Voice Recording 02

Recorded: 5th July Friday

Hola, Hana!

You may want to hold on tight for this one, I am steaming up in here where my literally damaged brain sits and how can I not be when it's another Friday and you're with your friends again. I called over Nashwa after so long because I couldn't bear the loneliness. We tried what we used to do with you together as a trio on Fridays until that is, you found a different company instead. Without you, we only ended up wasting hours of effort and feeding ourselves with Knorr instant noodles when the cake we tried baking first burned on the base and then turned out to be coal on the inside too.

Like everyone's heart these days.

Wait, let me drink some cold lemu pani first, another instant thing and not the fine lemonade you could make but you're not here and what's even the point of me ranting on this stupid tablet of mine when you might never actually look into my eyes to see what I want to say. Human nature is tragic in itself or otherwise I think it's just another damage in my brain that I can't just say to you in actual: Hana, I'm sorry, can we talk about what happened two years ago?

But would that stop you from hanging out with your friends so much?

What if you've found they really are the sort of people you click right with?

What if they're your real soul tribe?

Gah! I hope and pray not because that just makes me curse bad things at them like endless dandruff and rapid hair fall and multiple pimples on their special day and also yes, ugly fat husbands that are double their age and also bald.

Would you still hang out with them then? Bald, ugly, acne prone girls?

I think you would because you used to hang out with Nashwa and me and though I'm brain damaged and Nashwa's just furious and catty about everything, you cherished us for our hearts until they rotted too.

How do I fix a rotten heart?

How does Dadi fix rotten plants upstairs?

Is cutting them off the only way to save the rest of the garden?

Is there really no remedy?

Urghhh. I can't.

I can't take all this mental torture and frustration because Mama's preparing dinner now and Dadi's doing her crochet and Baano is furious at us for making a mess of the kitchen and Nashwa's gone because she and Baano had an outrageous argument too and I don't know what to do with my worthless, useless self!

I have been talking to you like this more and more and I'm deleting them all off because they're all about my anime, Korean shows and movies and stuff you just don't watch and though you'd listen to me pour my heart about them for hours had the Fight not happened, you're ... unfriendly with me now.

We do make short talk, you ask me which shirt looks better, I say that one. I ask you if you can make me chocolate pancakes for breakfast next morning, you say you have to head out early for your community service, you'll make them on Sunday and that's just all it is.

Of course, we're sisters, we couldn't just be silent to each other for all our lives, we have to communicate because we live in the same room and if we didn't, the elders would make us sit down, talk briefly about what's bothering us and we wouldn't bother telling them what's in our heart because they don't even speak our language, they'd just make us shake our hands, hug each other, thinking to themselves, they're just kids, what do they know of life's troubles? And see, that wasn't so difficult to sort out was it?

Little do they know every person's affliction is an absolute torment on them no matter if it's just a little prick on the finger or a heartbreak over a lost sister.

And things don't sort out just like that, if only we could talk for real, meet each other's eyes, stop pretending we're okay with everything when we're not.

Allah, I can still taste burnt eggs and the bitterest taste of the cocoa we added so generously to the batter, what were we even thinking! That's right. Nashwa said: zaiqa dill khol ke! Add flavours with an open heart.

Let me snort at that!

Honestly, I miss your bakings with my tummy, tongue, heart and soul. Even though you do bake now, once in two months sometimes, it tastes heavenly but it just doesn't taste the same as it did before the Fight. I don't know if it's because it lacks your love or there's a bitterness of my own in my resentful soul that tinges my taste buds too. We're all to blame equally after all. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself whenever I think I should step forward and initiate the talk we need to talk.

Lo and behold!

Here we go again, Hanaan's memory curse activates, I remember the day you baked your first chocolate cake all by yourself, Mama just guided you from afar. You turned seven that day, I was yet to turn four in January but Allah! You have been a professional baker since you were born.

Perhaps it was genetics? From Mama to you?

What did I get? A lot of clown genes from Baba's side I think.

Which reminds me, Nashwa and I tried playing basketball today as the twins came over with her. While playing, I was wondering why the ball was getting bigger and bigger. Then it hit me.

You can roll your eyes at that but let me laugh.

So, your big day, your seventh birthday, what a tragic day it was!

You had all your ingredients laid out on the countertop, allowing the eggs and refrigerated flour to come to room temperature before you started. Mama put an apron on you and a hair net too because professionalism automatically increases quality of food. I don't think Nashwa and I even bothered washing our hands today before making the batter and stuffed our licked fingers into it multiple times too to taste if the sugar was right. Well, that's just how we roll!

So while you were setting out all the ingredients, I came into the kitchen on the agreement with Mama that I would not interfere and just watch from afar. That flew right out of my three-almost-four year old head when I saw the eggs on the counter and reached for one. Surprisingly, I did grasp onto it and for my love of eggs, I bit right into it! Let us both gag at that as we imagine it in our heads. Little Hanaan, in a tiny shirt and a diaper weighed down by gravity and its own contents, biting with her front two teeth into a raw egg and then yellow slime dripping down her front.

Bleurgh!

No wonder I'm even more messed up today. But was that it? Hana, do you remember more of what happened later on? I do. And I laugh about it to this day because at that instant, I suppose in her own love of eggs that we never fed her, our beloved white Persian cat, my beloved and cherished Anna Sofia leapt around my legs and I lost my balance. I reached out to hold onto something and guess what I held onto in that world-tilting moment? Three more eggs!

On your seventh birthday, I treated myself with an egg bath!

Happy egg-day, Hana!

I smelled absolutely lovely later when Mama bathed me with half a soap, quarter of a bottle of shampoo and a full bottle of baby powder while Baano de-egg-tised the kitchen and you just watched everything numbly, wondering in that seven year old little head, after all this chaos, should you add more utensils to wash by making that cake you had not even started yet. Mama gave you my part of the scolding and told you to woman up, stop thinking so much about everything and not always compromise your own happiness over the troubles of others. You didn't look convinced and you weren't up until two years ago when you made it your motto. You let go of everything and anything that came in the way of your happiness and though it has made you glow so differently, helped you lose so much weight, it has also killed the girl in you that was my sister.

My Hana.

Could you not have done all that without distancing yourself emotionally and mentally from me?

Was I that toxic to you?

God dammit, why can't this tablet not answer me on your behalf, how is technology still such a child's play??

So when Mama told me it was because of my mess that Hana no longer wanted to bake her birthday cake and I wouldn't be able to eat any, I came over to you and asked you if it was true. You were so overwhelmed by the chaos, you couldn't answer me, your lower lip was quivering, your puffy cheeks were huffed up and your eyes teary enough wouldn't meet my gaze. I tried lifting up the corners of your mouth with my hands to make you smile but just ended up pinching you instead and you pushed me away lightly.

It wasn't easy seeing you like that so I began crying, like really loud wailing crying about how I wanted to eat cake and you wouldn't bake it for me and I started screaming at Anna Sofia for ruining all chances of me eating cake and it just ended up with you also beginning to cry and Mama asking us both which wall she should go and bang her head against. After a while we started laughing when Anna Sofia came from the kitchen, a hair net on her own head and a kitchen cloth wrapped around her tummy like an apron— I suspect it was Baano, she must have wanted to eat cake too — and we laughed and you agreed to bake the cake then.

I held Anna Sofia tightly in my arms as I watched you from the countertop cracking the eggs so perfectly in the bowl. You sifted the flour with such easy motions of your wrist. You stirred the beater in the eggs with your right hand and added sugar with your left without breaking a blender, three drinking glasses and toppling a chair over as I would have had I been in your place. I watched you in awe the way you measured oil and then put it in the eggs and sugar mixture. You found it a little too difficult to fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients so Mama helped with that. You poured the deliciously chocolate molten slowly pouring batter into the circle pan which you had already aligned with baking sheet and greased with oil. You placed it into the oven and with Baano, you transferred all the dirty utensils into the sink. You pulled out a new bowl and poured cream in it. You added sugar and more cocoa to it and some milk too before stirring in the beater in it. You placed it in the freezer while the cake baked in the oven, the sweet smell of chocolate and cake wafting in the air and tickling my nose.

Anna Sofia had shifted in my arms then and I had chided her.

No cake for the hungry if Hana's angry.

We sat in front of the oven then, you me and Anna Sofia and she licked the chocolate batter on your neck while you cried out for help. We watched the cake rise and then crack slightly on the top. You quickly had Baano pull it out of the oven, poked a toothpick to see if it came clean but it didn't, it had some dry batter on it, I think? That assures the fudginess I suppose. You set it on a grill to leave it to cool and then you layered the frosting cream on it— I drooled all over my shirt and Baano quickly got me a change of clothes before Mama could see me and for real, bang her head against a wall.

Let me mention it as an honorary mention, it was my fifth change of clothes that day.

When the cake was layered with the cream, you decorated it with colourful sprinkles on its edges. Had I been in your place, I would have entirely covered it with sprinkles, but even back then, you had a sense of 'art' and 'balance' and wouldn't overdo it on happiness. Too much of anything is toxic you say. You set the cake in the fridge and told me sternly not to open the fridge even to stare at the cake like I was all that time and sighing too at its magnificence.

Hayee, it looked so yummy.

It was seven already and we were expecting Baba and Mamu to come over too. We had invited Nashwa also but Nashwa's Haala Mami had refused saying if Ahmad Mamu was coming over, he'd bring a big gift and she would not allow Nashwa to watch her father smile and hug someone else while he wouldn't even cast a look at her. Mama insisted she would not allow such cruelty to happen under her roof, after all, Nashwa was her brother's daughter, she was dear to her but Haala Mami was insistent and rough, I caught all that from your expression and because you were listening onto them on the phone call.

Back then, if Mama was on a call on the landline from her room, you could listen to her conversation by picking up the receiver of the telephone in the lounge. It was how we discovered our inner spy. It was also when you started guilt tripping yourself at everything Mamu did for you because you realised he did not do it for Nashwa too.

It's true, you grew up too early, too soon.

Because when you went to get ready in your fairy blue frock and matching tiara for your birthday celebration, took your sweet time to bathe and put powder on your face and hairdry your hair with Dadi's hair dryer that she only allowed us to use in winters, Mamu and Baba had arrived and in my awe of you, I rushed them to the kitchen to show them the beautiful cake you had made.

Hana baked a cake! Hana baked a cake!

When you stepped out of the room, glowing like a real magical water princess with all the grace of water too, you saw something that shattered your heart in tiny little pieces that cut you on the inside with their sharp edges. In the space between our lounge and kitchen, was your beautiful cake— splattered on the floor.

I remember the shock on your face so plain clear. To see all your effort, your first chocolate cake, on your birthday too, splattered on the floor out of shape, no proof of the perfection you had made it with. It was like you lost all the trust in this world. I also remember my own heart, lurching to my mouth, ready to cry out, hating on the horror.

Because while everyone was ushering to each other to quickly pick up the cake and hide it before Hana sees and were planning how to evade the cake until later, 'we could go out for dinner first' and other such plans, it was only I who saw you there behind everyone else, standing and watching with your mouth open, your existence entirely still, asking with your eyes, surely that can't be my cake?

But it was. It was. It was.

Oh, Hana. I don't want to continue this.

Ahmad Mamu turned around first. He held up his hands and gave you a very apologetic look. "Oops?"

You showed no reaction, still in a trance.

"Hana." He raked a hand through his hair, laughing awkwardly. "I was so very hungry and your Mama told me you made a cake. And then I slipped on your cat—"

The first tear slipped then, Mama took me into her arms, one hand holding onto her heart. Baba came over to you but you pushed him away and that was the first and only day in my life I saw you taken over by rage. You didn't look like the Hana you do look like when you're angry, just going silent, crying on the inside, tearing down on the outside, all so very silently and softly.

That day we saw the monster in you, you lashed out at Mamu, you hit him with both your hands and you only reached till his waist. You hiccupped, you screamed, you wailed out and cried and he picked you up despite the fact you had told him numerous times before not to do so since you were now a grown up girl and you continued lashing out at his chest, eyes bloodshot red, cheeks splotched, entirely heartbroken and inhuman.

This was not the Hana little Hanaan knew. Or was she? Is this what Hana would become soon?

I couldn't take it, from Mama's arms I cried out: "Stop, Hana!"

You did.

Mama tried shushing me, putting a hand onto my mouth but I bit her to her flesh. With tears in my own eyes, I hiccupped. "He didn't do it." From under my lashes I confessed, "I did."

I always do it. Ruin everything for you.

I saw all the energy in you drain away, all that wilderness that took over you, it evaporated into thin air like a whoosh and you slumped numb into Mamu's arms who held you closer to him. For a moment yet again, you were in shock and I'll make this quick now because my heart can't take it anymore. You were numb and though he whispered things to you in your ear, running his fingers through your hair, your eyes were so so far away.

Everyone was saying something, I was crying with my head buried in Mama's chest but you didn't respond for a very long time. When you did, it was by looking at Mamu's face where you had scratched him on the cheek. You bowed your head and apologized to him. He was taken aback. You got out of his grasp and onto the ground. Our Dada and Dadi holding each other's hand watched you quietly too to see what you would do next but I don't think you knew either what to do. You turned away and headed back to our room and I was quick to follow after, tripping two times on my way there.

Surprisingly, no one followed after us.

You sat on your bed, knees to your chest, so quiet. Why weren't you lashing out at me, why weren't you hitting me? I asked you from afar: "Are you angry, Hana?"

You shook your head no, hiccupped and then said, "I think I'm just very very sad."

"Promise?"

You nodded and two tears streaked so fast down your cheek. You pulled me into your arms and you cried holding on to me.

Were you crying on your cake or your fate of having me as a sister, one that would constantly destroy parts of you in the future too?

Were you silently trying to overcome the urge to throw me across the room, whack my head against the wall and throttle my neck by just holding me close to you?

You had just turned seven.

And you couldn't scream at me, lash out at me.

Why, Hana? Answer me this. Why?

If you could do it to Mamu, your best friend? Your elder whom you respected and could never imagine yourself treating him the way you had, why then could you not take out your anger on me?

Was it because everyone had trained you to be easy on me?

Because I was a child?

More so because I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy?

Is this why all your life, you endured me because you had to, because I was disabled, because I'm 'special', because it's not my fault what I do? How and upon who are you to take out your frustration then? Point the finger then?

All from the age of seven? Am I truly not your tragedy?

But you did lash out on me two years ago. And then you distanced yourself from me, did you do it because you were losing control of your ability to endure me and the pain that comes with me? Was I the rotten plant destroying your garden? Can you no longer put up with me?

But tell me, Hana. Will you hold back again from killing me when you find out what I've done with your identity? Will you hold back this time because of my cerebral palsy even though what I have done is all really just because of me?

How much can you possibly endure, Hana? How much can you just absorb inside of you, the shocks, the quakes, the pain of life until you can't no more?

What happens then?

Because what I've done, I don't think you'll be able to hold in the rage despite my cerebral palsy. I don't want to lose you Hana but look at me saying that like I haven't already. Because if I haven't made your life hell since the day I was born, I surely have done so now.

And like always: without meaning to.

Isn't that precisely what you call a tragedy?