COVER STORY

Midsummer nightmare

28-anees-salim Anees Salim

All childhood memories are not about adventures and mischief. Some refuse to fade away because of the nightmares they cause.

I must have been about 14 when this happened. I had gone to my grandparents’ house to spend the summer vacation, and every evening my grandmother would give me money to buy goodies. One evening I went to a bakery that was a short walk from the house. It was a small and almost sunless shop, run by a man in his early thirties. He gave me a long look when I stepped into the shop and kept me waiting until the shop was empty. Then he reached across the counter, asking silly questions about my vacation, and started stroking my cheek with one hand while stroking himself with the other. It took me only a few seconds to realise what was happening, but it took me many years and a lot of effort to calm myself. In the days that followed I kept reconstructing the moment his hand touched me, his face set with what I could not then decipher as lust, his eyes set on the doorway.

Every summer vacation after that, I would walk—almost tiptoe—past the bakery wondering what was happening inside its murky interior. I would imagine the shopkeeper behind the counter, his hand stroking another unsuspecting child’s cheek. I would not go into the shop, even when I was accompanied by my grandfather. For some inexplicable reason, I felt guilty about what had happened.

It took me more than two decades to bring myself to enter the shop again and check on the shopkeeper. The bakery had changed almost beyond recognition. Where I had expected a slightly plump man with oily hair I found a thin, bald man with shivering hands who sat listening to the radio. But I recognised him without an effort. How could I forget him? I had tried to erase his face from my memory of a summer vacation gone terribly wrong, but in vain. I walked out without buying anything, without saying a word. Looking back, I regret not striking a conversation with him, not telling him how he had spoiled a schoolboy’s summer vacation many years ago. Later I turned him into a character in The Vicks Mango Tree, recreating the visit. Turning that bad memory into a piece of fiction brought me great relief. Unfortunately, every child may not be able to do that.

Salim is an author.

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