World Without Men.

Chapter III
A Summary

(A difficult patient.)

Let’s say you like ribeye steak a lot that you eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day, for a week. I’m willing to bet everything I’ve got in my pocket right now that by the fourth day you’d be so sick of ribeye steak that you’d say yes, yes, yes right away to a guy if he comes up to you with an offer to buy your head for a little more than fifty cents plus plus. You'd do anything, or sell anything as long as you don't have to eat another slab of ribeye steak.

To begin with, I don’t like rice porridge. Can you imagine how I feel when I have to eat this and nothing else for five days? On the morning of the fifth day I told Aunt she had better do something about this because I am not going to eat a teaspoon more of this stuff, not even if the fate of Dungun depends on it. How about if I add fried tenggiri in there, will that make you happy? Heaven knows how much I miss fish, or solid food for that matter, and so without thinking twice I say, yes that’d make me very happy indeed.

I see a huge slice of fried ikan tenggiri looking so nice and juicy perched on top of the porridge. Aunt must have put everything she got to fry it into a nice golden yellow, its flaky flesh all moist and white. I take a big gulp, tilting my head sideways to guide the fish into position in between my teeth. It’s painful enough to swallow rice porridge but the taste of the kunyit and garam blending in a nice mix make me forget about the pain for a second. And then it has to happen, right after the first gulp, even before the fish is half way down my stomach.

A bone got stuck in my throat that I say to Aunt, look what you’ve done! I got bone in my throat and this is going to kill me. Why must you do this to me? What have I done to you?

It’s a probably a small bone, drink some water, you’d be alright.
No, I ‘m not going to be okay with this bone. What’s wrong with you?
Serve you right for eating without saying Bismillah.
And please tell God to leave a small kid like me alone. Can’t He just let me have my meal in peace? Must I be punished with this for taking Mamood Botoq’s trishaw for a spin? There are men who commit bigger sins and women who commit even bigger sins but how come they don’t get bones stuck in their throat? I am going to die! I am going to die!

Aunt says, oh a small bone like that won’t kill a strong boy like you.

But I’m dying from this bone, can’t you see?
Shall I call Bilal to recite the Yassin for you?
I can read it myself!
Why don’t you just be quiet for a second, I go get something for that bone.
Where are you going? Are you going to leave me die here?
My goodness, this boy has wild imagination.

Here’s a banana, swallow it whole, don’t chew.
You have gone crazy, haven’t you?
I say swallow it whole, don’t chew. It’ll get to the bone to drag it down to your belly.
How do you know this is gonna work!
Will you please shut up and swallow it?

It’s painful enough to swallow a teaspoon of watery rice porridge and she wants to me to swallow a cylinder of banana whole without chewing? First she got the bone stuck in my throat and now she’s going to choke me with a banana. She’s gonna kill me. She doesn’t like me. She hates me.

I hate you, I hate you!
Shut up and swallow this, will you?

She pushes half the banana through the gape no bigger than a fifty sen coin, and I swallow it, hard, without chewing. It slides down the throat like a cylinder pushing itself in a shaft, dragging the bone along.

Well?

You shouldn’t have done that! You should have fried the fish without the bone. What is wrong with you? What if it got stuck and can’t get out?
Oh it’s just a small bone.
No, it was bigger than your thumb!
You’d be half way to heaven by now if it was that big.
Why halfway?
For telling such a big lie.