A Good Wife

by Samra Zafar

  And she talked about how difficult marriage could sometimes be. Two or three years into her own marriage, she had caught my father involved with another woman. She was certain he had either been unfaithful or was hoping to be. At her brother’s wedding a short time later, she found time to talk with her mother and brothers. She wanted a divorce. She explained that with her teaching certificate she could manage financially with two children, but she was looking for the family’s moral support. Her mother, her brothers and their wives were beside themselves. My mother’s own parents had separated when she and her siblings were fairly young. Rather than make another divorce more palatable, my grandparents’ split made it unthinkable. My mother’s brothers and their wives reminded my mother that everyone considered my grandmother an enormous failure. And if my mother were to follow her lead, people would think that the entire family carried a deep flaw. They insisted she not bring this dishonour to them.

  “Even if your husband has sex with another woman right in front of you, you must stay,” insisted one of the sisters-in-law.

  Mama still bristled at these memories, at the lack of support from her family. She intended to be there for me, but she also felt my situation was different. Things had started out so well that my plight was bound to be only temporary. She assured me that once we moved out on our own, Ahmed would become loving and companionable again.

  Even these tiny bits of mother–daughter time ruffled Amma’s feathers. A few days after my mother arrived, Ahmed took me aside. “Why are you neglecting Amma? You know a good wife’s mother-in-law takes priority over her mother. You need to stay up to talk with Amma.”

  I was confounded. My mother knew no one in Canada. She was homesick and lonely. Yet fearing Ahmed’s anger, I started to remain in the living room with his parents while my mother retired to the bedroom.

  One morning Mama and I did not leave the room the instant we heard Ahmed and his parents. I was fully nine months pregnant and so round and swollen that I could find almost no position in which to sleep comfortably for more than a few minutes. My mother had heard me moaning softly when she woke and told me to stay in bed while she worked some of the stiffness out of my neck and shoulders. As she gently massaged my aching body, we heard Amma’s voice in the hallway.

  “Samra and her mother are ignoring me.”

  The next minute the door flew open, and Ahmed marched in. He looked at us with disgust. “Your daughter is so disrespectful,” he snapped at my mother. “She is so spoilt. Haven’t you taught her anything?”

  My mother’s mouth fell open, and then her eyes began to fill. “Why did I come?” she said, as tears wet her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have come. I will go home.”

  At that, I started to sob.

  Then Amma was scurrying into the room, Abba at her heels. “What’s going on?” she said, pushing past Ahmed.

  “I’m going home,” said my mother, sniffling.

  “No, no, you’re not going home. You need to be with us.”

  “I’m not trying to ignore you, Amma,” I said desperately. I couldn’t bear the thought of my mother leaving before the baby was born.

  Amma had nudged herself onto the bed next to me. She put her arms around me and gave me a big theatrical hug. She kissed me on the cheek and patted my mother’s hand. She continued to produce a flurry of soothing sounds and comforting gestures. Then she looked over at Ahmed, as if to to make sure he had witnessed her acts of “kindness.”

  He had. “You are so ungrateful, Samra,” Ahmed yelled before turning on his heels and stomping out of the room. A few seconds later the condo door slammed.

  The next few days had all the calculated calm of a recovery room. Ahmed avoided my mother and me, but Amma smiled at us and asked how we were, even offering the occasional cup of tea. It was as if she had suddenly imagined what my mother might say to friends and neighbours once back in Karachi and Ruwais. She seemed intent on re-establishing some sort of amicable relationship before my mother left. But one afternoon, when Amma was out of earshot, Ahmed’s father leaned towards my mother. His grey face was etched with bitterness. “It’s because of you there is all this tension in my house.”

  * * *

  A few days later, I went into labour. As the contractions rolled over me, my mother and Amma made excited phone calls to the doctor and to Ahmed at work. Eventually I was bundled into Ahmed’s car, along with Amma and my mother, and taken to the hospital. When we got to the hospital doors, Ahmed pulled up but would not get out of the car.

  “You don’t need me,” he said.

  Amma and my mother helped me into the hospital and stayed with me through the afternoon as the contractions grew stronger and stronger. I was tense and frightened, but even with all the pain, I tried to remember not to talk to my mother more than I talked to Amma. At one point during the long afternoon, I managed to whisper into the nurse’s ear, “If my husband comes, can you tell him to stay. Tell him that only husbands can stay during the birth.” I looked over at Amma to make sure the nurse understood my meaning.

  As the evening approached, Ahmed reappeared. “I just came to check in,” he said to the three of us.

  He wasn’t happy to discover that the attending doctor was a man and immediately asked if I could be treated by a female physician. The nurse declined, adding that Ahmed should stay with me but my mom and Amma should wait outside.

  I was sad to see my mother go, but there was no way to ask her to stay without asking Amma. I was cheered when Ahmed pulled up a chair to sit beside me. As a wave of pain crashed through me, he took my hand in his. When the next contraction struck, he started to stroke my hair. As I struggled to breathe, he leaned over to kiss my forehead. I began to cry—not from the pain, but from happiness and relief. I had been right. The baby would bring gentle, loving Ahmed back. I had missed his tenderness so much.

  A few hours later, the nurse was placing a beautiful baby girl on my chest. I felt her warmth spread through me. Lifting her tiny hand in mine, I gazed at her long lashes, her pink lips, her glossy, smooth cheeks. My heart ached with love. And a feeling I hadn’t experienced in months. Serenity. This small, precious person was my daughter. And her simple existence meant that I would never feel alone.

  Then, when I closed my eyes, I had another thought.

  Now that I am the mother of his child, how can Ahmed not love me again?

  CHAPTER 6

  A GOOD WIFE

  Those hours I spent with Ahmed, in the throes of labour, were riven with physical pain but filled with warmth, too. That warmth glowed like a little ember in my mind long after we were separated again.

  The baby’s arrival had brought something of the old Ahmed back. I noticed tears in his eyes when he first gazed at his daughter lying on my chest. And when he picked her up, his nervous gentleness made my heart swell.

  But within only a few minutes, the reality of our lives began to reassert itself. My mother, Amma and Abba rushed into the labour room as soon as they were allowed. Amma scooped the baby from Ahmed’s arms, and Abba bent over her to whisper the Azaan, the Muslim prayer call, into her ear. Then the tiny bundle was passed from one person to another. Ahmed and I both got our turn during the rounds, but we didn’t get a say in how long we held her or where she went next.

  And Ahmed’s strange sense of modesty returned. Once I had been moved to the ward, he refused to be in the room alone with me when I attempted to nurse the baby for the first time.

  What’s more, fatherhood didn’t quell Ahmed’s irascibility. When the nurse pricked our daughter’s heel to draw blood for a test and the baby let out a wail, Ahmed was beside himself. He grabbed her from the nurse’s arms, then kicked a nearby cart, berating the startled nurse as he did. I begged him to calm down, but that only made him angrier.

  “Be quiet,” he said peevishly. “You don’t know anything.”

  I was embarrassed—and oddly conflicted. It was good to know that Ahmed felt a deep connection to our daughter already, but it was frighteni
ng to think it could lead to such volatility.

  * * *

  The morning after the baby was born people began to arrive in my hospital room. Amma brought me gond—a sweet mix of semolina, nuts and condensed milk—a traditional Pakistani dish thought to restore a new mother’s energy. Family friends came through the door with their hands filled with flowers or stuffed animals for the baby. As I sat in bed in my starchy hospital gown, trying to smile and express gratitude, I found myself wishing the other bed in the room was occupied, so we’d have some excuse to turn people away. The chatter and commotion prodded me to keep my eyes open hour after hour, until it was finally late enough for my mother to shoo everyone out. When the last person disappeared into the corridor, my mother settled on the empty bed to spend the night with me. The second day was a copy of the first. And then, after forty-eight hours in the hospital, I was told I could go home. Home. That felt like a cruel joke. As I settled the baby into the car seat for the short drive, I couldn’t help thinking that the last place I wanted to be was back at the condo.

  Once there, two things happened almost immediately.

  First, Amma named my daughter. While I was still in the hospital, Ahmed, his parents and I had talked about names. Amma had suggested “Aisha.” I had my heart set on “Sonia.” When we got home, however, it became clear that the decision wasn’t up to anyone but Amma.

  “This is Amma’s first grandchild. She didn’t get a chance to name any of her own children, so she should get to do this. You can’t take that happiness away from her,” said Ahmed.

  I knew full well that a happy Amma was better than an unhappy one. Besides, I was too bone-weary for a debate.

  Next, my mother left the following morning. She hadn’t booked her return flight originally, thinking she might be needed for a while after the baby was born. But three weeks with Ahmed and his parents had wrung her out, and she wanted to escape their barely concealed hostility as soon as she could. I was sad to see her go but did not protest her decision. Once she was gone, I thought, Amma and Abba might be a little less on edge and a little less unhappy with me.

  After my mother had finished packing up her things, we lingered in the bedroom to say our goodbyes. As we hugged, Mother reassured me that things would get better.

  “Just try to find ways to make him happy,” she advised. “Ask him to give you a bit more time. Try to enjoy your life together.”

  “I’ll miss you so much,” I told her, “but I’m glad I won’t have to see you disrespected by this family anymore.”

  We embraced one last time, and then she was disappearing out the door with Ahmed.

  By the time Ahmed came back from the airport, I had returned to bed and was lying quietly, listening to Aisha’s whisper-soft breathing as she dozed in her crib. The lumpy mattress felt like a cloud compared to the stiff, vinyl-encased hospital bed. I could feel sleep beginning to take me off. But a voice jolted me awake—Ahmed’s, telling me that I needed to be out in the living room, sitting with his parents. If I had thought having a baby would change any of the rules, I was wrong.

  I sat bleary-eyed on the sofa, not even aware of what was being said or what was playing on the TV. Eventually, however, Aisha’s mewls broke through my haze. I stood up shakily and walked into the bedroom.

  Once I had fed Aisha and got her settled again I crawled back into bed, so tired that I was sure I wouldn’t make it back to the living room even if I tried. When the bedroom door opened, I expected to hear Ahmed once again telling me to get up. But it must have been late. He got undressed and lay down in bed next to me. It had been weeks since we’d been alone together in our room. I reached out and put my arms around him.

  Ahmed stiffened. He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back. “Get away,” he said. “I’m trying to sleep.” He rolled away from me.

  As tired as I was, I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep now. For the next few hours, I sat in the rocking chair next to Aisha’s crib, awash with tears. I thought back to the first eight months we had spent together—all the times Ahmed had made me feel beautiful and loved. Where had I gone wrong? How could I change things back? How could I make him love me again?

  Eventually Aisha let out a cry. Before I could get her out of her crib and nursing, Ahmed was awake. “You can’t even keep a baby quiet,” he muttered angrily. Continuing to grumble, he got out of bed and left the room. From then on, he slept in the solarium.

  * * *

  The first few weeks at home with Aisha were a dark blur. I had no experience with babies and was overwhelmed by the enormous responsibility of having a new life in my hands. In a year of change, this was the most seismic shift yet. And I was a physical wreck.

  By the third or fourth day, I was bleeding and cramping, sometimes so badly that I doubled over with the pain. Aisha had eventually taken to breast feeding, but I had not—my nipples were raw and cracked. And my episiotomy stitches were beginning to get infected.

  Ahmed was impatient with my obvious suffering. “Stop creating so much drama” was his response to any expression I gave to my pain or discomfort.

  His mother didn’t provide any support either. “I gave birth to six children, and I never had any of these problems,” she scoffed. Nor did my relative youth evoke any sympathy. She had married at fourteen and had her first child at fifteen, after all. She didn’t hesitate to remind me that by the time she was my age, she was an experienced mother.

  Despite Amma’s earlier assurances that she would help me with the baby if I wanted to go to school, it was now evident that the care she intended to provide was not what I had imagined.

  She did love to play with Aisha, it was true. Early one morning, my bedroom door swung open. I was just drifting off to sleep after a long night with Aisha, who had been fussy and wanting to nurse almost constantly. I had managed to doze for only a few minutes at a time. (I couldn’t let more than a peep come out of her or Ahmed would appear in the room, furious that he had been woken.) As the sun began to rise, she seemed to finally slip into a deep sleep, and I fell back into bed with relief. But now Amma was scooping Aisha out of the bed and cooing in her face to wake her up.

  “Amma, she just fell asleep,” I begged.

  “I have a right to my granddaughter,” Amma said with a smirk. She turned her back and waltzed out the room with Aisha in her arms.

  I closed my eyes and drifted into slumber.

  Fifteen minutes later, Amma was back. She was holding Aisha out to me. “She’s fussing. I think she’s hungry. And her diaper needs changing.” There would be no sleep for me for the rest of the day.

  * * *

  That became the routine. If Ahmed was around, Amma would occasionally change a diaper or give Aisha a bath, commenting all the while about the need to teach me how to do things properly. But most of the time, Abba and Amma cuddled and played with Aisha until she needed something, and then she would be handed back to me. The one time I tried to enlist Ahmed in some child care—changing Aisha’s diaper—Amma was indignant.

  “That is a job for a mother. It’s shameful to ask your husband for help,” she said to me. And then to Ahmed, who was holding Aisha, “If your wife can’t do it, I will.”

  I took Aisha back and changed the diaper myself.

  But I wasn’t left to myself when Ahmed’s parents were entertaining the baby. I sat in the living room with them, sometimes falling asleep sitting up. When my dropping head woke me, I would open my eyes to see Ahmed or his parents glaring at me.

  The only time I was allowed to stay in my bedroom during the day was when I was nursing. Often, sitting in bed with Aisha at my breast, I would nod off. But Ahmed and his parents quickly put a stop to that.

  One evening, as Aisha and I dozed after she had finished eating, Ahmed came into the room and demanded that I get back out into the living room. I was desperate with fatigue and tried to convince him to let me stay for a while longer.

  “You are so disrespectful!” Ahmed exploded. “You’re not the fir
st woman to have a baby!”

  When I got into the living room, Abba was smirking at me. “Ah, the princess has finally come back,” he said.

  “Abba,” I said, pleadingly, “I’ve been up all night.”

  “Well, of course you have,” he said. “We brought you here to take care of our grandchild, but that doesn’t absolve you of your duties towards us.”

  Ahmed was nodding in agreement.

  I felt as if my heart had been dragged to my feet. It wasn’t because Abba was taunting me or that he insisted I sit with them. It was the implication of his words. Aisha was not my daughter. She was their grandchild.

  * * *

  A week after Aisha was born, Amma and Abba held a party to introduce her to their friends. Amma was excited but also annoyed that my mother hadn’t waited for this big event.

  “She clearly doesn’t know her duty.” She sniffed. “Like mother, like daughter, I guess.”

  We all gathered in the party room of the condo the afternoon of the celebration. Tables had been piled high with sweets and snacks, and the ceiling dripped with balloons and streamers. Music was playing on the sound system. Amma, Abba and Ahmed were positioned by the door, Amma with Aisha in her arms. I stood a little to the side, watching people’s faces brighten as soon as they saw the baby. Amma and Abba looked as happy as I had ever seen them. Ahmed was glowing with pride.

  I was wearing one of the fancy shalwar kameezes I had been given for my wedding celebrations, but as people filed into the room I thought how little it mattered that I had dressed with such care. No one seemed to notice I was there. When Abba made a speech, thanking everyone for coming, he talked proudly of the new addition to the family but made no mention of me, even though I was as much a newcomer as Aisha to many of the people there. Aisha was Amma and Abba’s grandchild. Not my daughter.