I sift through a treasure of photos that my Dad’s death has unearthed and pore over one of an acquaintance who had a fleeting presence in my childhood. I have a vivid memory that conjures every single detail, colour, smell and sound from recollections that would evade any other child.

I sat in the taxi next to the driver, a proper but tiny barrier between him and two young women, a relative and a dark-haired university student in her twenties, visiting home. The driver, a typical womanizer, divided his attention between the tortuous road to the student’s summerhouse and her very short-cut blouse. She had a beautiful bosom and the most captivating smile. He bombarded her ears with compliments and sometimes he crossed the line. I viewed her with my mesmerized eyes but she never returned a glance. She sedately ignored the driver’s remarks with a meaningful but inscrutable smile. I wondered what was making her so happy – I was sure it was not that silly clown. Though her face was fixed on the road, she was looking inwardly at something that fascinated her lustrous eyes. She was so taciturn that I cannot now recall her voice. I had an excuse to constantly examine her face to see how she responded to sexual praise of the unremitting type, but her politeness remained all along intact. When she left the car, I felt a terrible sense of loss. That nymph had me under her spell. She never doted on me as strangers usually do on children during a short drive, but she took away with her a piece that she chiseled off my mind. My sun and my moon orbited in her constellation – she had allowed them in without a sign.

More than forty years have elapsed and at the counsel of my retentive memory I could have been three, four or five. That was my only meeting with my mother, now I realize long after her demise. She had departed from the world without saying goodbye. I wish she had sealed that short meeting with a hug, a kiss, or a keepsake gift. My only inheritance is a box of haunting smiles and a long history of malignant lies.

Dr. Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde.
Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Curlew, A New Ulster,
Straylight Magazine, Down in the Dirt, The Ink Pantry, The
Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Mad Swirl, Leaves of Ink, The Avalon
Literary Review, The Opiate, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, WestWard
Quarterly, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, The
Blotter, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Crossways, The Moon Magazine,
the Mojave River Review, Always Dodging the Rain, and Coldnoon.