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Translated from the original Tamil short story calaṉam (சலனம்) from the 1992 collection of short stories titled makkattuc cālvai (மக்கத்துச் சால்வை) by S.L.M. Hanifa. The original collection is available at noolaham.org.

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Milky white light burst forth from the full moon. The light reflected off her face.

She was sitting on the coconut tree stump in the front yard, her hands hugging her knees, eyes fixated on the moon,

Was she crying?

Tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down, like a string of pearls rolling down her cheeks. She lifted the edge of her saree to wipe them away.

That coconut tree stump was the throne of her domain. She came out to sit on it as the sun descended behind Kaṇṇākkāṭu and the moon leapt up to take its place. Since then, she did not take her eyes off of the majestic moon, the velvety blue sky it was swimming in, and stars that twinkled on it.

She did not seem to notice the gentle breeze that hugged her body or the beauty of the coconut leaves that swayed in the breeze like giant flabella.

She couldn’t care less about them.

When the full moon ascends the sky, she would forget the world around her. It had become second nature to her.

She became one with the moon. It became her life, they fused together.

Moonless days were lost days.

The neighbors said she was possessed. Some gossiped that she had gone mad or that mōhini ghost had taken her over.

But she was the only child of the village muezzin.

He had raised her lovingly, lavishing her with everything he could from all the money he earned at the takiya, chanting mawlid birthday prayers or the khatm fatiha prayers for the deceased.

At twelve, her body had taken on the radiant glow of a sixteen-year old. Her breasts were like ripe pomegranates which her blouse struggled to contain. Her legs, and arms shimmered with a vibrant, lively glow.

Her round eyes were wide like those of a frightened doe, but quickly lowered themselves when another gaze confronted those eyes.

There was an exquisite beauty even in that fear.

She was God’s precious gift to the muezzin.

The gift had turned into a burden.

Whenever he looked at his daughter, the muezzin felt as if his chest was going to explode.

Her hair was matted, her ankles were ringed with dirt.

From ayat al-kursi, the throne verse of the Holy Quran to manzil dua, the night prayer, he had exhausted every prayer he could think of, pleading on her behalf.

But could a parent’s heart ever rest?

Even Dr. Kugathasan, doctor-in-chief at Vāḻaichēṉai hospital had shrugged to indicate his inability to do anything about her case. That was as if even God had given up on her.

No one could diagnose her illness.

In the end, the muezzin and his wife surrendered their worries to their Maker and learned to live with them.

Her heart would revel in a nameless bliss as her eyes stared blankly at a distance. Her eyeballs would roll around like black plums in a silver pot.

In all this time, she had not ventured to answer anyone’s questions. She herself had become a question.

She was content to merely exist, along with the moon.

She and the moon had a profound relationship, a deep bond.

Within the past year, the muezzin seemed to have aged a decade.

He could no longer constrict his stomach muscles, fill his chest with air, and make the veins on his neck bulge and throb, as he belted out the adhan, the call for prayers.

His wife had chosen to live a life free of attachments. She whiled away her time in the kitchen, becoming one with the smoke and the fire, as if she had become a cooking vessel herself.

The once close-knit family of three had now become like distant poles, far apart from one another.

After the isha prayer was completed, the muezzin locked up the takiya and trudged home. As he stepped into his front yard, his gaze came to rest upon his daughter perched on the coconut tree stump.

His eyes darted back and forth between his daughter and the moon above. Her blooming lips trembled as if they were grieving, an emptiness clouded her eyes, an emptiness that turned everything into a nothingness.

His wife stood on the front steps. He turned his gaze from his daughter towards his wife.

The same confusion and anguish pervaded her eyes, too.

He went into the house and washed his hands, getting ready to eat. Nowadays, he ate only to keep body and soul together. Enjoyment of food had become a vague distant memory for him.

No one spoke. After the meal, he prepared to return to the mosque. Despite his old age and infirmity, perhaps he yearned to lay his unbearable sorrows at the doorstep of the Almighty God.

His wife saw her husband off and approached her daughter. ‘Get up dear, come and eat,’ she said.

Her maternal instincts were anguished.

Her daughter ignored the entreaty and continued staring at the moon.

Perhaps her hunger would be satiated by that sight.

Seeing her motionless daughter, she gulped down whatever food left behind by her husband and spread her bedding by her daughter’s side.

The weariness brought on by the weight of her sorrow made her fall asleep right away.

But Ameena merely sighed and continued to stare blankly at the moon.

That day was no different. As usual, Ameena was taking coffee and hoppers for her father.

The moon was shining on the western horizon.

Maiyaththupiddy lay sprawled between their house and the takiya. The landscape was filled with neem, fig, and cashew trees, along with enormous banyan trees whose countless aerial roots had driven into the ground to form natural hypostyle halls.

Ameena loved to walk through that landscape at dusk or dawn

When ummā shook her awake, she would wipe her eyes and take off, without even going by the well to do her morning chores. She would cross the jungle landscape, half walking and half running. Ismail, who lived next door, had noticed that Ameena was venturing out all alone at dawn and dusk. He was an older student at Ameena’s school.

Sometimes he followed her — but when his conscience pricked him after he had taken a few steps, he would return home and bury his face into his pillow on his mat. His feet would pounce the ground.

His mind was caught up in the tumult of his emotions running amok.

From behind the fence, his eyes would spy on that beautiful bud, overcome with the sight of her at that moment, in that situation….

Some unknown urge would raise its head within him and sharpen its claws.

She would skip and jump as she went on her way. His heart would flutter, something would fume within his chest cavity, butterflies would flutter in his stomach… He could not help panting.

He wanted to grab her, hug her, bury his face in her cheeks and neck…

His legs would give way beneath him.

That day, he resolved to follow her.

The giant cashew tree standing in the sandy clearing hugged the ground with branches spread all around it.

It was the season for cashew trees to fruit. As dawn broke, parrots and bats noisily circled the tree. As she watched a pandemonium of parrots jump from branch to branch, Ameena lost herself in a state of bliss.

She parted the low-lying branches with her feet and entered the sagging canopy of the cashew tree that looked like a tent.

She put the plate of hoppers and the flask of coffee on the ground. In the moonlight, she stood on tiptoes to pluck cashew fruits. It was then that another pair of arms emerged from the darkness to press her tender arms.

The shock rendered her immobile. He hugged her tightly, and with uncontrollable fervor, he planted kisses on her forehead and neck.

At the peak of his emotional tumult, he did not comprehend his environment or his actions.

The flock of bats slurping on cashew fruits flew away noisily.

The crows that hang around Puḷiyadithuṟrai cawed as they flew overhead.

It was like a mesmerizing dream…

The dream…. the moment… the bliss made her eyes water and her cheeks blush…

Her body swayed. The very next moment, fear was followed by a feeling of bliss….

A novel experience unfolded from within her.

He was satiated… but she felt as if she had found something she’d been searching for so long, only to have it snatched away the next moment.

As the battle of emotions bewitched her —

“Allahu akbar!” her father’s morning adhan boomed in her ears like a cannon going off.

Ismail disappeared after the adhan was heard. As Ameena emerged from within the prison of the cashew tree canopy, the moon was descending on the western horizon.

Someone heading for the morning prayers was coming that way.

A faceless terror grabbed hold of her. Her hair in disarray, she dropped everything and ran home.

When his daughter did not show up as expected, the muezzin fretted and rushed home.

There, sitting on the front porch, Ameena stared blankly at him.

She said nothing.

After that incident, her entire life took a bizarre turn.

Sometimes she would cry out loud. The next moment she would clap her hands and laugh out loud. On full moon days, she would make herself look pretty. But then for days on end, she would be an unwashed walking corpse.

No one could guess what she would do next. A year passed by this way. But that day, she had been particularly engrossed in staring at the moon.

Ameena’s ummā lay next to the coconut tree stump, fast asleep like a piece of log herself.

The fourteenth waxing crescent loomed large as it moved along its trajectory across the sky.

As if she suddenly thought of something, Ameena grabbed the copper water pot and went towards the well in the backyard. Her glance involuntarily shot over the boundary fence towards the yard of the house next door.

She saw the silhouettes of two figures that looked as if they were glued to the coconut tree.

They were in a tight embrace.

The monsoonal wind that blew from the riverside tamarind tree slapped her across her cheek and went on its way eastwards.

Perhaps they saw her, because suddenly they separated.

Ameena’s heartbeat fast, like a winged bird.

She dropped the water pot with a thud and ran back to the coconut tree stump at lighting speed.

The moon had set on the western horizon. The crows whizzed past overhead just as they did on that day.

All the scenes that transpired on that fateful day, within the cover of the cashew tree’s thick foliage, raised their heads again in her mind and danced as if they were in a cosmic frenzy.

Suddenly, all the men in her life were caught up in the whirlwind within her mind.

But he — Ismail — stood apart from the rest.

He pointed at her and guffawed.

That morning during the twilight hours as she carried coffee and hoppers for her vāppā… he had embraced her and planted a thousand kisses on her and toppled her onto the ground… sand grains stuck to her thighs like white blossoms.

Her heart was heavy as she remembered.

An unfamiliar thirst sprouted from the pit of her stomach, and swirled within her chest, in her throat…

Memories lashed on to the far shore and returned…

She went into the house.

She put on her favorite yellow long skirt and the verdant green blouse and draped the blue tāvaṇi across her chest and over her shoulder. She looked at herself in the mirror and combed her hair into place.

As she returned to stand by her sleeping mother, the muezzin’s booming adhan enveloped the entire region, allāhu akbar.

That smell, her first sensation of a man’s smell that forced its way into her nostrils as Ismail kissed her repeatedly on her neck and forehead, the smell that she opened her throbbing nostrils wide to inhale fully… her body prickled with goosebumps.

The adhan filled her ears again with its sweetness. She glanced at the direction whence it came. She saw the moon setting in the distant horizon.

Something came over her.

She started walking towards the adhan.

Now she crossed the front steps of her house, crossed the road, and was walking along the road.

1969