#844 The Value of a Life- Fatima Shaik

#844 The Value of a Life- Fatima Shaik

Still, years after the attacks of 9/11, those of us who witnessed the horrors and the aftermath up close have a deep connection with the stories that came out of it. The unspeakable sights, sounds and smell will haunt us, and the depth of despair will scare us still. But we also remember the stories of hope and redemption that can only come from such darkness. We hate 9/11 stories but we are drawn to them as well.

I imagine the same is true of survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Like it or not, if you lived through that mess, it is now a part of your being…all of it. This story is about a New Orleans fire fighter, and rescue worker in the immediate wake of the hurricane. His brother fire fighters are his family now, and he needs them. This story paints a brutal but honest picture. It’s delicate but pulls no punches. Only someone from New Orleans can paint this picture.

Notable Passage: “Why didn’t anything go right? Dogs killing people. People killing people. And now Katrina. What was God Thinking?”

Rating: 9-9-9-9 Total= 36

#815 Leo Walks Home- Fatima Shaik

#815 Leo Walks Home- Fatima Shaik

Fatima Shaik has a knack for creating environment. It makes you sense everything around the characters. She writes about New Orleans, and if you have ever been there, as soon as you read one of these stories, you can feel, see, and smell everything that she does. 

This story is just another biographical take about the life of a New Orleans citizen. Leo has lived his whole life in this neighborhood. He survived a boyhood polio surgery in a white hospital and has lived a somewhat normal life. His neighborhood friends calling him “crip” gives him a sense of belonging more than the loneliness of being cooped up in bed watching the season change through the window.

He lives as normal a life as you can, seeing the world for what it is. He will outlive his wife who will die way too early, but at least they got to dance slowly. He is a man from New Orleans, and that should be good enough for anybody.

“A few of his relatives had run away from New Orleans, thinking that people in other places would be perfect…Leo knew better. He was once crippled, and now he was whole, even though he could hardly walk straight. Everyone was a cripple in some way at one time or another.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#787 The Prayers of the Sycophant- Fatima Shaik

#787 The Prayers of the Sycophant- Fatima Shaik

Sharon has a hard time with the changes around her. The neighborhood has changed and her husband, a friendly neighborly man, has fallen in with the bad elements of the changing neighborhood. She thinks he is using drugs again, but she is afraid to ask.

“She should have examined whether his eyes were more than tired, and asked if someone else’s cigarette smoke was in his hair. She should have asked. Or she should have known and done something…Instead, she gardened.”

Her fig tree is the symbol to her of everything that’s wrong. It grows lopsided and most of the fruit falls into the next yard over. Instead of going over there and gathering them up, or doing something else proactive, she laments the injustice. New people now occupy that house, and they never stay that long, she has no desire to learn their names. She is more upset at the dying figs.

 “What a waste…She had meant the figs, the children, and the dysfunctional families.”

When her husband dies of an overdose, her agoraphobia reaches new levels. Without help it is unlikely she will be able to live a normal life. She desperately needs help.

“And she stayed on her knees and begged as the sun fell and the figs fell and the juice seeped from the rotting fruit like the very nature of injustice.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#759 The One That Did Not Get Away- Fatima Shaik

#759 The One That Did Not Get Away- Fatima Shaik

A young woman is in love. Like most girls in love for the first time, she is taken with everything about this young man, even his scar.

“My boyfriend is the first man I have met who has mystery. He has excitement, a past I don’t know and a scar as proof of his difference… It is my privilege now to have finally met a man with a scar. Not a deep scar, a fine scar. One that gives character to him and excitement to me—the plain, the sheltered, and the unadventured. ”

She has heard too many love stories, read too many romance novels. Her view of this affair is all flowery and dramatic. He tells her that his scar comes from a fishing accident with a hook, but she doesn’t believe that’s true. She thinks he is being coy. She is young and naïve.

“Sixteen years I have already spent without harpooning romance, without waltzing desire, without fulfillment. I have never been fought over under the Dueling Oaks. I have never been kissed on the levee and then held hands in suicidal duet and plunged into the river. I have never lived in a bordello or run with pirates, even though this is New Orleans.” 

She will learn the true nature of life and love soon enough.

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total= 28

#731 Maurice in New York City- Fatima Shaik

#731 Maurice in New York City- Fatima Shaik

Some people come to New York for new opportunities, some come for the excitement, and some come running from their old lives looking for a place to hide. Maurice wanted a simple life, and for a while in New Orleans he found it. He had a good job and the perfect woman for him. Well, nobody is perfect and desire can leed to jealousy, and jealousy to violence. 

I’ve always felt New York embodies all that you bring to it. If you bring loneliness and despair, that’s what you get, only more of it.

Notable Passage: “Love had all the symptoms of a low grade flu that altered into something life-threatening.” 

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#703 Driving Without a License- Fatima Shaik

#703 Driving Without a License- Fatima Shaik

A dead beat mother abandons her daughter, even after the child was already abandoned by her father. She just leaves her in a cradle on the steps of someone she knows, and takes off out of town. She has someone keeping tabs on her over the years, through grade school and High School graduation. Now her daughter contacts her and asks her to come to North Carolina to visit her. 

She reflects on her choices and rationalizes leaving the child in more capable hands. She is thinking about her bad choices as she twice gets pulled over speeding in a stolen car with a loaded gun visibly sitting on the floor next to her. She won’t get to see her daughter today. That’s probably for the best.

“She’ll never see me. Hopefully, she’ll never want to see me again. That’s how much I love her.”

Rating: 8-7-8-7 Total= 30

#668 Bird Whistle- Fatima Shaik

#668 Bird Whistle- Fatima Shaik

This could be a beautiful New Orleans Love story, or this story could be a love letter to New Orleans—like most of the stories in this collection, What Went Missing and What Got Found. A recent Widower, a local neighborhood doctor, deals with life without his wife. The neighborhood is changing and he tries his best to hold onto what he remembers of the good times.

Once a day at dawn, a woman comes by his fence and whistles to the birds. She was his wife’s lifelong friend and she is mute, perhaps by choice. They would spend morning coffee together. The whistling would get louder the more days that would pass without seeing each other. Now she still comes by, and he waves out the window.

In the refrigerator are a few meals left that his wife had prepared. He has been eating them slowly, but now with only one left, he is afraid to heat it up. Because of his reputation, and a chance earlier meeting outside, three local criminals come barging in one evening, one with a bullet wound. They demand medical attention and food. One of them heats up his wife’s last dish over the Doctor’s resistance. Before the meal is consumed, the warbling of the bird whistler comes ringing through the house, scaring off the hoodlums. He brings the meal out to her, and she in turn feeds it to the birds.

I don’t know exactly how she does it, but like Anthony Doerr stories read earlier, Shaik infuses a subtle but permeating spirit in her stories, making them float in your consciousness slowing everything down and blowing a warm New Orleans breeze over everything she writes. Stunning!

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total= 38

#640 The Beginning of the End- Fatima Shaik

#640 The Beginning of the End- Fatima Shaik

Mr. Henri Chapon wasn’t your ordinary New Orleans Eccentric. He came from a famous and respected NOLA family. Only now he had been disowned from that family. He was struck, mostly by religion but also by a bit of lunacy. He became a minister.

“Chapon was both too emotional and too opportunistic: first, as a salesman and now as a minister.”

He set up a tabernacle in his home and began finding miracles in the world around him. People were not sure what to think, sure he was crazy but he was likeable as well. His good works about town were truly good works and his sermons—or passion plays—he performed on his porch were entertaining at least. He touched the life of the widow across the street. One saved life is sometime all you need.

Over his four week ministry, he set about to painting his prophesy on a white plywood sign he erected in front of his house. He would paint a single word each week and ruminate on that word’s godly meanings. By the time the sign was complete, the prophesy would be fulfilled.

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total- 30

#612 Seeing Through Water- Fatima Shaik

#612 Seeing Through Water- Fatima Shaik

This is truly a story unique to New Orleans. Sister Mary Patrick is having trouble adjusting to her life as a nun in the sweltering south. She is from an Irish Catholic Boston family and was hoping the church sent her out west. Now she teaches children in a town where she feels completely out of place.

Making life hard for her is a child, Pierre, that just cant seem to calm down. He is disruptive and remorseless. When she asks for the child to be removed from class, neither the headmaster nor the child’s grandmother agrees with the change. Pierre likes the Sister and he acts the calmest in her class. One day, in a rain storm, Pierre leads the class in second line parade in a pipe-piper like exercise in disruption.

Disruptive children don’t necessarily mean bad children. Especially in a town like New Orleans, originality and creativity should be celebrated not restricted. Sometimes when the rain falls, all there is to do is start a parade.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#577 Achille’s Jass- Fatima Shaik

#577 Achille’s Jass- Fatima Shaik

Achille Piron is a old New Orleans trumpet player. He plays as good as ever, but he doesn’t get many gigs anymore. The music scene is a fickle one and talent doesn’t always win out, but even now he has found his own niche. He is the one they call to play a funeral of other musicians. There seem to be a lot of those these days.

“There were only a few musicians alive who could capture a man’s whole spirit—lay him out from birth to death. And even, respectfully honor his foolish heart.”

“Because of his age, he could play loneliness better than ever.”

Mourners would ask for something upbeat or something with more joy, but inevitably they would be swept away by the emotion of Achille’s playing and weep and thank him for his soulful music.

“I’ll Fly Away would play so smooth and sincere that somebody would believe it. The weak-minded, the poor children just learning catechism, the old ladies—all might be apt to believe that God could fill their minds, their stomachs, and remove their wants and regrets. The music would be so convincing that the poor in spirit would let everyone see their tears and their faith for once. And they would convince others that God could relive unending sorrow.”

Somewhere in a cemetery, Achille plays, but not for another poor musician, but for himself and the city hears him and remembers and mourns. “Achille blew now as if he were playing his own funeral.”

I can't tell you how much this story has moved me. For those who see music as a religion and listen to music as if in church, Shaik hits home here. Like the tomb of the unknown soldier, this is a remarkably emotional elegy to the nameless musicians that touch our lives at our most raw moments; and this is a celebration to music itself and its power of transcendence. 

Notable Passage: “A person had to know a little about life to understand music.”

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#549 Life is For the Living- Fatima Shaik

#549 Life is For the Living- Fatima Shaik

Thomas was a New Orleans eccentric, a creole original. His co-workers thought him odd, but they liked him because of it. Good and bad, they always appreciated the break from normalcy in their lives.

“Thomas thought he was special since he got their attention most of the time. He could not distinguish their negative feelings from positive ones…And in fact, they did not dislike him. Observing his clothes, dramatic conversations, and peculiar perspective was a high point in the day for many.”

Thomas thought of himself as: “Simply a man like other men seeking the meaning of existence.”

His most eccentric habit was taking his lunch break by sitting in the graveyard. He sat in the hot sun, listening for the spirits to talk to him. Even though he was the most expressive person most people had ever met, he was still looking for his own voice. He wanted to teach, to impart, to contribute like all the great men and woman of the past; like the spirits in the graveyard.

His wackiest idea was to create a Po Boy sandwich that stretched from New Orleans to Los Angeles. By his calculations, that would be big enough to feed all the Creole citizens of this world. It would be a symbol of racial unity.

“The point of this sandwich was to make a statement about America and race. The U.S. was completely wrong in the decades when it tried to force blacks and whites together. True integration could be demonstrated by the Creoles showing the unity of all races and human appetites when holding the French bread, Spanish onions, Italian Salami, German mustard, Creole tomatoes and Louisiana hot sauce.”

He tried hard to understand his co-workers, but fell short of being one of them. He was set aside by his own doing, trying to find his voice. There is nothing more frustrating, more oppressive, more heartbreaking than trying to speak and failing. Even for a New Orleans original.

Rating: 7-8-8-8 Total= 31

#521 Charity Begins at Home- Fatima Shaik

#521 Charity Begins at Home- Fatima Shaik

Loutie is a mute, she lives with her parents in Louisiana. They are a old couple, very religious, but not exactly pure of soul. They can physically be best described as very large people.

“Words like wide, broad, heavy or fat are not used in this house. They are much too personal for people in Mama and Papa’s condition.”

Loutie herself is a bit slow, but we see her thought process as she goes about her days. They told her that she was a twin, and her brother never made it. So, she waits for another one, and she thinks about children often.

 “I am a special and innocent child for no matter how old I get, Mama said. She told me that over 30 years past when my mind first wouldn’t work with my mouth. We could never get me to talk. The things I hear stay inside and don’t come back.”

Life in that house is almost dead. It’s stagnant and oppressive as August weather in Louisiana. Her mother has been talking about her own death for as long as Loutie can remember.

“She planned for her funeral over 20 years ago. Since then, she’s just been waiting.”

This is the first story in Shaik’s collection, What Went Missing and What Got Found. So far, so good. This was a unique look into the mind of a non-traditional narrator, so I like that. I hope that Shaik’s Afro-Creole background adds a new viewpoint from other collections we’ve seen here.

Notable Passage: “This is the plan: I will end the suffering of the foreign babies. And when they are all happy, I will be free to be happy, and everyone else will be too. Just like Jesus, I will be free for the sake of all the people and, in the process, I might even get famous.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29