Follow the Thread

Every Christmas Day, young Ahmed found a thread of cotton outside his room. He soon trained himself to wake up early to look for it. Sometimes it was red and sometimes blue, and once it was so white that it blended into the carpet so that for one heart stopping moment he thought it wasn’t there.

But every year, without fail, the thread started just by his door, and wound its way through his house without a single break. He followed it wherever it went, and every year it was different. He would chase it through the bathroom and down the stairs and under the table in the kitchen. Some years he found himself crawling behind the washing machine in the shed or even across the frosty garden soil.

As he followed the thread, he would carefully wind it around his finger to ensure it wasn’t wasted, so that by the time he reached the end of the trail, his finger would be a tightly-bound cocoon of colourful cotton.

And there, where the thread tapered away, he would find his present, wrapped ever so meticulously in sparkling gold. Usually his mother knitted him a new jumper, but sometimes it was slippers and once she even crafted him a little wooden car. He loved the car, but what he always loved most was the chase.

After he found his present, he would wake his mother up, and she would cook him eggs for a breakfast treat. And then they would go to church.

The year that he grew taller than her, he worked up the courage to tell her he didn’t believe in God.

“That’s okay,” she said, reaching up to tousle his hair. “Sometimes I don’t either.”

He stared at her in surprise. “Then why do we go to church?”

She looked at him solemnly. “You must always go to church,” she said.

“But why?” he persisted.

His mother thought. “My father and I always went. And we always found peace, and people with smiles to talk to, and reasons to celebrate, and good food to share.”

“So I can go just for the food?”

“If that’s how you see it, of course.”

That year, he went to church content.

The next year, after his mother died, he stopped going entirely.

*

“Ahmed!” came the voice. “Ahmed, wake up!”

“What is it?”

“It’s Christmas Day!”

“So?”

“So you can at least get up and pretend it doesn’t suck.”

Ahmed got up, if only to placate his wife.

“Happy Christmas, Sara,” he mumbled. “I love you.”

“What are we going to do today?” she said, resting a hand on his knee as he sat sleepily on the side of the bed.

“Eat,” he replied. “Open presents. Watch TV.”

“Anything else?”

“You choose.”

She squeezed his leg. “I choose to spend it with you.”

He forced a smile. He knew what he had to do: grit his teeth, feign happiness and keep his head down. It would only be a matter of time before the day was over. All he had to do was stay in the house.

He opened the door of the bedroom and his breath caught in his throat.

On the floor lay a red thread.

He stood as a statue for all of time. “Sara?” he said eventually.

“Yes?”

“Did you – ”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Ever so slowly, he convinced his feet to move. He followed the thread across the carpet, a brilliant stream of red in a desert of white. It hurried over the landing in bold zigzags and loops, reaching out of sight under the bathroom door.

He stood outside the bathroom for another eternity, his throat dry, his eyes red.

Ever so slowly, he pushed open the door.

The red thread spread across the cold marble and ended in a red jumper.

Wearing the jumper was his four-year-old daughter.

She looked up at him in surprise as he stood silently in the doorway.

“Hi Daddy! Why are you in here? Don’t you know it’s rude when I’m about to – oh, it’s Christmas, Daddy! Happy Christmas! I opened your door but you were still asleep and Mummy was still asleep and so I’m waiting in here but you can’t sleep now because it’s Christmas! Daddy, what are we going to do today? Daddy?”

Ahmed didn’t speak immediately. He picked up the thread and wound it round his finger.

“Your jumper’s unravelling,” he said very softly.

“Sorry Daddy,” his daughter replied sadly.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t mean that, Ellie. I just mean…”

His voice trailed off.

“What are we going to do today, Daddy?”

“We could…”

He stopped again.

“Can we go out, Daddy? Can we get cake?”

He stared at her and knelt down on the floor.

“We could go to church,” he said.

“What’s at church?” Ellie asked.

“Well,” he began. “There’s good food.”

“Including cake?”

“Including cake.”

“Okay, Daddy. I’ll go tell Mummy.”

She ran past him towards the bathroom door.

“Wait, Ellie.”

“Yes?”

“Hold on a moment.”

He found a small pair of scissors in the bathroom cabinet and gently cut the loose thread free from her jumper. It crumpled into a ball of cotton in his hand and he found himself kneeling on the cold tiles once more.

“There you go,” he said. “All better now.”

“Thanks, Daddy. You can keep the thread.”

“Okay,” he replied.

And he told her he loved her.

And he watched her run across the landing to his wife.

And he cried, and he cried, and he cried.

And he kept the thread.