The Clinging Thing

"She has always owed her life to the women before her. This is not something to mourn … Freedom is often recent and always precarious. She owes her life to the women before her, in that she ought to live. The duty mustn't ever feel like duty, no, what luck, for her to be here, for her to feel so deeply and remember so much.”

Iqra has taken leave from her work and her marriage to return to her mother’s home in the place where she grew up.

A couple of hours out of the city, Seam River pulls Iqra back into a state of bewilderment. The grief she carries returns her to the stories of her parents and all the women before her, as dreams, memories, the uncertain and the impossible converge. Through ritual, friendship, slow conversations with her mother, and time, she recognises that the future refuses to take form.

She finds wonder.