Sports Day
The bittersweet truth about the briefness of life proves hard to swallow in this tale of family values and missed opportunities by acclaimed author and travel writer Kia Abdullah
The mid-afternoon sun scorched Ben Shipley’s neck as he bent down to tie his trainers – an action he carried out with blithe precision at least ten times a day and yet here he was, all fingers and thumbs, his heart racing, stomach churning. In fact, the last time he’d felt this nervous, he’d been watching his daughter being yanked into the world by a pair of medieval-looking forceps. A lifetime ago. Well, seven years ago, to be precise. So many rites of passage since then: Rosie’s first steps, her first words, her first day at this very school. But today the spotlight had well and truly landed back on him.
His first Dads’ Race.
His opportunity to show Rosie that despite the turmoil of the past six months, she really did have the World’s Best Dad. That it wasn’t just an empty slogan stamped across birthday cards and novelty mugs.
But, my God, the pressure. Would it be spineless to fake an injury? Pointless to pretend he’d been called away on urgent business?
Definitely pointless. Ben hadn’t had any business – urgent or otherwise – in months, and half the people here knew it.
“Any luck on the job front, mate?” asked The Banker Dad of the Shy Twins as they’d queued for their race numbers in the cool of the assembly hall. Try as he might, Ben could never remember the actual names of any of these men, attributing them instead to their kids, or their job, or whatever brand of flashy car they invariably owned.
“Oh, you know, got a few irons in the fire,” he’d replied, pinning his number to his T-shirt.
The Balding Dad with the Audi A8 had flashed him a pitying, luminous-white smile.
I wonder how they refer to me? Ben often wondered. The Dad Whose Business Went Bust?
The Dad Whose Car Has a Massive Dent He Can’t Afford to Fix?
Today, though, Ben was going to be The Dad Who Sailed to Victory. Looking down the starting line, at all the burgeoning midlife bellies and crocked, misshapen knees, it seemed a foregone conclusion. Almost too easy. If anything, the challenge would be not to win by too much.
Nerves eased, Ben stood up and looked around for Rosie, quickly locating her ginger curls among all the parents and play fights and cartwheeling limbs. She was deep in discussion with a little girl he didn’t recognise, both their heads bowed slightly.
Climate change, he thought to himself, smiling.
Rosie’s lecturing her on climate change.
It was his daughter’s latest obsession, following hard on the heels of Disneyland – a welcome change, not least because saving the planet was for the most part free. Ben had been dreading telling Rosie they couldn’t afford a trip to Devon, never mind Disneyland, especially with half her class Florida-bound that summer – or at least that’s how it seemed.
It hadn’t always been like this. This time last year, Ben’s personal training business was booming. Every day, a packed schedule of clients running, squatting and lunging their way to “perfection” in the local park.
Then, a swanky new gym had lured most of Ben’s clients away. Within months, his diary had gone from packed to pitiful. Claire said he should retrain, but retrain in what? He’d never worked in an office. Couldn’t imagine himself wearing a suit. Not like most of these guys, half-heartedly stretching their hamstrings while chatting about board meetings and sales targets and other Wildly Important Things. Focus, Ben.
The only important thing today was winning this race. Because while he may not have an Audi, or a steady job, or a hope of making it to Disneyland, Ben had two things: fitness and fierce competitiveness. And these combined would ensure that, for one day at least, Rosie could feel proud of him.
“Dad! Quick! I need to tell you something.” The breathless whisper came from behind, accompanied by a familiar tug on his right hand. Ben turned and crouched down, coming eye-level with his daughter.
“Hey, poppet. What’s up? We’re starting soon.”
Rosie’s grip tightened. “Listen Dad, you can’t win. You just can’t.”
Ben laughed, slightly confused. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’d say I’ve got a good chance, actually.” He peered down the line again, a final appraisal of the competition. Another man had stepped into the throng while Ben had been feeling sorry for himself and daydreaming of victory. Tall, lithe and early 30s at most, he had more than ten years on Ben, making him a decent opponent at least. “Hey poppet, whose dad is that on the end? I reckon he’s the one to beat.”
“No!” Rosie’s face was set between a scowl and a sob. “I don’t want you to beat him. Promise me you won’t win.”
“LAST CALL FOR THE YEAR THREE DADS’ RACE.”
The megaphone announcement panicked Rosie even further. She tugged Ben closer, her breath hot in his ear. “That’s Mia’s dad. You know? Mia!”
Ben had a feeling he should know Mia. The name was certainly familiar, although Rosie fired out names and anecdotes at lightning speed every day after school. It was hard to keep up.
“Is she the girl you were just talking to?” he asked, deciding it was as good a guess as any.
Rosie nodded. “Her mum died, remember? She’s always so sad, but she really thinks her dad is going to win the race. He’s been training for a month. It’s the first time she’s smiled in ages. I know you’re really fast, Dad, but can you pleeeeeeease let him win…”
And right there, with less than a minute to go until the starting whistle,
Ben Shipley was reminded you didn’t have to come first to make someone proud. You didn’t need to drive a flash car or present them with £5,000 holidays.
Sometimes being kind was enough.
Maybe he would fake that injury, after all.
The only important thing was winning this race. Ben may not have an Audi or a steady job but he had fitness and competitiveness
It was hard to believe that they had argued so harshly over four enamel bowls. The battered old things weren’t worth anything or even especially pretty. They had flaked in several places and one had a spot so dark and unsightly, it looked like a resting moth. Still, they had sentimental value – accrued from a decade at their mother’s table – and so the siblings had argued.
Jamal, the eldest, snatched up the bowls possessively. “But what are you going to do with them? You don’t even cook.”
“And you do?” Farah replied tartly. “I’m her only daughter. It’s only right that I should have them.” She knew she was using the very same logic that she had battled for years.
“What if we took one each?” said Rehan, the youngest.
The other two glared with such contempt that he retreated back to the cupboard in the corner. Silently, he unpicked old jars of jam and honey from their sticky bases.
“Mum told me I could have them,” said Farah. “Do you really think she’d give them to Gemma instead?” It was a low blow, she knew. Their mother had never warmed to Jamal’s wife, a bolshie blonde who never quite understood the delicate social mores of their Asian family.
Jamal drew back, as if he needed space and momentum to spit his next retort. Their mother’s tread on the stairs, however, quashed the words in his throat. The siblings shifted a little, like actors on a stage readying to perform.
Their mother, Halima, paused at the threshold and eyed Jamal and Farah. “What are you two bickering about?” She took a jar from Rehan and replaced it in the cupboard. She shooed him away and turned to the others expectantly. “Well?”
Farah cleared her throat. “Jamal wants the bowls. He thinks Gemma should have them.”
Halima’s dismay was a flash of static: brief but unmistakable. Her hasty effort to mask it only made things worse. “But I’d like them to stay in the family,” she said.
Jamal tensed. “Gemma is my wife, Mum,” he said quietly. “She is family.”
Halima tried for a smile, but it faltered at the edges. “Of course she is. I just…” Her gaze darted from Jamal to Farah as she laboured to find the words. “Look, you’re both adults now. You two work it out. I have to go and pray namaz.”
Jamal waited until she was out of earshot. Then he glared at Farah. “You can be such a bitch sometimes.” “Look, Jamal, I didn’t –”
He tossed the bowls on the counter where they revolved in a noisy clatter. He stormed out to the garden, the door snapping shut behind him.
Rehan looked over to Farah. “I guess that means they’re yours.”
Farah felt a wrench of guilt, but tamped it down with anger. After all, she was the one who had spent hours of her youth toiling in the kitchen. Her mother was smart and supportive, but also deeply traditional. “How will you find a husband if you don’t learn to cook?” she would ask on occasion. Farah would scan her tone for irony, before she even knew what irony was.
While her brothers played in the garden, Farah would watch from the kitchen sink. There, beneath the hum of fluorescent light, she would peel tendrils of white fat from chicken, shell and de-vein prawns, and behead fermented fish for Hidol, an eye-wateringly spicy delicacy of crushed fish mixed with an alchemy of spices that gave it a firebrick colouring. Hidol was a Sylheti specialty and her mother’s recipe was widely coveted. The pungent smell would coat the back of her throat and linger on her nails for days.
Farah had paid her dues and she deserved the enamel bowls.
Jamal wasn’t altogether wrong, of course. It was true: Farah didn’t cook, but that was a conscious decision. In her 20s, she lived on salads, ready meals and the culinary skills of a boyfriend or two. This was her rejection of the status quo; a one-woman feminist rebellion.
Her mother would always foist recipes onto her, scribbled on scraps of paper: an old receipt or envelope lid. Farah would stuff them into her bag, where they would languish with dusty old hairbands and mints that had escaped their wrappers until she remembered to stow them or throw them out.
She would have continued to live like this were it not for the wedding last week. Farah was sitting with cousins when the topic turned to motherhood: the tedium of bedtime, the drudgery of the school run, the endless, thankless mealtimes.
Farah’s laugh tinkled across the table. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I don’t cook,” she said, her self-deprecation too loud to be genuine.
Nina, her cool-eyed cousin, levelled her gaze on her. “Ah, that’s right. You’re too much of a ‘feminist’ to cook.”
A friend of Nina’s, an elegant sylph of a woman, arched a brow. “But what do you eat?”
Farah gestured airily. “Salads, ready meals. I tried a meal delivery service, but forgot to renew it.” She smiled rakishly. “At a push: cereal.” She expected a laugh, but the woman only frowned. When she spoke, there was no malice in her tone; only curiosity.
“But what’s feminist about not being able to look after yourself?”
Farah stared at her. She had never thought of it like that before and found herself at a loss.
The woman noticed her lapse in composure and graciously steered the attention away. Farah exhaled, feeling strangely shaken. That’s when she knew that things had to change.
Her mother would foist scribbled recipes on her. Farah would stuff them in her bag, where they would languish
It took her two weeks to begin. First, she secured the enamel bowls, which, to her, were like a talisman. Then, she finished the groceries already in her kitchen: garlic bread with globs of cheese and microwave pasta in plastic trays. On Sunday morning, after a bowl of cereal, she made a list for her pantry: two dozen spices, three types of oil and one large tub of ghee. Below that, she added: “15 pieces of Hidol hutki fish.” If Farah could master Hidol, everything else would surely be easy.
She headed to her desk and rifled through her old receipts. She paused, confused, then checked them all again, this time more carefully, but found nothing; not a single recipe. How could that be? Surely, Farah had kept a few?
She plucked an old journal from her bookshelf and flicked through the pages.
She tried another, then another. She grew agitated as she pulled out books and keepsakes. She checked the shoebox at the back of her cupboard and a folder with all her bills – but there was nothing. Kneeling on the bedroom floor, she finally grew still. Had she really been so cavalier with her mother’s legacy?
She scrabbled for her phone and called Nina, but her cousin just chuckled meanly.
“Your mum’s always been protective of her recipes. I’ve spent years trying to get Hidol right and she still won’t show me.” A pause, then a sly creep in her voice. “If you get it, you will give it to me, won’t you?”
Farah was quiet. “Yes, of course,” she said finally and set down the phone.
Farah drained the dregs of her tea in the sink and spoke in a casual tone.
“I talked to Nina today,” she said, broaching the subject carefully. “She was asking after your Hidol recipe.”
Farah waited. When her mother didn’t speak, she turned around to face her. “Nina’s your niece, Mum, so I thought we could share it with her?”
Halima looked up defiantly and, for a moment, it seemed certain she would refuse. But then her shoulders bowed a little. “Fine,” she said glumly. “I suppose someone should use it.”
Farah’s smile was falsely bright. “That’s great, Mum.” She motioned towards the bookshelf. “Where do you keep your recipe? I’ve got it somewhere obviously, but it’ll be easier to copy from yours.”
Halima chuckled lightly. “Oh, I don’t write down my recipes.” There was a teasing lilt in her voice. “Other than for you of course.” She pointed at a drawer. “Pass me the notebook in there and one of those ugly blue pens.”
“If you dictate it to me, I can write it down.”
Halima waved dismissively. “No, no. Hidol is a delicate recipe. I’ll do it.”
Farah handed her the pen and notebook, then busied herself around the house: emptying a bottle of soured milk, watering the plants outside and taking the recycling to the communal bin.
When she returned, she saw that the finished recipe was piled neatly on the table. She scanned the first page, “HIDOL” stamped along the top in tidy block lettering. She flipped to a second page and then a third.
“What’s wrong?” asked Halima, catching her expression. “Nothing. This is just… a bit daunting.” Halima laughed. “But, madam, you cannot hurry a curry,” she said, mimicking a hapless waiter that had served them in a restaurant last year.
Farah folded the sheets of paper, neatly pressing a crease in the middle. “Evidently not,” she said.
“Keep the pen.” Halima said, pointing at the drawer. “I have a hundred of them in there.”
“Thanks, Mum.” Farah stood. “Maybe I’ll try my first Hidol tonight.”
Halima followed her to the door. “Won’t you even stay for a cup of tea?”
Farah smiled softly. “I’ve got to go, Mum, but next time.” She leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.
Farah placed her enamel bowl on the table. She had never eaten alone from these bowls before and the pang of nostalgia was almost unbearable. She smoothed the pages of her mother’s recipe and read the heading on each. HIDOL. HIDOL. HIDOL. Beneath the headings, each page was empty.
Farah gazed at the blank space and a clot of emotion rose in her throat. Glassy tears dripped on to her mother’s blue pen, obscuring the white lettering. Farah’s vision blurred, but she could still make out the words: Alzheimer’s Society.
She pushed aside the pen and swallowed a mouthful of soggy cereal. She watched the last of the day slide down the kitchen wall until she was sitting in darkness.
‘That’s right. You’re too much of a feminist to cook. But what’s feminist about not being able to look after yourself?’