Azad Baba left when Sian left for college, long after Zoha and I were already married. By then Abu had a new life and family, a new set of problems to deal with, and not many remembered the graying old man who made our lives livable, more bearable. For the three of us, he existed in our hearts, a rock-steady memory that we invoked for strength in times of need.
In a way, I felt that Azad Baba had come back to my life in the form of Baba.
There was never a discussion about how long Ma and Baba would stay. The unspoken understanding was that they would stay as long as it took for me to heal and move on—the unconfirmed but stable promise of selfless parents, a product of a culture a continent away. They would leave once I healed and created a new life for myself that didn’t have their son in it.
There were times when I did nothing all day but sit in front of the computer and pore over the stories of 9/11 victims, crying, re-reading and crying some more. I was fascinated by the story of losses, especially of the widow who’d committed suicide a month after she lost her husband. In a letter she left for her devastated brother, she explained that she could no longer go on living without the man she loved.
And I remember thinking to myself, what kind of a wretched wife am I? I continue to live when he is gone. Am I made of stone?
I realized in time that the source of my strength was the little tenant inside me, the symbol of someone’s deep and unfaltering love, and the woman in front of me. I looked at Ma and felt the purest kind of love. How do you love a mother? It had been a challenging question for me. How do you love someone who was always a hazy presence in your life despite the connection of blood? In contrast to my own mother, the woman before me was the epitome of sacrifice and now a vital support for her daughter-in-law and would-be grandson—so awaited, so cherished, already an orphan.
Had my own mother ever called? I vaguely recalled receiving a phone call. Ami was by far the closest, living in Boston, where she ran a salon. She had not come. What was it she said on the phone? It would be too awkward what with Abu being there. I had felt the bubbling of a hysterical laugh within me; only Ami could think of her discomfort at a time when her daughter was facing the biggest catastrophe of her life. I felt pity for her, the woman for whom the petty things in life were larger than her family’s needs. Perhaps for her we were always a distraction from what she wanted to do for herself in life. The marriage she destroyed, not having ever accepted it in her heart as a union of minds and souls, and the man she always blamed for not loving her enough, for the children who were always a threat to her independence. Her words were etched on my soul in dark, long, toxic letters: “I wish I never had you!”
Even years later, the words still had the power to sink my heart, if only for an instant, the words that took me back to a life that was structured painstakingly by Abu to be filled with love but was tainted often by Ami’s lack of care.
In contrast, I loved hearing the voices of Ma and Baba in the predawn hours, soothing like the whirring of a ceiling fan with its familiar fall and rise of pitch. Baba always brewed three cups of tea before breakfast for Ma, himself, and me when I woke up. That was their quiet time, and even in the first days they were with me, I understood the importance of those revered moments and never interrupted them. It amazed me—they had been companions for 40 years, and they still enjoyed each other’s company. Throughout their son’s death and afterward, they held each other through the waves of sadness and the ripples of lost hope that crashed against the giant rocks of desperation and made it ashore—always together, generously passing on that gift to me. My own life as a child had been so different; I was convinced marriages could only bring pain. Mine had, too, but the circumstances were very different.
It made me question my own looming motherhood. What kind of a mother will I be? A loving, doting one or resigned, inattentive? What I felt sure about was that I would try really hard to be good but tip the scale over on one side by my obsessive and constant self-analysis.
On panicked, sweaty, insomniac nights, Valium was my solace. I refused to think of the habit as an addiction, only as a means of coping.
“You have to stop taking it,” Abu chided me the night he caught me popping a pill at 1:00 a.m. “It’s not healthy for the baby or for you.”
I scowled like a teenager, a fist held to my throat to prevent myself from choking out the words in my mind. Baby! What about me? How do you expect me to get past all this?
I grabbed a jacket and headed out, ignoring his calls. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I needed to get away from this house of people who cared, sometimes a little too much. I needed to grieve, to go somewhere where I could think privately with spirits and shadows as my companions, not mortal beings.
Faizan’s death had opened up some possibilities for me but none that I was excited about. For instance, I could go out anywhere late at night and didn’t have to think about making him crazy with worry. I could go to a bar and drink, maybe even get picked up.
But did I really want all that?
Of course not. All I wanted was him. Back. Worrying about me, loving me enough to stop me from ruining my health, my life.
I headed up the street, watching the streetlights cast shadows that loomed in front of me like ghosts looking for trouble.
The moon hung low, laden with sorrow, and insisted on traveling with me, a forced companion. When I turned a corner, it, too, left my side. I walked four blocks, not knowing when I would turn or if I would ever return. What was it that I wanted out of life? How much did I care about the well-being of my unborn child?
Faizan had asked me once if it bothered me, being a woman. I wondered if he meant being bounced off the walls between acceptance and new roles with very little wiggle room. I said no. I lied.
The truth is I am a planner, and new situations and new roles take that away from me. I hate having to start afresh, plan anew, plot out probable challenges along the way. Until I have it all together in my hand, I remain agitated, anxious. The new twist in my life had caught me unaware, and I had not found my balance yet. I was living day-to-day, one breath at a time. Slow in, slow out. Groping in the dark for some form of equilibrium and always coming up empty-handed.
I saw a homeless man sprawled in a corner sleeping with his mouth open, snoring, a crushed Budweiser can near him, a reminder of the night’s events. I passed by an old sneaker, a forgotten Frisbee, a torn blanket. Past that, there were a few teenagers huddled in a corner passing cigarettes to each other. They turned around when they saw me and for awhile, it brought to my mind the incident at the subway. I lowered my head and kept walking. They lost interest and resumed their smoking. I looked back and saw one of them cough in quick succession. A companion thumped him on the back and they all laughed. It somehow created a rip in the serene fabric of the night. In front of me stretched a night of shops, lampposts and apartment complexes, occasionally startled by houses that talked in their sleep. They yawned and creaked and sometimes groaned. I passed by one and heard angry exchanges from within and then the sound of glass shattering. I moved quickly, hugging my shawl jacket to me. When I turned a corner, I almost tripped over a young couple embracing. They seemed to be high schoolers meeting secretively; their guilty expressions were a dead giveaway. I watched them with something akin to maternal anxiety. The girl clumsily tried to button up her open shirt, a nipple still peeking out. They must know. Surely they must know about monsters that strike in the shadows, the ones Ami told me about long ago. What made these teenagers so fearless? So gullible? Don’t they know that even towers who flirt with the sky can come down? That steel and concrete can become the rubble of the future and dreams can be destroyed in a heart-stopping second? That knife-wielding strangers wait around corners eager to strike? I wanted to say something. I even opened my mouth to speak. I did! But then I didn’t. Some rights I had; others were not mine. I turned around. I needed to face this brutal life, not for me but for the little person inside me who would feed off my coura
ge.
I entered the apartment and saw Abu sprawled on the couch in the living room. His eyes were closed. I studied his face, the wrinkles that had appeared in just a few days, and guilt overpowered me. How dear he was to me. I went to the medicine cabinet and took out the bottle of Valium and emptied its contents into the trash can. As an afterthought, I chucked the bottle in as well. The sound of the bottle touching the bottom of the trash can jolted Abu awake, and he sat up.
“You’re home,” he said.
“Yes.” I walked over to him.
He got up with a sigh. I offered a hand to him and then a hug.
“Sometimes I am not the easiest daughter to be around, right?”
“You do make life interesting,” he laughed. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.” He grew quiet and then said, “Will you be okay, Arissa?”
I knew he was thinking of the time when he would leave.
I nodded. “I’ll be fine. How can I not? My life isn’t mine anymore.” I patted my stomach. Abu looked down and touched my belly gently. He was silent for awhile, and when I looked at his face, his lips were moving in a silent prayer.
ELEVEN
In the last week of November, we finally received word to proceed with the absentee funeral. A funeral without a body, we learned, wasn’t a common concept.
The casket we saw was for a janazah service for another fallen victim of the attack, a Muslim. It was not an option for us, we were told later. It was a simple casket made of wood with wooden fasteners hugging it together, the only one allowed since wood, like flesh, disintegrates in soil. I looked at the green satin sheet inside the coffin with the flowing Arabic script in gold thread that read, “We belong to Allah and to Allah we return.” Sunnah was to spread dust in the casket. From dust we come, and to dust we return. Why did He need the dust back? Did He not have enough?
There was a red satin pillow on one end of it. Here is where Faizan’s head would have been, I thought to myself, trying to block the pain and let objective thinking take over, and here the toes. The entire 6 foot 3 inches of his body would fit inside, albeit a little tightly. How ironic that, being a Muslim, Faizan was cremated without his loved ones’ choice. There was no body, no three pieces of cotton kafan that his body would be shrouded in. I often wondered how many people he saw to safety before he succumbed. He would not have thought of himself. Or of us. He tangoed with fire, just as he had flirted with life. He never believed in following a conventional way of operating in life, and in death he mocked us, too. Lit in flames, lost like a firecracker. Not a cry. Not a sign. Vanished, like he never existed. Snatched away like he was never mine. Buried, cremated, lost at sea or in the air, no one leaves this world without a trace. They leave behind a memoir of moments, cherished or despised.
It was like pulling teeth to have the imam of our mosque agree to ghaibana namaz-e-janaza, an absentee funeral. Abu presented case study after case study extracted from hours of research on having a funeral less a body, citing even an example of a cleric assassinated recently with no remains found, who had a casket at his funeral that contained only his wristwatch, a ring, and a turban—some possessions from his life on earth. He reminded the imam that even Prophet Muhammad had offered an absentee funeral prayer for an Ethiopian man named Negus. The imam finally agreed reluctantly, though he did not want a casket present. There will be protest against this practice, the imam warned. Abu reassured him by saying he would take his chances. Baba hung around, a dazed and distraught father, letting Abu take over a situation too grim for him to fully comprehend.
The ride to the funeral home was surreal. The morning sun was up, merciless and harsh, blinding Uncle Rizvi as he drove. As the car ascended a hill, it caused the spiteful sun to set, and I was grateful for the shade. There were many roadblocks along the way. Security was beefed up. Our vehicle was inspected four times before we reached Brooklyn.
There were a few things required to get a death certificate. We had no flesh, no identity. They needed Faizan’s birth certificate, marriage certificate, proof of employment, and a completed presumption of death form. Prove to us that he existed, they tried to explain to us tastefully, so they could sign off on his obliteration. Mayor Giuliani had promised that one day all the families of the victims will have a memento by which to remember their loved ones. “We will give every family something from the World Trade Center, from the soil and from the ground, so that they can take it with them,” he had said.
What can the soil from the ground give me? Just the validation that the body comes from dust and to dust it returns. Except that some exalted ones never touch the earth. They merely fly away.
“Whatever the religion, having the body gives people some real sense of consolation,” a minister of a local church had said on CNN. “I would want it myself.”
I felt angry at that declaration. Would you? Do you consider having a body a consolation? Is that closure? Or would finding Faizan’s body be another thing that would scratch at the scab that had formed on my bleeding heart? I felt for the families who got called as piece by piece their loved one’s body was recovered, then a toe, now a bone, the blueprint of DNA linking them together in a chain that could not be challenged.
I looked at the two things in my hand: a 3 x 5 photo of a smiling Faizan taken in Karachi during a vacation, and his white shirt that he’d loved so much. The shirt read, “Today, I will do something different!” and bore a ketchup stain that no amount of washing could remove––a permanent mark, a difference that couldn’t be shaken. I would have dropped those inside the casket were we allowed one.
The towers had obliterated flesh and identity, the news media said. The closure wasn’t for me. It was for everyone else. I will hold on to my grief, my Faizan.
I won’t let go.
I clasped my hands tightly together as thana, the funeral prayer, began, and bowed my head. I was impervious to the sideways glances of pity around me, the clasped hands, the solemn faces. I had started to ignore them. I was tired of hearing the litany of all the proper things to say at such a time. None of them sounded right to my ears or comforted my heart. Loved ones hurt me the most. They wanted to talk about everything but him.
“If you stop talking about him, it will be easier to let go,” said Azra Apa, my cousin, who had flown in from Miami for the funeral.
“Healing will begin when you accept that he is gone,” Uncle Rizvi observed, laying an arm across my shoulder.
Accept that he is gone? Never! Abu held my hand but didn’t talk; Sian and Zoha looked at me in dread, teeth clenched, waiting for me to snap. It seemed like only a matter of time. Ma and Baba waited for me to mention Faizan. The tension became palpable as the circle dwindled down to immediate family members. Their sidestepping hurt the most.
I recalled running into a middle-aged woman with fiery red hair who had always made a point to avoid Faizan and me. She lived across from us on the second floor, and her home always smelled of French onion soup. She never smiled when we greeted her and never acknowledged our existence. A few days earlier, however, she came up to me as soon as I got off the elevator.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” she blurted out. “He was a fine man.”
Somehow that didn’t comfort me.
“Oh, did you know him?” I snapped. “Or are you sorry that you never bothered to get acquainted with him?” My questions threw her off completely.
She winced and walked away in a hurry. As long as I lived in the building, she never spoke to me again.
Subhaanaka allaahumma wa bihamdika wa tabaaraka ismuka wa ta’aala jadduka wa jalla thannaa-uka wa laal ilaaha ghayruka. Glory be to you, Oh Allah, and praise be to You, and blessed is Your name, and exalted is Your Majesty, and there is none to be served besides.
Exalted You are, but You couldn’t prevent this from happening either. What kind of a god does that make You?
After the prayer, Baba gathered me in his arms, and I let him weep. He cried noiselessly, without exhibition or audience.
When he pulled away, my shoulder was wet and his beard was soaked in his own tears.
Sons are not supposed to die before their fathers, and fathers should never have to attend their son’s janazah. The world had just flipped on its side in our household and in many others across the country.
Beneath the drone of the F-16s flying low over the city, New Yorkers were slowly resuming their normal lives. But what was considered normal anymore? In the aftermath of 9/11, that definition had significantly altered. New York, a melting pot bubbled over, was now a boiling pot of lost innocence. Makeshift memorials went up daily. Wherever you turned, there were photos of lost loved ones of all ethnicities plastered on walls, bus stops, even shops. Some of the fliers were dog-eared and yellow from being in one spot for too long. Occasionally rain washed them down, or a sunny day rendered them stiff and crisp. They died and were reborn daily. The laminated ones merely shed tears when it rained and quickly dried. The collective group of souls they portrayed were betrayed by humanity, united in their legendary departure, their faces next to each other as if they somehow belonged together. The truth was that perhaps they had never even met one another. For me, the sea of faces all fade away until one remains—the one who represents them all, a loving family member, an innocent civilian, a hard-working citizen, gone never to return. His struggle, his tenure in life cut short, his dreams unrealized. His jihad was so different from the misguided, misrepresented, and misunderstood interpretation of the word that existed in some circles.
Saffron Dreams Page 8