A granite pestle and mortar. Black with white specks – the night sky distilled into stone.
Six garlic cloves. You blanched them to remove their skins. Your mother always started softly so the garlic didn’t fly out. You gently smash each one.Pestle and mortar, like garlic and ginger, long to be together, their connecting sparking thunderous music that plays melodies of sharp pungency.
You add the slivered ginger, and strike. Flavour and aroma merge into reverberation, intoxicating you to a long-ago moment when you sat opposite her while she pounded away at herbs and spices, milling them into pastes and powders.
Your eyes close involuntarily. Her grey headscarf – rose embroidered - has moved off her forehead and her hair shows. She alternates her hammering with grinding and mashing, each technique creating its own resonant pitch, her melody unique to whatever recipe she is making.
You match your rhythm to hers. The music of the pestle and mortar is old, your ancestors making it thousands of years ago. It flows through your blood as it flowed through hers, and in this moment, and in the millions of times you have done this before, you and your mother are the one and the same.
But she is not here and you need to make your own melodies. Her image fades and the thuds of the pestle fade. You discard the paste and begin again, this time, not copying her, but interweaving her melodies into your own.
Mohammed Rizwan is a UK-based writer. His writing tends to explore parental relationships and marginalised identities.
He has been published in Flash Flood Journal, Lovecraftiana, Streetcake and Bath Flash Fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment