Dalila Marat. RAMEN

Glass shattered.

The first thing that I thought of was mom’s vase that she got as a present on her wedding day from her grandma. 

Better not be that vase.

“5 days! The last time you slept at home was 5 days ago!” I could hear mom screaming from the living room.

“You’re accusing me of cheating on you?! You’re out of your mind Alma!” dad shouted back but with a rather calm tone. 

“You never tell me anything!” 

“Oh, so you want to hear about all the problems I have at work?” 

“You don’t care about me! You don’t care about Amira!”

I didn’t want to hear any more of that. I peeked in the living room to make sure that the vase was in its place. I saw that it was standing still, and for some reason that made me smile. Then I put the shoes on, zipped my jacket, grabbed my backpack, and walked out of the house. 

A nice Sunday morning of a sunny but cool April in Astana city. I was walking down the street without having a particular destination in mind.

It was the beginning of my 5^th semester in my university when I decided to drop out. I knew I was close to graduating, but I could no longer endure my studies. Law school was never my thing. All those hundred-page readings, thousand-page papers, and dozens of hours of weekly torture listening to professors trying to explain what they themselves seemed not to fully understand, added up to the misery of my already miserable life. Besides, I knew I was not planning to connect my future with helping people find a way to justice. 

#

I approached a park located close to our apartment. I sat down at the nearest picnic table I noticed, grabbed a book I had in my backpack and started reading. I was reading a novel about a big family of four sisters. The family was described to be loving and very supportive of each other. That was the fifth book I was reading about what I considered a good family. I only got to learn about good families from books. How pathetic. 

“Sorry, can I sit here?” I heard someone say with a high-pitched voice. I raised my head and saw a young girl, around 13 years of age, with two pigtails tied high on her head, in a black jacket, orange dress, holding a backpack in her hands, standing looking at me and pointing at the table.

“Oh, sure,” I responded.

“Great!” the girl said.

She put her backpack on the table, opened it, but without taking anything out, she looked back at me and stared for around a minute. That made me a little uncomfortable, but for some reason, I did not say anything either. I could not tell what she was thinking about, but she seemed either confused or disappointed.

“Do you mind …,” she finally started speaking. “Do you mind if I eat here?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Wonderful,” she said with a huge smile suddenly appearing on her face. 

She took out a box of instant ramen noodles, poured in hot water from her tumbler, and looked back at me with a concerned expression while waiting for her noodles to be ready. 

“Emm … is there something wrong?” I asked as I was getting annoyed by her staring at me.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

I swiftly wiped out the tears with the back of my hand and looked back at the book just to notice that half of the text on one of the pages got blurry from teardrops. I sighed.

“It’s okay. Whatever that is, it’s okay,” the girl said. I didn’t even know the reason for my tears but in my head, I pronounced “It’s okay.”

#

I never had a family. Or whatever the word “family” was supposed to mean. My parents were not in love when they got married nor are they now. They agreed to marry each other thinking they would relieve the pressure from their families to get married before turning 30. For some reason, everyone from my grandparents’ generation considers the age of 30 and above as “too old” for everything. Too old to marry, too old to change a career, too old to have a first kid. As if the life of a human being stops progressing after they hit the mark 30, especially that of women. Mom would always tell me how she would get in an argument with her parents, every time she visited them in their village, about the shame of not being married at the age of 29. She stopped visiting them at all. She could not stand against them though. Somehow, she convinced my dad, who was her colleague at the time, to commit to a marriage of convenience. She knew that he was also a bachelor facing pressure from his family and was sure about the advantages of her offer for both of them. Both would get married before 30, share an apartment and bills, go to work together, and get a kid in common. Their companionship, though, did not last long. Marriage built on mutual interests and life problems only, without a single bit of love, is doomed to fail. I was born shortly after the wedding, and as mom once confessed “was supposed to save their relationship”. I was 8 years old at the time when mom first talked to me about her disaster of a marriage. “Me? A savior?” I thought. “How enticing.”

#

“I am Sabina,” said the girl.

She opened the cap of her ramen box, got the wooden chopsticks, and mixed up the noodles with them. She stared at her noodles for a minute as if hesitating to eat.

“You know, these are very spicy. They are known to be the spiciest instant noodles available on the market and I am not good with spicy food. At all.”

“Then why would you eat them?” I asked. 

“Well… cause I like pain. Used to. At least,” Sabina said with a serious face. 

“I used to think that one could cure mental and emotional pain with a physical one, as if the outer pain overtops the inner. And then I discovered these extremely spicy noodles,” she said grinning.

“The spice that I feel makes me forget about what’s going on in my head, as if all the negativity, problems, and anxiety get burned, just like my mouth. Do you want to try some? I have two more boxes in my bag, and I got some hot water left,” said Sabina, unzipping her backpack.

“No, thanks,” I said.

#

I’ve always despised people for being selfish and self-absorbed creatures. My parents never cared about how I was doing at school as long as my grades in the transcript were high enough for me to be one of the top 3 students in my class. My motivation for studying hard was that single word “savior”. A naive child like me was strongly convinced that my grades and other academic achievements would make my parents happy and proud for having a daughter like me. The effect, though, would never be long-lasting. I started coming up with more ways of seeing them smile together. Hand-made presents for Parents’ Day, cooking dinner and cleaning the house, being the daughter of their dreams. Nothing worked. 

My last big attempt was when I got into the most prestigious law school of the country. The day I got the acceptance letter I approached mom who was sitting in the kitchen writing something. When I told her that I got accepted she said nothing but “good for you” and when asking if she wanted to call dad, who was away for a business trip, and tell him the happy news, she ignored the question by telling me to iron her dress for work. 

The dress. That flowery vintage dress. I’ve always hated it because sometimes it felt like mom cared more about her dress than me. Maybe that’s the truth. 

As much as I remember myself, mom would always wear the same dress, that only varied in color, every single day. She had nine of those. A 23-year-old Alma, being so astonished by the compliment of her beautiful dress by her first and only love, to then decide to wear it for the rest of her life. He was the most popular guy in the neighborhood and couldn’t care less about young Alma, but that didn’t bother her. To her, that single compliment meant everything. Still so strongly dedicated to her dress and not her marriage or child. What a psycho.

#

“You know what,” I said after looking at Sabina suffering through the noodles for a while, “I think I would try some.”

She took out the exact same box of ramen from her bag, poured the water in and handed it to me. 

I put some noodles in my mouth and instantly felt my tongue set on fire. I got a strong feeling of throwing up, so I covered the mouth with my hands to avoid the disaster.

“I know, right?” Sabina said happily with tears on her red face. The spice never has mercy on people.

“But don’t get too attached. Find a better and non-painful way of coping with emotional struggle. That will be better for you.”

“Better for me,” I repeated those words in my head. “For me.” 

I realized that the only decision I’ve ever made that I considered as a better option for me was dropping out of university to instead pursue my hobby of photography as a full-time job. I still do not understand how come I had the guts to change things in my life for the sake of myself. Was I being selfish? Or was it the right way? I still can’t decide.

My phone rang.

“Hey Amira, where are you? Can you help me out? I need to pack some clothes for donation or maybe recycling,” my mom said with a hoarse voice. 

I wondered what clothes she was talking about, but without asking any questions I said I would be back in 10 minutes and hung up.

“I have to go now. Thank you for the ramen,” I told Sabina.

“Not the ramen. I told you, you need to find a better way,” she said in a complaining tone.

“Well, thanks anyways!” I waved at her and headed back home.

I opened the apartment door and noticed dozens of huge boxes standing in the hallway right away. I also noticed that some shoes in the shoe rack were missing. Dad’s shoes. I walked into the living room as I saw a total mess. Clothes were thrown all over the place. Broken coffee table, torn curtains, spilled dark drink on the carpet, colorful fragments of the vase all over the floor. I picked up one of the fragments and squeezed it in my palm. I looked around the room. I knew exactly what happened. I’d always known that would happen one day. My heart ached. “You need to find a better way” I remembered the words of the girl. I screamed at the top of my lungs. 

“Amira!” mom came running from the other room in shock. 

“Amira, what are you doing?” she yelled and grabbed me by the shoulders.

“I need to find better ramen!” I screamed back at her.

“What are you saying?” she said looking at me confused with her eyes full of fear.

“Blood!” she screamed. “Amira! Get that thing out of your palm!” 

She tried to pull a sharp piece of glass out of my hand, but I kept resisting as I squeezed it harder. 

Soulless I looked around the room again. The storm swept everything away. The coffee table, the vase, clothes, peace, my family, my pain. Suddenly everything went blurry. My mom was still grabbing me by my shoulders and shaking me, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying, I couldn’t see her face. No emotions. No pain. 

“I am free,” I quietly let out as tears were running down my face. I am free as I have always been. I’m not a slave. I’m not a savior. I don’t owe my parents a happy marriage. I don’t owe them a law degree. I don’t owe them anything. I’m living a life. A life full of pain. A life full of suffering. But it’s my life. It’s my ramen.