Raian had a special ritualistic signing that began when he woke up in the morning and didn’t end until he fell asleep at night. He had a set of signs he went through, wanting to know exactly where everyone was and what they were doing. He also loved certain shows on TV that he watched after school. He memorized their starting times and validated them continuously with me like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Our endless barrage of signing often ended in a tantrum for him when I refused to sign anymore. I felt like a horrible mother when I did that, but we all needed to rest and refuel.
This is what our typical signing went like:
Raian: Mummy?
Me: At home.
Raian: Raian
Me: At home.
Raian: Dada (Baba)?
Me: At home.
Raian: Dadi (Ma)?
Me: At home.
Raian: Mummy shower?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Raian shower?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Mummy ready?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Raian ready?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Mummy shopping?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Raian shopping?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Mummy sleep?
Me: Yes.
Raian: Raian sleep?
Me: Yes.
That repeated on and on until something new happened. Uncle Rizvi said that Raian’s ritualistic signing is the result of multiple sensory impairments, not mental retardation; it helped regulate himself and the world around him. Raian was missing so much of the sensory information that in our daily lives we took for granted because of his blurry and peripheral vision, hearing aids, people seeming to talk at a whisper, and balance issues. He did not receive the environmental cues that were so normal for us to process. If something was not happening directly to him or with him, he missed most of it. Like many children with special needs, Raian thrived on routine. His life fell apart if that was taken away. Without routine he had no way of knowing what might happen next.
When he was in an obsessive mode, I found it best to leave him alone. If I didn’t, it triggered a stress behavior that he found hard to deal with. I saw his repetitive and sometimes destructive behavior as more than just a compulsion and tried to gauge his mood and perspective before reacting. It required finesse, grace. When he was in that state, he either constantly ran in circles, jumped, spun on his heels, turned the lights on and off in his room, or lightly banged his head against the wall. I let him air it all out to help him cope, all the while keeping a watchful eye on him. When he was done, I usually made him hot chocolate, and we sat on the couch and huddled together, sipping the warm drink. At some level I know he appreciated the space I gave him at those times. Even if his actions hurt him physically, his mental state was more important.
There was commotion on the playground when I walked in. I saw Ms. Suzanna, Raian’s teacher, rush past me with an ice pack and hand it to Raian who pressed it against his bruised left knee.
“What happened?” I asked but it came out more like an accusation. I kneeled down to help Raian hold the ice pack in place. His knee looked red and swollen.
“He collided with another kid and fell against the playscape,” Ms. Suzanna explained, still tending to Raian who grinned at me. “I am okay,” he signed, but his nose was running and I knew that he had been crying.
No, you are not, I thought, upset at the teacher for not being watchful enough, angry at myself for being a few minutes late. Why couldn’t Raian ever catch a break?
“He is okay, just a bit rattled,” Ms. Suzanna offered, looking at my expression, “It’s a very minor bruise.”
I couldn’t get over how upset I was. “Shouldn’t there be more teachers outside watching eleven children?” I asked.
“Not really,” Ms. Suzanna replied a bit annoyed at my reaction to what she probably considered a very small problem. “We usually have only one teacher watching them while they are on the playground.”
I helped Raian wobble to the car and got him in his booster seat. As soon as I got behind the wheel, I began dissecting the situation, trying to figure out other options for Raian in my mind. I felt that the school had failed him in some way. I didn’t realize that Raian was signing to me until he finally slapped his hand against his seat to catch my attention. In the rear view mirror, I saw him gesturing passionately with his arms. I pulled the car over and turned my attention to him.
“What is it?” I signed. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “We learned about Beethoven today,” he signed, brushing away the hair in his eyes.
“That’s great.”
“He was deaf, did you know that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He was a musician but he couldn’t hear his own music.” Raian’s eyes shone with passion.
“He probably felt it with his heart.”
Raian laid a hand against his heart and smiled.
“I feel it too.”
So the music lessons at school were really helping.
“Do you enjoy music at school?” I asked.
Raian nodded. “Can I be a great musician?”
I smiled. “There’s no stopping you, Raian.”
He was quiet for awhile, a hand still against his chest, lost in thoughts.
“Was my father deaf?”
There was a catch in my throat. “No.”
“Was he a good man?”
“He was the best.”
We rode the rest of the way quietly. The school was all right for now, I decided.
I was frantically trying to meet my deadlines at work. The magazine had received another round of funding, and we were putting together a celebration issue, symbolizing our renewed commitment.
The feature I had done on a Pakistani woman politician had to be yanked at the last minute because the interviewee developed cold feet and felt that her comments and outlook would offend others in her circle.
“I feel terrible,” she kept saying, “but my career is very important to me. I will be shooting myself in the foot if I let you run this interview.”
Her comments would have exposed a certain colleague’s financial scams.
I consented but was left with a gaping hole in a magazine that was due to hit press in less than two weeks.
“Why don’t you do a story on your life?” suggested Cyma.
“Huh?”
Cyma raised an eyebrow. “Or would you rather not talk about your life?”
I thought of my child and of body parts strewn in the street, the fire, the chaos. That might be a bit much for the audience’s palate. But comfort is never the goal in reporting. You should present true and hard facts to encourage dialogue and spread information—isn’t that what Cyma always advised?
I told her I’d think about it.
And I thought about it.
What could I talk about?
The traditions I left behind?
My soul mate and his unfinished work in life?
Or the son who made me whole again?
In the end, I wrote about Faizan and our life together. Memories of times spent together washed over me as I wrote—mistyping every now and then, in my rush to get it all on paper. My hand left my mind behind as my pain took over and poured over the pages—agony, crushed youth, fallen dreams, a life wronged. Then I went in to chop and prune, stripping out all emotion. When I started working on draft three, I noticed I was weeding out important facts. I stopped and decided to follow an important rule of writing: let someone else edit your work. I took out the first draft and handed it to Tareeqa, another editor at Chamak, to review the next morning.
A few minutes later when I came out of my cubicle to grab some coffee, I found her at her desk, head bowed over my article.
“Arissa, is this all you?” Her eyes looked pink and puffy as if she had been crying. I didn’t want to believe that it was the result of reading my work. That would be sheer vanity. I nodded and stood by her to peek in close
r. She was on page ten. Four more to go, I calculated.
“It’s amazing,” Tareeqa said. “You never talk about it.”
“It is said that if you don’t talk about loss, you heal faster.”
Tareeqa shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”
“Neither do I.”
“We meet again.”
I turned around at the sound and smiled at Zaki. Strange place to meet, the waiting room of a hospital. He was standing there with an arm around his son, who was looking for an escape route. “This is Safiy.”
“Hi,” the teenager mumbled as his father released his hold on him.
“Hello,” I said briefly and turned to get Raian settled into the chair next to me with the little toy sedan that he had been screaming for on the drive over. It had fallen on the floor in the car and caused major chaos during our commute. I still felt nervous driving, and it usually took all of my concentration just to keep myself and my passenger alive.
Safiy settled across the room with a few auto magazines while Zaki plopped down beside me. “We have to stop meeting like this,” he whispered in my ear, and I jumped.
“Excuse me.” My voice came out a bit sharper than I intended.
Zaki looked flustered. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
His voice trailed off, and I hastened to put him at ease. I wasn’t blessed with savoir-faire either, that uncanny ability to act right in any situation. “Oh no, I didn’t understand—”
We both laughed simultaneously, overlapping each other’s sounds. He reached over to grab a magazine to soften the awkwardness and leafed through an edition of Newsweek.
“I just realized that I don’t know your name,” he said after awhile. “ I am Zaki, by the way.”
“Arissa.”
“Please don’t mind my asking, but I don’t see a ring on your finger,” he said matter-of-factly. His directness caught me totally off-guard.
“Yes, that.” I looked down at my ring finger. My wedding ring had never fit my finger after the pregnancy. My body had outgrown that symbol of my marriage, and I had stopped fretting about it. In time, I retired it to my little jewelry box at home instead of getting it resized. It also made for a lot less explaining at work. When you don’t have a ring but you do have a kid, I found that it shut people up pretty quickly.
“My husband passed away.” I dreaded the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. Did I really want sympathy from a virtual stranger?
“Oh, I am so—”
“Please don’t.” I held up my hand. “It was a long time ago.”
We sat in silence for awhile, looking at Raian, who had moved to the floor and was turning his toy car in a semicircle on the carpet.
“Your son,” Zaki began. “Does he come here often?”
“Every four to six weeks. These are easy appointments to check his hearing. He has multiple problems, and we do many doctor visits. Sadly, this hospital is Raian’s home away from home.”
Why am I telling all this to a stranger? I wondered. Maybe deep down that was my tactic to keep likely suitors at bay. I liked my little cocoon, my comfort zone, where Raian and I formed a perfect circle, leaving no room for anyone else to enter. Abu had dropped several hints, and Ma and Baba had said in no uncertain terms that they would welcome any man who took their son’s place in my life and yet would still remain as involved in our lives as we wanted.
“That sounds tough. Safiy and I are here for a follow-up,” Zaki said. He called out to Raian. “Hello, Raian, are you enjoying your little car?”
Raian didn’t respond.
“He can’t hear you,” I said, smiling at Raian. “He can’t see very well either. We are working on speech but haven’t made giant leaps. The progress is slow and far in between.”
“Oh.” Zaki seemed a trifle shocked. “How do you—?”
“We sign,” I answered hurriedly. “He has peripheral vision.”
Zaki seemed to not comprehend.
I tried to explain by making a few sign gestures. “Signs, you know.” I demonstrated an eating sign. “This is for eating.” I showed him another sign. “This is for more.”
“Wow.”
The silence afterward was so long that I figured our small talk was over and picked up a copy of Health Wise magazine from the side table and started reading. I had a strange habit of starting magazines from the back, like reading in Urdu—a language that is written right to left.
When I heard Raian’s squeal of laughter a short while later, I was surprised to find Zaki on the floor with him, helping him grind the wheels of the car while backing it up so that it sprung forward and gathered speed. I had no idea his little car could do that, and I watched them for awhile, amazed at their silent connection.
“Would you like to have coffee after their appointments are done?” Zaki looked up at me. His eyes were the purest brown, stroked at the top by thick lashes. It was my turn to be flustered at getting caught staring at him. Raian went behind Zaki and enveloped him in a bear hug.
“Sure,” I stammered just as the nurse called Raian’s name. I felt I was not left with a choice in the matter.
I was right. History can be altered—but did I really want that?
Bouillons Café across from the hospital was crowded at midday, bursting with an energy that took many forms and sizes. Sullen teens tried to serve coffee amid debates and vigorous conversations, even some heated exchanges. I looked at the couple sitting across from Zaki and me. From the tensed shoulders of the woman and their gestures, they seemed to be in the middle of some kind of argument. The woman was using her fork to punctuate her sentences while with the other hand she kept sliding back the strap of her dress that kept slipping off her shoulder. At one point, the fork ricocheted off her hand and came to rest on the floor. The man jerked back in his chair as if she had aimed it at him. She glared at him as if he were a moron and bent to pick it up. Our eyes met briefly. She looked away and resumed her animated conversation with her companion.
I tried to bring my attention back to my company.
“We’re having pizza night at our house on Saturday,” Zaki was saying as Raian swiped his dunked cookie and put it in his mouth.
Of course, I had to say yes.
Zaki’s house in River Oaks was just short of a palace. It was one of the few neighborhoods with only one thousand properties, predominately inhabited by successful professionals. Zaki’s house, built on six acres, had its own private lake that could be seen from the covered porch. The huge two-story Colonial had five bedrooms, a tennis court, an indoor swimming pool, and two giant columns that seemed to hold the house erect. The house overlooked a wooded lot with hiking trails. Zaki had mentioned that he was an engineer by profession, electrical, he had emphasized, but had done well in real estate. Clearly an understatement! His sons were twelve and fourteen and were both taller than him. They seemed nice, although in the classic teenage behavior they didn’t have much to say and answered mostly in monosyllables. After dinner they plopped in front of the TV to watch football. Raian sat with us and got busy wolfing down what I had brought from home for him.
“What is that?” Zaki asked, a little grossed out.
I laughed. The semi-liquid yellow broth did look uninviting, but Raian loved it.
“Lentil, rice, and potatoes pureed up.”
“No pizza for him, huh?”
“No.” I ruffled Raian’s head. He gave me a thumbs-up. “Maybe in a few years.” I tried to sound hopeful. I took it slow. Do not expect miracles, I constantly told myself.
While the boys swam after dinner, I rolled up my jeans and dangled my feet at the shallow end of the pool, keeping a watchful eye on Raian, who had recently developed a love for pools. He was doing great and came up to me at one point, interlocking his fingers in mine. Don’t worry about me, Mama, he said with his touch.
How can I not?
We communicated this way often, needing neither signs nor words.
A warm smile flirte
d with the corner of Raian’s lips before he pulled away, a gesture that reminded me of Faizan. My heart stopped briefly. Our world was so different from the rest. Inside our little bubble, the space was concave, pliable; to those outside, it seemed convex. Perhaps we were oddballs to others, but put together we were an enigma.
TWENTY-TWO
“Your eyes are like roadmaps,” Zaki said to me once when we were still getting to know each other, me hesitantly, him excitedly, accelerating the relationship at every chance. “It seems like there is hope, there is refuge in them.”
There is no future in them, I wanted to remind him. Now they were a canvas that was stripped of its colors although I didn’t feel the plainness within.
“I mean that in a good way,” Zaki was quick to point out. “It’s almost as if your emotions live within them and define the depth and the passion that drives you.”
Does white come in shades? I wondered. Technically, is white even a color? At some point in my life, I had grown to accept my colorless life. I accepted that knowing Faizan was like meeting a king for the first time—you take that memory to the grave, even if you never see him again. You die happy. You saw joy once. You were lucky enough. Some never get to meet the king. The luckier ones end up with little princes who follow them around all their lives, a constant reminder of the monarch himself. Who said I was alone?
Zaki and I had fallen into a routine of meeting for coffee every Tuesday at the café across from my office. We had a very unsurprising kind of arrangement. He knew what to order for me. I knew what he would be wearing that day. I knew what made him smile. He knew the topics that irritated me. I knew not to mention the old culture to him, as it didn’t have a big presence in his life. He understood that the numbers in his business baffled me. I looked at our meetings as a chance for two friends to connect who shared a few common interests. Books were not one of them, I had quickly discovered, and neither was art. Coffee and pleasant dialogue were. He was a good listener and very articulate in conversation.
“You know what else is in there?” Zaki continued, looking deep in my eyes, making me feel at once self-conscious and exposed. “A glimpse of all you carry in your heart––your burden that you carry with grace.”
Saffron Dreams Page 18