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| Willem de Kooning, Attic |
Leaving the things that are real behind
Leaving the things that you love from mind
All of the things that you learned from fears
Nothing is left for the years
— Toys in the Attic, Aerosmith
It was a head, a human head, severed from the rest of the body, and perfectly pickled in olive oil, mustard and rock salt. It floated gently in a crystal jar among bay leaves, cinnamon, clove and cardamom, eyes closed in a perpetual expression of bliss. There was sodium ascorbate mixed in the olive oil for preservation, like they do for canned apples and tuna. It could use a little chili and pepper, probably a twist of lemon. But, I didn’t know that.
All I knew was I had a head floating in a jar, a goddamn motherfucking head, perched in my attic between a pile of old vinyl records – Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong – and a box full of old yellowing letters carrying the mundane from fading friends – “hello, I’m in Greece now”, and “last night my dog passed away”, and “Shifat is getting married to Jihan”, and whatnot. The very right end of the shelf was piled high with poetry books (no, I don’t like poems) – mostly Sylvia Plath (“We are meek/ We are edible”) and Edgar Allan Poe (“All that we see or seem/ Is but a dream within a dream”). The left end was a total anarchy of porcelain figurines – a Gujju folk dancer, Ming the Merciless, the Little Mermaid, a group of Maasai hunters, Sherlock Holmes… and more of that accumulated from around the world (nah! I was never much of a traveler myself). In the very middle was a head without a body.
And, I had no clue how it came there.
Did I put it there? Did someone leave it accidentally? Perhaps that someone left it on purpose. What could be the purpose? Ummm… that someone probably needed a safe place to hide it. Hide it? Why would someone hide something prepared so lovingly, with such care? Besides, no one from the old days knew where I was, what I was doing, or even what I called myself. Could it be that it was placed there to implicate me? But… wouldn’t that purpose be served as effectively if it was not pickled? Hell, I didn’t know, and the head made no sense.
Where the hell did you come from, sweetheart, and why exactly?
The head didn’t answer, of course. So I put it back on the shelf again, and couldn’t help noticing the way the shelf was rusting away. Woodworms, damp and dust – this shelf wouldn’t hold much longer – I thought for a moment. Then – okay, so what’s wrong with this picture? I had a rusting shelf in an attic, covered with dust, and hosting myriads of knickknacks, old letters and older records, and a head floating in a crystal jar, pickled and peaceful. Did I see anything wrong there? Well… just a little detail. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, but the jar.
Yes, it was clean, at least cleaner than the rest of the stuff there. Surely that head couldn’t have come here a long time back. Hey ho, it was freshly pickled, or that’s what it looked like. I stood fixed in front of the head, staring straight into its closed eyes. It wouldn’t open those eyes, though. Memories started trickling in, sipping slowly upwards to consciousness. Those winter noons, sitting with mom on the porch, swimming in the heady aroma of pickles put out to the sun, thinking how to bring down the crow making funny faces at pickle jars. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. She loved to cook, for the family and for guests, and she always was eager to spread the joy of culinary adventures around. She was a wonderful woman. Like all moms, well… most moms. No complaints.
