Cigarette Thief

The house rumbled as Nissa pulled a piece of wood out from the wall. Wrapped in a cloth, the dust on the talismanic piece settled on her toenails.

She had managed to move the bed out of its corner using all her strength. The wooden cot, layered with bedding, had doubled in weight.

Earlier, Nissa had moved the bed just enough to slip her arm down its side. When her hand reached the hole in the wall, her fingertips felt a hollow nest. As she punctured through the air, a loud thud from the room adjacent to hers made her jump and withdraw her limb back up.

Now she was squatting over one of the suitcases her mother kept underneath the bed. Moving the bed had given her the sight of what her fingers had felt. 

Not even a single cigarette in there! From the stack she had left in her safe place, not even one in sight. The empty hole appeared as big as her hand. A hole she had accidentally discovered one day while cleaning for Eid.

The older women of her family, including her mother, welcomed the auspicious day by mopping down the house till its plinth.  For young Nissa, her mother kept a rag and water mixed with detergent to wipe the painted mud-walls. With the bucket of soapy water, Nissa would move from one room to another. It was so that she had chanced upon this corner years ago, hidden behind a thick coat of Rogan. When the paint bent and scraped off with water. Its crumbs fell on her toes, just like the dust today. 

Seeing the hole empty again meant that someone else had found it. For Nissa, it meant someone else had found her cigarettes hidden inside. 

******

Before moving away to another city for college, it wasn’t easy for Nissa to find a cigarette to dangle between her fingers. 

In Kashmir, where she lived, the shopkeepers guarded the tobacco on their shelves from all women folk. Their rounded prayer caps and bearded visage frightened the hairs out of Nissa. She detested the eyeballs moving up and down her body. Checking if Nissa was after-all just a long haired boy, daring to ask for a pack of Four-Squares from the shop.

Much to the shopkeeper’s disappointment, Nissa enjoyed smoking. The headrush from a puff of smoke felt like the morning mist to her adolescent brain. 

In college, even though she changed her brand of smokes, the white packet of Four-Squares reminded her of home. Oh, the trouble she went through at the shops, pretending to be on a phone call with her father who smoked three  packs a day.

His chain smoking helped Nissa transcript stories for her purchase. She would halt her scooty miles away from her street.  Holding her phone to her ear, she would pretend to ask “I am at the shop Baba, what do you want me to get for you?” Nodding in attentiveness to her rehearsed dialogue. “Four-Square? Uggh” She would growl, as if repeating a name that she had no taste for.

Sometimes if she sensed bitterness dripping from the beards, an appalled  Astagfirullah would appear on her tongue. Throwing shade on any suspicion or judgement from the shopkeeper. But on some unfortunate days, they would outrightly refuse. Cursing the addiction, and her father who sent his poor girl out for cigarettes.  

It was an exhausting task no doubt. She could not leave the house often, or have the keys to the scooty with her at all times. After heart pounding considerations, she decided it was easier to sneak into her snoring fathers room– who was knocked out by his hearty dinner–to steal one cigarette for her desperate cravings.

Tip-toeing into his room, she would leave the door open in case she needed to run out. Her heart, like a loyal partner in crime, would slow down to avoid any noise. From the small box lying on her fathers side, she would pull out a cigarette; sometimes two, depending on how many were left. As she would clasp the sticks in her hands, her heart would start kicking again, signalling her to make a run for it. 

That cigarette in her hand in the middle of the night would feel emancipatory– even though she had to smoke it with all the windows open. After a few successful heists without waking up her father, Nissa found it easier than going to a far-away shop. So she settled on stealing a couple every now and then. 

One day Nissa noticed a routine in her fathers purchase. He would come home with a pair of packets out of which he would take only one to his room. The other he would leave in the living room. Though most of the time sealed, sometimes a pack with its mouth open would present itself to Nissa. Luck seemed to be an empathetic cigarette smoker. Finding a pack unattended, Nissa, like a swindler, would pull a few out.

Nissa dreaded having to go back to a shop. Luck could decide to quit anytime. Out of this fear, she rarely ignored an unsealed packet and ensured a running supply.

Though collecting cigarettes had become easy, keeping them hidden from her mother was not the same. Her mother had her hands in everything. Her bags, her almirah, her diaries….all personal spaces were open to her. 

After a few close encounters and scouting around the house for nooks and crannies, Nissa had remembered this hole in the wall. Her mother had filled it with a piece of wood. Calling it a bad omen to leave a hole empty. For she believed who else but mice and the devil take shelter in empty spaces. 

After scooping out the rubble from the hole, Nissa had placed her Four-Squares inside. Hiding them behind the same piece of wood her mother had left. She had even moved the bed to the corner to cover the hole from everyone’ s eyes. To smoke became just a matter of two fingers. First pull the wooden piece out, then a cigarette to light up. 

Before moving to college,  Nissa was left with seven pieces of her favourite brand. In excitement for leaving, she had forgotten having tucked them away in the wall. Coming back after a year, the first thing Nissa did alone in her room was, to reach for the hole.

After carefully gauging the empty hole, the color of her face resembled the pale white cloth the wood was wrapped in. Nissa put everything back to its place. The wood, the suitcases, the bed… and slowly unlocked the door. 

The need to smoke had vanished. More than a cigarette she wanted to know who had emptied the hole. She fell on the bed before gathering the courage to walk out.

     ****** 

The first step down the stairs was taken in eerie silence. Something had changed after this revelation. The slice of smile that Nissa’s mother gave her earlier reminded her of a sweet mango, but now it had changed into a walloping sickle.

Sharp enough to harvest an overgrowing weed from her garden. She felt terrified of facing her. 

“Could it be Dadi?’ Her mind began.  No-one had said a word to her. Everyone had welcomed her with smiling faces and warm hugs. There were the usual inquiries. “How was the trip? How is college? How are the people?  but no confrontations. 

Even on video calls from home, no-one from the family had shown any sign of disappointment or anger towards her. There was the occasional bicker with her mother. About how Nissa never picked up the phone on time but she never pointed out any other bad habits. 

“Maybe it’s not Mama at all” she hoped and dismissed it as being “worse”.  If it was her grandmother, she would be pulled out from the university and stationed in the kitchen. The old woman could accept a man smoking, like her son, but a woman was not part of her principles. She would blame her books, her novels, her cinema, the world outside the house, forgetting that it was filled with men smoking publicly. 

Spiralling thoughts carried Nissa down the stairs. Skimmed her thin into the ground, compelling her to prepare a burrow to lay in. Her dread made her want to crawl into a hole and make shelter. Like a rodent.  Her body felt as if it was changing shape. Becoming small and fearful. 

As soon as Nissa entered the living room, her eyes, like those of a squirrel, jumped from one person to another. Flickering within milliseconds– seeing but not staring into the pupils looking back at her.  She scuttled and sat next to her mother, as she usually did. 

“It would be much better if it was Mama after all.” she thought to herself, smelling a familiar odour. 

Nissa rested her hand on her mothers knee to seek relief but her mother gave no reaction.

“Is that why Mama is ignorant towards me?” frightened she pulled her hand back.

“Would you like something?” her mother asked.

Assessing the tone of her Mothers’ question Nissa thoughtlessly replied, “I would like to know..”. Stopping herself mid-way from blundering, “Tea maybe?”.

She watched her mother pour Nun chai from an old kettle. Fixated on the sound of an empty mug filling up. 

“Did you find it?” a voice screeched across the room.

“Hah?” Nissa looked up, staggering, towards her aunt sitting on the opposite side.

“I said… Did you find what you were looking for?…….. deep in your thoughts?” she enquired. Nissa nodded and smiled, shaking inwardly. She gathered her legs into a fold. Buckled her arms around them. Tight enough to keep her nerves from getting out into the family living room.

 As her mother passed her a cup of tea, her anxious thoughts spiraled with the rising steam. “Could it be Khali, is that why she took an unnecessary pause?”

It was very much like her aunt to plate up taunts in a gathering. Nissa knew she was mischievous. Was it her playing with Nissa’s mind? Did she know that Nissa was in trouble? And without confronting her, was she waiting to pounce on her like an owl waits for a naked mole-rat?

“Drink your tea….you might not get it easily in your college” her Aunt smirked at her. 

“It wouldn’t be Khali,” she thought reassuringly.. It was rare that she would be cleaning any other room than her own. She wondered why anyone would bother to move the bed otherwise.

“It couldn’t be her.”  Lost in introspection, Nissa gave out a loud sigh and everyone in the room turned towards her. Fearful of exposing her restlessness, she bowed and began sipping from the mug. 

All the men, finished with tea, had left the room. Out and about into the world beyond the house. Nissa was almost sure that it was someone from the women who had found her safe hiding in plain sight. 

In the family, the women kept their lives tucked inside the walls of the house. Their traces could be found in each room. The curtains, the floormat, the bedsheets, all had an imprint of one or the other woman. You wouldn’t find a man cleaning. It was an intimacy only the women shared with the architecture of the house. They were aware of all the crevices the dust could fall into. They knew where the cracks were emerging. They, in fact, were the ones who would cover up those cracks with mantles, pots and pieces of wood. So Nissa thought, surely, the cigarette thief was one of the women.

“Someone had found the cigarettes or taken them. Threw them away or kept them. What if someone had smoked them? Dadi didn’t smell of smoke, only lavender soap. Mama hated the act too much, she would definitely throw them away.” Nissa was losing herself to speculation.

“What if it was her younger cousins? Nissa wondered. “What if they too thought themselves to be lucky to have found a hole full of white robed saviors!?” 

Watching her younger sisters buried in the lightholes of their phones Nissa wondered if they too were exposed to the millions of screen grabs of beautiful women, with a cigarette in mouth. The Monica Belluci’s of the world, renouncing cowardice with a puff of smoke.

She remembered how the cigarette smoke made her feel when she first started. How the smoke became a blanket. Maybe in their teenage angst, her sisters found a similar fortress behind the fog of cigarettes.  

“They are too young” Nissa dismissed  her thoughts. “They might be addicted to their phones more.” She relieved herself. 

Her mother ran her sweaty palms across her head and brought her back to the present. The tea, now cold, had laced her chapped lips. She licked the salt with her tongue and sucked on her lower lip with her teeth. Remembering how her lips had lost the color girls should aspire to. She jumped up in haste and quickly left the room, without asking to be excused, only thanking her mother for tea.

The sky had turned into the evening crimson. The golden light had been spent in speculation and fear. “Why would no-one come up to confront her? What was the cigarette thief waiting for?” Nissa with her fearful thoughts, limped her way up the stairs. The house moved with her heavy strides. 

****** 

The bedding was in heaps all around her. The floral patterns on the sheets covered the mattress like dandelions atop a hill. Nissa was jumping around the room, from corner to corner, searching like a madman. The hole in the wall was empty. 

The room with sky blue Rogan walls was lit up by a fluorescent bulb. White light illuminated the corners and with it, her empty safe.  In the adjacent room, Nissa’s father had lit up a cigarette, and its smoke had traveled in from the windows, as if to tease her. She peeped in one more time, into the hole to make sure that she had not rushed it all.

When nothing but dark depth met her eyes, she stomped her feet in reckless frustration and shook up the skeleton of the house.  Soon there was a knock on the door. Nissa ran to unlock it and saw her mother was on the other side.

Nissa’s face wrinkled with fear, but her mother only noticed the mess in the room.

“What happened here?” 

She screamed at Nissa for the disoriented state of her bedroom. She paced towards the heap and swung up the bedsheet. Immediately starting to fold. Her mother, muttering under her breath. and Nissa, brooding over the thief,  were both rattled when her father walked in with a cigarette between his fingers.

“What happened here?….Are you two fighting?” he said, turning from one woman to another. He took a puff of smoke and exhaled the gush of the Four-Square.  Covering up the room in a dense cloud, he walked towards the window and sat resting his pelvis on the shelf..

Nissa felt the smoke touching her nose. Suddenly calm and aware of her father, she gazed  at the man with the cigarette in his hands. The smoke followed him around. His disinterest towards the untidy room, his ease, revealed something to Nissa. Catching the cold whiff of a man smoking so openly in the house, she eyed her fathers burnt out cigarette as he flicked the ash down the window. 

“I saw a mouse coming out from that hole” Nissa pointed at the wall and left the room.