The Orchard of Lost Souls 165-66 by Nadifa Mohamed Lyrics

In her orchard the trees had been born from deaths; they marked and grew from the remains of the children that had passed through her. She never picked the fruit that fell from them, believing it a kind of cannibalism, but out of those soft, unshaped figures had grown tall, strong, tough-barked trees that blossomed and called birds to their branches and clambered out over the orchard walls to the world beyond. The infants in the orchard all had names, the genders sometimes distinguishable and sometimes imagined. The largest of them was Ibrahim, a nearly perfect boy with pale hair thick on his curved, rubbery limbs. Seven whole months he had survived in her harsh womb. He was tired, with wrinkles furrowed deep across his brow, and she thought she had seen him take one deep, resigned breath in her arms before he put down his clubbed hands and surrendered the fight. It had been difficult to bury him; he had toes, fingernails, a good head of hair, puffy eyes that clearly would have taken the shape of her own. Farah was hostile towards the shrouded bundle; he refused to look, refused to touch. Kawsar remained in bed with him snuggled against her breast while Farah called for a doctor to stem the blood flowing from her. By the time the Italian obstetrician had appeared at the door, she was drained yellow, her clammy skin as cold as the child's, so disconnected from her senses that she dropped her legs open without a murmur and revealed everything to the foreigner. He prodded and cut and stitched while Ibrahim appeared to snooze open-mouthed beside her. When the Italian went to examine him, she refused and pressed him against her breast, her nails breaking through his skin. She remembers hearing wails and screams but she herself was silent. Two days later, while Farah was out, and when the gloss of blood and fluid had dried into Ibrahim's hair and his lips had set to a dark grey color, Kawsar gathered the stained sheets around her waist and padded to the yard in bare feet. She clawed the earth with her hands, her nails split and shredded by the gritty soil, only stopping when she had created a narrow, two-foot deep trench. She filled a bucket from the kitchen tap and washed Ibrahim clean, wrapped him in the multi-hued blanket she had knitted, and then laid him gently down. She read the prayer for the dead and then gently smoothed the earth over the blanket; it took a long time for the purple and red and pink squares to disappear under the brown earth.