by Esther Ahmad
I listened as the teacher spoke at length about what a good student I was. “She’s very well behaved, always respectful, and very organized. She’s the smartest in her class and loves to ensure that the other girls are sitting down and not disturbing me.”
I looked up to see my mother staring at me. Through the slit in her veil, I could see her eyes dancing, and I knew that beneath the black fabric was a smile as wide as an ocean. But it was my father’s reaction that most took me by surprise.
“Yes.” He looked straight at the teacher, his hands spread wide as if he were about to accept a gift. “We are very proud of her.”
His voice was somber, but the words were like honey to me. I could feel them make their way deep inside me, soothing and healing as they went.
I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t look at me once during that meeting or that he never mentioned the teacher’s words to anyone else. I wasn’t surprised that my sisters renewed their teasing of me with even greater vigor later that day. But I vowed to do better, to work even harder. Maybe once I did, my father would finally look at me.
†
Perhaps because my father was cold and distant, my relationship with my mother was especially close. She and I talked constantly, and when school finished for the day, I took delight in walking alongside her as she picked her way through the chaos and color of the local market. Together we would duck into a low building, past the thin curtains that hung in the doorway. Those curtains marked the end of the outside world and the beginning of my mother’s kingdom. It was there, in the low-ceilinged room lit by the lights that buzzed gently overhead, that my mother ran her dressmaking business.
It was a magical place. I would sit on the stool beside her and look around, my eyes wide as my mother and her team of two other women sat surrounded by piles of brightly colored cloth. There were endless rivers of silks and cottons, boxes of buttons, and the constant chatter of three electric sewing machines. They were old and dented, but they could still perform miracles. They turned lifeless material into dresses that were every bit as beautiful as those I saw in magazines.
I was desperate to find out everything I could about those machines. I peppered my mother with questions about how they worked. I was a little disappointed the day my mother showed me the foot pedal that started and stopped the motor. Until that point, I’d honestly believed the machines had a life of their own. I soon got over the disappointment, however, and started begging my mother to allow me to try one of the machines myself.
“When you’re older,” she said. She guided me to a dress that was finished apart from the buttons. “First you must learn how to sew as I did.”
No men ever came in through the curtain. My older sisters visited only occasionally, and I don’t remember my brother ever coming. Sometimes I had to share my mother’s attention with my younger sister, but I didn’t mind much. There was enough magic for both of us in that little room.
All the women would remove their burkas as soon as they were inside. They could talk freely in the workshop, and there were days when the air was full of laughter. Other times everyone was quiet, but whatever the mood, I always felt safe within those walls.
When I wasn’t asking how electricity worked or quizzing my mother about how the needle combined the two threads together so neatly, the conversation often turned to matters of religion. Not that I did so much asking. My mother steered those conversations, teaching me what it meant to be a good Muslim with even more passion than she taught me how to sew on a button.
“You must always give praise to Muhammad and give thanks to Allah,” she would say almost daily. “Remain pure, Zakhira. Don’t let yourself be taken off the path the Prophet has marked out for us.”
She had a beautiful singing voice, but the only kind of songs she sang were naats—songs that praise Muhammad. She never allowed us to go to the movies, even though my older sisters begged her to let them see the latest Indian blockbuster their friends were talking about. And even though she ran a successful business making beautiful dresses, she was careful to do so without straying from Islam.
“If you wear nail polish, Allah will pluck out your nails,” she would say. “Wear lipstick, and your lips will get sewed up with metal. Can you imagine how painful that would be?”
I could if I tried hard enough, but my mind was too full of thoughts about electricity and the engineering of the sewing equipment to worry too much about makeup, romantic Bollywood movies, or eternal damnation.
†
When I finished my second year of school, I gladly spent the days of summer break with my mother in the workshop. That was the summer when I took my first steps as a seamstress, watching in awe as the sewing machine growled into life when I pressed the pedal.
It was also the summer I learned about hell.
The conversation happened on an afternoon like any other. When my mother and I were sitting alone in the workshop, she shifted the topic away from makeup and movies. As she spoke, a darkness fell across my mind.
“If someone lies,” she said, “Allah will pull their tongue out hard and nail it against the wall.”
The image was so vivid and shocking that it took me a while to respond. When I could finally speak again, my voice sounded far away. “How does Allah know when we lie?”
“There are two angels watching over you all the time—one on your left shoulder and one on your right. The one on the left writes down every bad thing you do, while the one on the right keeps a record of everything you do that’s good.”
I thought about my father and all the times I’d felt angry with him. I felt a chill run down my back. When I spoke next, my voice was even weaker.
“Ami, what if I have thought bad thoughts about someone? Does the angel on the left write those down too?”
My mother smiled and reached out to stroke my cheek. “No, my child. They can’t hear your thoughts. It’s only our actions that count.” She paused, and the smile faded from her face. “Everybody dies someday, and when they do, they will find themselves standing in front of Allah. On one side will be the angel who has written down the good, and on the other will be the angel who has written down the bad. In front of Allah will be a set of weighing scales. If the good deeds outweigh the bad, the person goes to heaven. If the bad are heavier, they go to hell.”
Later that evening, my mother and I were at home, preparing the evening meal with my sisters. As I was baking chapattis, my concentration wavered and I burned my arm on the pan. The pain was immediate, though I did my best to swallow my tears.
Throughout the rest of the evening, I checked the welt on my arm. I was convinced that I could feel my flesh continue to burn. Even when I went to bed, I was agitated and anxious, my arm still too sore for me to sleep.
When sleep finally came, my dreams were terrifying. I was standing before a throne made of black stone. On each side stood an angel. As I looked, the angel on the right turned away from me while the angel on the left reached out his hand. I could feel his fingers clasp tightly around the spot on my arm where the pan had burned me. Then I could feel my feet moving as he dragged me beneath the floor.
The closer we got to hell, the hotter it became. Soon my whole body was burning up in the heat, as if every inch of my flesh had been seared by the frying pan.
I awoke in the darkness. My arm was throbbing, and my back was covered in sweat. I tried to call out for my mother, but for the longest time no sound came.
2
I was not the only one my mother sought to educate about the importance of being a good Muslim. She encouraged my siblings to pray and emphasized to all of us the realities of the judgment we would face after death. But while I was an attentive, thoughtful listener, the same could not be said for everyone in my family. Especially my father.
The first battle of their marriage was over his closet. My father favored Western dress, but to my mother, his polyester pants and skintight shirts were an outward sign of a lack of inward devotion to All
ah. He was a weaker man then compared to his later years, and he gave in soon enough, accepting the plain, flowing shalwar kameez that his new bride suggested. It was a hollow victory, however, for in the years that followed, my father showed no sign of becoming a more devoted servant of Allah. He dressed the part, but his heart was not in it.
One night I woke to the sound of shouting outside. I joined my giggling sisters at the window and watched as my father, dressed in the tightest-fitting pants I had ever seen and a white shirt with a collar almost as wide as his shoulders, banged on the door.
“Let me in!” he shouted.
“No.” My mother’s voice drifted up from inside the house. “I don’t want you coming in here if you’re going to dress like that and go to the cinema.”
There was a pause. “Okay,” my father said, his voice calm and gentle. “I won’t go again. So let me in.”
“No!” my mother shouted, full of the confidence that came from knowing she was acting as a dutiful daughter of Allah. “Let everyone see you’ve been locked out.”
The battle was over, but the war raged on. Several months later, my father walked into the house carrying a brand-new television. We had never owned one before, and like all my siblings, I was thrilled. It was hard for my mother to get us out to school the next morning, and we all rushed home at the end of the day, excited to see what wonders were in store for us on the screen.
To our surprise, there was a gap where my father had placed the TV.
“I sold it,” my mother said as we stood there, openmouthed. “I don’t want a TV in my home. If it stayed, Allah’s blessed angel wouldn’t come to us.” I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t argue with her logic. My mother had told me so many times about the importance of not defiling ourselves. To serve Allah dutifully, we must follow all the steps laid out in the Qur’an—how to pray, how to eat, how to dress, and even how to greet each other. According to the hadith, angels do not enter a house where there are animate pictures, so why would a good Muslim family even contemplate bringing a TV into their home?
When my father came home and discovered what had happened, he did what he’d done all along in his marriage. He said nothing and walked out.
†
My mother set all the rules for the house. She made sure all her children prayed at home five times a day, and she saw to it that the Qur’an was always the highest book in the room and was never placed on the floor. In order to encourage the blessed angel to visit our home, she ensured that no unclean animal such as a dog ever came through the doors.
Our family wasn’t unusual in this regard. Our street was full of families just like ours, in which the mothers took care of their children and homes and the fathers devoted themselves to their businesses. However, even at a young age, I could tell there were times when people treated us differently. Whenever we went to the market to buy rice, lentils, or garlic, the vendors always paid my mother a little more attention than they paid to the other customers. And if my father sent any of us children to the butcher to collect some meat, we would be given the best cuts as well as a cold soda—something none of the other children in the shop received. Wealth brought with it many privileges.
The fact that people respected my father and held him in high esteem didn’t mean much to me. All that mattered from my perspective was that I was a disappointment to him. As hard as I worked in school, the moments when I made him proud were few and far between. The taunts from my sisters continued, as did the murmurs and sour faces from the women who gossiped about me whenever I was in their presence. I was still the child my father never wanted. I was still the girl he wished would have been born a boy.
†
Our whole world changed the day my father grew a beard. At least, that was how it seemed to me at the time.
I was ten years old, and Pakistan was changing. A small group of militant Islamic extremists started recruiting in our area. They wanted to wrest control of Pakistan away from the businessmen and secular leaders who held power. They believed that Pakistan should be ruled by sharia law, and they encouraged our community to reject all the trappings of Western life that so many in our country had embraced. They tried to close down the cinemas and starve the fashion shops of business. In retrospect, I see that they targeted my father specifically because he was wealthy. They had ambitious plans for the future, and one day they would need people to fund them.
I don’t know how, but they were able to succeed where my mother had failed. They managed to turn my father’s head away from the world of tight-fitting pants and Indian movies and convince him to take his faith seriously.
And so he grew his beard.
The more time he spent with the militants, the longer and fuller his beard became. At first it was patchy, but by the time it was long enough to cover his chin, he had started taking my brother to the mosque at the end of our street to pray five times a day.
By the time his beard was long enough for him to stroke, its strands curling around his fingers, he had announced that our entire family should declare our allegiance to the group.
When the beard was almost as full as the beards of the clerics he talked to on the street, my father remodeled the first floor of the house. He wanted to create a room big enough to invite one hundred people to come and listen to the clerics as they taught about what it means to be a true, devoted Muslim.
Within weeks, the building work was complete. One of the bedrooms was gone, and so was the best room in the house—the place where we had once received guests, seating them in leather armchairs that squatted like thrones along the wall. In their place was a room with wall-to-wall carpeting, a single chair at one end, and a curtain that could be drawn across one corner so that women could attend the meetings at the same time as the men without being seen.
Though this room contained no machines, little color, and nothing in the way of womanly chatter and laughter, I thought it was every bit as magical as my mother’s workshop. And after the first meeting I attended there, I was convinced it was a place where miracles could happen.
Once the builders and decorators left, I helped clean the room. My mother led the work, directing all of us children in our tasks and encouraging us with statements like this: “The harder you work, the happier Allah will be.”
By the time Friday afternoon came around, I could barely contain myself. I watched from upstairs as a crowd of men gathered outside our gates before being welcomed in by my father. I listened to the house fill with the sound of deep male voices and then quickly took my place alongside my sisters and mother, hidden from view by the curtain.
Since this was the first daras, or meeting, my father decided we should mark the occasion by asking Allah to bless the food my mother had prepared: white rice with almonds and cashews mixed in and milk poured over the top. My father’s job was to bring in the dish, cover it with a white cloth, and place it near the seat of the cleric, who was to give us instructions on how to pray.
We all closed our eyes, held our prayer beads, and repeated the same Arabic prayer twenty-one times—once for each of the beads. We turned our heads left and right as we prayed. Soon we fell into a rhythm, and the room hummed and stirred just like my mother’s workshop when all three sewing machines were running.
“Allahu Akbar!” The loud cry from the front of the room startled me at first. I looked up to see the cleric standing in front of the dish, the white cloth held high.
“The handprint!” another man said. “We have been blessed by the Prophet, peace be upon him.”
The room erupted with praise and excitement, and I pushed toward the front so I could see beyond the curtain and witness with my own eyes what everyone was looking at. In the middle of the rice was a clear handprint. It could only have been made by a man, and I saw no reason to doubt that Muhammad himself had made it.
“You see,” my mother said as I caught her eye, “the harder we work, the happier Allah will be.”
†
After that fi
rst daras, we held meetings at our home at least once a week. I never needed to be persuaded to attend. Even if I was the youngest female sitting behind the curtain, I would listen, enthralled, as the clerics taught from the Qur’an (the sacred text revealed to Muhammad by Allah) and the hadith (the additional writings that give further insight into the life and teachings of Muhammad). I learned to love both, to feast on the words as if they were bread.
In those days, I heard a lot about generosity and the importance of helping those in need. Though we were wealthy, I knew I only had to walk a couple of blocks to see poverty on the streets. The more I heard and the more I observed, the more I understood that Muslims are passionate, generous people. When they give, they do so joyfully and without reservation.
Perhaps the best example of such generosity came to me from an unlikely source: my father. I arrived home from school one day to see five sewing machines lined up in the hall and my mother staring at them, confused.
“What are these for?” my mother asked my father when he came home.
“I bought them for the widows,” he said.
“Why? You could just have given them the money instead, and they would be able to buy food and send their children to school.”
“Perhaps, but this way they will be able to earn money for themselves. And when they do, they, too, will be able to give just as we’re doing.”
Not long after the sewing machines had been given to their grateful new owners, we hosted a daras I’ll never forget. The room was even more crowded than usual, and instead of a single cleric up front, there were five. The men held themselves with a degree of authority and composure I’d never seen before. To my young eyes, these men with their flowing beards and scholarly airs looked like the wisest people I’d ever seen.
The oldest among them spoke for a while about the life of Muhammad and then indicated that the other clerics should each take hold of a corner of a large white sheet. They held up the sheet between them, and at once everyone got to their feet and pressed forward. Most people threw money onto the sheet, but one woman removed a gold bracelet and placed it among the coins and notes.