Persona Short Story

He had a wooden rod with which he stirred the can long enough to irritate me. Then he closed it and sat at his table, scratching his patchy grey beard. "Ustaz,"* I said, "I am waiting to have a dip from your wonderful hands.". Without looking at me, he said," Just a little while more." With frustration, I asked," What's up? What's the science?" He said there was no science. "There is popular wisdom," he added. I almost yelled that I wanted a dip without popular wisdom. He answered disdainfully," That's obvious. You guys spoil quality by rushing the making." I fell silent, thinking. He was right, in a way. On a split-second mental scan, I cherished an underrating of the substance in question. A voice somewhere in my mind snickered: talk about quality for snuff! He surprised me by saying, "Is that what you are thinking about? snuff?" He looked at me directly after placing the rod on the table. "Well, this plant has a personality. She wants you to treat her on her terms before she can give you what you want." I flipped back into whining," You're torturing me. It's just a dip, and I am done." I said and added," After I spit it, I have a joint to smoke. Two shots to down." He gave me a steady look, then smiled wryly and said," What's the deal? Do you have to do all three of these?" "Whatever," I said, rather shyly. He surprised me again by saying firmly, with his shaky index finger pointing at the can," Go ahead, open it and take a dip" For no reason, I could not. Instead, I stood gazing at him, undecided. He chuckled. "It is the power of the plant," he said, "that inspires your indecision," he concluded. He removed a piece of debris that had landed on a book in front of him, a fallout from his patient mixing the snuff. Then he turned toward me with a pleasant face and said, "because she is unsure." "The snuff is unsure?" I asked, trying to smarten up to his point. He was at his beard again. He suddenly looked like a real professor. "You see, the natron I am using is not basic enough. That is not helping her give out the stuff," he said pleasantly. I thought, well, this is science, not popular wisdom. He coughed and oscillated in his chair, excited by what he said. "I worked on it for days. I even went to see a professor at the faculty of agriculture, but he was not in the office," he said and then fell silent. I was about to ask if he went to the Nuclear Institute but abstained for fear he would be angered and would not give me a dip. I remembered a news report about natron being adulterated with radioactive stuff in the soil. The article claimed two Western companies were paying the corrupt government to allow them dump radioactive junk in the remote parts of the country where natron was mined. He seemed to have gone into a contemplative mode, but suddenly, he touched the edge of the can with the tip of his finger and said," Plants are not to be taken for granted. They don't just live." He paused and then continued with a hint of passion in his voice, " Do you know that gum acacia favours dictatorship?" I knew that he had problems in the past. He had been accused of killing his wife but was acquitted, and he underwent rehabilitation. Many in the neighbourhood ultimately thought of him as a wise man, but he did not have a job. "What do you mean, gum favours dictatorship?" I asked in amusement. "Just like I said. That is scientific talk. Researchers have found that when you incise the tree bark during a dictatorship, it liberally oozes gum. But when it is a democracy, and voting and whatnot, you won't get that much gum from an incision." "This is a bit weird, Ustaz," I said cautiously. "Only the devil is weird." He spoke. He seemed midway into the meditative state he had previously been into. "Do you know about saffron?" he asked. I said no. He explained that it is a philosopher of a plant (to use his words). At this, I remembered something else about him. He was once a medical student. In one exam, he did not like the question. He quit medicine. People insist that nothing was hard for him. He just did not like the question. So, as an answer, he wrote lines from a poem by Wordsworth. A famous English poet, I guess. But honestly, I thought saffron was mentioned in a verse of the Holy Quran. It went like the verses that counted things: e.g.,'-and saffron.' And he landed his (fourth?) surprise by saying, "Well, saffron is unfairly treated in ancient texts, presumably because these texts call for societies that don't promote its cultivation." Oh, my. ‘Do I know about this?’ I whispered to myself. I did not wish to say anything lest I look stupid. "Saffron needs a cultured society," he said and pulled his body up from the chair as if to stand up. After hearing the word 'cultured,' I felt it was time to go buy my drinks. He noticed my unease. With a pale smile, he said," By now, the snuff has found enough alkalinity to yield results." I asked him politely, "Can you say that in simple Arabic?" "Take your dip," he said.


Mustafa Mudathir,

*Ustaz= Learned person or professor