September 16, 2019 | Occasus | Issue 9 | Fiction

The Third Eye

While having breakfast a few months back, I heard a knock on the door. It took me a while to get up from my meal and prepare myself for the travails of having to entertain someone first thing on a weekend. I reached for the lock, unlocking it, only to be startled to find myself in the presence of my English teacher. It was overwhelming but I quickly became suspicious to discover him at my door-step this early. However I tried my best not to show the slightest of agitation and welcomed him in.
 
‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you so early on a week-end, it’s just that I... there’s something that I must share with you.’ Mark said somewhat guiltily while trying to sit himself down on the couch.
 
Mark, a lean Irish man with graying hair, had been my English teacher for the past one year, and to my benefit, I was his only student and perhaps only friend in what for him was a foreign land.
 
‘It’s really no problem; you seem troubled, is everything alright?’  I replied.
 
‘Yes, I mean no, could I get some water to drink?’ he said.
 
I looked at him from the kitchen; he seemed shaken. I handed him the glass of water and watched him finish it in a hurry. We both sat in silence; Mark had fixed his gaze towards the Buddha statue that was placed on top of a low wooden stool. I waited for Mark to speak but when after sometime I saw that he wasn’t, I decided to break off what had seemed to me as an awkward silence.
 
‘Mark, are you okay? You don’t seem so well’ I asked him without the expectation of a reply.
 
‘There’s something that’s bothering me,’ he replied without taking his eyes off the statue.  Taking deep breaths he then continued.
 
‘My mother, do you remember her? She called last night and really, I fear that she’s fallen ill; perhaps it’s her heart or her kidney, I really can’t tell from here; he paused and took deep breaths while trying to gather his thoughts.
 
I sat adjacent to him on the bamboo chair that I had inherited sometime after my grandparent’s death; I tried to figure out exactly what he had wished to say.
‘I’m afraid, I don’t know much regarding your mother apart from the fact that she lives in Ireland. And I’m terribly sorry to hear of your mother, if there’s anything I could do.’ I said but I was cut off by Mark at this point.
 
 ‘Yes, she’s back home in Ireland and I’m here in Bangladesh. I did plan my trip home and that’s really not an issue here’ he said hesitantly when I interrupted him as I could sense where this was going.
 
‘Mark, if you need an official holiday from me then please take a few days off. I’m sure I can manage a week without your assistance. It shouldn’t be a problem with me if the school is willing to let you go.
 
‘That’s very kind of you but no, there’s something else that I should ask of you. Something that I believe, you won’t be happy to hear about. I should let you know that I’m not the sort of a person who really believes in anything. I mean, I don’t wish to come off as a hypocrite to you and I assure that I’m not one. But this is really important. After my family’s death, mother… she’s all I have and I just can’t afford to lose her’.
 
I had known Mark for the last year or so.  In the beginning, I did not like him much, now my feeling for him is rather ambivalent. This I had developed after hearing about his family’s death in a car crash. After which I cared to re-think before saying something, in order to keep myself from causing him further pain.
 
‘I know that I’ve previously talked about my mother in the most harsh manner but I really need her to be well’, Mark continued to go on speaking vaguely and for a while I had entertained the thought that he was drunk, which in fact, I was certain about later on.
 
‘At this point I grew restless; the suspense was killing me. And I could sense myself showing much of it in my facial expressions. But Mark continued to talk aimlessly before finally coming to the point.
 
‘I’ve heard things about you, that you’re an incarnation of the Goddess Durga, I’m not Hindu and yes I do not believe in God. But please if there’s anything you can do for me, for my mother. I will forever be indebted to you. They say you have powers beyond human apprehension; they say that you are the protector, the savoir. Please’, he pleaded.
 
I didn’t know what to say to this. True, I had people come up to me before because of what they had perceived godly in me. I had always dismissed this, as I’ve considered it as prejudices and superstations of the uneducated. But coming from someone as educated as Mark I was at taken aback. I was in great confusion. Dismissing him though would have meant that I would have to shatter his hopes and retain my nurtured belief in science. On the other hand, if I had yielded to him, it would give him momentary hope and would indicate that I too believed in my un-humanly nature.   
 
As the sunlight came seeping through my kitchen window, I did what to me seemed correct. I responded to his request and acted to bless him by lifting my wrist up, as a true goddess would do.

HYACINTH ZIA is an English Literature major. She has spent most of her life shuffling between Bangladesh (her place of birth) and The U.S.