Chapter 10 | The Fragile Mountains and the Flowing Moonlight (with audio)

Portrait in Words | Mumtaz Hussain

The Alphabet of the Image | Mumtaz Hussain’s short stories with paintings

“Today, I turn 40,” Mohsin mumbled as he looked at the birthday cake. The lights were off, and there were no candles to illuminate the kitchen sufficiently to allow him to find a knife.

At once, the candle of his mind lit up. He sprang up with an idea, found a little candle, and placed it onto his cake. “I have become a person of forty years…so what? I’m escaping the tragedy of middle age and starting life afresh.” Immediately, these words condensed into one precise phrase, “Midlife crises,” he uttered disgustingly.

To combat that crisis, he made a decision. “When I was born, I needed someone to raise me. This necessity greatly impacted my growth and played a role in completing my personality. Although many important facets were not covered then, I can now get them and fulfill my deficiencies.”

Like a mysterious sense of helplessness, something else started to bother him. The solution to his crisis may be found by identifying his life’s shortcomings. The maturity of his personality depended upon finding those handicaps. To solve this psychological puzzle, he had to compensate for his deprivations, allowing them to become his psychological protein. He sought to identify what he lacked and then reassess his mental state.

As he reached for the stove to turn on the flame, he told himself that he didn’t need the help of any psychologist or psychiatrist. He poured two spoonfuls of tea leaves into the kettle. As the water began to heat up, another idea came to a boil in his mind.

“Why not take tea in Lord’s Restaurant on Mall Road?” After reaching the place, he found a table near the window and gazed outside. The colorful lights from passing cars seemed to send him birthday wishes. But when a car passed through without stopping at the red light, it made him feel like a naughty child. As if he were still a child.

Mohsin motioned to the waiter by nodding and then ordered a tea set. At once, the waiter placed his order and brought an assortment of tea bags on a tray loaded with colorful pastries. Mohsin poured a spoonful of sugar into his teacup and then moved the spoon to the teapot to improve the color of its water. He poured the tea into his cup, inhaling the fragrant vapors of this costly brand. When Mohsin lifted the pot of milk, his hand started to tremble. He could not pour the milk. Suddenly, he stood up to leave the restaurant and un-drunk tea behind. He wasn’t sure why this happened but then distracted himself with his daily tasks.

After a few days, he visited a small fair on the city’s outskirts. He watched the motorcycles race around the circular well of death. Mohsin reached the mini zoo and looked upon the hanging pictures of lions, jackals, and monkeys until his attention was diverted by the bang and pop of a shotgun hitting a balloon. Mohsin wanted to blast the balloons. They were attached to a cardboard wall with glass buttons underneath. Upon blasting a balloon, the next shot was free, with a twenty-rupee prize for hitting the glass button. Mohsin took the gun from the Pathan (local tribesman, they do this game in Pakistan) and took a shot but failed altogether. He continually missed the balloons, not once or twice but after twenty-five attempts. He argued with the Pathan that the barrel of his shotgun must be crooked. But as he started to walk away, he saw a small child successfully shoot the glass button with a single gunshot. Again, he became overwhelmed with anxiety. But the balloons still held a magnetic attraction for him, forcing him to press the balloon with his hand, and he was embarrassed when his gunshot failed. So as he left, he purchased two pink balloons from a vendor. They soared toward ceiling as soon as he returned home and entered his room, so he stood on a chair to catch them. They felt firm and big in his hand.

Mohsin tied the balloons to his two front coat pockets and hung the coat on a hanger. Then, he again busied himself with domestic pursuits and forgot about the balloons. In the morning, before leaving for work, he looked at them. They drooped with less air and roundness as he touched them with his hand. Indeed they had become very soft. 

With slightly shriveled balloons, both hands felt a sensation of loss. Nonetheless, he hurried off to work and forgot about them.

But he couldn’t shake the sensation of loss throughout his day at work. After work, he left immediately and inspected the balloons, still tied to his coat. They were hanging down even more deflated. One side was fastened to the thread, and the other had become a nipple like a child’s pacifier.

Mohsin could not help squeezing the balloon. He felt the balloon in his hand. It was soft and helpless. He put the nipple of the balloon in his mouth. Some energy charged throughout his body, like an electric current in his veins. Absent-mindedly, he bit down with such force that it popped like a firecracker. Shamefully, he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove to boil water for tea. After filtering the tea into his cup before pouring the milk, the same nervous condition started again. His hands started trembling, and he could not pour the milk into the cup. He left the tea and left his home. But he was still unable to understand this state of mind.

Every weekend, Mohsin would visit his paternal aunt. He thought of her like a mother because she brought him up. When Mohsin was born, his parents separated, leaving nobody to raise him. He was only two months old when his father handed him over to his sister. But there was no lapse in his upbringing. His father provided him with a good education, background, and all the amenities of life. His mother went abroad and remarried. Mohsin never saw her again and sometimes felt the loss of his biological mother. 

But the thought that he had attained the age of forty years encouraged him very much. The blood from his parents was now replaced by that which his body machine-generated. Now, he was the architect of his body. His personality depended only on his actions. This thought gave him a spark of energy.

The blood in his brain started climbing the stairs of his body and circulating like in a line graph. He leaped up the stairs to his aunt’s home and found her praying. The maid offered him tea, but he refused due to fear of seeing the pouring of milk into a cup. He only requested cold water.

In the meantime, the cries of the maid’s newborn baby grew louder. Mohsin asked the maid to look after her child while he poured his water from the refrigerator. When the maid headed toward her baby, Mohsin opened the fridge and removed a water bottle. As he raised the bottle to his lips, he glanced at the maid, who had lifted her shirt and given her breast to the baby. For a moment, Mohsin was struck with a frozen stare. It looked as if the child was sucking in life with his lips and cycling his legs as if this action was helping him in the flight of his life. Mohsin was convulsed with emotion, knowing that he had never experienced being breastfed by his mother.

Meanwhile, his paternal aunt finished her prayer. She asked him how he was doing in life and work. Mohsin couldn’t move his eyes away from the maid as if she were a goddess carved into the caves of Ajanta. Or as if that goddess was his mother and he was the child being fed breast milk. 

The paternal aunt immediately diverted Mohsin’s attention away from her. “Jindaan is our new maid. Though her child is only one month old, she has to work for a living. I try my best to help them.” 

After coming home, Mohsin’s thoughts remained with mother and baby. He felt deprived of suckling and still wanted to, even as a 40-year-old man. This desire was taking him to an extreme state.  He realized this condition was driving his mid-life crisis, with breastfeeding as the only cure. This is the lost path that leads to the top of Mount Koh Kaf. He was the caged parrot, like a fairytale, deprived of mental peace and unable to break free. 

To secure peace and the parrot, he went to his aunt’s house every day after work for dinner. Slowly, he cultivated a relationship with the maid. Every day, he brought gifts for her and the baby. She grew to be very pleased with Mohsin.

One day, Mohsin knew that his aunt would be away visiting other relatives. So he rushed over to her house. After entering, he noticed a glass of cold water sitting on the table in front of the chair where he usually sat and asked for water. He asked Jindan how she knew that he would come over so early. Jindaan, gesturing toward the edge of the veranda replied, “Whenever a crow flies by and caws thrice, it means you are coming. “ Mohsin loved how villagers have such superstitions. He was impressed that villagers knew the secrets of communication. 

Mohsin and Jindaan talked for a while, comfortable with each other since they met often. Soon he asked to meet her in private. She agreed immediately. Then he told her the reason for this secret meeting. “I have a one-year-old motherless child. If you feed him, I will pay you anything you want.” As a mother, she was shocked and replied, “Dear Mohsin, mother’s milk has no price. I would love to serve your child and reserve my second breast for him.” 

“But this secret should remain between us,” Mohsin said. 

“There is nothing to be ashamed of, dear Mohsin. You have bestowed on my child a foster brother.” Jindaan was fond of Mohsin and was attracted to him, despite his much greater age.

The next day, Jindaan kept her promise and went to Mohsin’s home. She looked around for the child but couldn’t find one. Mohsin then informed her, “I am that child. I have been deprived of suckling my mother’s breast, so I feel as If I must do it now.” Jindaan understood immediately and patted his head affectionately. “Dear Mohsin, you seem to have been weaned since birth. You are breast broken – a thun tuta.” 

Mohsin did not understand. 

Jindan explained, “We villagers call this kind of person a weaned one, thun tuta, who has never been breastfed and remains disassociated from his mother’s spirit.” 

Jindaan took pity upon Mohsin and opened her blouse, offering her breast filled with treasures as a gift of motherly love.

Jindan reclined on the pillow, raised her shirt, and took Mohsin’s head in her lap. She lifted his head with one hand and her breast with the other, putting her nipple into his mouth as if he were her son. Mohson started sucking Jindaan’s milk. An electric shock-like sensation passed through Jindan’s entire body. She lost control and began to embrace and smother him with kisses. Mohsin broke free in a violent jerk. He was furious. The motherly fountain of pleasure and solace, which had been made available to him for the first time in his life, was transformed. 

Mohsin again started to suck her breast. Jindan’s body filled with anxiety and anger – he crossed the limits of her patience. Angrily, she slapped his face with great force. She pulled her shirt down and ran off, yelling, “I don’t need a 40-year-old child. I want a 40-year-old man!”

Portrait in Words | Mumtaz Hussain

The Alphabet of the Image |
Mumtaz Hussain’s short stories with paintings

• Chapter 1 | The Barking Crow
• Chapter 2 | When the Rain Shines through the Sunlight
• Chapter 3 | Her Resplendent Face
• Chapter 4 | Enigmatic Mumtaz
• Chapter 5 | Mona Lisa of Bones and Flesh
• Chapter 6 | The Death of Life
• Chapter 7 | His Master’s Voice
• Chapter 8 | Half Shut Eye Wisdom
• Chapter 9 | The Bride of God
• Chapter 10 | The Fragile Mountains and the Flowing Moonlight
• Chapter 11 | Adam’s Rib
• Chapter 12 | Godly Bastard
• Chapter 13 | Poppy cultivated in Heaven
• Chapter 14 | Virus Bomb

See:

• Historic Win for Pakistani-American at International Impact Book Awards (April 13, 2024)
• Pakistani Mumtaz Hussain Bags 2024 International Impact Book Award (April 23, 2024)

Portrait in Words is available on Amazon’s Audible, narrated by Scott LeCote (4 hrs and 36 mins). Order here.