Tayiba Sulaiman
There’s rules at home, but not like yours. No knives or forks or elbow bans. Our rule is that when offered food, you always take what’s nearest to you, not what’s tastiest, biggest, best. We don’t scour a plate for the biggest slice, never reach across for the richest pudding. We take what’s closest.
After tea, we’d sit at your feet to eat the fruit you’d peel for us – a love song in Vitamin C – and we’d climb under the table to play that game, waiting together for unwitting segments of tangerine to come calling. You’d say one of our names, then slowly lower a piece into view, singing to what I realise now is the tune of ‘How Much Is That Doggie In the Window?’:
IIIIIIIIIIII’m only a poor little baby orange,
I hope you’re not going to
– eat me!
On the last two words, each piece would be snatched down and devoured, and every time we’d fall about in peals of laughter amongst the crumbs.
So we terrorised the local fruit bowl, grew almost as fast as the price of fresh produce, and read in the papers of the people eating at high tables with blunt silver knives. In my mind’s eye, we sit at their feet, watching them reach over platter after platter after platter. Even despite the angle, it’s not a flattering view. Instead, I imagine you up there, peeling tangerines just out of sight. You, asking us to wait our turn. You, asking: how much is that world in the window, where we cry tears of laughter when our siblings get their share? I know it is real, I saw it – the gold in your hand, the gold in our mouths. I know that world is real because I saw it under the table.
Tayiba Sulaiman is a writer and translator from Manchester. She works at a literary agency in Oxford and is currently completing a translation mentorship with the National Centre for Writing.
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