Ma’s voice at the other end sounded panicked. “Arissa bayta, where are you? I have been so worried. I called every person in your phone book.” I pictured her in my mind, the undercarriage of her eyes dark from worry.
“I came to the hospital to get myself checked out,” I said, trying to sound calm. “They are telling me I might be here for awhile.”
“What is it? What’s going on?” She cut me off, alarmed. “Here, I will pass the phone to Baba. Give him directions. We’ll meet you wherever you are.”
I passed the phone to Jennifer. Heck, even I didn’t know where I was. I turned around on the pillow and heard the nurse struggling to assure my father-in-law that I was not dying, and tender love washed over me for that couple who in a few days of being with me had put their grief aside and helped fill the shoes of a lost husband, a loving companion, a father, and a soul mate.
And all I could ever give them was one piece of bad news after another.
The results were in.
Dr. Mitchell ran a laundry list of things they had seen during the advanced ultrasound—heart defect, urinary tract malformations, kidney abnormalities, cleft lip. My heart sank as the list kept growing. I gripped the edges of the bed as Ma held my hand tight, squeezing it every few minutes, passing on some of her strength to me. She and Baba had arrived at the hospital a few hours earlier.
“What does all this mean?” I broke in, too frightened to hear any more.
The doctor shook her head and closed the file. “The condition still is compatible with life,” she admitted, although she didn’t phrase it as a good thing either. “We don’t have the results from the amnio yet, but even then there is no way of knowing the full extent of the challenges until the baby is born. We will do weekly ultrasounds and monitor you closely. That is—”
We all looked at Dr. Mitchell questioningly.
“That is what?” Baba and I asked in unison.
“That is if you are willing to carry the baby to term.”
The room lost all of its oxygen. I felt something akin to physical agony and saw my loved ones’ faces turn ashen. Ma put her arms around me, cradling me like a child. I snatched my hand away from her and closed my eyes. I struggled to breathe, taking desperate gulps of air. I felt the baby kick and inhaled deeply to regulate my breathing.
“I will carry the baby to term.”
My voice was croaky, broken. Like china on concrete.
Ma and Baba looked at me and nodded vehemently.
“Arissa!” Baba came to stand beside me, his voice shaky. “We will help you through this.”
How could anyone help me? I was having an abnormal baby, all on my own, with no partner to share the burden with. This was too big. Mountainous. How did my life end up this way? They were so meticulously planned, the events of my life. We were supposed to have a wonderful life, a healthy, beautiful child. Not apart like this. Not by myself.
“We are here, Arissa,” Ma said softly beside me.
Yes, but for how long?
I thought of the empty videocassette in our bedroom at home. What a start to my little boy’s life: a lost first photo opportunity. Even nature determined that the moment was not important enough to be recorded. How did I get here, from blissful married life to stark bleak widowhood and now this?
A journey that took just 41 days.
I shut my eyes, wanting to hide from the world behind the blessing of sightlessness. When the nurse came in with my medication, I pretended to be asleep. It was only when I heard Ma’s soft snoring that I opened my eyes and saw that she, too, had dozed off. It had been a long night. I sat up and willed my brain to think.
Yeh na thee hamari qismat. An old Urdu poet’s verse rattled in my brain. It wasn’t in my fate. I let it soak in and overpower my thought process. I tried to shut my brain down to avoid thinking the inevitable. Unsuccessful, I focused instead on recalling the rest of the lines by that controversial poet, Ghalib:
I would not have resented death had it come only once
Shamed, as I was after my death, why didn’t I drown in a river or sea
There would have been neither a funeral nor a tomb erected in my memory.
Through the window, I heard the slow crescendo of city traffic usher in the morning, but the room retained its silence. It was ironic to me that the world went on as if nothing was amiss when in just a few weeks, I had lost so much. The world did not care about one person’s misery; it did not care about thousands of people’s losses either. I wondered if the ghosts of the nearly 3,000 people who perished still visited their old dwellings. Perhaps they lingered in doorways, stood near their old beds, baffled at their sudden exit from the world, unable to accept that their place at the dinner table was gone. Did they cling to their loved ones, hover near their children, or try to touch them to tell them that really they had just shifted dimensions? That they still existed? Did they come back one final time to say goodbye? Did he come? Ill-fated as I am, did I sleep through Faizan’s visit when his disembodied lips touched mine in a final farewell?
After Faizan, the child within me had provided me the will to go on. Not anymore. I wasn’t even certain that I was doing the right thing in wanting to give birth to this baby who would have lifelong struggles. What would Faizan have said? Would he have agreed with me? Clueless, I rotated the hospital bracelet around my wrist and waited for an answer. There was none. I was alone in my struggle.
For the first time in many days, I took the rosary from the bedside table and started praying. Verses from the Qur’an on my breath flowed into my soul. Eyes shut, I found all the events of my life bouncing around my brain, the good and the bad, the moments when joy discovered wings and soared high, taking me along for the ride, and the moments when bleak shadow entered my life and threw the cloak of darkness over me and tried to suffocate me.
I saw it all, the benefactor’s name on my lips, as the chronicle of my life opened up in my mind and spread its pages before me—recording every fleeting moment, every erroneous turn, every disturbing second and not allowing me the chance to go back and recreate the past. The deaf ears of history paid no heed to my entreaty. Instead, like wings they soared forward, adding new pages, carving out plans that didn’t exist in my mind, marking directions I had not anticipated. It didn’t matter that I was a reluctant traveler.
The cruel thoughts came to me when I had almost dozed off, like an unleashed sob at the back of my throat, cutting in its truthfulness and finality.
If I had woken up and given my husband his goodbye kiss before he undertook his last journey on his final day on earth, could I have stopped him?
If I had just snuggled against his chest and convinced him to get inside the covers with me that morning, would it have preserved his existence on earth?
And then, finally, the one that haunted me many nights: if I had listened when Faizan had tried to talk to me about his premonition of disaster, could we have averted it?
TEN
Evenings continued to create a looming apprehension in my heart as my life stretched before me, endless like the night, barren and unfulfilled. My child was no help either. Just when I’d doze off, he’d wake me up, lying low on my bladder, forcing me to get up to go to the bathroom. One night, lying half asleep, I felt the feathery touch of something outlining the contours of my belly. I shot up, heart thudding, raining blows on my belly only to realize that it was just the baby moving inside me, not an intruder. He stayed silent for the next few hours, too scared to move. I nudged him lovingly, seeking forgiveness. He refused. The baby, too, was mad at me. I stayed awake that night. Again.
Most days, I felt like I was spinning inside like a top, unable to stop. The world around me had a crazy quality to it. I looked at my surroundings with the eyes of a stranger, wondering why I had never noticed the shocking pink in the checkered print on my bed sheet. I hated that color and yet I had bought the sheets. Why? The fan on the ceiling had a black spot on one of its blades. Nights when I was unable to sleep, i
t seemed to grow until it took over the ceiling and inched closer to my face, almost touching my nose until I felt claustrophobic. I don’t think I was going crazy. I didn’t want to, I knew that much.
The empty space next to me in the bed seemed to grow bigger each time I looked, and the darkness magnified my loss to an incomprehensible degree. Throughout the night, I kept throwing Faizan’s pillow on the floor and picking it back up, hugging it close for his warmth and scent. It still carried a faint whiff of his aftershave, which was diminishing by the day. I refused to launder the cover. Many nights, I just clutched his pillow and sat at the foot of the bed, one leg dangling down, the other curved at the knee, and stared out the window where moonlight streamed in and weakly illuminated the empty side of the bed, trying to make up for the person I’d lost. What can a few shimmering rays of the moon do?
There were nights when Sian and Zoha crept in and sat next to me, reminding me of when as children we huddled together after watching a scary movie. We left a light on in my room and slept on my bed, hugging each other’s bodies, twisting and turning to find snug spots. Once settled, we were too frightened to move, too uncomfortable to sleep, afraid of closing our eyes lest the monster in the movie descend into our bedroom. One by one we finally closed our eyes, the many names of Allah on our lips. Even then we slept facing the fluorescent light on the ceiling. What harm can come to you if you face the light? Don’t shadows fall behind? Or below?
Sian and I shared a special bond in our early years, because we were closer in age. Growing up, we skipped many afternoon naps to send Azad Baba to get us phalsas from the street vendor in the corner—the red sour berries that with their juice turned our tongues crimson. Afterward, we often indulged in a fierce competition to see who could spit the seeds out the farthest. Once we even aimed for Azad Baba. When Sian’s seed struck his dark balding head, he turned around, scratching his head in confusion. We pretended to be busy with our marbles, trying not to laugh.
Other days, we chased the white puffballs—the flowerlets of the shimul tree, fleeing from their split pod—all across the yard until Ami rounded us up and took us indoors for our nap. We paused only to trace their wayward path as the gleeful seeds raced past the rose bushes and the bougainvilleas along the fence, bouncing off the windows, escaping from nature and manmade snares in their path. That memory always conjured up an image of me running in my snow-white shalwar with a red kameez and a trailing long batik scarf that seemed to stretch and grow as I ran and then took off into the air. I would later hunt it down but not before I was exhausted by the other chase. We never caught a single puffball, ever. They always traveled a little too high, a few fingers beyond our reach, like unattainable dreams.
The nights Sian and Zoha came to my room after Faizan was gone, I didn’t know what brought them there, and I didn’t ask. Could my screams have woken them up, I wondered? They never said anything, just sat with their arms draped around me. We watched the sky through the bare window, sometimes moonlit but most often stark naked, stripped of its jewels. We didn’t need words and they could not talk about the man I wanted to converse about. Instead with their presence they acknowledged that the monster had been in the house and snatched away one of the inhabitants. Maybe it was time for silence, for mending the broken and for piecing together a life disintegrated by hatred. Long after they were gone, I still felt their arms around me the nights I stayed awake. Love has a curious way of finding its way through oceans and skies; distance is never a barrier. Those nights, I waited until it was too dark to see, and just as darkness lost its hold on me, I turned over and went to sleep.
My thoughts often went back to the week before the disaster. We had gone to bed late after catching the last show of Anthony Anderson’s Two Can Play That Game at the Triplex. I woke up to screams. Faizan was convulsing on the bed, eyes closed. I tried to wake him up but couldn’t. In desperation I slapped him across the face, and his eyes flew open, wild and bloodshot.
“Are you okay?”
He sat up, feet dangling off the bed, looking around with feral eyes. “I had the strangest dream.”
“What about?” I leaned in closer and hugged him. I felt his heart beating like a frightened rabbit’s in his chest cavity.
He didn’t answer and pulled away, reaching for the glass of water on the nightstand. With his other hand, he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his plaid nightshirt. He had a panicked look on his face as he drank in big impatient gulps.
“Why can’t I breathe?”
I could have bottled the anxiety that exuded from him. I took the glass from his hand and put it away. I leaned my head against his shoulder and rubbed his back. He pulled away and his shuddering body curved away from me on the bed.
“What did you dream about?” I asked again, feeling his temple with my hand. It was throbbing.
There was a long unsettling silence before he began.
“I…uh, I saw that Baba, Ma, and you were gathered around a bed. There was a person lying face down on the bed. It appeared he was dead, and you were all talking about him.”
He paused and looked directly at me. “In the past tense,” he added. It was as if he was telling me the plot of a movie he had seen. It seemed unreal, but then dreams rarely ever make sense.
“The man was dressed in a black suit, and his hair was oiled back with some rich black cream or oil,” Faizan continued, staring off in the distance. “Possibly Brylcreem. No, it can’t be that,” he quickly corrected. “That is white. Anyway, it seemed from the conversation you were having that the man had been a victim of some form of a racial attack. While you were talking, he began reciting some unknown Arabic verses. He was chanting several, but the only one I recall was Al Mani.”
Faizan shivered and fell silent. Al Mani. It sounded familiar but I couldn’t recall where I had heard the word before.
“Then what happened?”
“The man started shifting his body clockwise on the bed. Slowly. So that his head came very close to you.” Faizan looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. “You were startled but only slightly. It was a general understanding around the room that it was still a matter of time for him. You seemed undisturbed by his movement and simply put your purse on the floor to make room for him to rest his head. As soon as his head touched your lap, he flipped around and I...I saw his face.”
I held my breath. “Who was it?”
“Me.”
I inhaled sharply. He looked haggard. I snuggled against him.
“It’s just a dream,” I whispered, not sure what else to say.
“Right.”
“Try to get some sleep.”
He nodded and closed his eyes.
I stayed awake, unable to fall back asleep. I studied the maroon curtains on the window, eerily dark in the night.
“Jaan?” My voice didn’t feel mine when I finally spoke.
There was silence. Faizan’s steady breathing meant that he had probably gone back to sleep. I meant to ask him to recite Al Mani for protection. I had remembered what it meant. It was one of Allah’s names, the one that meant “the preventer of harm.” I tried to say it several times before sleep took hold of me and I gave in, my fear melting away. The verses cleansed my insides; I felt light-headed, safe. Dawn erased the events of that night from my mind, and possibly from his.
Ma came in each morning with a cup of steaming tea and helped me sit up, forcing me to face the new day. She smelled of soap and water, fresh like spring. She would draw the curtain and sit next to me and encourage me to talk. I studied her dark oval face while we conversed, the sun highlighting the lines on it, etched more by the events and people in her life than years: the father she had lost as a young child; an early marriage; some miscarriages; a mother-in-law who was hell-bent on destroying her marriage until her own untimely death created some much-needed peace; the tragic death of her only surviving son. In many ways I saw similarities in the structure of Ma’s face and Baba’s face, perhaps a product of
going through similar life events that left wrinkles and lines at the exact same times on their beings, some at the exact same places. Ma’s eyes were most astonishing, gray and ever hopeful, belying her age and circumstances. She pulled her salt and pepper hair back with a long broad clip, the only accessory I ever saw her wear. She was built lean and had a slightly extended abdomen from childbearing. It was ironic that she had no children left to show for it. Instead, she carved her space in the lives of others, giving more than she ever received.
In time, it seemed like Ma and I had a history, like old friends who had shared much. She started to talk about Faizan more openly once she realized that was what I wanted. Unlike most people, who dodged the subject, she talked to heal. I talked to hurt. I loved to suffer, to feel the sweet sickening slow twist of a knife at the pit of my stomach at the mention of his name. I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want any of the moments we spent together not spoken of, lest time would make me forget them.
And Baba reminded me so much of the old driver Azad Baba back home, with his rock solid strength and silent love.
As children, Zoha, Sian, and I loved running to Azad Baba’s shed behind our house in the early morning hours, with its scanty furniture, just the bare minimum: a stool, a rickety chair, a charpoy with a few-decades-old blanket, a flat pillow with frayed edges. We usually walked in to find him prostrate on the floor, his two hands outstretched and clasped together in front of his bowed head as if reaching out to someone other than whom he was praying to. Perhaps he tried to touch something more alive, more tangible than the unseen God who exists only in the mind. Money, perhaps, which is more real and should be worshipped, or some unrequited love. Azad Baba had neither. He was alone, poor and aging. It was hard to imagine him being someone’s father, brother, husband, or son.
Azad Baba was a sincere advisor in our lives. In our hearts, he was more than a driver; he held the place of an affectionate grandfather and even a mother at times. To us, he was a person born old who had at some point stopped aging any more. Even when I saw him twenty years later, he looked exactly the same: glasses almost falling off his nose that he slid back up every 10 seconds, scarce gray hair on the sides of a balding head that he covered with a turban each morning. He had the kind of smile that lingered in his features long after it had faded from his lips—the smile of contentment, of unadulterated love for us, the only family he had. We reciprocated, although not in kind. Class barriers prevented us from showing our affection for him. On days Ami was gone, he assumed many of her responsibilities, making sure we were well-fed and well-attended, ordering our favorite dishes, barking orders to Mai Jan as she scurried around completing her tasks under his watchful eye. He made certain that when the cat was away, the mice didn’t play.
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