The Visit

Meher Ali

 

What I remember is sitting on his lap in the verandah of our house and him sitting on my grandmother’s cane chair, the same one she used to sit on and read her Urdu newspaper, Sahara, as she kept an eye on who entered and left through the main gate.

This was the chair on which H sat.

We started talking. It was night. I don’t remember what we said but gradually we started talking in the third person, that is, I became “M,” so “M” feels this and that, and he became “H,” so “H” wants this and that.

But there is another version of this conversation that could have also happened: I could have started speaking on his behalf—in the first person—and he on mine so I would’ve said, “I felt this way when you did this,” and he would’ve said, “I did that probably because I felt—”

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As she spoke these words as herself/as H, M felt herself receding even further away from herself; it was a kind of dispossession: a child’s hand removing finger by finger another child’s hand that holds tightly onto a branch from which it is hanging.

H, on the other hand, seemed quite pleased with himself. M was good at articulating his/her feelings. He said, “This is really helpful.” She nodded.

 

Meher Ali is a writer and freelance journalist based in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Her stories have been published in Storm Cellar, Paper Crown, and Alebrijes. One is forthcoming in Charles River Journal. Find her on Twitter at aashi310.