A Funeral of Butterflies
By Mona Mohamed Saleh
Translated by Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour
Sun scorched the earth, and hot winds sang among the trees, humming their mysterious song. On that sweltering day, time moved as slowly as a lizard. The mountains gazed at the distant horizon, guarding the ancient silence of this place at the foot of Mount Mekki al-Shabi, near the remote army barracks that stood behind their careful barbed-wire fences. There, an old house, in an old neighborhood, was sunk deep in the isolation of its magical worlds, bound in its solitude like a forgotten secret—a secret that waits for something that will no longer come.
It was in that isolated house that Um Suliman once lived. Or, as the people of the neighborhood called her, Aunt Kharifiya. They were used to having her among them, and no one asked about the secret behind her name. It was a fixed part of their memory of the place, like her dilapidated house, which was surrounded by zinc sheets painted in dark green and covered in engravings, like the wings of a bird trying to fly. In front of the house, three small cement steps led up to a wide door with two leaves, distinguished by its unmistakable red paint. It stood apart from the other houses, hidden behind the shade of lebbeck trees, surrounded by mystery. It stood alone: like an old, indelible scar.
A woman in her fifties, Aunt Kharifiya’s face bore the traces of a life that had eroded her from within and carved her features without, tracing invisible lines that you could see in the curves of silence that stretched out from her absent-minded looks. She appeared to be in good health, yet this did not hide the shadows of loneliness in her eyes. Nor did it conceal the sounds of an impenetrable absence. Aunt Kharifiya did not talk much about her only son, Suliman, who had gone out one morning and didn’t return, disappearing without a trace. No funeral ceremonies were held for him, and she did not cry over him in front of others. All she did was watch the edges of the night as they fell, little by little, like an old leaf on a tree, as she lay in merciful silence and muttered:
“He’ll be back. He’ll be back before sunset.”
She was sure that he would come back one evening. She still heard his voice in the folds of her memory, heard him knocking on the red door and calling to her with the eagerness of a child who never grew up:
“Mama Kharifiyah’s so nice.”
Every morning, flocks of brilliantly patterned red butterflies would surround the house, moving in a single rhythmic pattern, fluttering their wings in the light as if they were souls in search of a body.
No one knew why they would gather around Aunt Kharifiya’s house, landing at her doorstep every morning, then slipping into her courtyard, carrying their burning hearts as they floated through the air. It was as though the house had been created just for them.
Like his mother, Suliman had loved the butterflies, but without losing his way to his mother’s heart. Whenever she was busy in the wide courtyard, he would chase her with his childish laugher:
“I’m leaving them now, Mama.”
Then he would rush out, heading off to school without waiting for the morning sounds or the voice of his mother, Kharifiyah, who would run after him and close the door behind him.
Ever since his disappearance, her house has been filled with light and secrets and half-formed shadows.
*
In the old neighborhood, no one knew much about Aunt Kharifiyah. A few stories about her were passed around the neighborhood in whispers. Some gossips said that her blood carried a buried secret. Others claimed that the butterflies were the souls of the dead, drifting like sand on the wind, and that they had come when her kind husband had died by drowning, when floods had swept the land and the neighboring farms had been submerged beneath autumn rains, which had swept everything away one ill-fated year, more than sixteen years ago.
No one had been able to find and save him, and there was no trace of him until his body floated up on a gray morning, covered in weeds and silt from the waters that had rushed in from distant valleys, bringing back the story of an old pain that never left her soul.
Nobody heard her weep in grief, nor ask, What did I do, Allah, for all this to happen to me? She had quickly sought God’s forgiveness, prayed her two cycles of prayer, and embraced her sorrows with complete contentment.
She wasn’t waiting for a miracle. She knew that miracles don’t come to those who wait for them, but to those who create them from the fragile stuff of life. She wished for something to ease the burden of her loneliness, a hidden support to lean on, and peace that would not leave her the way her loved ones had.
She stood firmly, casting her shadow over the place, and did not slouch.
This steadfastness confused everyone around her; it was as if she could see with her heart, as if she knew what others did not. She never stopped pleading with God as she talked to herself, and she whispered to him:
“Don’t make me need anyone but You, as You alone are my support and the one I trust.”
Her heart went on beating warm and sad, like the morning sun. She never abandoned her routine of sitting on the doorstep, watching the butterflies as they hovered around the lemon trees, along with the spirits that inhabited the place. This wasn’t just walls and a roof; it was an extension of her soul, an old house that remained steadfast despite the years of loss from which she never recovered.
It was a strange scene, but the people of the neighborhood got used to seeing the butterflies every morning as they filled the air around the house and searched for a way in. They would disappear at sunset, as though they carried a secret that had not yet been revealed. Some claimed her house was hiding an enchanted treasure, which was guarded by the swarm, and that there was an old covenant between them. As for Aunt Kharifiyah, she did not speak of the spirits that remained loyal to her.
She rarely left her house, going out only every Friday evening after the sunset prayer. She would sit in front of her house on a wide wooden banbar selling milky tea mixed with ginger, along with gingery cakes dipped in sugar. Wrapped in her colorfully patterned dress, she would look on with complete calm as she sat and silently observed passersby. Around her, her customers would gather after a long day of work. Most were bus drivers. They felt a sense of relief at Aunt Kharifiyah’s side, and, as they drank tea with her, their anxieties would disappear, and they would share stories about their ordinary lives and ordinary worries. The place became a refuge for weary souls. That was all they needed—to talk with no fear of their secrets being exposed before they went on to their midnight shifts.
*
Sometimes, the pain of loss besieged her, and her head grew crowded with anxious questions. Then, she would retreat into a distant reverie. She’d search for herself in the corners of the house, and in the memories that seeped from its cracked walls.
The monologue of exhausting questions would rise again: Do words and laughter melt, the way images melt in memory? The words of a sorrowful old song echoed through her thoughts: “How I missed them / how I’m always remembering them.” In these moments, it seemed as though she might cry, and with one quick motion she’d wipe her face with the edge of her dress before anyone noticed. Then she straightened up and sat back down, drinking an infusion of hibiscus and cinnamon as she watched the butterflies dance in the air.
The children played under the faint lamplight that came from the edges of the side street, staring in awe at the butterflies’ movements as they lined up in front of her door, to be swallowed up by the courtyard, before Aunt Kharifiyah scolded them with her soft voice, and they went back to their own homes without protest.
No one dared speak to her, except rarely. She would pour her tea and look around without moving. Every now and again, her sad face would shine with a brief smile, revealing a rare beauty. God only knew where Aunt Kharifiyah got this charm, and how she gathered the people’s love for her.
For some reason unbeknownst to her, Aunt Kharifiyah began to feel that, like her, the house was growing old. Still, despite all the feet that stood in front of her door, and all their tempting offers to buy it, she would smile gently, giving her head a soft and decisive nod, as though she were listening to ancient voices that no one else could hear.
“This house does not belong to me. It belongs to the butterflies.”
The people of the neighborhood knew that Aunt Kharifiyah refused to sell her house, which remained a shelter for the light seeping in from the windows, and for the memories that never abandoned its walls, even if its residents did. Then one day, a strange man with stern features came into the neighborhood with two others. He was wearing a loose jalabiya, a large shawl draped over his shoulders. On his left right finger, an engraved silver ring shone. The man’s appearance was strange, and he wasn’t known to the people of the neighborhood.
He hesitated in front of the red door. The others felt certain he would not be an exception in the series of passersby, but just another confirmation of a fact that everyone knew about Aunt Kharifiyah’s house. Yet he was certain that he would succeed in buying the house. He gave the door a firm knock, and, after a few minutes, Aunt Kharifiyah found herself standing in front of him, calm and expressionless.
For a while, the man was silent, trying to fend off a terror of this woman who was stronger and more steadfast than he had imagined. Then, as he spoke, he tried to sound confident:
“I trade in camels and livestock. I live in the countryside, and I’m well-known at the big Daim an-Nour market.”
A heavy silence prevailed, as though everything lost its effect in front of that fixed gaze.
He added, a little anxiously:
“I’ll pay whatever you ask in exchange for this house.”
Fear crept into Aunt Kharfiyah. It wasn’t the money that worried her, but the man’s voice, which was as unusual as his person. The house that had kept all her memories, her dreams and her pains, and begun to slip through her hands. But then her heart’s intuition rose up, telling her the house could never be sold.
The man approached her, cautiously, and repeated his offer, trying to hide the anxiety that had begun to creep into his eyes.
“I’ll pay whatever you ask in exchange for this house.”
He went on talking, explaining that it was a rare opportunity, trying to convince her to sell it all.
Darkness gradually fell, and the lebbeck trees hung their shadows over the front of the house, as though their huge swaying trunks could cover everything. Aunt Kharifiyah stood there quietly, listening patiently, and then smiled a smile he did not understand.
Before he could give her a chance to speak, he quickly jumped in:
“And all that…”
He hadn’t finished his sentence when she lifted her hand slightly, as if to put an end to everything, and interrupted in a calm voice that resembled an evening breeze. To everyone’s astonishment, it was the same two sentences she had said to everyone who had come before him:
“This house does not belong to me. It belongs to the butterflies.”
She did not add another word. She closed the door behind her, ending the conversation without waiting for his response.
Despite his cynicism, the man couldn’t ignore the confusion that crept over him.
*
That night, the butterflies didn’t appear. The house remained dark, and Aunt Kharifiyah sat by the window, her eyes drowning in darkness, as though she were watching something no one else could see. The place seemed unusually quiet, as though something had disturbed the fabric of the night.
Just as the man was about to leave the neighborhood and never return, the weather suddenly changed. The skin thundered in pitch darkness, the winds gusted, and the air was filled with the scent of sadness-soaked earth. The butterflies had begun to perform their final rituals, their bows before the sunset, when their wings grew heavy and they fell one by one, like drops of blood pouring from an old wound.
As for Aunt Kharifiyah, she stayed where she was, watching the funeral of the butterflies—of the ones who had filled her house with sadness in the middle of an endless space, of endless stories.
A little before the dawn call to prayer, Aunt Kharifiyah found herself standing in the middle of the courtyard, watching the flock as it gathered in the air, as if it knew what was happening. Their wings clattered with a sound like a heart’s collisions. When the last butterfly fell, she folded its wings and gently hung it above the red door. Then she quietly closed her eyes, as though she were saying farewell to a life that had passed quickly before her, without anyone else witnessing its stories.
Slowly, the light began to creep back into this old neighborhood. The butterflies were seen again, but they didn’t hover around her house as before. They were scattered on the ground, motionless, their wings folded. These creatures that had once danced in the light seemed to have fought a hidden battle that no one else had seen. When people came out after their morning prayers, they saw Aunt Kharifiyah sitting on her doorstep, with her usual calm face, but now her eyes were closed, and her hands were in her lap.
Some thought she was sleeping in the stillness of dawn, as she sometimes did, until one of the neighbors approached and saw a faint smile etched on her lips. No wailing or screaming was heard in the neighborhood—only a heavy silence, and the sound of a light wind that suddenly blew up, carrying the wings of the butterflies far away, taking a secret that would never be revealed.
No one dared approach Aunt Kharifiyah’s house, which had become the only witness to her secrets, to the loves and losses that nothing would compensate, to the beauty that could never be circumscribed, but which eventually withered, like everything else…
Since that night, Aunt Kharifiyah’s house has remained sunken in a cold silence, its red door closed. It is illuminated from afar by the wings of a swarm of butterflies that hangs over it, resisting the dust that creeps in on it, and the creaking of its windows in the face of the wind. Memories are heavy with absence, and dreams wander in the sky, like the last trace of a woman who God blessed with an abundance of her own nature, who passed away quietly, leaving behind the bruises of her secrets. These never stopped moving, and yet no one but her could find an explanation for them, and no one knew to where the clouds had traveled.
The colors that adorned the house’s walls faded, until it became a featureless monster surrounded by the shadows of the sycamore and lemon trees. Everything inside seemed deserted, quiet, empty. All that emanated from the house was the scent of its sorrows, like a shrine forgotten in the heart of the desert.
Birmingham, UK. February 3, 2025
Mona Mohamed Saleh is from Al Qadarif City in eastern Sudan. She is a short-story writer, poet and translator. She widely published in Arabs newspapers, magazines and cultural websites. She has been actively working in exiled-cultural communities’ activities, where she contributes to immigrants and refugees’ initiatives at different centers and institutes abroad. She intensively writes in Arabic media and organizes short-story competitions. Her writings include literary articles and public cultural issues. She is fluent in both English and Dutch. She lives the United Kingdom.
Nassir A-Sayeid Al-Nour is a critic, author, and translator.