1

Growing up she had been afraid of ghosts; not burglars, like her older sister was. When the burglars had come, Anne’s sister had been three and Anne had been less than a year old. She had no memories of that day save for the ones that were formed from the memories of others. They had come looking for her father but he was not home yet. They searched the house for him, threw it open and turned it outside down but it was just his wife and children and the maid. They told them to hand over their belongings. The little girl that her older sister was at the time kept returning the suitcases back to the room where she knew they belonged. Eventually, the thieves had locked them all up in one room, and Anne who had been crying in her mother’s back, finally fell asleep.

When they heard Anne’s father drive in, her mother and the maid began to scream.They were telling him to go back, that there were uninvited guests waiting for him. But he could not hear them. But the thieves had been impatient and unknown to their captives in the locked room, they had left about an hour before, with material things and with memories- the only footage they had of their wedding- a video tape and albums.

Thieves usually do that. They take something that is a pair and then return one part to the house. It is usually something that does not make sense. In this case, it was a slipper.

Anne’s family left the house as soon as it was possible, to a hotel where a guard stood outside the door. They lived there until they thought it was safe again. They say a thief is always a person who knows you. Anne’s father must have known who. You can always tell, the once invisible marks of shock and displeasure when they see that you are still breathing become plain to the sight.

She had the door open and close. It was the second time she had heard it open and close. She peeped at the front door from the door frame of the main room but she could see that it was closed. Just like she had left it.

Sometimes, in the dark when she switched off the lights she thought she saw something move but when she looked closely, all was still, on the human side. If there was any parallel life in the house, she could not see it. She sometimes suspected that, there might be a parallel life. Someone who had once lived there but had not gone.

When they first came to the house, the alarm went off almost every few nights. They switched it off and checked but there was always no one there. It was just the wind.

On two nights, as Anne stood in the light blue tiled bathroom letting the warm water glide over her in bath staring- standing ritual. She was jolted out of her listless thoughts.

“Yes?” she said, over the door as she peered into their bedroom. Tom was sleeping. She had heard him so clearly call her name. Her heart skipped as she turned back to the bathroom and hurried up.

2

She woke up to the darkness of the room, her eyes struggling to make out anything in the dark. Her heart was racing. She sat up and walked to the wardrobe where she kept her phone at night. It was just a dream.

There had been someone standing in their son, Mot’s bedroom. Standing over his crib, watching his little body rise and fall with his breath. Someone, contemplating their next move. Someone ice cold, machinated and armed.

She prayed. It was four a.m. She opened the door to Mot’s room as lightly as she could but the hinges were rusty and still made noise. She heard him start up, his usual scramble to a sitting position and then a small questioning whimper, wondering whether to cry. He decided to cry. She let go of the door knob and tiptoed back to bed. Unlike, any other night, his cry was a relief. He was safe.

3

The day was set. It was 8:00 a.m and she was running late for the salon. She slipped out the door and left baby crying with Tom and the maid. It was always now or never for personal grooming. It was one of those important things that were not noticed until they were out of place. A mother’s continuous struggle to exist in dual capacity- to exist for her self and then to exist for others.

At 9:00 a.m, they began to plait her hair. She sipped her breakfast, a bottle of water, and joined the zoom meeting. It was for an online class for a course she was taking. The salon’s radio blasted the continuous rumblings of one of the local healers, rising higher in tempo as the prayers got deeper and then suddenly getting quiet only to rise again.

“This is last Monday. No, two weeks ago, when I ‘unplaited‘ my hair “. She tilted her phone towards the other direction.

“Oh, I just cannot do natural hair!,” the other woman exclaimed.

She was showing pictures to a friend she had met at the salon.

The zoom class dragged on. She readied herself for the tasks ahead. There would be two children this weekend, her sister’s one year old and Mot, almost two years old. She anticipated a sleep less night. It was doable. She had handled many before, on weeknights and with no help. It had been the prayer on her lips for nights when she thought she could not possibly push herself one step further, that there would be someone she could rely on if she ever needed to. She would be the answer to this prayer for someone else.

4

It was 3:00 p.m and the younger child was wailing helplessly. Mot got scared and tried to calm him down, imitating Anne with his own “What is it?”. He was just learning to speak. Soon Mot began to whimper. She rocked the crying one and hugged the older. She mentally checked her baby cry proof list, food, water, comfort. She run for little one’s soft blanket and wrapped it around him. Little one’s eyes were heavy but he kept looking up to make sure she was still there. And every time, he looked up he searched her eyes to see if she still cared.

The body does not sleep unless it feels safe.

The body does not sleep unless it feels safe.

The body does not sleep unless it feels safe.

She held him tighter and he fell asleep surrounded by the loud happy banter of Mot singing his favourite song, BAA BIRTHDAY TO YOU. BAA BIRTHDAY TO YOU. It had been a few weeks since he had learnt to say ‘ to you’. Before that it had been “Baa birthday ‘tutu'”.

Later she would tell them both I love you. And the little one would blow his eyes open and stare at her without blinking, as if he understood what she had just said.

The little one was down for about an hour. Next one, she thought.

5

Tom had once been the most unlikely candidate to put a little child to sleep.

He was the kind of man who had, had to learn on the job how to handle a crying baby and how to handle a crying woman. He had learnt how to check for the unsaid things instead of just dosing off when he dropped onto the bed. He had learnt to listen to feelings and not just logic. And even when it went against everything he knew about being a man, he had learnt how to change a poop filled diaper. Once, to Anne’s shock, he happened to be awake studying, when he heard Mot cry, took him out of bed, fed him and put him back to sleep all without waking his mother.

Anne had heard him cry too. She always heard. She had waited in bed, turning to one side and then the other. Closing her eyes and letting them lie open, for they were no longer heavy.

That night, little one kept following him around and raising his arms up. Whenever he left the room, he cried and tried to follow him. Finally, the little one stopped the crying and suddenly grinned at Tom in an attempt to get his attention. But Tom was on the phone and he didn’t notice until Anne told him that little one, shorter than 80 centimetres, had tried everything to get him to carry him.

About ten minutes later Tom appeared from the sitting room without the child in his arms. Anne could not believe it. It was coming to 9:00 p.m, and little one had fallen asleep in Tom’s arms. Anne had been seated at the table with her book open, her phone open, a day almost done for the rest, but for her it was ready to begin. Mot was beginning to get cranky. He was asking for everything but none of it made him happy, not ‘irk’ or ‘ata’ or even ‘ogat’ and he had began to throw things and kick and scream- a sign that his body was ready to sleep even though his mind was not.

“He slept? You’ve put him to bed?” she stammered.

“YES,” Tom said, with an air of pride. “…The cameras make a lot of sound, do you think I should turn them off?” he asked, bouncing backward and forwards.

“Umm, no. Okay, whatever. I guess you can switch them off.”

She left her book and phone on the table, warm milk on the stove.

She held her hand over the alarm box and then stopped.

“You know, I think, let me leave the alarm. It makes too much noise. It might wake little one up,” she called out.

6

It was 3:30 a.m and her coughing woke her up. Her throat felt dry, drier than it usually did during the night. She walked to Tom’s side of the bed and sure enough his phone was lying close by on his side table. She sighed and pressed the side of it. It lit up and showed the time.

3 : 30

Anne removed the phone from the charger plug and put the phone in the wardrobe.

The door moved. “Why did it move?” a small voice asked. “You closed it, didn’t you?” It must be the wind. It’s been rainy all week, she thought. “It does not open when it rains.” Anne woke up.

She could not remember how she had gone back to bed again. The moments between putting Tom’s phone in the wardrobe and going back to bed would forever be blurry.

She heard something drop to the ground, lightly. At the door, she found out what it was, a bed sheet that had landed just outside the door of her and Tom’s room. She could not understand how she had heard it. Her heart fluttered. Little one must be awake.

She heard his footsteps walking towards the back door. He must not know where he is, wandering around the house and scratching at our door. There was a glow in her heart. She saw him, standing his small figure, standing by the backdoor, staring outside the curtain.

The curtain was open, the door too, wide open. The deep black of the night met her and she stood face to face with it. The wind blew through the remaining bed sheets on the hanging line and only then did Anne run.

She run back to the sitting room and turned on the light. The TV was gone. MOT. THE LITTLE ONE. MOT AND THE LITTLE ONE. MOT. AND THE LITTLE ONE. She couldn’t hear her voice but she had screamed to Tom who was still in bed. “They have stolen!… thieves!… Call someone!…”

“Run! Go, Call the askari!” he stuttered as he tumbled out of bed. His face was still asleep, his small eyes even smaller. His morning groggy voice not allowing much of a shout, he sounded like he was talking out loud, “ABABI! ABABI!“

Anne scampered down the stairs.

She called out to the man who kept guard shouting in haste and pointing at the direction the burglars had taken. Instead he stopped, looked at her and then jogged in the opposite direction. He had run out like a man whose eyes had already been open.

“TOM!” she screamed in the cold quiet of the night. “Tommm! Mot! Please! They have taken him!” It was then she realised that she had on just Tom’s vest. And that no one was coming to help her. Most especially not the man who lived in the askari house. Afraid to face the future, she walked hesitantly back upstairs.

The front door was open. This time it was actually open. No ghosts.

She asked him, with tears in her eyes if he had checked the children’s rooms. He said that he had. She did not believe the look in his face. She checked for little one first. Inside the room, in his little crib, he turned and moved his legs.

She asked him again, if he had checked for Mot.

“Yes,” he said, unconvincingly. “You can go and check for him yourself.”

She opened his door, heart bolted by steel. And he sat up. The way he usually did when she opened the door.

“TUTU,” he said and pointed at his wet trousers.

7

On the sitting room chair closest to the bedrooms, lay kitchen scissors and a knife and the white cement stained hand print.

They took the television and the laptop- along with the previous night’s program for watching a movie. They had taken a flash disk with their wedding videos and photos. They had also left with Anne’s phone, with her memories of her days with the Mot and Tom during the national lock down, memories of Mot in a bow tie on little one’s birthdays, with memories of things she had felt, things she had seen, and memories of who she had been when she was pregnant with Mot, after she gave birth, on the New Year of 2019 and of the happenings of the past few weeks. They had left with Anne’s peace of mind, dashed the grain of faith that she been growing and sent a clear message.

EPILOGUE

It was 4:30 p.m. Both boys were awake and quiet. The maid was about to leave. The baby handbook says that young children sleep better when exposed to sunlight. Besides that, Mot and the outdoors could not be kept apart for long periods of time without a meltdown.

She opened the small gate, Mot in hand and little one at her waist. As soon as she had stepped outside, the askari came out to close the door. She muttered to herself, hoping he could hear her. “Why was he always ready to close the gate but he was never there to open it?”

A few steps further up the hill, Mot tugged at her and began to cry. He pointed downwards and asked to go home. It was unlike him to not want to be outside. Anne followed the direction of his finger.

Below the gate, a man wearing a reflector jacket who had been walking behind them stopped walking. He did not seem to have been going anywhere anymore. He awkwardly stared at the unfinished building where he had been working.

Soon after, another man, in dark clothes jumped out through the gate of the same building in a hurry. And then suddenly he too, was not in a hurry anymore. He decided to sit on the incomplete brick fence with his ear phones in his ears. It was clear that there was nothing playing in his ears, he was too distracted, looking up and down. His friend in a reflector jacket seemed frozen in place, admiring the drying concrete that they had just smoothed onto the exterior of the new building.

Mot was right. It was time to go back home.

*****************