Lataf Derujni

Lataf finished his work with a curvy line running off the edge of the crimpled paper. He laid his dull pencil down and glanced around the room. Students were busy at work, pencils making swift moves of their own on the crisp, beige colored paper of the schoolroom.

“Lataf,” a high pitched voice said, sending shivers up Lataf’s spine.

“Yes, Mrs. Chingford,” Lataf replied, looking behind him at a small, thin figure of a tight faced young woman, about Lataf’s height, and probably weight, Lataf guessed. The woman’s thin lips drew together in a bright red, straight line and her cold, ice-blue eyes froze into Lataf’s bored, green ones.

“Lataf,” she repeated, “how many times must I tell you to actually work on your drawings?” She impatiently tapped her long, red fingernails on Lataf’s paper full of miserable little scribbles.

“Mrs. Chingford, my dear teacher,” Lataf said, his voice a fake gentleman’s, “I must tell you that I am not to say the least, finished on my work of art! Must such an artist be pressured in such little time?”

Mrs. Chingford’s arms tightened to her bony sides and her eyes narrowed to unfeeling slits of danger. “Lataf Derujni. I will NOT tolerate any more of this nonsense. Now sit down and finish that oh so easy assignment….young artist,” she said firmly, adding much sarcasm to the last bit of her lecture.

“Yes, Mrs. Chingford,” Lataf replied, settling down into his seat, to watch the lady glide away, glaring over other’s papers just as nastily as his own.

The bell rang and Lataf stuffed the poor, abused paper into his pocket and hurried out the door. The wind and snow caught himself off guard, and he fell to the ground, hitting the cold cement with a thud.

“Are you alright?” a voice asked, small and kind.

Lataf looked up. Oh, he thought, recognizing the familiar face almost instantly.
“Naira, I thought you were sick,” Lataf answered, bringing his aching body up, ignoring her outstretched hand.

“Oh, I was.”

Lataf studied his little sister, half annoyed, half amused. “You were, were you?” he asked, walking briskly away, rubbing the sore area of his buttocks where he had hit solid ground.

“Yes, indeed I was, Lataf,” Naira said again, this time right beside him. Lataf glanced to his side and saw his sister, her red head bobbing up and down as they practically jogged down the deserted street of Osaka, their home town.

“Mum said I ought to go to school or I will never live a life,” she declared, a note of sad emotion in her last word.

Lataf glanced at her. “So you came even though you look like you just escaped from the Devil’s hands?”

Naira sighed. “Lataf, I want to live a life, don’t you?”

Lataf laughed. “Oh, of course I do. Just not go to school. Anyway, you still listen to Mum and all of her nonsense? You know, it’s just a bunch of jumble to get us kids out of the house so she can bathe in herself,” Lataf said, slowing to a regular walk now.

Naira slowed too, wrapping her scarf around her pale neck tighter. “But Mum! We must obey her, you know, even if she is half-ant, half-human,” Naira said strongly, blowing into her pink hands.

“Oh, Naira. What to do with you, what to do.”

They finally reached the big, blue house with the white picket fence surrounding the entire lot. Lataf unlatched the gate with frozen hands and led Naira up the broken stairs and into the cold, white-washed walls of their big, Victorian home.
“Mum! We’re home!” Lataf yelled, setting his coat down on their red, Chinese chair by the door.

Naira ran around the corner into the kitchen, where Lataf followed her to find his mum baking on their once again, red oven and stove.

“Mum,” Lataf greeted, kissing his small, plump mother on the cheek.

“Lataf! How was school, my dear boy?”

“Oh, the usual.”

“Mum, I’m feeling much better now that you made me wisely go back to school,” Naira said, pulling a chair up to their counter.

“Oh, you are, Naira?” Lataf mumbled angrily, throwing glares back at his even paler sister.

“Lataf, be nice. That’s good, Naira. No more of this sick business. You want to have a career, don’t you? A husband? A farm? Chickens and ducks?” His mother went on and on, throwing a cookie onto a platter at each new phrase of the list.

Lataf finally retired from the kitchen and ran up the winding staircase to his bedroom. He sat down at his wooden desk and pulled out a blank sheet of paper.

He wrote his name at the top, in slow, sloppy letters as follows:

Lataf Derujni

He sat and stared at his name for awhile. She had to name me that? And the last name too! Her last name isn’t even Derujni! She gets to change it, and I have to stick with it forever? He thought angrily, shoving the paper behind the desk in a forced movement of frustration. First off, Derujni backwards: injured. Injured? Me? Naira? Why injured? Secondly, Lataf backwards: fatal. Injured fatal. Fatal injured. Might as well be deadly scorpion for all I care!

Once, he had asked Mum why, why on earth, had she named him such a thing, and the thing she said was, “Why, Lataf, dear boy! That was the first thing that came to mind!”

So, Lataf supposed he wasn’t that special type that had a meaning to his name, unless of course you wanted to believe that fatal or injured meant something, but other than that, he was dump.

Naira, on the other hand, was Arian backwards. That’s pretty enough, he thought.


That night, Lataf couldn’t sleep. He rolled around, throwing pillows at his bare walls, until he couldn’t take it anymore. He finally got up and went across the hallway to his sister’s room. He slowly opened the door and went over to her bed.

Lataf kneeled down and touched her pillow. There was nothing there but a warm, recently made dent of small, Naira like head.

He jumped up. Then he saw it. The window. The window’s curtains. Blowing in the wind, like a suicidal attempt to blow the life out of Naira’s soon-to-be-cold warm room.

He looked over the edge of her windowsill and saw a white night gown streak across their gray, bleak yard. Naira.