PART 3 It feels strange to be lying in some foreign bed. I toss and turn unable to get some sleep. To make matters worse the woman lying beside me keeps groaning every few seconds. I turn to look at her and find her staring at the ceiling. She’s disturbing, both literally and figuratively. The periodic groans she emits are disturbing my sleep. I feel sad, depressed, afraid, alone and now I can’t even sleep. I set an alarm for fajr and attempt to sleep. I don’t know when I fall off to sleep but when my alarm goes on I get up and proceed to the bathroom to make wudhu. I try to decipher which direction is qiblah and settle on a direction after much contemplation. I’ll confirm with Grace tomorrow. Hopefully she’ll know. I’m woken at 7:30am by a nurse who is unfamiliar. She doesn’t even bother to introduce herself. She just commands me to get up and go for breakfast. I make my way back to the dining hall and find a few people seated already. Grace and another helper bring plates of toast and a kettle of tea. Grace pours me a cup of English tea and passes me a slice of toast. I yearn for ‘indian tea’ but know that its a craving that won’t be satisfied. I notice that each of us is given only one slice of toast and one cup of tea. Back home I used to have a mug of tea with an egg and toast. Sometimes I’d have cereal or a muffin. Fareed used to like having toast, tea, sausages, scrambles eggs and polony for breakfast. I can understand that this hospice can’t afford such luxuries and its something I’ll have to do without. It hurts non the less. After breakfast I make my way to the bathroom and find a que of people already waiting to use the bathroom. I resign myself to waiting. There are three bathrooms in this place. Two are used by the nurses to bath and change those inhabitants that need help while the remaining bathroom is used by the few of us that do not require assistance. When I finally get to use the bathroom the water has already gone cold and there is soap messed all over the sides of the bathtub. At home I always had hot water. Even though I don’t use that much water to bath, its still an ordeal to bath in cold water. Once I’m done I make my way back to my room. The cold bath has made me feel cold and I rummage through my clothes trying to find a jersey. I pull out an old torn one that I’ve had since I was a young woman. Raising Fareed had left me with no money to spend on myself. When Fareed started working he never bought me anything. I don’t know when last I ever had a ‘new’ piece of clothing. I look around and realize that I have absolutely nothing to do. I don’t know what to do with myself. At home I’d always be cooking or doing something around the house. The woman beside me is still groaning periodically and I feel the emptiness engulf me. I go out in search of Grace and find her in the kitchen. I ask her if there’s any work for me to do and she replies in the negative. I feel redundant. ‘You can sit outside on the patio, Mr Kasim’ she says kindly. I follow her advice and make my way to the patio where I find an old chair to sit on. The backyard is drab and dry. The grass is dry and appears in patches around the yard. The wall is so high that nothing can be seen over it. Its like a prison. I try to think about something that’ll make me happy but can’t seem to conjure up anything else but Zain. I wonder if he knows where I am and I wonder if he’ll ask about me. Grace said that visiting hours are between 2pm-4pm daily and I hold out hope that Fareed will at least come to see me. It’ll mean the world to me to have something familiar even if only for a few moments. I wait patiently hoping that a visitor will arrive. One of the other women in the room gets a visitor. He’s an old man, who looks like he could do with some help himself. He sits by her bed in the far corner of the room and whispers to her. All the while I still hope that Fareed will come. At 4pm the man gets up to leave and I resign myself to the fact that my Fareed is not coming.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 09:00:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015