Aathma Nirmala Dious What Haunted the Men on Hamdan Street

What Haunted the Men on Hamdan Street?

Aathma Nirmala Dious

TW: sexual harassment/assault, mentions of blackmail, revenge porn, and sexual exploitation.

Abu Dhabi, February 2018

“It’s the twelfth one this month,” Papa muttered.

Anagha looked up at him or rather the newspaper he was holding up to read mid-sip of her late-morning chaya.

“What was the twelfth time?”

“What?” Papa folded the newspaper and placed it next to his phone. “Oh ... another man getting hurt ... near that Burger King place. Jobin uncle sent me a message on whatsapp yesterday night … I am surprised they actually reported it today—”

Amma slapped the table, startling Papa and Anagha. The older woman was still in her orange nightdress and looked frazzled even with her hair clipped away from her face.

“Finish your chaya! It’ll get cold in that mug and I don’t have any more milk to remake it. This house …”

“Where’s Gopu?” Anagha asked as Amma left to grumble at the state of the laundry, while slowly tearing off a piece of the soft, fluffy appam. “He’s not here yet.”

“Your brother is playing football. He went before you woke up.” Papa said, his voice resonating in disapproval. Clean shaven and pepper hair meticulously combed in place, her father was a man of discipline and was not a fan of Gopu’s laid back attitude. “His 12th standard exams are coming up, and he will only wake up early to play ... che.”

Anagha did not know what to say. At least her brother could go out without a whole investigation as to his whereabouts. However, a recent joy for her was that for the first time in years, Gopu, her older brother who was allowed to stay out till late night, got the same curfew of 8 p.m. that she had. Papa said they’d reconsider it once these “animal attacks” ended. Anagha joked the whole day the curfew was imposed that Gopu could no longer go to Shisha with the boys and Snap about it. He threw a pillow at her in response

The “twelfth man” was among the latest of bizarre happenings on Abu Dhabi’s Hamdan Street. It started three weeks ago after an incident where a man who owned a trading company was found dead on his way back home in an alleyway near Hamad center. The newspaper said it was an attempted robbery that went wrong and they were investigating. Not that any newspaper here would admit to a crime they cannot solve. The Baqala uncle told us the week after that he had walked by the scene when the Police came and it was like a large cat clawed the man apart. Then came whispers of wails in the night rattling all the windows to the highest floors. A home center employee opened the store two days ago

to find utter wreckage, lights broken and pillows torn apart. Men reported feeling like they were being watched and followed. Some who went into alleyways to smoke or stare at women came out covered in scratches, their voice boxes dysfunctional for a week. “Are you still going to study with your friends today?” Amma asked, bucket of clothes in hand.

“Yes?”

“Hmm. Be back by seven. Be careful.”

Anagha was almost done with her Appam when her phone buzzed. She tried to ignore it and it buzzed again, making the table vibrate and Papa’s right eyebrow raise high.

“Who is it?”

“No one. Maybe just Priti. Or Sarah. They want to know what books to bring.” Anagha moved the phone from the table onto her lap to check the message. Even before she saw the notification and entered the passcode, Anagha knew it was Don. That is the last thing she wanted her Papa to know because technically, dating was out of the question for her. Sometimes she wished she was Gopu. Neither parent seemed to know or care about his social circles.

The last month had felt like a fairy-tale, with cute texts, covert dates and kisses in the staircase of his building, which conveniently did not have cameras. Don was perfect. There were times he would get annoyed when she did not respond immediately. Anagha would always make up for it by staying up to talk to him, even if she was super tired the next day. There was also the rumour that his ex left the school because he broke up with

her but Don insisted it was because her father got a new job. Otherwise, he was perfect.

“Are we still meeting at 5? new Tim Hortons right? :) ” Anagha’s thumb flew across the keyboard to type “yes” as she scarfed down the last of her breakfast.

Hamdan street was loud with traffic, the cars on their way to their respective houses clogging up the many tri-colour signals that interrupted the otherwise serene orange sunset. As she got out of the lift, all dressed up with her curly hair in a french braid, Anagha’s mind pushed away the guilt she felt for her lie about meeting Priti and Sarah. She deserved to have this fun.

The wind generated by the fast cars lifted her blue skirt up to reveal more of her stockings. The thought of someone seeing her hastened her attempt to keep the skirt from misbehaving in front of the area’s Baqala, whose owner knew her parents. She did not need more stares than she already got.

Soon, the letters of the new Tim Hortons glowed in the twilight as she reached it. The wall length glass windows exposed its red, cream and brown interiors, filled with teenagers scoping out a new hangout spot and parents buying their children donuts. Anagha spied a donut covered in Nutella and her mouth watered.

“Who are you looking at?”

“Ah! Don!” Anagha turned around to face her boyfriend and her surprise dissipated to butterflies in her chest. She was among the taller girls in her class and the fact that Don was a head taller than her made her swoon. “Don’t ... scare me like that? And I was looking at the donut.” “Aw, but it’s fun. You should have seen your cute face when scared.” Don put his palm under her chin, his fingers squishing her cheeks. “Also, do you need more donuts? Look at those cheeks.”

She froze and her stomach churned as Don removed his hand from her face. Were her cheeks that bad? Her Amma always commented on how she could be a little thinner. Was she right? Priti and Sarah insisted boys liked curves though. Don agreed that her curves were in the right places, which is why he always asked for photos. She indulged him sometimes through Snapchat since photos disappeared as soon as the receiver sent them and she trusted him. The compliments he sent after seemed worth it.

“Come on, let’s get you that donut. You need a treat after that trash science test yesterday, na?”

Don took her hand and pulled her in. It would have been romantic but Anagha could not shake off the weird feeling that hit the pit of her stomach. It was the AC giving her the chills, right?

“Don, I should get going soon—mmph!”

They were back at the stairs of his building, standing in the corner next to the fifth floor’s door, two floors down from his apartment on the 7th. His hand moved up into her hair and her hands found his shoulders as they kissed.

“Stay a little longer. This is fun.” Don’s lips whispered as they moved to her neck. This was new but it felt good to her.

“Amma said ... I had to ... be back by seven.” Anagha tried to push at his shoulders and he didn’t budge from his position. Don stopped and met her eyes. Anagha squirmed at the disappointed gaze he gave her, She hated it when he did that, looming over her to make her feel small all of a sudden. “We’ll meet again, soon.” Anagha moved away from the wall and was startled by Don’s hand touching her stomach, pushing her back. “Babe, I need to go or Papa will get super mad—”

“Anagha.” Don’s tone changed and so did the pressure of his hand on her stomach. She found herself struggling to move away from his grip as his other hand was fiddling with the edge of her shirt. Her arms had no effect on him. “Do this for me, right?”

“Do what? We already—” Anagha choked on her words as she felt his hands touch her bare stomach. “What was that? Please—”

“Don’t you want me to touch you?”

Anagha stopped. The weird feeling had become alarm bells buzzing in her, making her shake despite the warmth of the humid staircase. “No—I mean, yes—but not now.”

“So you can send pictures but not do this for me?” Don grabbed her hand, making her flinch as his other hand roamed from her hips to her chest and back down again.

“Don, no, stop!” She slapped his hand, shocking him for a second before his eyes narrowed .

“Or what? If you don’t—” Don dug his fingers into her hips, and Anagha gasped at the sting of his nails. “I can start telling people of the kind of pictures you send boys.”

Anagha stared at her boyfriend, who was no longer smiling. She felt drops of sweat drag down her back. “You won’t ...”

“I won’t ... if you listen to me.” Don pressed her hand against the wall, his full weight on her. Anagha’s mind flashed back to the rumour about his last girlfriend. Was she too backed into a corner of his building’s staircase? Nausea bubbled in her as the pads of his fingers moved up her skin. Her free hand pressed on his chest and her nails dug into his shirt, but he did not stop. Anagha wanted him to stop. Stop. Stop. Stop—

The lights buzzed and flickered. Then the staircase went dark.

“What the hell—Ah!”

Anagha pushed on his chest and before she could process it, she heard the thump of his back slamming against the wall opposite her. Don screamed and reached for her. Her hand grabbed something as she stepped forward. She heard a hoarse voice speak Malayalam in her head. It sounded like an older lady.

Go. Now.

“Anagha! It hurts! It hurts—”

Anagha’s arms moved forward in its own accord. Another thump. Silence. Red eyes looked straight into hers. The lights flickered on.

Don’s face was a light tinge of blue. The skin around his neck was shades of purple marking the imprint of fingers around it. blood oozed onto his white tee shirt, torn up with what looked like claws. Her nails had red on the underside as she looked at her shaking hands. No words, not even a scream came from Anagha’s lips, as she ran down four flights and out of his building, She ran and ran, not caring for the cars whizzing across Hamdan or what the traffic lights told her as she ran back.The tears blurred her vision but her feet would not stop, until her head bumped into someone.

“What the—Anagha? ” She stumbled back to see Gopu holding a plastic bag with milk in it. “Where the hell are you running to—wait, your eyes— have you been crying?”

In response, Her arms wrapped around his midsection, burying her face into Gopu’s chest like she used to when they were little, when she did not want to cry in front of the other kids they used to play with. Within a second, his arms were around her.

Since coming back, Amma and Papa had taken turns asking her what happened, but nothing came out of her mouth. Only tears streamed out of her eyes. Amma tried to give her the chapatis and chicken fry she made but despite the pit of emptiness growing in Anagha, there was no hunger to be found there. All she could bring herself to do was lie down in the dark, listening to Halsey in max volume on her phone, which she made sure was in silent mode. Priti and Sara were blowing up their messenger group chat, wanting to know about the date. What can she tell them? Maybe that she was an idiot, a freaking idiot.

“Ammu, come on.” She heard Gopu ask from the doorway. He has not used her nickname in a while, even if she always called him Gopu or Chetta instead of his name Anand. “Amma’s freaking out. Did you fight with your friends or something?”

“Leave.”

The silence ballooned around them for a while and then the door slammed shut. Anagha buried her face into the pillow.

“You should tell them.”

It took her a few moments to realize it was not her inner monologue speaking but a woman’s voice, in the same hoarse malayalam she had heard at the stairs.

“Who ...”

“Here, child, the window.”

Anagha felt a breeze from her left and turned. The curtains were spread apart and the window was wide open. The mix of moonlight and streetlight streamed onto a lady sitting on the floor, legs crossed and eyes closed. Her straight black hair flowed from her head to the carpet, framing a face that looked like it was carved into white marble except for her stained red lips. A white sari covered her body and Anagha could see light scars stretch across her pale arms and neck. For a second, you could think she was the light itself.

“Don’t scream, girl. I don’t think your Amma can handle seeing me.” The woman laughed, her fangs flashing. The lights flickered for a couple of

seconds. Anagha scrambled out of bed. The woman opened her eyes. Red.

The eyes at the stairs.

“You …”

“Did you not hear no stories about me? I cannot believe that. You should know what my kind are, as a woman. We were like you before—” The woman looks at the mirror on the door of the closet. Anagha realized there was no reflection in it. “We become this.”

The teenage girl blinked a bit before the word came to her head, the name connected to a story her Ammachi told her as a child during summer nights in Kottayam. Of woman whose bodies were dumped in the forests after being ruined by men, who then re-emerge from Banyan trees, summoned by black magic, with revenge twisting their soul into bloodlust, forever haunting the site of their death, sucking the lives out of the men who fall for her charms thinking they too can break her like the man that made her.

“A Yakshi.” Anagha whispered. “A Vadayakshi. A female demon. Ammachi told me the story after I almost got lost in the forest.”

The Vadayakshi’s red lips twisted to a sinister yet gentle smile. “Good. You know your stories, even when you are far from its roots. The white man thought of us as their Banshees or Vampires. The Arabis here would call me their Jinns. We are both or neither. Beyond human time or thought.”

“But you aren’t in Kottayam. You’re ... here. In Abu Dhabi.”

“We do not need Banyan trees to exist, child. Only a man’s cruelty and ill-fated timing. I do not know what stars and planets were in the sky to make me this.” the Vadayakshi shrugged.

“I—” Anagha closed and opened her eyes. The Vadayakshi was still there, looking at the mirror. “You— you cannot be real.”

“I am the reason nothing more ‘real’ happened to you.”

Anagha’s legs couldn’t handle the sight. She sat back on the bed and looked at her hands. She had cleaned her nails five times since coming back. “It was you. How—”

“Don’t ask me how. I knew. We can sense it. I came to that ... boy ... ready to hurt you.”

Anagha could not believe her ears. The Vadayakshi did that for her ... or with her.

“Did your Amma not teach you to be careful about boys like that? Those—” the Vadayakshi continued with some colourful malayalam swears that Anagha knew would make Amma wash her mouth with soap and dettol if she uttered them under this roof. “—worthless men. They don’t deserve to live.”

“Did you—”

“I’m not stupid. Just beat him around enough so that he may have some ... problems remembering what happened. Even if he did. Who will believe him when he talks of a Vadayakshi teaching him the lesson his family should have taught him?” Anagha could not help but smile at how gleeful

the Vadayakshi was tabout the whole event. “Oh, he just screamed and screamed for mercy. Also, his phone broke as he ... fell down the stairs.”

“His phone ... the photos. Oh, oh my god. Tha—”

The Vadayakshi held up a hand to stop her. “No need. I was alive in this city before you were born. I know how the men here with power and money think. Whatever they do, you’ll be the one betrayed by their laws in the end. There’s no winning for us.”

Anagha did not know how to respond. It was uncomfortable enough that Don did this to her while she was in the safest city. Safer than back home in India at least Amma would say while glancing around at the staring men when walking Abu Dhabi’s streets. Safe nowhere, belonging nowhere, justice nowhere. Such was Anagha’s reality in the city she chose to call home or the home her mother came from.

“They don’t know about him.” The demon stated.

Anagha nodded, looking at the floor.

“Of course. Just like you, your Amma did not talk about a boy she gave her heart to and her Amma didn’t too.” The demon woman sighed, looking around the room. “And in that silence, they’ll break us and leave us in it.” The woman met her eyes again. “First lesson of being a woman, girl. Do not risk yourself for anyone, especially a man. You don’t remember that, you’ll be killed by the hands of one. Trust me, you’d rather die any other way.”

The Vadayakshi’s rage at the end piqued Anagha’s interest. “What’s your name? What happened to you?”

“My name ... was lost to me the moment I died.” The Vadayakshi stood up to her full height, twice as tall as Anagha, and looked out the window. For a second, the demon’s eyes were almost a normal black, like Anagha’s own irises. “I am the cautionary tale you tell women coming to the Gulf. I trusted a man with my heart and my passport. He took both, along with my dignity.”

She stretched her fingers and Anagha saw her claws grow longer. Wait. Anagha’s eyes widened. “The man in the alleyway … all those men ...”

“So you know.” The Vadayakshi winked at Anagha and put a finger to her lips with a smile. Anagha closed her mouth. “Tell them. My family never got to hear mine.”

The room went dark.

“Ammu? Darling, wake up. You need to eat something. Please.”

Anagha woke up to Papa gently nudging her awake. The curtains were still open but it was now bright sunlight that streamed into the room, lighting her Amma from behind as she held a cup of chaya. Gopu was standing by the door, looking awkward. It was almost funny, the way he leaned into the doorframe. Anagha cannot remember the last time everyone was in her room like this.

“Ah, you are awake!” Amma smiled, holding the cup of chaya to her. Anagha noticed these puffy dark circles under her eyes. “Drink, drink, we

have your favourite toast with Nutella ready. Wash your face and come— Ammu?”

Her eyes were welling up in tears, but Anagha knew it was now or never. “He hurt me.”

Melting

Nada Almosa

Digital collage