Spells We Never Named

UZAIR RIZWAN

Part I - Invocation

Our house hummed with ordinary sounds.

The kettle’s low whistle, 

That screechy Bollywood singer Papa loved (Art, he would proclaim)

An oak floorboard’s weary sigh, 

My Sisters arguing about some trivial thing, 

Winter draughts threading lukewarm tasting air 

Through opaque rose-embroidered curtains.

Papa’s weary jumper smelled faintly of dust, smoke and sweat from the Metro.

Mama’s hands on the kitchen counter sweated Ghee and Attha (flour), their scent mingling with Lemongrass dish-soap.

Nothing here sparkled.

No wand tapped against the air.

Yet something unseen gathered quietly,

like breath before a prayer—

waiting to be named.

Part II - Rituals

Each evening, Mama slipped into my room.

A glass of water placed on the desk,

chai steaming in chipped Chinese porcelain,

roti wrapped in a tea towel to keep its heat.

She never asked if I was hungry.

The question was answered in the act itself.

Papa arrived less predictably,

a hand brushing the doorframe,

his voice gruff yet soft—

‘Beta, ek hug do.’

A command, a request, a spell

folded into a single moment of embrace.

These rituals, performed without announcement,

bound the spiced air of our home

more tightly than lock or key.

Part III - Incantations

My parents called me many names.

Beta when I was their son,

Jaani when I was cherished,

Jerry when love needed

a playful mask in English.

Each word, a note in a half-familiar song.

Urdu softening into English,

English bending back into Urdu.

Arabic weaving the threads in-between.

Our house stitched

by a language no dictionary could capture.

I learned that some words

mean more in the mouth

than they do on the page.

Beta carried weight like stone,

but when spoken at night,

it curled like a prayer around me.

Part IV - Communion

Every evening we gathered at the table.

Plates steaming with spiced meatballs, Kofte, voices layered,

arguments dissolving into laughter,

silences softened by the scrape of spoons or the gentle scratching of fingernails against

empty plates.

Food brought with it much more.

Biryani bright as marigold flame,

pulao carrying whispers of cardamom, anise, cumin (and maybe saffron)

karahi thick with red oil,

brisket tender and smoked like it had crossed oceans,

Shepherd's pie baked into its’ own ritual. 

But, 

Each dish an incantation of belonging,

old worlds and new braided together.

Our tongues shifting,

Urdu folding into English,

English slipping back into Arabic,

Jokingly, annoyedly, angrily, 

Apologetically, lovingly, happily, 

but always, the table translating

what words could not hold.

It was here we learned – that, 

Hunger was never only of the body.

To be fed was to be Named,

Shehzada, Shehzadi (prince/princess)

to be reminded that love

could be ladled out and passed across, again

again and again, and again and again, and again and again, and again and again, and again and again, and again and again, and again and again, and again and again, and again and again.

Without ever running _____.

(empty)

Part V - Revelation

They told me magic lived in storybooks:

in dragons, in spells carved on parchment,

in heroes lifting swords heavier than themselves.

But I have seen stranger enchantments.

A father who wore holes in his jumper

like a second skin,

who gave up the world

so his children could step into it whole.

A mother who turned silence into abundance,

her hands shaping roti from nothing,

her love kneaded into every fold of dough.

A 19 year old son who spent ten grand, his savings gone,

 (It’s too expensive, refund it)                                               on a watch his father refused to put on. 

He knew the cost was heavy, cruel, unfair,

but love was worth the weight he chose to bear.

Because from that father, he learned

That Love is Eternal, whilst Money trickles and flows

And even stranger, 

I have heard incantations

hidden in everyday words—

(beta, jaani)

syllables warm enough

to shield me from any Australian winter.

And I have known rituals

so ordinary they pass unseen:

a glass of mango lassi at my desk,

Kashmiri chai steaming in a “#whatever” porcelain mug,

a brief hug in the doorway

that tethered me to earth.

This is my inheritance:

not wands or wings,

but a magic stitched from blood,

from language and food,

from gestures too small to name,

yet  powerful  enough

to 

build 

a 

life.

And so when I speak of spells,

I mean the ones my parents cast—

not to bend the world,

but to carry me through it.