I saw god at the dentist’s, splattered on the chair– a discarded fish head. Jaw forced open, eyes closed shut. On a flushed summer afternoon, the fishmonger fished a freshwater Hilsha by the teeth and plopped it on the cutting board with my mother’s approval. The fishmonger gilled and snapped its neck like a wishbone, the head tossed aside. When I was four I almost drowned in a shallow swimming pool, lungs aching for air, gills gasping for water. I wondered if fish believe in god. He showed me how to delicately descale a fish, and the compassionate child in me would, at twelve, use sharp knives on my thighs– no scales, just skin, not even that once I was done. The fish, gutted and left to bleed out is me at sixteen. Bereft and bulimic. My dinner flushed down once again– at least I would fit into my childhood clothes. The remnants of the fish were twisted and bent out of shape, fresh fillets, bones benevolently left in. I once broke my wrist during child’s play– a fractured anatomy, proud of the imperfection. All that’s left of us, I learned in school, are bones. Our daring declaration of a life once lived. One last devious rebellion, a saccharine souvenir. I am not yet dead, merely eventually dying. My dentist coaxes me awake. From my uvula, he pulls out a fishbone.
*****
I aspire to prove, like Chinua Achebe, that English may be our second language, but there are creative liberties we can take with it which can astound even native speakers. – Nayara Noor
