THE SIKH PATIENT---Chapter 8----KNIGHTS (continued)

Me on our back deck

The sun is shining on my back…

KNIGHTS

Yasmine stared at Mona’s hair in the small living room of their small apartment.  It was cut in a boyish cut with bangs whisking down to her chin.  It made Mona’s chiseled cheekbones rise and accentuated the size of her dark brown eyes.  Her hair used to be down to the middle of her back, and now it was all gone.  She still looked good, but somehow not as good as before.  How did she do that? 

            They were both Sikh and in their religion, they were not supposed to cut their hair, although this was never written in their scriptures.  Neither one of them was sure why, it had something to do with their identity.  A long time ago in India, there were wars between Muslims and Sikhs and some Sikhs would pretend to be Hindus so they wouldn’t get killed.  When the Sikhs had long hair and the men had turbans on their heads, they could not pretend, they could not act; they could not play the part of someone else.  Some Sikhs also say there is a spiritual reason to keep long hair; that energy is kept in hair.  The extension of our mind is our hair.  Mona and Yasmine had both cutoff parts of themselves.  Yasmine thought of statues of women with no arms and legs.  If you cut off your leg, it doesn’t come back.  Why was she trying to cut something that someone keeps giving back to her? 

            Yasmine wasn’t sure what part she wanted to play yet.

            Mona lied back on the blue couch and tried to explain herself.  “Khalid used to tell me I was mysterious.  I don’t want that.  Mystery is just an exotic word to describe something you are hiding.  I can’t live with secrets.  I know he thought my hair was part of my mystery, maybe it was my mystery.  Now he’ll have to know me.”

                                                                        *

            Khalid knocked on the door of Mona and Yasmine’s apartment.  He waited for a few minutes and Mona came out, still dressed.  She had been expecting him, even though it was three-thirty in the morning.  Sometimes he worked late at the diner and she didn’t feel like greeting him with wrinkled scrubs that had a small stain from her period on the inside of one leg.  Circles were embedded under her eyes; he could tell she had just woken up.  Khalid’s jaw dropped when he saw her.

            “Your hair?”

            “You don’t like it?” she cringed.

            “Where is it?”

            “Where is it?” she whispered.  “Where is it, I don’t know where it is.”  She thought about how it might be in the garbage bag of a vacuum cleaner at the salon.  Her holy hair was now holy shit.

            “No, I mean, it’s different.  It’s still you, you still look great.”  He hated how inconsequential his statements were, so instead of talking, he put his hand through her black hair.

            “You hate it, don’t you?”  Mona hung her head down and then closed the door in his face.

            He banged on it over and over again, Yasmine heard something, someone was knocking at her door in her dream.  It was Daniel Day-Lewis from The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  He had every woman in Prague and now he came to America because he wanted her.  Yasmine finally understood what she saw in womanizers, they searched the world for something, and she knew she would find the one when he stopped looking because the search was over, everything he wanted was in her green eyes.  

            “Come on Mona.  I love you, don’t be ridiculous.  It’s just that I’m immature, I’m not good with change.  I don’t know what to say to people. Come on, how many times have you said I have no manners?” Khalid said in his most mature voice.

            “Come on Yasmine, let me come inside you,” Daniel yelled.

            “No, no, you have no idea what’s in here.  I have no idea what’s in here.”

            “You are in there.”  His voice was raspy.

            “No, I’m someplace else…go someplace else and I’ll be waiting.”

            “Come on, look at you, I mean I can’t with the shut door, but you won’t even let your own boyfriend in your apartment,” Khalid whined.

            She unlocked the door and walked away.  Yasmine took off her panties but didn’t open the door as Daniel started singing.  It wasn’t a song.  He sang the Constitution of the United States of America.

            Khalid opened the door slowly and saw Mona sitting on her bed over the cotton bedspread in her bedroom, staring at her hands.  “Until now you say you’re not sure if you’re my boyfriend, you’re not sure if you can handle a relationship.  Guess what, I’m not your girlfriend,” Mona chimed.

            “If I let you in, you might take over my body.  Then you will be me.  I want to be me,” Yasmine sighed as she slipped off her nightgown.  Her sateen sheets caressed her breasts and she rubbed her hand in between them as Daniel sang at her door.

             Khalid laughed and sat next to Mona on the bed.  “Now who’s being immature?”  His laugh was loud.  He put his arm around her and Mona felt chills on her neck.

            “Just leave me alone.”

            Khalid took her arm and she tried to pull away.  He pulled her other arm and forced his arms around her.  “I love you.  I love your hair,” he whispered in her ear.

            “Can you feel me?” Daniel asked from the other side of the door. 

            “I don’t want to, but I can,” Yasmine sighed with pleasure.  “I would open the door, but once you open it, you can’t shut it.”

            Mona pulled away from Khalid.  “You’re a liar.”  She stared at his shiny skin.

            “Maybe, but I’m not lying about this,” Khalid retorted.

            He put his hands through her boyish hair.  Yasmine’s long hair was flying left and right as she breathed hard.  Mona pretended like she wanted Khalid to stop.  “Don’t stop,” Yasmine whispered.

            “Don’t stop what?” Daniel whispered as he sat down on the floor before the door.

            “Don’t stop singing.”

            Khalid almost said, now she was his boyfriend.  He was surprised he didn’t say it, where did he find the tact?  It must have been lying on the floor of the diner, when one of his tips fell, a two-dollar bill.  All of a sudden he thought she wasn’t as feminine as she used to be.  She was still a woman, right?  She was still pretty, right?  He stared at her bold dark brown eyes and her strong cheekbones. 

            He missed the inches of hair. 

            He missed the thing that made her different than him. 

He didn’t wonder why he wanted that separation.

            Yasmine missed being touched, when was the last time someone touched her?  So she touched herself and a silent scream came out of her.  “I can hear you, even when you’re silent,” Daniel said.

            “I can feel you, even when you’re far away.”  She moved her fingers in a circular motion as they became slippery.  “Oh,” her lips pursed together, “Oh.”  O, zero.  It was gone.  It was the math that ruined it. 

            Khalid felt more similar to Mona, yet more intimidated.  She was always intimidating.  How could she look so different and still be the same person?  It will change her, her person.  He had no idea how, why, or in what way.  But it would change the way she acted.

            “I want to act, let’s act,” Yasmine whispered, unsatisfied. 

            “Act like you are me,” Daniel whispered and then pressed his lips against the door.  He kissed it.

            Khalid worried it would change who Mona was.

            “Do you think I’m less sexy?  Do you think I lack something now?”  Why did she always ask the difficult questions?  Why didn’t she let him lie?

            “Everything is sexy, I mean everything about you is sexy.  You couldn’t not be.”

            “Really?  That’s a pretty intense statement.”

            “I never lie about sex.”  He couldn’t tell if she believed him so he immediately grabbed her and started kissing her soft full lips.  Their tongues touched.

            “Get out of my dream, I’m bored,” Yasmine yelled.

            “You don’t make the decisions about who comes in and who goes out,” Daniel spoke sternly.

            “I decide…I decide who walks in, I decide when they walk out…I decide what…I decide…I decide…Don’t take away my decisions,” she cried.

            “Was this dream your decision?”

            “No, who’s making the decisions?” she asked and tears formed in her eyes.

            Daniel just shook his head.  She could see him, through the door.  Daniel you’re a star.

            Khalid was surprised her haircut didn’t change the way her skin felt against his.  It didn’t change the feeling he had that he was sinking, in her mouth, in her arms.  He was sinking, like in water.  She was drowning him.  Or was she the mermaid, at the bottom of the ocean who saved him?  Mermaids have long hair.  You’re not my mermaid, he thought, where’s my mermaid? 

            It’s hard to alter the characters in your dreams.

                                                            *

            “You don’t want me to like you?” Yasmine asked Khalid and stared at the blue couch, and the blue rug.

            “I want you to fall in love with me so Mona stops speaking to you.”  Khalid laughed.  Mona shot a look at him, there were silver bullets in her eyes.  “What would you do if Yasmine fell in love with me?”

            “Break up with you,” Mona answered. 

            “You’re gonna do that anyways, aren’t you honey?”

            Mona stared at him really hard until he looked down.  Yasmine stared at them as they sat on the couch and looked at each other.  She got up from the chair and went into the kitchen and ran the water in the sink.  Her mind stopped when she thought of the man she loved, once.

            She had met him at her temple, The Gurudwara, The Sikh Temple.  He played the tabla, sometimes he sang along as he played.  He didn’t have a name anymore.  Yasmine had never heard fingers move that rapidly and precisely on a drum before.  He still sang, even after he told her that he didn’t love her.  So she stopped writing poetry for a while.  She stopped laughing. 

            But that was two years ago.  She hardly ever thought of him now.  The actors in her dreams told her he was only singing because in reality he wanted to scream but screaming is not accepted in society.  He couldn’t scream because really, he was a small man, none of the actors wanted to play him if Hollywood ever made a movie out of his pathetic life.  They tried to tell Yasmine, “Make a movie out of your life, then you’ll be complete.”

                                                                        *

            Mona and Yasmine decided to go to Espresso Royale to study for a few hours before Mona had to meet Khalid.  Wait, did they decide to go there, or did their bodies just end up there?  They sat near some winding plants and a white brick wall that had black and white photographs of garbage trucks from the School of Arts.  It was pitch dark outside and there was snow on the ground.  They both saw a man begging near a streetlight outside, the light made his shoes shine.  Yasmine thought maybe one day she would write a poem for him and give it to him with a dollar.  She felt that she was so trite because she had never given anyone on the street more than a dollar.  Wait, no one ever gave her a dollar. 

            Mona opened up a large physics textbook and Yasmine opened up Lord Jim.  Khalid walked in with snowflakes in his wavy hair.  He stared at the back of Mona’s head; he barely recognized it from across the room.  “Damn it, why did she do that?”  He wanted to know why she didn’t tell him before she chopped her hair.  Maybe he wanted her to ask his permission, even though he didn’t respect women who asked for his permission.  He walked over to their table.  “Hello,” he said and put his hand on Mona’s neck, this time she didn’t feel chills.  She felt alarmed.

            “Oh hi, you scared me, what are you doing here?”  Mona looked up from an equation.

            “Here, there, anywhere, what am I doing anywhere?” Khalid smirked.  He looked over at Yasmine.  “I know you’re glad to see me.  I know you wanted to see me today, don’t lie.  I can smell a lie even when there’s this much coffee in the room.”

            “You got me,” Yasmine gave him a fake smile and wondered how her acting skills were going.  “You always seem to read my mind.”

            “You know some psychologists say there’s no such thing as a mind because they can’t place it, it’s not really in your head, it’s not in your toes, it’s definitely not in your hair.”  He looked over at Mona.  “Where is your mind?”  He looked over at the other side of the room, as if he was actually looking for it, and waved at his friend Ali.  “I’m just gonna play chess with Ali.”  Ali was tall with olive skin and sharp features.

            “How’s my favorite three-some?” Ali asked and smiled coyly.  “And how’s my soul mate doing, are you still keeping him under your whip, Mona?”

            Mona didn’t answer him.  She just gave him a tired look.  She was tired.  

            “Yasmine, babe, I never see you in class anymore.  Are you avoiding me?” Ali was referring to their Bible class where an eccentric man with very large hands explained the origin of the world.  Ali sat down at their table.

            “Ali, I don’t have the nerve to avoid you.”  Yasmine found Ali attractive and annoying.

            “Good.  So Khalid, shall we play?  You know Khalid you’re lookin’ pretty cute today in that turtleneck.  We kind of look like twins, don’t you think?”  He looked closely at Khalid.

            “No,” Khalid replied.  He wasn’t in the mood for Ali’s homoerotic jokes.  They weren’t funny.  Ali took out a chessboard he kept in a black leather bag and set the pieces on the table.

            “It’s my turn to be black,” Khalid whined.

            “Whatever man.”  Ali set the black pieces in front of himself.  Khalid was convinced he could only win if he was black.  He remembered when he first learned chess, how he thought it was like fighting in a real war.  He stopped playing for a few years after he started getting nightmares.  The chess pieces in his dreams were made out of rotting wood and they gave him splinters every time he touched them.  Eventually, he got Gangrene in his fingers and had to have them amputated.  He was sent into a leper colony for the rest of his life, in the dream.  He just kept screaming, “I don’t have Leprosy!”  Mother Teresa gave him a shot to shut him up.

            “I love chess, teach me how to play, I forgot,” Yasmine murmured.  She thought about how her father used to play chess with her until his hands started shaking.  They only shook ever so slightly, but it was enough to ruin the game. 

            “Just watch the master,” Ali commented.

            “He’s talkin’ about me,” Khalid remarked.

            “We’ll let the game speak for itself,” Ali laughed.  They began playing and Ali slowly knocked off five of Khalid’s pieces while Khalid had only killed two of Ali’s.

            “You’re a bad man,” Khalid said as Ali killed his bishop.

            “You know you’re a better player than me,” Ali murmured.

            “That’s only because I have a plan, I don’t just randomly kill all your people.”  Khalid looked down at the board and noticed that more of his pieces were missing, but he knew that in a few minutes, he would have Ali’s queen.  He looked over at Mona who was sitting next to him, sipping black coffee. She was his queen.  She held him by the hand and led him through the war.

            Khalid noticed how closely Yasmine was looking at him and he thought she was probably rooting for Ali.  She was sitting by Ali’s side.  “She wants to be his queen,” Khalid thought.  In Khalid’s last chess dream, he saw people dying on the street and heard women crying while he tried to capture the king.  He forgot about God, or rather he forgot about the king and the point of the game, right about then, when God forgot about them. 

            Yasmine silently hoped that Khalid would win.  He knocked off Ali’s pawn and then went for his rook.  Yasmine smiled.  Mona put her hand on Khalid’s shoulder.  Yasmine wondered why Khalid wasn’t speaking and she oddly wanted to hear his voice.  Khalid looked up at stared into Yasmine’s green eyes.  He didn’t know how, but he saw her soul.

            He quickly took Ali’s knight and killed his queen, “Check mate,” Khalid said and kept his fingers on the knight and looked at all the pieces. 

            “You bastard,” Ali whispered.

            Khalid looked at his knight and then the board.  All he saw were his enemies around him.  This was his Kingdom.  He looked up at Mona, Yasmine, and then Ali.  This wasn’t like the kingdom he had played in when he was a child in Iran.  He had always dreamed of a good king who knew the difference between his friends and his enemies.  Who was he now?  Khalid looked at the chessboard and realized he never wanted to win.  He had nightmares about chess not because he thought he would lose, but because he was afraid he might win.  He was afraid the prize came with new enemies. 

            Khalid wanted to invent a new game…

By

Nina Kaur