Excerpt: The Bare Bones Book of Speculative Fiction

The Other Son

1.

When the son of Hasanuddin and Julfa was born wrong, the family advised to put him in a coconut tree for the djinn. Hasanuddin agreed to do so. The infant hugged his little mangled leg to himself and opened a red mouth to bawl as loud as a car, his protest ringing in the hot stillness of summer. At this time, Julfa lay in her sweat-drenched petticoat, her chest bare to the air after a young sister-in-law undid her blouse in the middle of labour, her feet and nipples aching, weak with pain and exhaustion. Her mother-in-law had taken the baby away too soon to see his father. She had not held him. When she returned with blankets empty of the infant, Julfa opened her mouth and cried, and continued to cry.

2.

Hasanuddin could not find any narkelwala who would agree to climb the coconut tree and hide the babe among its heavy fronds, so he borrowed their climbing cloth and sickle to do it himself. He swaddled the babe and tied it onto his chest and its fuzzy head nuzzled against his skin, soft like velvet, and his heart warmed automatically. He wrestled with his emotion as he believed that Allah had instructed men to overcome their base impulses. Hasanuddin was not devout in his prayers but he attended every Friday jummah. Now he asked for conviction and after asr, as the sun glowed warm and red and ushered in dusk, he climbed up the tallest coconut tree he could find and placed the baby among the fruits. It slept soundly, the fragile eyelids fluttering like a flower’s petal. He climbed back down and fear struck Hasanuddin’s heart, fear that the baby would fall out of the tree in the wind.

He waited under the coconut tree as dusk turned into night and night darkened and turned cold. In the morning, Hasanuddin heard the baby’s wail pierce the sky before the sun had even risen. Cold with regret that he had stayed, Hasanuddin climbed the tree once more, and found in it a most beautiful child with pearlescent skin and perfect lovely limbs tucked against his sides. His eyes were wide open, drinking in the stippled clouds drifting overhead and reflecting their silver hue, and then sunlight shone out all of a sudden as if the heavens broke open, and Hasanuddin took the babe home.

3.

Summer passed and monsoon arrived. With it, the floods and thunder, cleaning the face of the earth and skies, while in their wake the people return bedraggled to their homes, nature’s disaster giving them a fresh start. They gave the child a name. Mumin would not take Julfa’s milk. Her breasts swelled with milk until they leaked but even as Julfa pressed her leaking nipple into the child’s mouth, he turned his face away and screamed until she gave him away. Her mother-in-law took this babe away from her too. She was not even allowed to hold Mumin for her failure. But her breasts continued to swell as if the child had fed from her and she squeezed out the hindmilk when she washed herself, the creamy liquid running down her ribs and dipping through her quim as a river through the delta and into the Bay of Bengal. She massaged her milk out, and it seemed to Julfa that her breasts ached for her true baby. She took it as a sign that her true baby was hungry and calling out for her milk, his mother’s milk. Julfa massaged herself and wept over her son that she did not get to name and felt the anger rise dark and dour within her heart. 

4.

And so the son of Hasanuddin and not of Julfa lived. He was tall and strong for his age and the fairest child the village had ever set their eyes on. Mumin became the pride and joy of his father and he took Mumin everywhere, carrying him on his shoulders to the market, taking him to the fields where he showed the other farmers how well Mumin walked, holding him in his arms in the mosque while the imam delivered the khutbah. Mumin was the perfect child, so well-looked and well-mannered that the men at the mosque would ask to hold him, unabashed in showing their affection to this perfect son of Hasanuddin. How these men, who were generally stoic and unforgiving to their own offspring, cooed over Mumin, enchanted by every little movement and babble the baby made. Women sat around the kitchen, ignoring the lentil pot and letting the rice burn in lieu of passing the babe around, entranced by his beauty and voice. They said that spending just a few minutes in Mumin’s presence gave one luck and blessed their year. In due time, word of Mumin spread to neighbouring villages and people came over to see the child that the heavens had gifted. They told his tale far and near, spoke of the lightness of his eyes, the dark curl of his hair, the redness of his cheeks, the magic of his laugh; and those in the villages far from this home of Mumin whispered the words son of the djinn to each other and stayed away.

5.

After maghrib, Julfa haunted the coconut tree her husband had climbed, beating the trunk with her fist and calling for the djinn to return her son. The villagers called her possessed. When Hasanuddin heard word of this, he pulled her home by the hair and beat her for it. She refused Hasanuddin’s touch and bore his thrusting cock with grim forbearance. He begged her to bear him another beautiful son as he spilled his seed, begged her to love their firstborn and be a good mother. He muttered my son, my son as he fell asleep beside her while Julfa lay awake, her gaping heart ripping wider, calling for her son until her prayer eclipsed all else. She asked Allah for answers and heard silence ringing in her ears.

The child Mumin had his own bed in their small home with not enough rooms. His grandmother had placed him in the center of the room as you would a shrine. When Julfa snuck in after her husband was snoring in deep sleep, she found Mumin sat up amidst his pillows, a lithe pale figure in the center of the dark. He laid his white eyes upon her and for a split second, Julfa saw his innocence and helplessness. He was only a babe. He was only here because Hasanuddin had taken her son away. His wasn’t the hand that had cast the die. That had been her own people, who now sit content in his thrall, unthinking and uncaring toward her plight. Then the second passed and Julfa could only see the cuckoo child that had taken the place of her own. Julfa took Mumin in her arms and ran out, his wails echoing through the house, a sound like music. She ran fast to the river, the baby hugged tight to her chest, his small skull cupped in hers, but no affection nor peace rose in her. She covered its mouth and nose, but houses had already lit up behind her with people waking at the cries of an infant. The people came out of their homes to see her crazed figure running, and their yells and shouts followed Julfa to the river’s edge. 

6.

Julfa threw the child Mumin into the water. It sank underneath the surface until the water rippled green over its pale face. Then it disappeared as if hands had yanked it down towards the third bank.

7.

The villagers found Julfa weeping by the riverside, bent in sijda, praying to Allah to return her son to her. The water kissed her forehead. When Hasanuddin pushed his way through the crowd and saw his wife, he knew what she had done and he threw his body on her and began strangling her before their very eyes. They began to pull him off her when she screamed the djinn will take it, the djinn will take it away! And it dawned on the villagers next that she had drowned their beloved Mumin. They fell upon her with sticks and fists and, in the violence of their madness, began to beat them both to death. 

The river lapped its banks and swelled and swelled like a flood was to come. But in the waves of the river, little limbs swam and played and dipped out of the foam unnoticed. They danced and laughed with each other, these sons of Hasanuddin and Julfa, who gasped their last breaths on the riverbank, knowing not that their children were lost and safe with the djinn. The pale body of Mumin swam like a free fish and beside him swam the other son, his mangled leg slowing him not at all.

Excerpted with permission from The Bare Bones Book of Speculative Fiction edited by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury published by Bare Bones Publishing 2026.

The Bare Bones Book of Speculative Fiction (ed. Tejaswinee Roychowdhury) can be ordered here.