PodCastle

* Author : Karuna Riazi
* Narrator : Farah Naz Rishi
* Host : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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PodCastle 577: Temptation is a PodCastle original.


Rated PG-13.
A special episode in celebration of Eid al-Fitr, guest edited by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali.
Temptation
By Karuna Riazi
“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?” 
— Christina Rossetti, “Goblin Market”

When was the last time food glided over her tongue?
It was funny how Kayla couldn’t even remember what it was she ate.
Was it a quick jaunt to a local fast food joint — a juicy burger or a chicken gyro that was left half-eaten and balled up in sauce-stained foil in the back of the refrigerator?
Had her mother tried to coax her into eating a meal one last time before she walked out the door, shouldering her bag, impatient, sure she was late?
(Late to what? To meet who?
Even that, she couldn’t be sure of, but that didn’t matter as much.)
Shame curdled in her gut as she recalled now all the ungrateful moments in which she’d rolled her eyes and shoved away a plate, or grudgingly grazed on a cold samosa, half-heartedly tugging it through a pool of ketchup and nibbling at it, not hungry enough to savor its heavy spices or the yielding tenderness of a potato chunk.
So many regrets, and all of them to do with those bites she didn’t catalog fervently enough while they were being experienced.
Now, she sat on that moldering throne They always yanked her toward — mockingly, she felt — with the rusting crown pressing low on her brow, trapping the sweat-laden silk of her scarf against her bruised skin, and she closed her eyes and gave herself over to what she could remember.
She’d sucked and laved at the extravagances first until they didn’t hold so much as a brief flicker in her mind’s eye: wedding receptions with several courses, the one time she had attended a friend’s engagement party at a country club and snuck a potentially haraam hors d’oeuvre into her mouth when her mother’s head was turned, a quick melting taste of soft chicken, rich cheese, and olive that anguished her now because God, please, what was that finishing note?
Back then, a friend had noticed the sour twist to her mouth.
“Didn’t like that one?”
“There’s something about it that’s . . . maybe too bougie for me? I don’t know. It was bitter or something.”
She could shake herself by the shoulders now.
Down here, there was no differentiation between sweet, sour, or bitter. Or perhaps there was, in that one blissful moment of taste They all cajoled her toward: the best, most unforgettable twist of flavors that would make the entire sacrifice worth it. It would leave you smiling, eternally, regretfully, as They tore your soul like a velvet coat off your back and danced it to rags beneath Their feet.
No. There was nothing that could be worth that.
She could not forget that lesson, taught to her in masjids with images of vengeful personified fire and brimstone, and in school through the insatiable appetite of Faust.
Hunger made you susceptible.
Hunger made you forget what was poison, what was served by the hand that would see itself wrapped around your neck.
She had to remember. She had to suckle the brightest,