The
Deep End
i
It
was pleasant. The cool
evanescent
sensations
on
my chest. The laughter
of
my cousins. All of us
wading
in the shallow end
under
the hypothetical gaze
of
chitchatting parents
enjoying
respite from
the
bombing raids, this scene
of
kids’ water play at my uncle’s
in
Tehran. Mummy somewhere
in
the background, my father
there
too. Warm, effervescent
stuff.
Add in ice cubes
bubbly
drinks, juicy cherries
on
foldout table by the rim
of
the pool, and dissonant
babble
of wet children. Why
did
I stray away towards the deep
end?
I knew I couldn’t swim.
ii
The
summertime bliss
of
a child’s inexperience, my boy’s
hairless
body, a slate
clean
of all but the most
primal
connotations. But where
was
‘love’ – of parents, uncle
my
own – when I felt my grasp
slip
from the tiles at the edge
of
the pool? Had my sociable
guardians’
passion to prattle superseded
the
chore of guarding me? Perhaps
they
were gossiping about someone’s
daughter
losing her suitor, money
wasted
on a despised relative’s
fortunately
failed venture,
the
opulent house purchased
by
a favoured relative, and hoping
to
awe everyone by finally migrating
to
the West – just as my feet
slipped
over the drop into the deep
end.
Water swamped my nostrils,
ears,
mouth. I was drowning.
iii
My
father fished me out. Did he
think
it normal that little boys be
curious,
reckless, tempting
death?
Yes, but I never told him
that
in my brief descent
I’d
seen underwater the azure
of
the pool’s walls and
nothing
else. No maritime beasts,
no
eels or octopi of Captain Nemo’s
abyss
(as promised by a book
Mummy
had given me) no light
or
angels, no finality of an end
(as
divined by my grandmother’s
Islam.)
Only an absolute, monochrome
void.
I’ve never told my father
I’d
sunk into the infinite emptiness
of
dying. Later he dried his hands,
resumed
the talk about his job,
his
plans to move us from War-torn
Iran
to the West. I coughed up
water,
shivered in the folds of the towel
and
withdrew. I didn’t care for
–
and could never again really care for –
the
glass of sugary cold sherbet
Mummy had poured for me.
This poem comes from Ali's wonderful book Ashes in the Air (UQP) which was short listed for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards in 2012.
http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/book.aspx/1120/Ashes%20in%20the%20Air
