“A Familiar Sound” by Sabahat Ali Wani

Sabahat Ali Wani is a writer, researcher and artist from Kashmir. Currently, she runs Maaje Zevwe, a feminist literary and cultural magazine of and about Kashmir, and aims to create a safe space for dissenting women's voices in her community.

Author Foreword:

A Familiar Sound, revolves around the theme of mental health, religion and women's choices. It aims to highlight how the religious codes of conduct and their imposition leads to the repression of women's desires, violent theft of their rights, and has a negative impact on their mental and physical well-being. The character of Shafiyah is inspired by the women in my life as a writer, who reject the baseless religious beliefs in their everyday life and refuse to be treated as a 'sin'.

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A Familiar Sound

It was a terrible year. The place was rotting away and the people populating the miserable land were ill and diseased. 

Shafiyah sat down on a chair and began cleaning the outer sole of her shoes with a small fallen tree branch. 

A decaying, rain-soaked land amidst mountains was not the ideal place to complete her research thesis at all but she had chosen this for herself. She understood the weight of this research, even if no one else did. She was in a fever, a place full of undivided focus, where doubt, comfort, and luxury didn’t dare to enter. 

While cleaning her shoes, she scrunched her nose, considering the flesh that must have dissolved itself in the mud, clinging to her. 

She threw the branch away and stood up to walk towards her apartment. 

The surroundings that welcomed her were typical, dull, and repetitive. A group of men sitting together and discussing how women and their unveiled heads were responsible for the plague; a tea maker putting more water in milk so that he could earn more out of it; two dogs sitting on the pavement waiting for the animal lovers to give them some food; wrappers of injections piled up on one side of the road while the other side was reserved for household waste; worried mothers carrying their children to the nearest facility for a checkup. 

There was a hazy, conglomeration of smells. Of smoke and medicines. 

Shafiyah hated both. She covered her nose with a piece of cloth and rushed to her place. 

Once she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, she took the Hijab off her head that she had worn to save herself from acid attacks and death threats. She was not a believer and never wanted to cover her head with some cloth to prove her modesty, innocence, and virginity. When she turned nine, her mother forced her to wear it and then, she was threatened by her brothers to cover her head, claiming that if she didn’t, they would shave it off. Now, no woman could go out without wearing a Hijab because a bullet, a rapist, a bottle of acid, or sexually repressed religious lunatics were just a few moments away from performing their holy duties and getting a reserved spot in the land of paradise.

She clutched the floral printed Hijab in her hand and moved towards the dressing corner. 

Decompressing in the chair in front of the mirror, she let out a heavy breath

Releasing the cloth from her hand, it fell to the ground. She pressed her fingers to her forehead to ease some of her worries. She was worried but not afraid. Since she had left her parent's house, she was not scared of anything. Always cautious, but never scared. 

She didn’t miss her family. She waited for the feeling of longing to arrive but it never did. It felt liberating. It gave her the relief one gets after the amputation of a nasty aching organ. 

She shifted on the chair and looked at her face in the mirror. 

Even if she didn’t miss her family, her face, sprinkled with freckles and topped with an unignorable crooked nose always reminded her of the people who held the same features as her.

Suddenly, with no courtesy of warning, she felt the walls closing on her. She knew what was happening. 

Sweat broke out on her skin and she could feel the irritation brewing in her chest. She knew that this irritation would turn into suffocation in a matter of seconds and then, she would have to patiently wait for it to end. 

She didn't have any medicine for it. She was used to just dealing with it on her own. 

It was not over. She could still feel her heart thumping violently inside her chest. 

‘Just a few more seconds’, she kept on repeating to herself.

She pushed herself off of her chair and started moving toward her bed. Her knees not strong enough either to take her to the comfort of her bed. 

She compromised with her body and fell on the floor of her room. 

She moved her limbs to find a position less of an instigation to her headache. 

She could hear the people who lived downstairs—the clatter of utensils indicating that it was already dinner time, giggles of two daughters whom the parents didn’t want when they were born, and a continuous sound, a ticking one. Something was going off in their house.

Their dinner preparations reminded Shafiyah that she had to cook something too. After this unavoidable fit, she decided to prepare a good meal for herself. That’s the first sign of being a responsible adult. Never skip meals; it would do you no good.

Her heart calmed ever slightly and she took this chance to sit up.

With her hands between her legs and her head dangling at an awkward angle, she could feel the saliva coming out of her mouth. Long slimy ropes covered her mouth, chin, and neck. 

What an erotic sight, she humoured herself. It was a sensual dance of saliva on the beats of her throbbing head and thumping heart, accompanied by her buzzing skin and longing for medicine instead of a lover.

She wiped off the saliva with the sleeve of her shirt and stood up. 

She rolled the saliva-covered sleeves of her shirt and moved toward the kitchen. 

She took her time to reach the sink and opened the tap with no franticity. 

As her hands made contact with the water, relief hit her body. She cleaned her face and opened her rolled sleeves to wash them too of all the saliva and sweat.

After she made herself clean enough to cook, Shafiyah thought of preparing a good fulfilling meal. 

She decided to make it exactly how her mother used to prepare it for her except for the cinnamon. She didn't like cinnamon in her food. It made drinks better but in food, meat especially; it overpowered every other spice and herb. Anything but cinnamon.

While she was cutting the vegetables for the broth, she couldn’t hear the ticking sound and the people downstairs were also silent. 

As she put the vegetables in oil, Shafiyah moved back a little on instinct. She added all the necessary spices to the mix and let it cook after adding some water.The aroma of spices had slowly started filling up her apartment and she felt a lot better. 

‘Should I cook an egg too?’ she thought.

She looked in her fridge and found none. With a sigh, she closed the door of the fridge. As her hand released the door handle, a seering pain shot up her arm and she quickly pulled her hand back. 

She saw that her skin was burnt.

‘When did this happen? What burnt my skin?’ she shockingly wondered. 

In the same breath, she started coughing. 

She raised her head to take in her surroundings and realised that her room was filled with smoke.  Irritation started bubbling inside the walls of her throat again and she began scratching her neck vigorously.

The ticking sound was back.

In a room filled with smoke, Shafiyah lept towards the stovetop and turned off the gas. 

She rushed towards the door and opened it, gasping for air.

The reality waited, stark, for her through the open door. . 

Nothing. No smoke, no sirens, no crowd, nothing hinting at the fire blazing in the building.

Taking two fast steps to catch the railing, Shafiyah tilted herself at an angle to look into the family's house downstairs. 

Her panic-filled face was in complete contrast with the calm and silent scene of their house.

It was a moment of realization for Shafiyah. She couldn’t bring up the courage to look at her room because she knew what she will find.

Nothing, again.

Her condition had evolved. She was used to hallucinations and bizarre illusions but at that moment, the degree of realness in the whole period made her more anxious.

Her hands were not burnt, there was no smoke and the night had fallen on the valley. However, the ticking sound was present. Shafiyah clutched the railing tightly when it fell upon her that the ticking sound was an extension of this cruelty. 

It was an alarm in the still-alive corners of her mind, wanting her to escape the phase of ridiculous illusions and take refuge in the arms of some medicine. It was her body’s desperate attempt at bringing her back.

The stark contradiction between her and the surroundings was vivid, almost brutal to accept. 

She brought her body down and placed her head on the railing. 

Her breathing had reached the normal state and she could trust her body to balance on its own. 

As the rainy winds sprinkled a few drops of water on her face, she felt a little grateful toward the perishing land. It might be dying a slow death but it still showered love and mercy on the inhabitants on certain occasions like this one. 

She looked around her and felt relief at the normalcy of everything.

The smell of rotten meat was normal. The smell of mud was safe. The persistence of cowardly silence was home.