Our shared practice

The kettle had long since boiled. It sat on the stove, hissing, steam billowing out at an almost alarming rate. At the nearby table I stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of me. Well, blank aside from the marks where I had scribbled something then furiously erased it again, pushing my rubber so hard against the paper it had almost torn. Some people had suggested that if I wrote her a letter then maybe I would start to feel better, but still my hand sat poised, the problem being I didn’t know what to write.

It sounds like a funny problem for someone like me to admit. You see, I am a writer by trade, paid to do this for a living. I had been putting pen to paper every day for nigh on 20 years and in that time, I had never, ever had an issue like this. But now when I needed my craft the most, when I needed the catharsis, the escape, the words were failing me, a disconnect between my constantly chattering mind and the pencil I was gripping so fiercely the knuckles had gone white.

Again it sounds like a funny problem to have. There had to be other ways I could do this rather than writing a stupid letter that likely no one will ever read. But it was the only coping mechanism I had ever learned, and it felt so debilitating for something that normally comes so easily to be snatched away. It is entirely possible that I was being a touch melodramatic – as a writer, I am so inclined. But I felt cut adrift, while my brain full of thoughts and emotions continued to churn and simmer away, much like the kettle I had put on to boil…

The kettle!

It was then I became acutely aware of the steam, the hissing. In an instant I pushed myself away from the dining table, leaping across to the stove. How long had I left the kettle there for? I wondered guiltily, yanking it off the ring. That was something she had always berated me for, putting the kettle on to boil, then walking away and forgetting all about it. I would burn the house down one day, she had said. I argued back that if she got an electric kettle, like everyone else, that wouldn’t even be an issue. But the chances of her doing anything of the sort were about as likely as pigs flying – she had always been stubborn.

In my haste, I set the kettle down with a little too much force and water splashed angrily onto my bare foot. I sucked in a sharp breath, along with several swear words, through gritted teeth. Determined to continue I picked up the china teapot. It was the one with the blue flowers, the one she always used just for the two of us.

I resisted the urge to hurl it across the room. It wasn’t helping that everything in this kitchen, in this house, reminded me of her. The tea caddy which she’d had as long as I could remember, was still sitting pride of place on the counter, despite its weathered appearance. She never did care about looks.

In the same instant, and almost selfishly, it also reminded of my own inadequacies. After all this time, I still found myself sponging off her, in her house, wearing her clothes, drinking her tea.

Above the caddy, a makeshift shelf, roughly hammered into the wall, was groaning under the weight of several reused jam jars, housing her eclectic tea collection. They had homemade labels, stuck on often at odd angles, in her scrawling, childish handwriting. I smirked as I ran my finger along the lids, there were blends here I had never heard of. I knew she would be able tell me exactly what each one was, what it was good for and how long to brew it for.

One jar caught my eye, and I pulled it from the shelf, opening it to see the rich, dark flower petals within. There wasn’t much in there, a teaspoon maybe at most, yet I was amazed there was anything left at all. But then that was another habit of hers. Loathe to finish anything she liked, she would always leave a little bit at the bottom, claiming she was waiting for a “special occasion” to use it.

We had brought this tea back from our first trip to Iran, all those years ago, when she and I were still joined at the hip. The smell that wafted from the jar was enough to transport me back. The kettle was boiling from the minute we arrived - in Iran they used a samovar, not too dissimilar to a large metal urn. Size was essential because there was always a lot of us, crowding into the small but cozy living room.

I didn’t even like the taste of tea back then, but sipped it out of necessity. Mainly because she did, and I so desperately wanted to be like her, but also because of the connotations that came with it, warmth, love, and of course, us curling up with maman joon as she geared up to tell another story.

Everyone always joked that the two of us, thick of thieves, were maman joon’s favourites. Looking back now, it’s hard not to believe them. We always managed to nab the most coveted spot on her lap, while the rest of the cousins huddled at her feet, all of us hanging on to her every word.      

Even when the parents said it was time for bed, we would cling to her, begging her in our broken Farsi to tell us just one more.

“Yeki dige (another) story. Please maman joon.”

Maman joon would always oblige, our parents would sigh, and we would look at each other, a little glint in our eyes. Even at a young age we were masters at getting our own way.

But the final story always called for something a little bit different, maman joon would say, and instead of the strong black tea (which I always had to have with nabot (sugar crystals), she would call for a pot of hibiscus tea to be made.

The brew made from the dark red petals was bitter on my tongue, but I would drink it all the same. When the day came for us to leave Iran, maman joon took us both aside, pressing a jar of the tea into our hands. Our comprehension of Farsi was much better than our ability to speak so we were able to understand her parting words.

She thanked us for the bond the three of us had shared these last few weeks, the stories, the tea. Being able to spend time with her grandchildren from overseas had been a real treat, but most of all she had enjoyed seeing the relationship that existed between us as sisters. She finished by cautioning us to not let anything come between us.

I remember that we had laughed at her, thinking in unison that nothing ever could.

How wrong we had been.

I poured the remaining contents of the hibiscus tea into the teapot, adding the boiled water. It felt like an eternity had passed, but it hadn’t even been 48 hours since I first got the call, a rude awakening from the alcohol-induced stupor that had left me in the fetal position on the cold, hard ground of the train station.

But in a way it had actually been convenient, because it meant I was on time to catch the early morning train, after scraping together what little money I had left for the ticket.

I had stupidly been expecting a cup of tea upon my arrival at her house too. After that first trip to Iran, it became our shared practice – we never greeted each other without one.

Instead I found her old Hyundai parked in the driveway, still with the dent in the front bumper, but the house was empty, cold and uninviting.

I had let myself in, with the key she kept under the garden gnome, still shaking off the shock, the booze, the lack of sleep. No sign of life apart from the oranges in the fruit bowl that were going fuzzy. I used whatever money I had left to stock the fridge myself, feeling proud I had managed to be of some use, even at this late stage in the game. Just the basics, milk, eggs, bread, from the local ASDA. A lot of people there had greeted me in her name. It hurt, but I did look like her after all, same dark hair, slightly green tinge to the eyes, so who could blame them. I had responded in monosyllables, barely looking up, and if anyone questioned this reticent behaviour, they never said. For me it was just another painful reminder that I wasn’t her, never could be her.

There had been a time where we pretended to be each other. We never thought we looked that alike, we were sisters, not twins after all, but the prank always seemed to work, even on our own parents. Sometimes we even fell for it ourselves, getting so deeply invested in pretending to be the other, it was hard to remember who was who.

Maman joon however, could always tell us apart. We returned to Iran a few times after that first trip, and she laughed along with our antics for a while, until we must’ve played one prank too many.

She cautioned us again on the importance of our relationship but also on the importance of our individuality.

Again we had laughed at her – we liked being similar, so similar it felt we could read each other’s minds. She just shook her head sadly at us.

We had thought it was our similarities drawing us together, but in fact it was the opposite. It was those similarities that tore us apart, leaving jagged edges that would never heal.

I say my sister had always been stubborn, but the truth is I was worse.

The night she found me at the train station, it was snowing. I hadn’t told anyone where I was, not even my agent, but somehow she knew. She claimed it was our telepathic connection.

I was cold, wet and hungover and she begged me to come home with her, promising a warm bed, clean clothes, and of course a cup of tea, that same glint in her eyes.

But I was obstinate, too proud to let the past go, to admit I had been wrong, that I needed help, instead choosing to risk my life rather than give in.

In the end she left, tears in her eyes as she stalked away through the snow and the failing light.

I never regretted that decision, at least not until now. If I’d known that was the last time I would ever see her, I would’ve gone with her.

In a way I blamed her too. If she had told me then about the tumour, it would’ve been different. Instead she made everything about me, like she had always done: I was the one with issues, not her.

But she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I don’t know if she ever told anyone - I only found out through that phone call. It was from the hospital and they told me she had gone through weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, to the point where the doctors cleared her.

She enjoyed a few blissful, cancer-free weeks, before the headaches came and she started to have problems with her eyesight. Cautious, but trying to remain optimistic, she went to get checked out. The tumour was back, bigger and more malignant than ever. They had given her four short months to live.

The first thing she did with her remaining time was track me down. It was a show of her persistence that she found me at all, as I had gone to great lengths to make myself untraceable.

That’s why the call from the hospital came as such a shock. How they managed to get my contact details was beyond me, but she must’ve told them.

By now, the tea was ready, bitter and tangy, slightly over brewed (I never could make it as good as her). I sipped it gratefully, but also guiltily that I had used up the remainder of the hibiscus tea without her. It was the last remaining link tethering me back to her, to Iran, to maman joon. Without it, I was lost at sea, no hope of getting home.

The last time we had gone to Iran together, at least seven years ago now, we bickered and squabbled the whole way. For someone who didn’t care about looks, she criticized my hair, my outfit which I had carefully crafted to imitate her own wardrobe, an attempt to impress her. Forever the child, I yelled at her to shut up.

There was an unspoken agreement that we would put on a show for maman joon but we still couldn’t fool her. She sensed the discord between us almost instantly, and even as 30-somethings, we quailed under her unwavering eye. She never said anything to us, but that look was enough. On the plane on the way home, we vowed we would try to do better. But the rift was deeper than either of us cared to admit, and despite my despairing sense of wanting to be more like my sister, to do right by maman joon, we pulled further and further away.

When it came to my sister, I always felt like I fell short: she was logical, smart, accomplished whereas I was always her shadow, a lesser version. In the early days of our adulthood I was constantly on her doorstep with some new sob story. She bailed me out every time, and despite my assurances I would make amends, I still refused to change.

I made my way without her for a brief time: writing for a travel magazine paved the way for my first novel, which jumped straight to the number two on the best-seller list. There it remained for years, while I tried desperately for the follow-up that would hopefully make it to number one. However, my second book was poorly received and everything plummeted, my novels going from the top 10, to not even making the top 100, my self-esteem and the illusion of wealth, fame, and luxury I had built going with it. So I made myself scarce, finding solace in alcohol which helped to numb the pain. That’s how I found myself sleeping in a dark corner of the train station.

Anything I touched seemed destined to fail: my career, my relationship with my sister, the simple act of writing her a letter. I couldn’t even make a cup of tea without burning my foot and nearly setting fire to the house. But perhaps there was still a way I could make things right.

I poured the remainder of the hibiscus tea into a thermos, and grabbed the car keys hanging on a hook by the door.

The waiting room was cold when I walked in, the white walls bleak and sterile. Eventually I was led down a corridor to a room with a frosted glass window. After a brief pause and a deep breath, I entered.

The deterioration was hard to believe. It hadn’t been that long since that night at the train station, in the snow, and while I felt thin after weeks of sleeping rough, my sister looked like a skeleton. She lay in bed, her hair gone, skin stretched taut over her cheekbones, her breath faint but rattling. It was hard to believe this was my sister at all, and part of me wanted that to be the case, that this had all been some terrible mistake, they’d got the wrong person somehow. Maybe it was another one of her pranks and I would go back to the house, and she would be there, laughing at me as she handed me a cup of tea and we could go back to hating and loving each other.

But it was too late, she had seen me, and I knew that I knew those eyes, with the tinge of green in them. There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes, and something else – was it shock? - to see me standing at the foot of her bed.

I gulped at that, realizing she thought I wouldn’t come, that my stubbornness would win.

I held out the thermos.

“I brought you a cup of tea,” my voice cracked. There was that familiar glint in her eyes again.