2025 Short Story & Essay Contest: First Place, Adult Short Story Contest
By Asma Dilawari
What a pleasure it was to make tea the way she liked it, in a kitchen all her own, shelves displaying her chosen necessities. At 55, Rubina finally had the independence she had yearned for since she was a teenager. Being born deaf and receiving a cancer diagnosis brought some benefits, at least in a country with taxpayers who didn’t want to see her homeless. She had been so happy when her nephew secured this apartment for her, the first time she had a place of her own. She had placed tins of tea, cans of evaporated milk, raw sugar, and chili oil intentionally within arm’s reach of her small stove, relishing the organization of a kitchen barely more than the width of her shoulders. It seemed a betrayal when, shortly after, the cancer gene she carried her whole life began wreaking havoc on her pelvis, her cells reproducing with exponential fury. Right when she had felt settled in this country of clean air and plenty, the parts of her body she had accepted would never be of use rebelled.
The kettle whistled and she poured the boiling water over tea in the saucepan, recalling one of the first times she had gone through these motions, now practically muscle memory. Her shoulders tensed as she remembered the audition of sorts, older aunties watching as she brought chai to them on a tray with masked confidence. They had intensely gazed at the curves in her teenage body as their sagging faces sipped chai from thin mugs she had worried about breaking. She recalled feeling so stressed about the tea preparation that she had enlisted her cousin’s help, her only confidante at the time. But B was not an orphan like Rubina. B was in a proper family of six, with servants to make tea and a father who would give her money to buy sweets, so she had been quite useless in this task and had only giggled with her in the kitchen. Rubina had relied on her memories, of people standing over saucepans on gas flames, of gentle tilts of milk poured onto boiling brown water, smells of cloves and cardamom, and the sparkles of sugar granules cascading generously from a box. She had not realized then how many times she would repeat those motions in the years that followed, and how easily she would learn to prepare tea for others.
That afternoon was deemed a success; she was accepted as a potential wife to her older male cousin at the age of 15. This man, who hid behind his mother at gatherings, bore no resemblance to the image of a husband she and B had dreamed of, with Bollywood movies and magazines feeding their imaginations. When her sister-in-law had asked if she agreed to the marriage, Rubina felt numb, staring past her face as if there was another option behind it. Her sister-in-law was a tired young mother with two small children, whose husband spent long hours working to support his family and other siblings. Rubina knew what was being asked of her: that she not become a burden and find a way to live her life without being dependent on them. So she had agreed to be married and asked only if she could continue going to school. Years later, she would scold herself for being so naive when her sister-in-law agreed. She hadn’t realized then what the word “wife” really meant, that the tasks she would be expected to do would have no resemblance to life in a schoolyard with carefree lunches and homework; any decision about her life would be made by her husband and his mother. The lessons she had needed were not those her lovely teacher had taught her. There were no classes in school on massaging your mother-in-law’s calloused feet, on how to lie perfectly still and pretend to sleep, or to stifle screams of boredom while being confined to a house to wait for summons. Still, she remembered the satisfaction of grasping the beauty of sign language, a world of lips and faces that portrayed feelings and connected her to others, allowing her to finally laugh at the punch line instead of searching for B to explain the joke. She would learn to carry that skill with her in the years that followed, sharpening it on her own.
From a young age, Rubina had always tried to fill voids, to make some parts of her so pretty and pleasant—blowing up the good qualities like a reverse caricature—that her flaws would be forgotten or go unnoticed. She always hid her coughs or ailments, perfected her makeup and grooming. She couldn’t afford a mark against her. Being born deaf and killing your mother in the process carried a cloud over you. Everything else had to be perfect so as not to further inconvenience anyone. As an orphan with six siblings, she could either become squashed with the rest of the city’s forgotten or find a way to shine. After her marriage, she regretted trying so hard to look attractive; her appearance had only gotten her an early marriage and crushed any hopes of continuing school. It would be decades before she got a ticket to a new life.
Three family homes in a congested neighborhood encompassed the only world she had seen as a child and young adult. Less than two months after the proposal, she moved into a house she had visited dozens of times as a guest but had never really seen. She had missed the yellowing of the curtains, the shelves dotted with shiny items, the gaudy displays of wealth that belied shabby reality. She had missed the grime between the tiles in the bathroom, the sadness of the dark cracked floor, the intensity of the kitchen heat, and the coolness of the inhabitants.
After three years of marriage, she swore her husband would never touch her again, though it would take almost two decades to finally leave. Seeing him in that small office of their family’s store with another man unclothed had stunned her; she had run to her brothers, who told her not to speak of it. As she waited in her bedroom, a part of her experienced some relief, as if she had filled in the missing piece of her puzzling life: the rushed marriage, the husband who rarely reached for her. He had come home and cried with her that night, not being able to meet her gaze. He had begged her not to tell anyone else and to forgive him. She had acquiesced, stunned at the sight of a grown man sobbing. He had laid his head in her lap and Rubina placed her hand on top of his hair, shocked by the intimacy she felt for the first time with him at that odd moment.
She spent years caring for her husband, in addition to her mother-in-law, her siblings, sick relatives, nephews and nieces. Early in her marriage, she thought that she may have a child herself but could never really imagine it. Though she had held her nephews when they were babies, she couldn’t fathom having one of her own who would grow up to run in the streets, to spill food while eating, and depend on her to wipe his mouth, or hold his hand tightly in crowds. Rubina had always felt so near to the longings of a child herself, still sometimes wishing for her mother, any mother, to look for her out the window when she played with her cousins, to comment on her clothes and tell her they were too tight or too short. She had longed to be reprimanded because it meant someone was worried about her, about her future as a respectable girl. In the end, it hadn’t mattered: In her small world, a family marriage served as an almost foolproof prevention of adventure.
Now she thought about how many people worried about her. B, still her closest confidante, made video calls and visited often to give her health advice gleaned from her years as a doctor’s wife. Her favorite chemotherapy nurse and her friend whose treatment days coincided with hers both knew her schedule and checked in frequently. Her nephew, who was her best friend, would narrow his eyes when he saw her wince, and call this doctor or that nurse to try to fix her ailments. This concern was so foreign to her. The only time she felt unfettered by the attention was when she was sitting in the cancer center among other patients. She had become so adept at reading lips that she could understand people from their eyes, the widening or narrowing, eyebrows dancing or furrowing to match the movements in their lips. She had realized that the nurses asked her the same questions they posed to every patient, and this was a comfort to her, that her body could be damaged the same way as people who had been born perfect and that they were just as concerned about her side effects as theirs.
One visit, she had seen the words “hearing impaired” on her medical chart, as if that described her situation. How could something be impaired when it was never actually there? She had never really had her hearing. Maybe her mother, knowing she was dying, reached into her womb and grabbed a small anvil or hammer from her daughter’s ears as a keepsake. She smiled thinking of her mother putting middle ear bones into a tiny gold box like baby teeth, and wondered if they would be ready for her when she joined her in the afterlife. Perhaps she would stick them back into Rubina’s ears and they would talk for hours.
She interrupted her reverie to pour the perfectly sweetened scorching chai into one of her delicate bone china mugs. How many times had this ritual been taken from her, the sharp orders to boil loose tea in a pan while squatting in a hot kitchen, the scoldings as she acquired the skill of preparing salty pink tea in large pots for wedding nights. She relished the thought that she would never be forced to make tea for others again. Though nothing tasted quite like the chai she learned to make as a child, she would never trade her English tea for that of the past.
As she sat down at the narrow table, Rubina looked around her apartment: the linoleum floors she cleaned to her standards, her bedroom with the dark silk sheets covering a small bed she now rarely shared with anyone. She sipped slowly as she planned her outfit for her infusion appointment. She never bothered with wigs and prided herself on having the best scarves of any patient in the center. After she finished, she began to dress, selecting bright colors with a few pieces of jewelry, wearing dark lipstick and her new scarf. When she painted her face—creating eyebrows and outlining her lips—she was curating her mask. Her reflection mirrored how she thought of herself inside, glamorous and smart. She cleaned the kitchen before she left, unsure if she would be using it later, as she never knew how she would feel after chemotherapy. Perhaps she would sleep late tomorrow and prepare tea in the afternoon with buttered toast, or maybe she would wake early to have a proper breakfast with morning chai. These details did not matter; Rubina knew that the choice was hers.
About the author:
Asma Dilawari
Lives in: Bethesda
Occupation: “I am a medical oncologist with a specialty in breast cancer and cancer survivorship. I recently resigned from my position at the FDA to take on a new role with an organization called Thyme Care as a medical director of oncology.”
Recommended reading: “One of my favorite books is A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif because the author takes an event in history (the death of a Pakistani president) that I heard about growing up and creates this amazing story around it.”
How she got the idea for the story: “I have an aunt on my mom’s side whom I did not see very frequently but who left a strong impression on me. She was very close to my mom, and I wished I had known her better. This story was my way of exploring that and is loosely based on events in her life.”
Up next: “Thanks to [this] contest, I was able to take a free class at The Writer’s Center and chose one on nonfiction narratives, so I am working on a piece reflecting on cancer from different perspectives, including that of a friend who is undergoing treatment.”
This appears in the July/August 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
