It was during my first days in my business, and due to the fear of burning someone’s clothes with the iron, I restricted myself from many things anytime I was ironing clothes, to the extent that even if the rapture’s trumpet blew, I would finish the clothes I was ironing at that moment or at least calmly turn off the iron before joining the people going to heaven.
One particular day in the evening, there was public electricity, and I had a lot to iron. And just as it is in my area, we try to make full use of electricity whenever we see it because the electricity company gives us light only when they are in peace with their wives. I was ironing clothes very fast, trying to cover ten clothes in one minute. Then my phone rang, and when I checked, it was one of my uncles, who I’m very close with. The uncle is not the usual old person associated with uncles—no, he’s not much older than me, and we bond a lot. But when that call came, we hadn’t talked for almost four months.
I saw the call ring and go off three times while I was contemplating whether to turn off the iron to pick the call, pick the call and continue ironing, or leave the call and call him later when I was done. When the call came for the fourth time, I didn’t know when I picked it up because, with the four consecutive rings, I believed there could be a problem—that’s why he was calling. I placed the phone between my chin and shoulder while both my hands continued ironing clothes, and hey, before I knew it, my hot iron chopped off a net part of the female cloth.
“Ooooooh God!” I screamed with deep anger at everything—both the call, the caller, the female cloth that had a net, and even the electricity company. I ended the call, threw the phone into the heap of clothes far away, hit the iron on the table, and sluggishly walked to my chair to sit down.
I didn’t know if I was dreaming or it was reality. I had just burnt someone’s cloth—and it was a woman’s cloth! Omo! And the worst thing is that the part that got burnt was the designed part of the cloth that had a net, and women don’t take things lightly whenever their clothes get burnt.
Why did I pick the call?
Why didn’t I wait till I was done to call him back, or why didn’t I turn off my iron as my custom is?
Questions of condemnation were flying in and out of my head. I didn’t know who to blame, even though the blame landed directly on the uncle that called me, because why did he choose to call me at that hour? That must be the act of the village people.
All through the night of that day, my mind was totally restless while imagining how the owner of the cloth was going to take the news of her cloth being burnt.
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This is my entry to Com contest