada. I am going to see him at the hospital. The acceptance of this fact triggers memories of his frail body covered with a thin baby blue sheet, of echoes of his once sonorous voice urging me to concentrate on my exams and of the mute smell of antiseptic. It surprises me a little to realise how deeply I'd buried these memories in these past two weeks. But, then again there was the wedding and exams to preoccupy me. Two words form a banner in front of my eyes: 'beautiful excuses'.

Dada. I am going to see my grandfather at the hospital. The acceptance of this fact triggers memories of his deceptively youthful physique, of his lean muscular limbs, of a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and of me falling behind him as we jog together by the lake. This looks right. It also brings back memories of his booming voice striking the fear of God into everyone within a 10 meter radius. This sounds right. Then arrives the memories of expensive bottles of imported cologne lined neatly in front of a spotless mirror. This smells right. It surprises me a little how easy these memories were to retrieve. One word floats in front of my eyes: denial.

Dada. I am going to see a dying man at the hospital. This man is my grandfather. The very same hard-boiled military man who brought me up, the same man who everyone at school recognised as my father, the same man who changed the light bulbs in my room and the same man I had forgotten in the whirlwind of my adolescence. He is now the man lying in a rickety metal bed feeding from a bag of creamy fluid hanging above his head. The skeleton of a human I am going to visit.

We arrive at the hospital, my mother and I. Slowly but surely, I feel all the fun, makeup and laughter of the past fortnight melt away as the numbers displayed on the elevator monitor increase. We walk down the corridor and my legs feel like match sticks. I feel almost nauseous. Somehow we reach his room and my mother gently knocks and pushes the door open.

The first thing I see is bright red.

My newlywed sister decked in a scarlet sari is holding dada's hand.  For a moment I could see nothing but them. The orange rays of dusk set afire the scarlet and gold of the sari. A heavy gold necklace studded with rubies dangles from her neck. She is bending over dada, so her dark hair bathed in sunlight is covering her face. Her gold-ringed hand is clutching his fingers. I stare at his hand. There is but the thinnest layer of wrinkled skin covering the bones of his fingers and it seems as though there is no blood running through the visible blue veins.
I take a step back. I hear the sounds now. My sister is trying to tell dada that she is here with her husband all dressed up so he can see her as a bride and bless them. She is sobbing a little. Her husband is there right beside her, whispering unintelligible words of comfort. Dada is trying to speak, but all that come out are gasps and gurgles. My mother asks the nurse whether dada had gotten any sleep or not?

Dada is straining to open his eyes. For the brief second that he does, I notice they are unusually bright. He chokes out a single word: shundor. My sister starts fully crying now and with her hand still holding onto dada's she buries her head in her husband's chest.

I smell the antiseptic now. Miraculously, I find the strength to walk out of the room and no one stops me. In the corridor I stand statue still.

I am twelve years old and I am sitting in a rickshaw beside dada. We are stuck in traffic. He is telling me stories of the war. I am getting bored. “Dada, chips khabo”, I say. He looks at me, smiles and gets down from the rickshaw. He meanders his way around the cars to the mudir dokan and buys a packet of chips…

I am seventeen years old and I am standing in a hospital corridor. The first tear finally tumbles down my cheek. I collapse to the floor as my legs give in to gravity. The tears fall into my fingers as I cup my face with my hands. And, like a child I keep chanting: he is going to get better. He is going to get better.

He is going to get better. In sha Allah.

The writer, 17, is a grade 12 student at Sir John Wilson School.