A short story on how simple things can sometimes be life-changing
Rabia observed the hills standing silently in front of her. The slopes were various shades of red, blue, yellow, and green — all jumbled up with a dull muddy brown. On top of the tallest one, an old metal car door jutted out from the rubbish and gleamed in the rising sun. The reflected sunlight made Rabia squint as she looked up to scan the landscape for any new arrivals.
It had rained last night. The moisture in the air combined with the June heat had created the perfect conditions for microbes to feast on the city’s refuse. The entire place reeked of rotting vegetable matter mixed with an overflowing sewer. But for Rabia, it did not matter. It was her home.
Usually, the early morning arrival of fresh garbage from the city attracted a lot of poor and hungry children who would rummage greedily through the litter for edibles. Rabia had to be quick to find some food –usually half rotten fruits, waste from wedding halls and restaurants, or expired meals from the supermarkets — before it was all taken away.
Today, however, she was very early. There was no competitor in the field and there was no need to hurry.
She strolled carelessly through the small puddles battling evaporation under the harsh summer sun. Upon approaching the foot of the tallest hill, she began her arduous climb to the summit where the gleaming metal door stood waiting for her. Her five-year-old body was swift and nimble, and she navigated the piled-up heaps of plastic bags, wood scraps, tattered clothes, and rotting vegetable peels like a seasoned mountaineer. When she was half-way up, she could already imagine touching the warm gleaming metal with her bony bronze hands and looking at the reflection of little girl behind its polished surface.
Unfortunately, her simmering cauldron of vivid dreams came crashing to the ground as she accidentally stepped onto a wet banana peel. She slipped and with her came down an avalanche of rubbish loosened up and lubricated by last night’s downpour. Once the clattering of the sliding rubbish had ceased, she managed to extricate herself out of the pile of garbage. Her left leg was sore after hitting an old rusty pan on the way down and her right index finger bled due to a cut from a sharp metal can.
She was disappointed and in pain when she saw a small book lying near her feet. The cover showed a smiling girl in a flowery red dress. Fascinated by the colors, she picked it up and turned the pages. There were lots of black squiggly lines on the soggy, wrinkled pages. But somehow, she knew that they all meant something. What they meant — she did not know.
Rabia sat on the ground with the book in her hands trying to decipher the meaning as the shy and timid morning sun clinging to the horizon began its languid journey around the sky. As it travelled, it swelled up and emanated larger and larger amounts of heat into the clear blue sky, washed clean from the rain last night. The sun was still some distance away from the zenith, when a familiar voice called.
“Come on Rabia! Let’s find some food.”
She looked up. Salman was already sprinting towards the rubbish mounds where several children were searching for lunch. From afar they looked like grazing cows spread out on a hilly meadow.
“I will come later”, she shouted, then grabbed up the book and ran back home.
She was breathless when she stepped inside the one room house that her parents had built using materials from the dump. Her mother and father were sorting plastic bottles from the waste they had collected the day earlier.
“Abba (Dad), do … you … know … what … these … lines … mean …?” Her words were punctuated with gasps for breath as she held up the book in front of her father’s eyes.
The kind soft eyes of her father wandered from his daughter to the book in her hand and back. He smiled and then asked, “Do you want to find out, Bitya (daughter)?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
Her dad turned to his wife and said, “Should we send her to school?”
His wife nodded with tears welling up in her eyes.
His mother and father talked at length about the money they had saved, about some place called school, about giving Rabia a better chance at life, a brighter future.
Rabia did not understand much of what they talked about, but one thing she did understand, and it was enough for her to be happy — she was going to find out the meaning of the book.
