Substitution
A Short Story by a new immigrant African writer. It depicts the illusions of gripping a new reality that is not so different as it is inhabited by fellow human beings who have similar sufferings and frustrations.
Content
Substitution
Original Text by: Yahya Fadlalla
Translated from Arabic by: Mustafa Mudathir
It was an evening in Ottawa of unveiling clouds; stripping of copious rain.
She was walking ahead of me. lightly running, I should say. With a nervousness ascertained
to me when she hurled the Pepsi can and then kicked it with her left foot. The can’s sonorous
rattle on the asphalt resonated well with the beauty in her tension. I was hiding under my
umbrella; a useful trick I had learned lately from watching the weather channels before I left
home. It also was a scheme that while I was hiding under my umbrella, she trotted her tension
ahead, indifferent to the falling rain, but soaked up to the extent of vague sexual invocations.
Did I say vague sexual invocations? I had probably envisioned such a wetly beauty while
bathing.
She kept bouncing ahead of me; her purse oscillating from her left shoulder to bear the
burden of absorbing the harmonic elegance of her graceful tense body in its orchestrated
intolerance of any discord. Her hair maintained its chaos in consort with bursts of drizzle that
fell on her face as they conspired with the blowing breeze from the opposite direction. A
breeze unlike the one old poets delegated to visit their loved ones on their behalf. We both
walked against the rain; apparently to the same destination; the Mackenzie King bus station
from which buses were scattered in the four directions of the city.
I decided to abandon it. Was I not a creature of rain? I folded the umbrella to align myself with
the bursts of rain; hoping for a unity, even if only when it rained, with the blissful carnival
ahead of me.
In the waiting area at the station Mackenzie King, I followed other umbrellas with changing
colors as people moved in and out of the Rideau Center. But I also followed her. She had
entered the indoor waiting area before me. When I spotted her, she was shaking her hair left
and right and in graceful circles to rid herself of raindrops. She then walked to a dimly lit
corner to examine herself in front of a glass wall capable of enduring the entirety of her
beautiful body. The waiting area swarmed with travelers. She moved to the phone hanging on
the wall after she relieved the glass wall of her worrisome appearance and of its being a
reliable mirror. Red buses were coming and going. People entered and others departed. She
screamed insults at someone on the other side of her conversation. All kinds of modern day
obscenities yelled out of her. She became so mad that she kicked and punched the wall
several times. She cursed and yelled. Shouted and cursed. And when her voice got
overwhelmed by her crying, she slammed the phone violently and hurled a highpitched insult
to an unknown entity, doublekicked the wall and entered into a sobbing fit. In the middle of
her fit and shakes she pulled off her pink shirt declaring wild fullblown breasts over which a
sleeveless top was loosely worn. With shaky hands, she wiped tears and rain drops from her
face and collapsed in a sitting position against the wall. Only her tears would reveal her silent
crying.
I looked up at a wall clock. Seven thirty six. I shifted to the schedule board, scanning the
charts for bus number 97 to South Keys. Luckily, I turned when bus number 84 just came in. I
saw her lining up to board it! Instantly I decided to take it. Bus number 84 also went up to
South Keys; only it had a lengthy itinerary in South West Ottawa. I had to desert the idea of a
quick arrival home and spend some time following her. Now there was only this old lady
between us in line. She was holding high a big umbrella with the colors of the Canadian flag.
The girl appeared less tense. But a deep moan laced with, apparently, a history of losses; a
moan scratched by residual crying; a moan of unlimited pain propelled audibly through her
chest and out when she stepped to board the bus. The old lady insisted on keeping her
umbrella unfolded until she was seated by the bus driver when I noticed that the girl had tied
her shirt around her waist. Down her neck and further down to the wet sleeveless top,
raindrops slid from locks of her disheveled hair. I noticed I was also wet. I was following her
as wet as could be. I used my umbrella as a walking stick; held it in my right hand and did not
think of any purpose, other than a walking aid, for it! I might have been trying to ward off a
suspicion of failure to appreciate beauty or simply trying to preserve a relation with the rain! I
might have had to know how beauty related to adversity. Why was she so miserable to the
extent of blatant disintegration that conveyed only to tears and confusion.
She sat on the last seat in the front section of the bus. I sat on the first seat in the rear section
which offered a look from above because the rear part was three steps higher. I was above
but close enough to see tears in those green eyes. In fact it was my first encounter with tears
that belonged to green eyes! She wept in silence. From my seat, I could see her facial
features registering various emotions. Tears flooded her eyes and slid down her carefully
carved nose descending on her lips. Of course, I never failed to follow the receding raindrops
from the tufts of her hair. Of all the passengers, a mix of ethnicities and skin colors, and
despite the clatter, I could hear that moan coming from a terrible disaster. A moan allied to the
rain that washed the city in that evening in Spring. A rain so inciting to a night unrestrained.
Only me could hear her. She did not seem to bother about her freeflowing tears. I did not
lose interest in following her from a distance so close; from an obvious yet a hidden place.
I thought about ‘what if she has to disembark in the next or any of the stops before South
Keys’. Should I follow her? Flipping through some possibilities, I came to realize I was totally
biased to
the idea of a ‘loosening up’ as a unique feature of Saturday nights! A deep and distinct moan
of a sorrowrevealing nature, brought my mind back with a startle.She had nervously opened
her purse. With trembling fingers, she took out a photo album. I shifted my body to a ‘ready
mode’ that would enable me to see the photos in the album which she suddenly decided to
keep in her lap for a while. She, then took a deep breath and leaked a dispossessed sigh.
She opened her purse again and took out an averagesized envelope. When she opened the
album again, I could see two photos on its first page. She and a young man whose hair was
dyed a metallic blue. The second photo showed her with the same young man but in a more
intimate, close to a kissing pose. Suddenly, she tore the first photo from the album and
reduced it to pieces with her face abuzz with pain. She took out the next photo, tore it and
stuffed its pieces in her purse. Opening the envelope, she took out a bunch of photos, chose
one and placed it on the rectangular space previously occupied by the first picture she had
destroyed. This new photo was for her with a dog. The substitution was carried out with a
clear expression of vengeance on her teary face. She took a different photo from the
envelope and stuck it in place of the second photo she had destroyed. The dog in this new
photo seemed to have just finished kissing her on the cheek. It was a somewhat black and
brown German Shepherd with smart eyes.
It was raining heavily now. I realized I wasn’t paying attention to the bus stops. She repeated
this act of pulling out pictures, shredding them and stuffing her purse with shredded remains
of photos. She did it with changing emotional expressions on her face. From my seat, my
place above but close, I could see that she destroyed all photos that had that guy in them and
replaced them with photos of a different friend. More than ten photos in different places,
fashions and poses were substituted. I noticed that the Canadian Parliament building,
destroyed in the first photo, was replaced with one that showed the Parliament in which the
dog stood in an erect position with his front feet rested on her breasts. Although many places
did not survive destruction, other new buildings appeared on the dog’s photos.
Just before the bus reached South Keys, she looked somewhat relaxed and quiet. She
noticed her tears, untied the pink shirt from around her waist and wiped her face. I could still
see a shade of sadness looming on her beautiful face.
At South Keys, bursts of rain were still identifying that Saturday night with an inherent call for
nonrestraint. She disembarked, offering her slender body to the sting of raindrops. I left the
bus behind her, as a follower. I did not unfold my umbrella but sought refuge in one of those
red kiosks. She stood for the rain to wash her and take full advantage of her shapeliness.
Before taking number 142 to Feather Lane, where I lived, I saw her walk to a litter box. She
opened her purse, took out the shredded photos and threw them in the litter box. She did this
with what I sensed was like the most beautiful of all the tensions I had seen her in. And while I
was feeling my steps onto bus number 142, I saw her light a cigarette and take a deep breath.
Then I saw her shake her hair to free it from the bursts of rain, but to no avail.
Original Text by: Yahya Fadlalla
Translated from Arabic by: Mustafa Mudathir
It was an evening in Ottawa of unveiling clouds; stripping of copious rain.
She was walking ahead of me. lightly running, I should say. With a nervousness ascertained
to me when she hurled the Pepsi can and then kicked it with her left foot. The can’s sonorous
rattle on the asphalt resonated well with the beauty in her tension. I was hiding under my
umbrella; a useful trick I had learned lately from watching the weather channels before I left
home. It also was a scheme that while I was hiding under my umbrella, she trotted her tension
ahead, indifferent to the falling rain, but soaked up to the extent of vague sexual invocations.
Did I say vague sexual invocations? I had probably envisioned such a wetly beauty while
bathing.
She kept bouncing ahead of me; her purse oscillating from her left shoulder to bear the
burden of absorbing the harmonic elegance of her graceful tense body in its orchestrated
intolerance of any discord. Her hair maintained its chaos in consort with bursts of drizzle that
fell on her face as they conspired with the blowing breeze from the opposite direction. A
breeze unlike the one old poets delegated to visit their loved ones on their behalf. We both
walked against the rain; apparently to the same destination; the Mackenzie King bus station
from which buses were scattered in the four directions of the city.
I decided to abandon it. Was I not a creature of rain? I folded the umbrella to align myself with
the bursts of rain; hoping for a unity, even if only when it rained, with the blissful carnival
ahead of me.
In the waiting area at the station Mackenzie King, I followed other umbrellas with changing
colors as people moved in and out of the Rideau Center. But I also followed her. She had
entered the indoor waiting area before me. When I spotted her, she was shaking her hair left
and right and in graceful circles to rid herself of raindrops. She then walked to a dimly lit
corner to examine herself in front of a glass wall capable of enduring the entirety of her
beautiful body. The waiting area swarmed with travelers. She moved to the phone hanging on
the wall after she relieved the glass wall of her worrisome appearance and of its being a
reliable mirror. Red buses were coming and going. People entered and others departed. She
screamed insults at someone on the other side of her conversation. All kinds of modern day
obscenities yelled out of her. She became so mad that she kicked and punched the wall
several times. She cursed and yelled. Shouted and cursed. And when her voice got
overwhelmed by her crying, she slammed the phone violently and hurled a highpitched insult
to an unknown entity, doublekicked the wall and entered into a sobbing fit. In the middle of
her fit and shakes she pulled off her pink shirt declaring wild fullblown breasts over which a
sleeveless top was loosely worn. With shaky hands, she wiped tears and rain drops from her
face and collapsed in a sitting position against the wall. Only her tears would reveal her silent
crying.
I looked up at a wall clock. Seven thirty six. I shifted to the schedule board, scanning the
charts for bus number 97 to South Keys. Luckily, I turned when bus number 84 just came in. I
saw her lining up to board it! Instantly I decided to take it. Bus number 84 also went up to
South Keys; only it had a lengthy itinerary in South West Ottawa. I had to desert the idea of a
quick arrival home and spend some time following her. Now there was only this old lady
between us in line. She was holding high a big umbrella with the colors of the Canadian flag.
The girl appeared less tense. But a deep moan laced with, apparently, a history of losses; a
moan scratched by residual crying; a moan of unlimited pain propelled audibly through her
chest and out when she stepped to board the bus. The old lady insisted on keeping her
umbrella unfolded until she was seated by the bus driver when I noticed that the girl had tied
her shirt around her waist. Down her neck and further down to the wet sleeveless top,
raindrops slid from locks of her disheveled hair. I noticed I was also wet. I was following her
as wet as could be. I used my umbrella as a walking stick; held it in my right hand and did not
think of any purpose, other than a walking aid, for it! I might have been trying to ward off a
suspicion of failure to appreciate beauty or simply trying to preserve a relation with the rain! I
might have had to know how beauty related to adversity. Why was she so miserable to the
extent of blatant disintegration that conveyed only to tears and confusion.
She sat on the last seat in the front section of the bus. I sat on the first seat in the rear section
which offered a look from above because the rear part was three steps higher. I was above
but close enough to see tears in those green eyes. In fact it was my first encounter with tears
that belonged to green eyes! She wept in silence. From my seat, I could see her facial
features registering various emotions. Tears flooded her eyes and slid down her carefully
carved nose descending on her lips. Of course, I never failed to follow the receding raindrops
from the tufts of her hair. Of all the passengers, a mix of ethnicities and skin colors, and
despite the clatter, I could hear that moan coming from a terrible disaster. A moan allied to the
rain that washed the city in that evening in Spring. A rain so inciting to a night unrestrained.
Only me could hear her. She did not seem to bother about her freeflowing tears. I did not
lose interest in following her from a distance so close; from an obvious yet a hidden place.
I thought about ‘what if she has to disembark in the next or any of the stops before South
Keys’. Should I follow her? Flipping through some possibilities, I came to realize I was totally
biased to
the idea of a ‘loosening up’ as a unique feature of Saturday nights! A deep and distinct moan
of a sorrowrevealing nature, brought my mind back with a startle.She had nervously opened
her purse. With trembling fingers, she took out a photo album. I shifted my body to a ‘ready
mode’ that would enable me to see the photos in the album which she suddenly decided to
keep in her lap for a while. She, then took a deep breath and leaked a dispossessed sigh.
She opened her purse again and took out an averagesized envelope. When she opened the
album again, I could see two photos on its first page. She and a young man whose hair was
dyed a metallic blue. The second photo showed her with the same young man but in a more
intimate, close to a kissing pose. Suddenly, she tore the first photo from the album and
reduced it to pieces with her face abuzz with pain. She took out the next photo, tore it and
stuffed its pieces in her purse. Opening the envelope, she took out a bunch of photos, chose
one and placed it on the rectangular space previously occupied by the first picture she had
destroyed. This new photo was for her with a dog. The substitution was carried out with a
clear expression of vengeance on her teary face. She took a different photo from the
envelope and stuck it in place of the second photo she had destroyed. The dog in this new
photo seemed to have just finished kissing her on the cheek. It was a somewhat black and
brown German Shepherd with smart eyes.
It was raining heavily now. I realized I wasn’t paying attention to the bus stops. She repeated
this act of pulling out pictures, shredding them and stuffing her purse with shredded remains
of photos. She did it with changing emotional expressions on her face. From my seat, my
place above but close, I could see that she destroyed all photos that had that guy in them and
replaced them with photos of a different friend. More than ten photos in different places,
fashions and poses were substituted. I noticed that the Canadian Parliament building,
destroyed in the first photo, was replaced with one that showed the Parliament in which the
dog stood in an erect position with his front feet rested on her breasts. Although many places
did not survive destruction, other new buildings appeared on the dog’s photos.
Just before the bus reached South Keys, she looked somewhat relaxed and quiet. She
noticed her tears, untied the pink shirt from around her waist and wiped her face. I could still
see a shade of sadness looming on her beautiful face.
At South Keys, bursts of rain were still identifying that Saturday night with an inherent call for
nonrestraint. She disembarked, offering her slender body to the sting of raindrops. I left the
bus behind her, as a follower. I did not unfold my umbrella but sought refuge in one of those
red kiosks. She stood for the rain to wash her and take full advantage of her shapeliness.
Before taking number 142 to Feather Lane, where I lived, I saw her walk to a litter box. She
opened her purse, took out the shredded photos and threw them in the litter box. She did this
with what I sensed was like the most beautiful of all the tensions I had seen her in. And while I
was feeling my steps onto bus number 142, I saw her light a cigarette and take a deep breath.
Then I saw her shake her hair to free it from the bursts of rain, but to no avail.
