Aunty and ants are unable to coexist

Our aunty Bilqees Fatima and ants are incompatible creatures. She has hygiene obsession and the ants are lousy beings. Nonetheless they can’t live without each other. Wherever she is, ants, somehow, come to know about her presence and reach there.

Our kitchen is the cleanest place of our home. It’s the one spot in the house that we can rove through without tripping over scattered broken toys. The rest of our house appears as if a storm has ripped through it, when the kids are around. But our kitchen is perfect. Any muck, dirt and dust found in our kitchen are immediately removed to ensure that cooking environment is wholesome.

Last week, my aunty went to the store and got a bagful of peas, beans, grains, rice and other foodstuff of her liking to prepare meals to her taste.

Heading to the sink, she looked down and saw a mass of tiny insects crawling over the bag and her body. She screamed, threw the bag and slapped the bugs off her arms and hands. She crept back to the food closet and found hundreds of little bugs having a party all over the food stuffed there.

Luckily, the kids didn’t wake up as she screeched. She ran to the phone, dialled my phone number and yelled, “Come here.” recounting the horror unfolding in the kitchen. Realizing the food closet needed to be cleaned out; she returned to the kitchen and donned rubber gloves. The unopened bottled foodstuff was safe, so she knocked the bugs to the floor and washed the bottles with disinfectant. Next, she looked at the bags of dry fruits. Little beetles waggled all over them and tried to get in the cracks. As soon as I said “This is Ahmad”, she burst into tears. “I can’t handle the bugs.”

After thirty-plus years of ties, I know when she reaches the point-of-no-return - and she obviously crossed that limit; I said, “I’m on my way.”

When I reached home she walked toward me and grabbed me by my collar while I was halfway across the courtyard. She took me to the kitchen and jabbered on and on about how she found the bugs, how the bugs tried to attack her that she considered calling 17, and that nobody was home to help with this catastrophe.

Controlling a grin, I smiled back. She dug in the food closet and showed me the disintegrating foodstuff. “Yup, just what I thought. You bought the items that had bugs in them.” I advised her: “Freeze these products for a couple of hours -- that way, the eggs won’t hatch.” “Ugh,” was all she could manage to say. “Don’t worry. Eating these bugs or their eggs won’t make us sick. A certain proportion of pests in the meal won’t do any harm,” I said jokingly.

I cleaned out the food closet while she attentively pointed out all the bugs that she missed. I sprayed and swept the food closet while she mopped and scrubbed. After disinfecting the foodstuff, double-bagging the bug-tainted food, placing the un-bugged in the freezer, I took a sigh of relief.

The kids were still sleeping, so she contemplated what to make for dinner. I flashed back to the image of bugs having their way with the food items.

Would she ever cook meal again? Yes, but not this night, or this week or maybe not until she has attended a course in insects-killing.