The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  I took it from him. And skimmed through the words without reading them. I can’t even remember the headline, my eyes caught and held by the small letters of the byline. Dawood Qader.

  Mohsin spoke on. “Four months later, Dada wrote, ‘I have borne many losses in my lifetime—two children, two wives, so many comrades. Never have I faced a moment so bleak, never have I shuddered with such convulsions of despair. After so many little victories, mixed in outcome, to be sure, it seems that all is lost, that the forces of injustice have finally won.’”

  “What was he talking about?”

  “Gandhi’s assassination. But Dada followed his own advice. He didn’t waver from his purpose.” Mohsin paused and then licked his finger, using it to turn more pages as he said, “Over the next ten or twelve years, Dada had his finger in all kinds of projects—women’s literacy programs, workers’ rights bills, child labor laws, health clinics, housing development.

  “My dad grew up. He went into law. Dada was very proud of him, when he graduated. First class, first. He went to work at a law firm—the senior partner was an old friend of Dada’s. He started out doing research and writing briefs for the senior barristers. And then he tried his first case. From what I gather”—Mohsin was still thumbing through the pages of Dada’s journal—“he didn’t do too well.” There was an unsympathetic note of humor in his voice—one that came at my uncle’s expense. Mohsin stopped turning pages. “Dada wrote, ‘The boy is more like his father than he would care to admit. Ahmed’s courtroom delivery lacks fire. My own lack of oratory skill kept me happily occupied behind the scenes for all of my life, a foot soldier in all of the projects I involved myself with. Yet Ahmed cannot reconcile himself to the lack of glory that such a role might entail. He has taken it to heart and is dejected, despite all of my efforts at consolation.’ Eventually, my dad found his niche. In an area that Dada did not approve of. Tax law. Specifically, loophole-hunting. ‘Ahmed has become a first-class lackey, finding ways to enrich the very robber barons I have worked against all of these years, helping them to hold on to their ill-gotten gains, to increase their excesses, instead of sharing with the sweat and blood that earns it for them.’

  “My father became indispensable at the firm, generating huge amounts of money from rich, corrupt clients. They must have fought about it. A lot. Until, finally, my father ran away to England. Where he’d been offered a job at a bank, Saif Bank, owned by one of the robber barons Dada had no respect for. A Pakistani banker.” The corners of Mohsin’s mouth curved up. “My other grandfather. Dada and Dad broke off all communication.” Mohsin bent his head again. “‘With disgust, I wash my hands of the boy. In vain have I reminded him of his duties and obligations. He has been seduced by power and wealth and has turned his back on all that matters.’ Dad married the boss’s daughter—my mum—a year later. There’s a letter here, from my dad. Informing Dada of his engagement, inviting Dada and Dadi to a reception that was to be held in Bombay. The main wedding was in Pakistan. Your parents met each other at the reception in Bombay.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “And Dada must have attended, too. Because my dad sent him this really angry letter afterward.” Mohsin had pulled out another piece of paper. “Let me read you a bit.” Mohsin took a second to scan down the page. “This is the line that gets me—‘Given an opportunity to make peace, to let bygones be bygones, you, sir, chose to make a mockery of yourself and our family by turning up at the wedding in rags.’” Mohsin was chuckling as he folded up the letter from his father and put it back into the pages of the journal. “Can you imagine? Showing up in rags?” He shook his head. “God! My dad must have blown a bloody fuse!”

  Then the smile faded from Mohsin’s face. “Within a year or two, your mum and dad were married. And they went off to America.”

  “My dad came to America to study medicine—to make a better life for himself and my mom—!” I spit the words out, trite as they were, the product of years of public school social studies indoctrination about the strength of a nation built on immigrant stories like my parents’. But I was struck, for the first time, by the implication of what they meant from another perspective, from that of my grandfather and Mohsin.

  “They had medical schools in India.”

  “But—he wanted to specialize—the opportunities—he—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guess there were no sick people in India? And that’s why he never came back? Like he promised his dad he would?”

  “He—? How do you know—?”

  “It’s all right here. In this letter Nadeem Chacha wrote to Dada. From America, shortly after your sister was born.” Mohsin pulled a blue airmail envelope out from near the back of the journal. He handed it to me.

  I held it, noting my father’s handwriting on the outside, the return address in Los Angeles. After a long pause, I pulled out the tissue-paper letter it contained and read the letter.

  September 14, 1969

  My dear Papa,

  I hope this letter finds you in good health and bright spirits. I apologize for the infrequency of my correspondence and know that you will be wondering at my reasons for writing now.

  Shabana and the baby are well. You will have heard of the continuing scandal in Shabana’s family. Her father remains in England. Her mother has shifted to Pakistan permanently. The situation is awkward, to say the very least.

  I am nearly finished with my residency, which is progressing well. I have decided to follow up my residency training with more practical experience. I feel that the opportunities here, the chance to work with the very latest techniques and technologies, under the supervision of some of the best doctors in the world, will be invaluable and unavailable back home.

  I want to reemphasize my commitment to return to India, to carry on the legacy of service that you have inspired. Employment here will only enhance my ability to do so. In addition, I will be earning a significant salary, when compared to what I will be able to earn back home. Such savings will be especially important for us when Shabana and I return home to establish our household now that we have begun our family.

  I know that you might not agree with my plans, but I hope at least that you understand and believe that my motivations are not based solely on monetary consideration. With this in mind, I have accepted an offer of employment, to begin upon graduation, at a highly reputable hospital and in practice with a first-class medical team, which will afford me a wide range of experience and help to maximize the further development of my skills. Shabana and I have set a limit of five years for our time here. I hope you understand this decision. It has not been made lightly.

  Shabana sends you her salaams.

  Affectionately,

  Nadeem

  I looked up at Mohsin, a million stray thoughts rushing through my head. It was the first time I had ever considered my father as a whole person. A person who was born and lived and made choices before there was a me, before he was my father or Ameena’s. I thought about other choices he might have made. About what those other choices might have meant for me and my life.

  I shook my head to clear it, remembering Big Nanima’s words: There’s no if. There is only what is. What was. What will be. “What about Dadi?”

  “She was already dead. Right after your parents were married.”

  I nodded, having suspected as much already. “How long after this did Dada die?”

  “He died a couple of months after receiving that letter from your dad. Just after Mehnaz and I were born.” Mohsin turned the pages of the journal again. And pointed to the date on the page where he stopped. December 15, 1969. “That’s our birthday. Mine and Mehnaz’s. A few weeks before he died. See what he wrote?” He pushed the journal into my hands for the first time, forcing me to read the passage for myself:

  On this day was born my grandson, Mohsin. An auspicious birth, he brought with him a sister. It is on your shoulders, my son, that I rest all of my hopes for the future. Do not fail me in your efforts for
what is right and what is just. Bear witness to their opposite, to evil and injustice, which are one and the same. Bear witness so that they may not be committed with impunity. Whatever path your journey takes, do not succumb to the seduction of indifference to suffering, which authorizes evil.

  I looked up, stunned. I muttered, “Bear witness—bear witness. That’s what you meant. Mohsin—this is—this is awesome.”

  “It is a bit, isn’t it?” Mohsin cleared his throat.

  “He must have been so lonely at the end. After a whole life of sadness and sacrifice.”

  “Yeah. Like something out of a tragic play.”

  “I see my son is filling your head with nonsense, Saira.” Mohsin and I both started, hearing the voice intrude on us from behind. We turned, hearts racing, to see Ahmed Chacha standing in the doorway to the room, another glass of ice and amber liquid in hand. His eyes rested on the journal I held for a moment, before he entered the room and walked toward the window, parting the curtains to take a look at the driveway in front. “Mehnaz is not in her room. Where is the car? Where is your sister, Mohsin?” His voice was controlled. But there was a steely note to it that made me pity Mehnaz.

  “She met up with some friends. Saira and I came home on the tube.”

  Ahmed Chacha was still standing at the window, holding the edge of the curtain. “You let her go?” He used his glass to point at the clock on the mantle. I saw that it was past 1:00 AM. “Is this any time for a young girl to be out on her own?”

  “I’m not her keeper.”

  “No.” Ahmed Chacha sneered, waving his arm at the letter and journal in my hands. “No. Not hers. You’re much too busy preserving the past, I see, keeping the memory of long-forgotten nonsense alive. Much more important than your living, breathing sister.” Ahmed Chacha turned to me and shook his head, “You see, Saira, what a contradiction my children are? One is obsessed with ancient history, taunting me with irrelevancies of the past—the other bent on flouting the obligations of her culture and heritage with no regard for her own future.”

  “Maybe she’d care more about her future if you gave her something to be proud of from the past.” Mohsin had stood up, as if to back up his verbal challenge with a physical one.

  “Something to be proud of? You think that your grandfather is something to be proud of? A man who abandoned his own family, time and again, for some useless crusade of justice? What did he ever accomplish? Nothing! I was only a few months old when my mother died—a horrible, untimely death that he was responsible for. What kind of husband sends his wife into the slums to her own death? That is not what makes a man, Mohsin. A man is someone who provides for his family and protects them. It is easy to talk of ideals in the abstract when you are young. When you have nothing to lose. My father was not in this position. His obligation was to his family.”

  Mohsin didn’t say anything. But his silence was no concession. I knew I was witness to an argument that had not just begun.

  Ahmed Chacha sighed. He took a sip of his drink and shook his head. “Your fixation with impractical notions of justice is all right now. But eventually you must grow up and become a man.”

  “A man like you?”

  “Don’t you sneer at me! Don’t you hold up that poor excuse of a father as an example of light to your impressionable young cousin! My father was a fool who chased after an imaginary, utopian world. He lived in his head, with a bunch of ideals for company—useless ideals that feed no one and which make the world dangerous. I swore that I would never be like him—that I would work hard. In the real world. To provide. You have never felt the lack of a single thing in your life, you and Mehnaz, you spoiled brats! Yet you would criminalize these things—making wealth a crime instead of the blessing that it is, like some damned communist!”

  “First of all, your premise is wrong. Dada lived in the real world, too. He faced up to it. Instead of shrugging his shoulders, hiding his head away in the sand, grabbing what comfort he could for himself.”

  “Faced up to it? He wasted his life!”

  “Not the way I see it.”

  “Tilting at windmills. You think any of these damned fool ideologues ever actually achieved anything?”

  “That’s not the point. It’s the journey they took that mattered. The destination is the same for all of us.”

  “None of that mumbo-jumbo abstraction, if you please! You think the British ran away because of a little brown man in a loincloth and his friends? The British left because it was in their interest to leave. That is how the world works. That is how change happens. Self-interest. To work against one’s own interest for some imaginary cause of justice is to be a fool.”

  Mohsin shook his head. “You tell yourself that. If it helps you to sleep at night. I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to eat the food I’ve snatched out of the hands of others.”

  “Then go hungry, you fool!”

  I don’t know where the argument would have turned next. The sound of a car on the drive, the flash of headlights through the crack of the curtains shifted my cousin’s attention—and his father’s. A few seconds later, we heard Mehnaz enter the house. Ahmed Chacha left the room to meet her at the door, and another loud argument began. She stomped up the stairs, her father trailing after her, both of them yelling and screaming back and forth.

  Mohsin and I stared at each other for a long moment. I looked down, in surprise, to find Dada’s journal still in my hands.

  “You said you found this—the trunk—in the attic?”

  He nodded. “Last year. It has loads of other stuff in it—Dada’s—that someone had packed up and shipped over to my dad. He never even bothered to open it.” There was quiet outrage in Mohsin’s voice, and disgust. “There’re pictures in there. Pictures of his first wife. Of my grandmother—my real grandmother. And Dadi. Little Gulshan. And Dawood Chacha. Our dads, too, from when they were kids. And letters. From so many people, some of them famous. In India, you know. Letters from my dad. That one you read from yours. And this diary.”

  “Can I see them all?” I asked, standing up—yawning and stretching—my body betrayed again by the adverse effects of jet lag.

  Mohsin smiled. “I’ll show you the rest tomorrow. You can take some of the pictures with you, if you like. Until then—” He took the diary back from me, thumbing through it again until he found what he was looking for and said, “Here’s a picture of him. Our grandfather. He must have been in his twenties when that one was taken.”

  It was small, the size of a passport picture. And black-and-white, of course. Even so, the resemblance was eerie.

  I was quiet for a long moment, studying the picture, before saying, “Mohsin? You know you look just like him?”

  “I did notice a resemblance.”

  “But then, you are just like him, aren’t you? I mean in more ways than looks?”

  “You think so? Well, there are some very significant differences. Trust me.” He was laughing, amused at something he didn’t share.

  I turned back to face the wall of photographs, looking for and finding Magda. Magda in winter, Magda in the rain. Mohsin had taken pictures of her—as he had that evening—from across the street, from an angle close to the ground, at the same level she sat. The legs of passersby were in some of the shots, in motion, on their way here or there. One shot showed someone stopping to drop some money into her lap. Another showed a child, eye-level with Magda, tugged along by the hand of an adult, dragging his heels as his eyes connected with the old woman who smiled at him shyly.

  “I wonder where Magda is right now. How she lives. What her story is.”

  “Magda. It’s funny, that,” Mohsin said. “I never knew her name until tonight. Until you talked to her. Most people don’t see her at all—not as a person.”

  “I wouldn’t have seen her either. If you hadn’t stopped to take her picture.”

  “But that’s all I ever did. She was just an image—something I saw from behind the lens of my camera. Now she h
as a name. You have a way about you, you know. Cousin Saira. A way of drawing people out. You pay attention.”

  “But we still don’t know anything about her. None of the details of her life.”

  “We know her name. That’s something.”

  EIGHT

  I CAME HOME FROM that summer in Karachi and London—head swimming with the voices of a reconstructed past, full of a self-importance I couldn’t wait to share—only to find that my family had been busy arranging the future in my absence. Ameena’s future, at any rate.

  At the airport, after a quick hug, my mother began, “Your sister is engaged! To a doctor! He’s an Indian boy, finishing up his residency in San Francisco. From a very good family in Bombay. We are so excited! We didn’t want to tell you the good news on the phone. So we decided to wait and surprise you. Isn’t it wonderful? It will be a long engagement, of course. Your sister is still very young. Two years at least—though I suppose it all depends on how long we can keep them apart, eh Ameena? Well, Saira, aren’t you going to congratulate your sister?” Mummy was breathless from excitement. I was breathless from shock, looking from one dearly missed face to another for some sign that my mother had developed a rather disconcerting sense of humor in my absence. There was none.