Buttoned Up

By Hibah Shabkhez / Issue 20

Once upon a time there was an old woman who put buttons on everything. She put buttons on all her shawls and coats and dresses and boots, and even on the curtains and table-cloths. Every day someone trudged up the mountain to ask her why, and every day the old woman made up a new reason. Sometimes she said ‘because it makes the mundane mysterious,’ sometimes ‘buttoned-up things are so much cosier,’ and so on. Some people thought her wise and wonderful, others believed she was quite mad, but they all thought they, and only they, knew the secret of the buttons, for she had confided it to them alone. At first they were smug and content, but then they began to talk to each other and to discover a myriad answers where they had thought to find just one, and that one securely in their own keeping. So they marched off to the old woman together to make her tell them the truth. She laughed and put buttons on all of their mouths too.

HIBAH SHABKHEZ is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Black Bough, Zin Daily, London Grip, The Madrigal, Acropolis Journal, Lucent Dreaming, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez.