The bird made sounds that irritated her ears.
She laughed. ‘Is that all? I know I’m human.’
Again, being told what to do. Be responsible. Be mature. Total uninhibited freedom is not for you.
‘Go away,’ she shouted.
‘Stand up.’
‘No.’
‘Stand up.’ He was flying all around her now, zooming in close as if he would swipe her cheeks with his wings, peck out her eyes.
‘I’m not scared of you.’
‘Listen.’
‘No.’ Enough with the patronising. Enough with the holding back.
He said, ‘There are consequences to everything you do. A price to pay. Go against what is right and here of all places you will find the tangible consequences. They will not be postponed. Get up.’
‘No, and you can’t make me.’
His sadness was palpable, it descended upon her like a shroud. She would live the consequence of her disobedience, be punished.
A hollowing was taking place underneath her. Gentle, nothing to be frightened of. This was her fate, even if misgivings shrouded it. This was the inevitable consequence of who she was, the sum of her actions, the manifestation of her intentions. She submitted to it.
It was not a grave. One is placed in a grave, wedged in with care by the living, those who are still in the queue waiting their turn. She was not dead, and it was the earth that wanted her, a place of incubation, temporary and necessary. Her metamorphosis was painful. Limbs stretched and contorted, skin scorched and punctured, her hair not her hair, her fingers not her fingers. Her mouth felt tight, her tongue started to swell. It pushed between her lips and the fatness of it was new and uncomfortable. And it was not only her mouth, every part of her was in pain. The combined physical sufferings of womanhood: the cramps and torn hymens, the invasion and press of pregnancy, bruised pelvic floor and cracked nipples, even the aches of beautification, the sting of waxing, the pierce of earlobes. She could not trace how it all had started. The day she acknowledged that beauty was a burden, her femininity overpowering her soul, the day she admitted that she did not want to be human any more. Because a tree always had a home. A fox did not need to be told how to find food. A bird did not need clothes.
She was submerged now. Above her and around her, soft granulated soil. Her feet touched hair, her skin grazed cold bones, her ears caught the sounds of the creatures made of smoke. They did not want her presence. She sensed them fretting. There was a silliness about them despite the ability to move seamlessly between air, water and earth. The djinn knew no barriers. An enviable position, but still their lack of weight counted against them. Iman felt the pain subside into rawness, all the sensitivity of new skin. There was no rush. She could sleep and dream of the Hoopoe. In a dream, he would tell her another story.
There was a story that he had not completed. It was about two tribes in a forest. One tribe was made up of small gentle people, highly skilled and peaceful. The other tribe were monsters, greedy and violent. The small people lived in fear of the monsters. All their efforts and intelligence went into protecting themselves from attack. They devised methods of predicting the movement of the monsters, they laid traps for them and studied their weaknesses. The monsters were foolish. They survived on their brute strength. In the style of the Hoopoe’s storytelling, there were epic wars and myriad adventures, heroes and heroines, tales of escape and subterfuge. Yet what had moved Iman the most in that story, what made her blood run cold, was the origin of the monsters. They were not another species. They were not foreign or alien. In fact, they were the children of the small people – some, not all of their children. At the toddler age, if they were destined to become future monsters, they would start to eat more and more. They would guzzle and become aggressive. Not finding enough food in the village, they would move to the woods and forage as much as they wanted. A small mother could come across her daughter or son, call them by name, beg them to come home, but they would ignore her. The next time, as their monster form developed, the mother would barely recognise her own flesh and blood. And they, well into becoming fully fledged monsters, would no longer have any memory that she was their mother.
Iman, though, was not losing her memory. When the earth finally gave her up and she stretched up as tall as a small tree, when she shook off her torn clothes, she remembered the human she had been. In the cartoons she often watched with Salma’s children, transformed characters could see their new reflection in water. They gazed down into a pool of blue and their face swayed up at them. Iman searched for water, her movements ungainly, her sight blurred. She found a running stream, gurgling and frothing. But it did not reflect her face.
She guzzled and snorted the water. She farted and rolled in dirt. Her new body was not under her control. There she was, leaping to tear apart a squirrel. The sort of squirrel she would have cooed over a day ago. Now it was food, a mess of muscle and bloody fur. She felt the pleasure of it, the wanton recklessness of it, and wanted more.
She no longer knew the names of what she could see, hear and smell. The names of the other animals and plants. She knew that a rabbit had long ears, a twitching nose, but she could not remember the word ‘rabbit’, whether in Arabic or English. She no longer knew how to count; two plus two had an answer but it was elusive. She could not remember the verses of the Qur’an she had memorised and daily recited. Whenever she tried to speak, her tongue got
