There was once a hero who wasn’t your typical knight-type. Nor was he perfect.
He had many challenges. His vision was as if someone had pulled a baseball cap all the way over his eyes so that his only vision was peripheral. He heard the world at the level of a whisper and had to strain to hear voices and sounds around him. In his household, every morsel he ingested was celebrated because it required the concentration of his every brain cell.
So what made Raian a hero?
Plowing ahead and smiling through it all! Just like his father.
There is so much of Faizan I see in Raian, and I am grateful for that: the eyebrows that run in a single line without a gap above his eyes, the curled lashes, the smile that never vanishes and puts strangers at once at ease. He senses my presence in a room just like his father did without even looking up. How will I explain to Raian the absence of a father when he finally asks me? How will I explain the viciousness of the world and define hatred to a person struggling with so many physical challenges? How do you convey horror, contradiction, and terror? Perhaps I will instead steer him toward tales of the land we left behind, the country that shaped us and made his father the great man that he was. I might also tell him that when you leave a land behind, you don’t shift loyalties––you just expand your heart and fit two lands in. You love them equally.
Before I had Raian, I measured my life in two major chunks: before and after Faizan. All other in-between events were minor and inconsequential. Raian’s birth changed that and brought me closer to letting go. It provided me a level of distraction from my grief that a normal child might not have been able to give me. My life fell into a single-minded routine, milestones measured by Raian’s accomplishments. I created a chart of my own and put green dots on days he did something new, like walk, eat, or laugh—all the events delayed but occurring at their own pace if I just held on one more day.
Raian had nine surgeries in a span of five years, including an open heart surgery to repair a large ventricular defect when he was three weeks old, a gastrostomy to assist with feeding at one month, and removal of adenoids due to recurrent obstructive sleep apnea at age two. He emerged from each one better, healthier, and stronger. By then Ma, Baba, and I had perfected the medical jargon—the names of the surgeries, the prognosis, the diagnosis, and the remedies rolled off our tongues as if we had always been caregivers to a disabled child.
When he was a baby I rocked him for endless hours, perched on a rocking chair, bonded in love. It calmed him immensely. When he learned to sit up, he bounced on my lap for long stretches of time, especially when he was agitated or confused. When he started walking at age three, late by all standards, he bounced on my feet. He could do that all day long. It regulated the rhythm of his body.
For Raian, because of poor coordination, even the simple act of walking posed its own set of challenges. Watching him play with other children or acquire a new skill made my chest swell with pride. He was a trooper and a hard worker. If at first he failed, he kept on trying—through frustration, anger, struggle, and in the end, victory. He walked with a side-to-side gait and had acute vision sensitivity to the sun. He typically had to tilt his head back in order to see better, and I had to sign at eye level. I also couldn’t sign to him from across the room. He needed to be fairly close. At age five, he was still tube-fed as a supplement, and that summer we went to the Children’s Hospital once a week for swallowing therapy. He hated textured foods to be mixed, so yogurt could not have chunks in it. He would swallow all of it and spit out the bits of fruit.
It was interesting to watch him as he converted his limitations into milestones. Living with Raian had its moments of mirth and meltdowns. When I talk about his challenges, I refer to them as ours. Our task was to overcome them together. He, of course, had to work harder. He displayed extreme enthusiasm for the work he did and all that passion was actually quite daunting for me at times.
I often wondered if Raian’s challenges were nature’s way of filling my days so that I would not have time to grieve. In my mind, it makes it all worthwhile when he holds up his thumb, index, and pinky fingers and signs “I love you” to me from across the room.
TWENTY
June 2006
Summer in Houston tastes like dirt, thick bellowing mounds of dust piling on and on until you can’t breathe anymore. Sometimes a squalling wind arrives, pressing its puckered lips to the window panes. Whooooo, it shrieks, whooooosh, and then it cavorts over the pile of dust, depositing it evenly in our miracle-less world. The rain that follows washes it all away, leaving behind an acerbic mustiness that lingers until September brings in the moldiness that I associate with loss, the dull snicker of an autumn past.
At 6:59 a.m. my alarm went off and I turned over to hide my face in the pillow. I had a curious habit of setting my alarm a minute before my actual waking time. It gave me a moment to enjoy the comfort of my bed before the day’s activities consumed me.
I had stopped dreaming about Faizan at some point, I realized. Perhaps it was because he was still so much a part of me. I remembered little things, the not-so-important parts of our lives—the way Faizan stretched in the morning and tiptoed around me so that I could sleep in. I led him to believe I did, although the truth was that with the first rustle of life next to me, sleep left my side. I kept my eyes shut, though, and pretended I was asleep. I studied him with half-open eyes as he stripped in the middle of the room and folded his pajamas neatly before placing them on the bench at the foot of the bed. I liked watching his naked back disappear inside the bathroom. He didn’t turn the light on until he closed the door lest the light fall on my face and stir me awake. I’d still be awake when he’d come out. He had the unusual habit of always wearing his socks before he wore anything else, and then padding over to the closet to get his clothes. He took longer there, and I usually fell asleep at that point. He always kissed me before he left, and without knowing it, he would wake me up once again.
I turned and looked at the baby video monitor at the foot of my bed. I still turned it on to keep an eye on Raian although he was now five. On the black and white screen, I saw his dark head against the white pillow. He snored in sleep, just like Faizan. My little angel!
Time to get ready for another day. I flung my legs off the bed and marched toward the bathroom, but not before the tinkering of teacups in the kitchen alerted me that Ma was up as well, preparing breakfast for me.
Evenings were our quiet time, mine and Raian’s, and he looked forward to his bath. It was a relaxing time for us. I would sit him in his tub and surround him with his bath toys: the yellow duck now faded, the sticky colorful alphabet letters, and the squeaky bath books. I found the sound of water slapping against his soft skin incredibly soothing. I wasn’t certain which one of us reveled in those moments more.
Once when he was enjoying the post-bath immersion time, he grinned and pointed to the ceiling, head tilted. I followed his gaze to see the light from the window reflecting water above, cascading waves over our heads, and we laughed together. Not an odd notion in our already topsy-turvy world—a world that made complete sense to us but was baffling to the rest.
His trusting eyes looked at me, shining, and I felt weak from the message they carried. My mother is my guardian. I am safe when I am with her. She cocoons me in the palm of her hand.
But there were times I was pouring water over his body when my thoughts would turn sadder: losing Faizan, getting uprooted, losing control of the life that in my mind had some form of stability. And always I thought of the little girl who I had seen in the news, the one who was thrown off the flyover by her mentally disturbed father to exact vengeance against his estranged wife. Then he himself plummeted to his death behind her. His daughter miraculously survived. God works in strange ways. I don’t know why she comes to my mind when I bathe Raian. Maybe I look at both of them as survivors, different stories, lost fathers, lukewarm endings. Then there are some with unbearable endings, like Yavar, the character in Faiza
n’s novel and even Faizan himself. On some level, I felt I had failed both of them.
Soul Searcher called out to me from the bureau each morning.
“I am here,” it said. “Look at me. Remember your promise.”
And each day, I tapped the bureau lightly in response as if appeasing a child. I remember. I have not forgotten.
Every morning, I got dressed for work and kissed the folded veil on the bureau before I left. I took Raian to his special school a few blocks from my work. He had a daily schedule of academics combined with speech, feeding, oral, and physical therapy. He spent his days with children like him, struggling, trapped in bodies that limited their potential and with the power of their gifts affirmed that they were different but chosen. It was here that Raian found his love for music. It was here that he tapped to the drumbeats in his heart, the rhythm that granted him hope.
I am closer, I told the waiting manuscript. I have not abandoned you. In my mind, I have already composed you. You are a masterpiece. And although I did not create you, I will complete you.
Writing from a different point of view perhaps had added years to completion, but I felt content in my heart. I would do it justice, as long as it took. I will not rush through it, I told myself.
When Raian started school, I took the manuscript out of hiding. Waiting for the muse to strike was a luxury I could ill afford, so I set a time to write. Every other weekend, when Ma and Baba took Raian out to the mall or park, I dedicated that time to writing. Ma smiled all day and looked forward to those times when she was certain that the bureau drawer would open and the manuscript would come out. The computer would crank to life, and the day would bring a mother’s dream a little closer to fulfillment.
Ma left little snacks for me on the desk, only my favorite ones—samosas, pakoras, and the fried round balls of flour in sugar syrup called gulab jamuns that were so soothing to the palate, sensual even—her silent acknowledgement for my contribution.
The main character of Soul Searcher baffled me. I kept going to the early part of his life, his life on the streets. It fascinated me, the notion of a child living that way.
And I worked hard, all morning, all afternoon, until the rest of my clan dragged in. Even when I greeted them and made small talk, I carried the haze of unwritten words that blurred my thinking capacity. Some nights, I feverishly worked until dawn, until my fingers cracked and throbbed from the repeated motion of typing.
It was all worth it.
I was committed. I just wasn’t fast.
Those mornings when I finally crashed and tried to steal a few hours of sleep, I was in and out of fragmented, phantasmagoric dreams that made little sense. I saw two red-tongued boys huddled together eating red phalsa berries from a newspaper cone, spitting out the seeds. They cheered the one who made it the farthest or struck an innocent passerby. The neck areas of their long shirts were splattered with wide strips of pink juice dotted with red. I knew them both, and they seemed to fit well together in spirit, not in appearance. One of them was a younger version of Faizan, his hair thicker than I remembered, and unruly. The other was Yavar—the character brought to life for me by Faizan. They both had marks on their faces at varying places, uneven in length.
One of them belonged to the street and the other was responsible for putting him there.
TWENTY-ONE
The man sitting across from me in the waiting area had his head bowed as he looked down at his Italian Edwin Cap shoes. I studied the stranger like you would a person on a subway, stealthily without letting on, not because the person seems interesting to you but only to kill time. He had a sports cap on his head, forehead creased in tension. Clearly his shoes were not on his mind, although at the price he probably paid for them, they should have been. I knew that brand well. I had once seen Faizan check a black pair out at a store and then walk away with the understanding that they were way out of his league.
I was more relaxed at present; this was just a routine ear checkup. Raian didn’t mind going in with the nurses alone, because the place was almost like a second home to him. I was not expecting earth-shattering news that day, so for once I wasn’t nervous, although I felt sympathy for the stranger. At Children’s Hospital, it could only be a father waiting for some news about his child. How many days had I waited in that seat, my heart weak with fear at the certainty that any news they bring me about Raian would be bad? Lately, the challenges had been less. The focus now was more on progress than life; survival wasn’t an everyday issue anymore.
The stranger looked up, probably realizing he was being scrutinized, and our eyes locked. He searched my face for the fear he felt in his heart–– was my child in danger as well? I looked away, giving nothing away, and focused instead on a Van Gogh sunflower print on the wall. I saw him look at me as many people from the continent I come from do, in an attempt to place me. In a world of the ones who belonged, we looked for displaced souls like ourselves—the ones who didn’t quite blend—exhibiting a fervent desire to learn their history. I did, too, and made my own assumptions. I believed he was from Pakistan. And when the nurse called out “Zaki,” my suspicion was confirmed at the familiarity of the name. She conferred with him briefly in a low voice, and he returned to his seat with a sigh, pushing the newspaper he was reading a few feet away. Whatever news he had heard from the nurse had probably not been good.
He and I, I thought to myself, we have no history, no fights, no reconciliations, no repartee over not enough sugar in the tea or forgotten keys in cabs. None, not unless you count sitting across from each other in the waiting room, agonizing over what terrible news the doctor would bring. But history can join us together if I give in a little and inch closer just once and ask him about his children, his life.
He looked claustrophobic and undid the top button of his green shirt. He looked at me again briefly and stood up to walk over. I opened my purse and started fiddling with the contents inside.
“Hi.” His voice was hoarse. I looked up at him. He was sweating and obviously needed to talk to calm his nerves. “This is a strange place, isn’t it?” He cleared his throat and laughed nervously. “My son, he is in there.” He gestured toward the closed door leading to the room where many of my nightmares had been realized.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
He shrugged and sat down next to me, picking up the Glamour magazine in the seat and placing it on his lap. “They’re running some tests. He got hit by a baseball on the side of his head. They’re checking to see if his hearing was affected.”
“I am sorry.” If that’s the only problem the kid has, he is one lucky kid, I thought, but I kept it to myself.
“You?” he asked after a pause.
“My son’s here for a routine ear checkup,” I responded cheerfully. “He finished up and accompanied the nurse to collect his stickers and such. Should be along shortly. He’s been in there awhile.”
At that moment, a nurse appeared with Raian in tow. I pretended not to notice how my companion’s jaw dropped when he saw my child limp his way toward me, making indistinguishable noises and babbling excitedly, his pirate eye patch drawing attention from all corners of the room.
“It was great,” he signed even before he reached me and enveloped me in a clumsy hug.
“Fantastic.” I smiled, pulling back and signing to him. I beamed all around at the many pairs of eyes that were fixed on us in the waiting room. Folks who were until that moment immersed in novel plots or reading about Operation Iraqi Freedom in Time magazine were now our attentive audience. I took Raian’s hand in mine, and we marched out together. I didn’t look back at the stranger. This land still has opportunities for my little trooper. It will assist him in reaching his full potential, his mother cheering all the way.
We stopped for some ice cream afterward. With the many feeding problems Raian had, this was one of the few treats he could enjoy. Cones were difficult for him. The different textures of the ice cream and the cone always made him gag. He liked plain
, even-textured ice cream; strawberry was his favorite. I looked at his face, all pink and milky, and he was the most adorable person to me. Two Iranian women passed by us, scarves on their heads. People looked up from their conversations and stared at the pair. The women appeared unfazed, conversing breezily in Farsi. They paused near our table and smiled at Raian.
“What an adorable boy,” the taller one commented in a heavily accented voice. “What is your name?” she addressed Raian.
“He can’t hear you,” I said in a hurry, wiping his face with a napkin.
They appeared shocked.
Raian signed his name as if on cue and uttered a guttural cry. To me, it was a happy sound. It was perhaps not delivered with an acceptable indoor voice.
“He says it’s Raian,” I offered.
“Little boy with a sunshine smile,” one commented with a nod and resumed walking.
The eyes around the shop had shifted from them to us.
The summer flew away from me in a frenzy of activities. Abu came down for a week, and Zoha joined us a few days later with all three of her children: the very active eight-year-old boy and the two younger girls, spitting images of their mother. By the visit’s end, I was exhausted from entertaining my visitors while working, keeping Raian safe, interpreting constantly for people around me, and fitting in all of Raian’s necessary appointments.
The visit also left a huge mound of new toys in every corner of the tiny apartment.
“We have to find a bigger place just to fit all these things in,” I told Ma. She smiled in understanding. The next day when I came back from work, the place was free from all toy piles. They had been neatly and carefully stored away for easy retrieval in various closets around the apartment.
What would we do without our loved ones? They drive us over the edge and yet bring sanity to our lives.
After awhile, I realized that despite the growing and sometimes receding circle of challenges he faced, Raian was the one who taught me to be a better parent.
Saffron Dreams Page 17