So, the closer I got to Boro Mama, Nani, and the two officials, the more the ground seemed to shake. I would be careful to refrain from stoking the flame of “Canada rescues Muslim girl, again,” as it was indeed complicated. I would also be honest.
Ammu and Sweety Khala followed my trail. I eventually sat adjacent to Nani and Boro Mama on the sofa, across from the officials on the stools. Ammu and Sweety Khala scurried closer to Nani, somewhat behind her in the shadows. They remained standing.
The two officials asked to speak to me alone. They directed Boro Mama to provide them my passport and he left the room to retrieve it. As I observed him dragging his feet, I thought about all the times I had to drag my own to meet him in this very living room. Bilkis watched from the other side of the veranda. Her big brown eyes and tumbleweed hair against the backdrop of vivid green bushes, glowing yellow radhachura flowers on the branches. Nani, Ammu, and Sweety Khala scampered to the bedroom, where my bridal trousseau filled with dresses, perfumes, shiny stilettos, jewellery, and purses remained open. There were also half-assembled flower garlands lying around.
When they entered the bedroom, I could see their silhouettes on the sliding door from the living room where I was still sitting.
I heard them mumble:
“What is she doing?”
“Who are they?”
“The audacity she has.”
“Who made the phone call?”
“I didn’t realize she had …”
When the officials and I were alone, they introduced themselves: Jessica and Mark.
“We received information that you may not be safe. Are you okay?” Jessica asked.
I opened my mouth to say “I’m fine” but then stopped myself.
I sat to think but couldn’t focus on anything important, my mind wandering into a strange fantasy-like waking dream.
In my waking dream, it is still October 31st, but no longer the morning; the sun has taken its leave. All Hallow’s Eve. I’m at my wedding in the Canadian outdoors, on a cliff somewhere, a luxurious orange carpet unrolled to the edge. The wind blows a white ribbon in my face. When I peer downward, I see that I’m wearing some sort of tacky, borderline-medieval white lace 1980s wedding dress with rebellious poufy shoulders and all kinds of gaudy bows and embellishments. The dress sucks my waist in. It exposes my collarbone and a little bit of my breasts with its plunging neckline. I am covered in blood. The blood is coming from my lips, which are partially covered by a thin mesh veil. The blood is sliding down the exposed part of my neck and chest and drips into the frills, expanding into tremendous deep red stains that remind me of pupils dilating.
I am holding a bouquet of red roses in my hand. I touch the top of my head and feel two horns there. I think I maybe have a tail but I’m not sure. When I look around, I see skeletons, were-wolves, vampires, mummies, ghosts that just look like people with sheets over their heads and big black holes for eyes, all bobbing their heads and raising their arms to the “Monster Mash.” Many of the guests are zombies in saris, lenghas, hijabs, abayas, kurtas, and sherwanis; orange-blooded with greyish-greenish skin, bouncing in circles around small bonfires. Other guests are wearing masks as if attending a masquerade ball, carrying plastic bags with red candy apples, sponge toffee, candy corn, and gummy bears, which they are stuffing into their mouths. Under the full moon the after party has already begun without the wedding having happened. I am struck by the chaos, unpredictability, and mystery.
I search among the crowd for the groom I will be marrying, but only spot black cats, jack-o’-lanterns, witches on flying brooms, and then the Viking from Jungle, who is holding a shovel, preparing, it seems, to dig up some burial ground. And then, from a distance, a hologram of Boro Mama made of red, green, and blue light. He is wearing a wizard’s hat. His face is large and hovering over the scene — the dancing, the monsters, the candy — repeating “Good, good,” over and over again.
From behind the hologram emerges Shoaib, then Bhav, and Wasif (the boy who called Abbu to inform him of my scandalous behaviour), all three cloaked and masked like bandits, swirling like dervishes in unison as they approach me, chanting in low desirous incantations, as if preparing to make me either their wife or sacrifice; there is no way for me to be sure. Shared, taken, given, as a type of reincarnation. Behind them, the silhouette of a womanly figure, just out of view. I experience it all with a mixture of uneasiness and fascination, All Hallows Eve with the lingering remains of Samhain, my heart beating fast. Then, in the mayhem of the celebration, emerge Jessica and Mark, wearing soldiers’ uniforms, both holding a rifle in one hand and a Bible in the other.
“Stop!” Mark yells. “The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!”
“We’re here to find the weapons of mass destruction,” Jessica adds as a troop of goblins skip past her, gnashing their teeth hungrily.
“Are you okay?” Mark startled me out of my fantasy and back to the present reality.
“Yes?” Jessica prodded from the stool in Boro Mama’s living room.
“What is happening here?” Mark inquired.
I gulped, then told them both.
“I didn’t know this would happen. I thought it would just be a family vacation. It certainly felt that way when it started, but then it just escalated,” I explained, everything pouring out all at once.
“The man, Shoaib, he is incredibly nice, but I cannot do this to him, or myself. My heart only has one person, and not only that — this is not okay. I know Allah wouldn’t want this,” I continued.
Jessica and Mark continued to listen, nodding their heads.
“Take as much time as you need to tell us what you want to say. We are here for you,” Jessica reassured me.
So, I told them everything: what life was in Canada, what life was here since I had landed in July, what my predicament was, how confused I felt. How incredible it felt to finally speak to someone outside of my own head or the pages of my journal, or other than maybe Manshoor or Bilkis, who were the only people who actually listened.
“Where is your dad?” Mark asked.
I told them he was in Canada and that I had been told recently that he was not well.
“Abbu would never let them do this to me if he was here.” I told them. “I am not sure he knows what has been going on. I want to talk to him.”
“We can do that for you.” Mark handed me a phone. “Do you want to go ahead with this marriage, or do you want to go back to Canada? Or just leave the premises? We can help you. This phone, you can use it to call anyone you need to, to make the decision.”
“I don’t know,” I responded. “This is my family, and without them I wouldn’t be me.”
I continued speaking to them as if I was speaking to myself. Disentangling thought by thought. Both the officials nodded in unison, searching my face patiently for end-resolve.
“On the other hand, I know deep down that this is not safe, this situation that I’m in. It wouldn’t be fair to the man they’re hoping I’ll marry. I don’t love him, although they have said I’ll grow to love him. Although I wonder, what is love? Shoaib does seem like a nice man, and his father is sick. I feel terrible. Apparently, all his father wants is for his son to marry me. Apparently, it’s his deathbed wish.”
The reels of my mind conjured Shoaib’s face. Shoaib, almost ten years older than I, unaware that when I said I was not ready to be married I meant that I wasn’t going to marry him.
“What would you like to do?”
I was snapped back to the present moment by Jessica searching my face.
I wanted so much to show her the radical emptiness I felt.
“I don’t know. I have to think.”
“Take all the time you need,” said Mark. “Can we tell you what we see?”
I nodded.
“When you speak, it’s almost as if there are two people. One that is very confident, knows who she is, what she wants. The other one is very much concerned about the expectations
she is supposed to fulfill, to the point of maybe even forgetting herself,” Mark told me.
The tone of Mark’s voice irked me at first, as I didn’t want him to attribute good or bad to any of these parts he saw; it was far more complicated. They aren’t just cultural expectations. They are my own expectations. What if it is really within our communities that we discover our truest selves? What if I remember myself best through the roles I play within my culture, within the society I am in? How clear are the lines anyway between our environments and ourselves as a separate being? It was tricky. There were many ways to look at it. What was important to me was that I needed to be able to choose. It’s just the price of my choices — should they be so hefty?
Yet, I didn’t go on to explain. Instead, I took the phone from them and decided I would call a few people, including Bhav and Shoaib.
Boro Mama was asked to come back in to dial in Shoaib’s number. He explained quickly to Shoaib what was happening. Then he handed me the phone.
“How could you do this? I was falling in love with you,” Shoaib said when I put the phone to my ear. “I thought you were willing to leave the past behind and start a new life with me. I would give you everything,” Shoaib went on. His voice was quavering, and I could tell he was being sincere. He was indeed quite hurt. He had certainly got attached, and fast. Somehow I had, too, to a certain extent. The rhythm of his breathing, which was slower than usual, sped up, indicating that he might have been crying. I couldn’t tell whether I felt empathy then or embarrassment for his woundedness. I just felt the hardness of my own heart; I had to do this to act in accordance with my own principles.
“I think you already knew. I had told you. It just wouldn’t be right, not even for you, if I went through with this,” I replied. “You aren’t my soulmate.”
“We already sent out invitations. My father might have a stroke just hearing that he’ll have to face all these guests, and all these costs.”
This did leave my stomach in knots, but I had to allow myself to ignore it.
“Please forgive me,” I said. I hung up the phone on the man who would never be my husband. I had believed at first that love was servitude, but I was learning that, even more so, it was about being true, especially to oneself.
I shuddered as I handed the phone back to Boro Mama to finish the conversation with Shoaib. He took it from me, saying nothing, only fidgeting with the device in his hands.
I waited for him to finish his conversation. I stood in the living room closer to the veranda, where Bilkis was still observing. Jessica and Mark were still seated on the stools in the middle of the room. Boro Mama paced back and forth as he spoke with Shoaib. I heard only fragments of their conversations. I could tell he was trying to appease Shoaib, console him.
When the call ended, Boro Mama handed the phone back to me and I called Bhav. He answered as if he had just won the lottery. “Thank God they got you in time.”
I described the scene to him. He did not have much to say other than, “I love you,” and, “This is your decision,” and, “I am glad you are safe.”
I also called one of my friends in Canada, who said similar things.
After my phone calls, when I looked above my head and said, Alhumdulillah, it came to me: if I remove all the noise, there remains one thing, and one thing only: my safety. If after all of this I stayed, my safety would possibly be even more compromised. I deduced this after considering and adding up all the past behaviours of everyone and then predicting what their next response would most likely be.
“I would like to leave the premises,” I finally declared. “I will decide later what I want to do, for now I don’t feel safe. I want to leave.”
Jessica and Mark nodded from their stools. They both stood up, almost at the same time. Jessica walked over to me. “Are you ready?” She scanned my eyes.
“Yes,” I avowed.
“Let’s go,” she said, and gestured me forward.
As I plodded to the door with her by my side, I looked back over my shoulder and saw Ammu, Sweety Khala, Boro Mama, and Nani all now in the living room. Mark was explaining the next steps to everyone.
“Where is she going?” Boro Mama’s tone was surprisingly controlled. “How can we contact her?”
“We will inform you,” Mark told them.
Before I exited, Nani ran over to me and lowered herself to my feet. She held my ankles, titling her pleading face up toward me. I remembered then that I was at her feet a few weeks earlier, also begging for her to believe in me. It pained me to see this inversion, because Nani was my elder, from my line of ancestors. I respected her.
“Please don’t do this to us. Tell them to leave. We’ll stop the wedding.” She sobbed, her tears snaking down the soft arch below my ankle.
I loved Nani more than words could describe, but trust, trust is like a fallen leaf — once it falls it cannot be reattached. I thought, I must wait. Abbu had always reminded me that sabr, patience, was key.
A part of me floated in the air, watching this: me angling my body away as Nani tugged on me gently. I didn’t know then that only a few years later, she would pass. I’d never see her again. This is the last memory I have of her. I never got to say goodbye.
During this time Mark had retrieved my passport from Boro Mama. He and Jessica were now both at the door, waiting for me. I walked past Nani, and then Ammu and Sweety Khala, too, who were huddled in a corner whimpering. I tried not to look at them, for I’d drown in their tears the way I almost drowned in the Jessore pond during my last visit to the country. I walked past Boro Mama, too, who looked away.
I left the place, the Shayṭān Bride.
I sat in the back of a Jeep with the two officials. We were on our way to a nearby hotel, where I would stay until I decided what I would do next. I closed my eyes; on the back of my eyelids I saw brown hands distributing red-and-white wedding invitation cards, trays of kachi biriyani, Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban draped in colourful red, green, and gold lights, and expansive blue skies, Abbu on his bed beside his phone waiting to hear from me, television screens going haywire and bursting into flames, my grandmother still pleading at my feet, my forehead touching the jai-namaz in prostration, news footage of planes crashing into the Twin Towers, the feet of people kicking debris of temples, gurudwaras, and mosques.
I was going to go to the hotel and sort it all out. I was only nineteen.
When I got to the hotel room, I placed a bedsheet on the ground. I didn’t have a prayer mat so it would have to do. I didn’t know which way the Kaaba was, either, so I guessed.
Afterward, I paced the small room back and forth, it’s plain white wallpaper and the white sheet on the twin-size bed blankly failing to establish a mood. The carpet was a standard grey and its padding underneath my bare feet was coarse. The window was sealed shut. There was also a circular wooden table on which was some food in a Styrofoam container. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I didn’t care to look. My mind was on the telephone on the nightstand.
My thoughts alternated like my feet as I pressed them on the floor, plodding toward the phone. I picked up the handset, heavy in my hand, wondering who I should call first: Abbu or Bhav. The last Bhav heard of me was when I confirmed with him over the phone that the officials had come. He had no idea what I’d decided to do, where I was. He must be in distress, I thought.
Bhav answered “Are you okay? Safe?” His voice was as soft as the pillowcase I ran my other hand over.
“Yes,” I answered, then shared all the details of the past two to three hours.
“What would you like to do? I am here to support you in any way you need. You can come back and stay with me. We could get an apartment, or we can stay at my brother’s until we figure things out. I can work extra hours. You will be okay.”
Usually, when Bhav made plans or gave advice I would lean in and listen. Ascertain his propositions. Now, as much as his presence on the other end of the line brought me great comfort, his voice began to fade out slowly a
s I heard only mine. Um, Sumaiya, you just almost got married earlier today. Like, maybe you should pause on big romantic decisions for now? How about sleep? Don’t you miss that?
“I don’t know if I am ready to just move in with you,” I told Bhav, as we weren’t even married.
I asked him how he was, and then I told him I’d call him back.
I put the handset down. I had salty tears in my mouth. Slowly, and like a much older woman, I bent down to sit on the bed, reaching my hands out and feeling for the nearby table in case I fell. The hard edge of the soft mattress, the flocculent duvet, and the empty air around me. I lightly plopped myself down onto the cushioning.
The pillow morphed to the shape of my skull. My cumbersome eyelids protested for sleep.
After a minute or two I picked up my heavy arms and brought them to the phone. I picked up the handset and dialed home. After so many months, I would finally call Abbu directly. He would finally know the facts, not hyper-exaggerated or minimized recounts of truth.
“Hello,” he answered.
I paused. Abbu sounded confused, as if he were at the edge of the earth and in need of further direction.
“It’s me,” I replied.
“My precious, how are you?” This question gained other questions: “Where are you? What is happening? When will you come home? Please, come home now. I want to see you.”
I just listened to him repeat “Please come home,” which he did a few times, as if to fill up the space between us.
I pulled on my hair strand.
“You can trust me,” he replied.
How must it have felt as a father to be deprived of an opportunity to guide his daughter? As I listened to Abbu’s voice, it upset me that Boro Mama and everyone else had taken me away from him. That they had subjected me to Boro Mama as a foster parent, as if Abbu had been insufficient or incapable.
I said goodbye and put the handset down, almost missing the switch hook. I saw on the table a small yellow notepad with hurried cursive letters that spelled “No one is home.”
I sat back down on the bed and this time allowed myself to sprawl across the whole of it. Suddenly, my body began to give into the stillness of rest. Rapid heartbeats calmed like softening drums. My appetite still left somewhere on a side street, far away. I closed my weary eyes, my brain still twitching like a lightbulb about to go out. I let it do its thing, until I couldn’t feel it anymore.
The Shaytan Bride Page 22