Mehreen Ahmed - Issue 36

Mehreen Ahmed is an Australian novelist. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist, is a Drunken Druid’s Editor’s Choice. Gatherings, is nominated for the James Tait Black Prize for fiction. Her short and flash fiction have won in The Waterloo Short Story Festival, Cabinet-of-Heed stream-of-consciousness Challenge, shortlisted by Cogito Literary Journal Contest, shortlisted by Litteratuer RW for Litt Prize, finalist in the Fourth Adelaide Literary Award Contest. A Best of Cafelit 8,three-time nominated for The Best of the Net Awards, nominated for the Pushcart Prize Award. Also, critically acclaimed by Midwest Book Review, DD Magazine, The Wild Atlantic Book Club to name a few. She is contributing editor and jury to the KM Anthru International Prize of the Litterateur Redefining World Magazine and a featured writer for Flash Fiction North and Connotation Press. Her Toads on Lily Pads was curated by Cambridge Press on Muck Rack. She is widely published online and in anthologies. She has published eight books, and her works have been translated in German, Greek and Bangla. 

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A Sense of Truth

“The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths”— Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

***

My bestie, Malita and I were having breakfast in our open balcony of our Paradise Island House in Polwi, when she startled me with a revelation.

“Truth cannot die, in my view, because dying is not in its nature, no rhyme or reason. Elusive as it may be, it is its job to find a way to reveal itself. However, how it does that is interesting. Especially, in the absence of concrete evidence, such as in the case of ‘he said, she said.’

“What do you mean by ‘he said, she said?” I asked.

Malita said. “Anything, any truth really, for instance, someone hitting a motor vehicle without a witness, or a child bullying another in a school playground without anyone noticing, any truth shall find its way out.”

“Let’s dive deep to witness its path of revelation, then.” 

“I can draw an example from my life,” Malita said.

“Say, do you want to go for a stroll in the garden?” I suggested.

“Sure,” she said.

As we strolled through the garden, Malita said, “my sojourne in Paris was an eye-opener. It taught me how we were never the makers of the Fates, yet, we believed that we were.”

“What happened in Paris?” I asked.

“I met a clairvoyant who was able to see some things that I could not.”

“Mysterious, please tell,” I said.

“Well, I was sitting in a park on a bright Parisian morning when someone came and sat down beside me. I looked at her and smiled. I realised she was blind because she had a guide dog, a blind stick and dark goggles on. She told me that I was being unkind in my relationship because I had been feigning love all my life; all the sweet lies I had been telling my partner of twenty-two years that I loved him, when I did not. Security and separation anxiety were the primary reasons to be with him, not love. He believed every one of my lies, were utterly convincing and comprehensible that they suppressed all faithful truths—crazy as it was, I thought, here she was, the clairvoyant for a reason, to tell me that truth will find its way out one day, and realisation would break this beautiful lie.”

“What lies do you tell your partner? Was the blind seer correct?”

“Yes and no. I feed him sweet lies everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner that my life would end without him. I feel no concerns or dangers when he is around me. He fills me with joy and happiness.” 

“Hmm, doesn’t he?” I said.

“No. Not at all. Then he buys me rubies, diamonds and sapphires.”

“Are you also having an affair?”

“No, I think I am incapable of love.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s more,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Well, his Mum got really sick one day. She went to a hospital where my friend worked as a nurse. Mum had a hip bone fracture from a fall. A surgeon operated on her and my nurse friend helped her during this entire time with post op physio and all. Without her help, she would not walk again. My partner saw how hard the nurse worked to make her well again, he found it most impressive,” she said.

“That’s great…”

“There’s more. I cannot love him, I tried, but I can’t leave him either? However, I texted him the opposite, words such as ‘companionship,’ ‘loneliness’  ‘love’ and so on. And his inevitable response, ‘I understand,’ ‘of course,’ words became the kernel to this relationship.”

“Astonishing lies?”

“We aren’t makers of Fates; truth is on its way. Wait, let me finish. In the hospital, where his mother was, an elderly gentleman walked in to see her, one day. He was my father’s retired friend from our old neighbourhood where I grew up. We had accidentally bumped into each other a while back, shopping with Mother. I introduced them and then we had coffee. I was watching them talk like love-birds as though they knew each other forever. Something came to pass between the two of them and ever since, this man whose name was Jalen Kemp, had been messaging me constantly to find out more about Mother. In the meantime, Mother fell and came into the hospital. I messaged him saying that she was recuperating in this hospital. He came to see her immediately after the message. I was talking to her when he entered her cabin.”

“Your partner was there, at the time, right?” I asked.

“Right, and he saw what he needed to see beyond any shadow of a doubt. The truth was staring him in the face.”

“And what truth was that?”

“The sincerity of a relationship, Jalen Kemp sat by Mother’s bed and took her hand into his; while they smiled and lost themselves into each other’s eyes, my man sensed something missing in our relationship. He got up and left the room.”

“What happened next?” I asked.

“I left too, to give Jalen and Mother some privacy.”

“Did you apologise?” I asked.

“No, I told him the truth. He had asked me, ‘Do you love me?’ I had responded, ‘no, I live with you because I feel secure in your company;’—out with the truth, lest he found the dutiful nurse more attractive.”

“Wow! Really!”

“Yes, really. He’s processing it,” she said. “Sweeter, if my lies of insincere love prevailed, instead of this stark loveless realty, no?”

“Your insincere lies were kinder but you finally owned up to the truth!”

“What’s ‘real love,’ fleeting, isn’t it? It erodes with time and that’s the final truth,” she said.

I shrugged as we strolled in silence. The gentle winds nudged the witch-hazels on the far side; she pointed out smiling, ‘harbinger of spring,’ the hummingbirds sang of ‘love and healing.’

Malita’s phone rang, breaking the panacea of quietness. She picked it up, her face paled in the mellow afternoon sun. I watched her as she moved away from me to speak to her caller. The call lasted over fifteen minutes. Her body language spoke a great deal of the mental agony with hands being raised and lowered several times. At one point she held her forehead with her palm. I could hear her voice breaking up and choking trying to suppress her sobs. There was no easy way of doing this. I knew that. She knew that. Could it be from her partner, unable to suck up the truth, calling her to break it off? Call it off? Oh this was unbearable, should she get a second chance maybe to work on her ability to love? Her inability wasn’t a crime, though, and she had owned up to it. Did that not mean anything? 

I wandered off, away from thinking all that could go wrong in this relationship. Disloyalty wasn’t something easily palatable. But this pretence of love wasn’t palatable either—a grand deception which she nearly pulled it off hadn’t it been for Mother’s accident which gave it away, her partner sensed something, not proven though, these things couldn’t be proven at all. Better to lie and be deceptive, find happiness in deception, perhaps. 

Really? No, no way, deception wasn’t the way to go. I turned around to see where she was. She was running, running away from me, running away from a harsh, unforgiving reality. These things happened in life. Not every event turned into a happy ending, not every event in life could be fulfilling, either. Life wasn’t perfect, we all knew that but grieving was just as much a reality as anything else, and we were never prepared to grieve.

Guilt? Wrongs were wrongs, wrongs couldn’t be made right, and every wrong had a consequence. I am not a maker of Fates but I could sense disaster before it happened and I knew that Malita was going down. What was it though? What was she going to do now that her truth was out? How was he going to cope with the grand deception? 

Accosted with a lot of questions but no direct answers, I ran after her to stop her, stop her, to tell her that she shouldn’t feel guilt, her marriage based on a sullied rock of lies was slipping away in pursuit of a pie in the sky. But, she also gave him her support, her kindness and her companionship, so what if she couldn’t love him. The kindness was solid, wasn’t it?

I heard her car revving up just outside the lawn. I stood and watched petrified. I couldn’t stop her. I saw her crash into an old oak tree. I ran towards the car. Her head was on the steering wheel. I opened the door with great difficulty. I called an ambulance, her veins were still pulsating. If this wasn’t love then what was? I couldn’t make fate no more than she could fake it.