Lipstick and nine dead bodies. That’s how her morning began and how her life, as she knew it, ended.
She had a routine. Always had to, as the anointed mother of her siblings. Perhaps it was her fault—she had been the one to make sure that they were ready for the train that morning. The schedule had times posted in permanent black. There could be no adjustments, no delays.
Save for Death itself, which always came too soon.
Someone had rung her while she was still at home. And everything dropped. Her jaw. Her phone. Her very own body.
It must have been magic carrying her to the police station. She hadn’t even reapplied her makeup—an irony, as her family always wanted her to take it off—and they weren’t even alive to see her puffy eyes and pale cheeks.
A name fell from her mouth in disjointed syllables and vowels, joining her broken heart’s pieces on the ground.
“Peter.”
Her body wanted to tumble all over again. But she was a grown up now, someone who had to bottle her emotions in a pretty vase. We couldn’t have a Pandora’s box in England, could we?
The other bodies next to his kept haunting her; ghosts without shadows. Then their names, still and unmoving, on the boxes she now had to sort with their possessions, never to be worn again. On the newspaper clippings announcing the funeral. On the gravestones. And worse still, that when she left them behind in the ground, the only remains were memories and a few shared letters. Their last name, and she the last one to carry it.
In her final year of secondary school, she began to address her assignments with a reverse sort of pen name, abbreviating the last initial and spelling out her first in full. She was much more used to that, anyway. A gentle soul needn’t be so fanciful.
It seemed disgraceful, that she claim to be part a lineage of boys and girls who were gone now. Who were gone because of her. She would spend her days in perpetual atonement, with no one to attend to her.
But she had to reign as the solitary queen of the house. All of the lipstick went in the bin, nylons were donated, and invitations were sent to the shredder. Nothing mattered now that there were no people to wear them around or with. What she wouldn’t give to trade everything she owned, for everyone she loved!
She was left all alone, all alone with her thoughts. Are they happy now? she wondered. Really happy? And together? And where would they have gone?
Where will I go, when I die?
There was still time before her studies at university officially began. The house sold, she only had a few remaining days before the new owners moved, and she went off to the dormitories.
So she read. When the house didn’t have the solution to her questions, she went to the library. And when the library didn’t have it, the church. And when the church didn’t have it, the temple. And when the temple didn’t have it, the mosque.
The imam was curious when she entered the building. She had that perpetual sad look about her; she supposed that he thought she was in need. Especially to appear outside of prayer time.
“Welcome, sister. What is your name?”
It felt like a lifetime since she said it in full: “Susan.”
“Oh, an Arabic name!” the imam responded. Susan’s brows ruffled. She’d never heard of such a thing. But then again, as she’d learnt, her country was wont to hide anything from the East. So instead, she nodded.
He continued to press her. “Where are you from, then?”
The last of her doubts wavered, and she said with full faith: “Narnia.”
*Author’s Notes:
This was one of the first fanfictions that I ever wrote in my head. When I was a teenager reading The Last Battle, I was crestfallen to read that devastating quote: “Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia.” In order to continue reading the book, I had to force myself to believe that Susan had “made it” with the rest of her family.
As I got older, I noticed other harrowing upsets about The Chronicles of Narnia. If one looks closely, the Calormenes are an Islamophobic and racist depiction of the Ottoman Empire. Men with long beards and curved swords, who say of their leader, “May he live forever.” When I read this, I thought it was reminiscent of how Muslims make du’a for the Prophet ﷻ, the Caliphs, and other leaders. Caricature upon caricature.
Furthermore, many writers feel that “nylons and lipstick” are supposed to be a reference to materialism, while “invitations” are to boys. While I agree that, in its excess, this can be sinful, Islam teaches a balanced approach. It’s in a woman’s fitra to want to look nice and enjoy nice-looking things. This applies to men as well, wanting wealth in this life and an abundance of good deeds in the next. Even around the Kaa’ba, when passing the Yemeni corner, are we not asked to recite, “Our Lord! Grant us good in this world and good in the hereafter, and save us from the punishment of the Fire”? Regarding “invitations,” we all know that marriage is the only halal means to a relationship. But what makes Islam beautiful is that one need not abstain from a marriage in order to be pious. And, in fact, it is a noble thing to look for a spouse.
Susan—or Queen Susan the Gentle—has an opportunity here. She’s traveled with her family before. She’s become a wise woman. It would only be natural that she would gravitate away from this worldly life and seek something more.
I’m not the only writer who has objected to her fate. One essay about this was titled “The Problem of Susan,” and the title of this flash fiction was originally a reference to that. However, I found this quote more inspiring:
“[Islam] is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey,” Shuhada Sadaqat (also known as Sinéad O’Connor رحمها الله) said. A “natural conclusion” can also be thought of as a solution.
C. S. Lewis received so many distraught letters about Susan’s outcome. Likely, I would have been one of the senders. In his “Letter to Marcia” in 1955, he wrote:
“The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end … in her own way.”
“I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s country; but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken.”
