The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  “Nanima told you?”

  “She told me—last time I saw her in Karachi—that he left her. For another woman. An Englishwoman. How did you know about it?”

  “I met her—the woman that Nana fell in love with.”

  “Fell in love with? That sounds—that’s not the way I would put it.”

  “No?”

  “No. That makes it sound like—like he couldn’t help himself. Like he had no choice.”

  “Maybe he didn’t.”

  Ameena frowned, as what I had told her seemed to register. “You—met her? When—how could you have met her?”

  “In Pakistan. At Zehra’s wedding.”

  “What?! Why didn’t you tell me? How could she—who invited her?”

  “Her daughter—Nana’s daughter—is Zehra’s best friend. They were all invited.”

  “Nana’s daughter? He had a daughter with that woman?”

  “Two daughters. And a son.”

  “I—but—I don’t believe you! How could you not have told me all this?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her question. But I tried anyway. “Since I came back from Pakistan, from Zehra’s wedding—the only time I ever spend with you is when Shuja’s around. You—you’re always so busy—mooning around all the time, sighing over him, planning out his next visit. And with Mummy. Making shopping lists for your trip to Pakistan.” I sounded pathetic, whiny. Mummy and Ameena were going to Pakistan at Christmas, to shop for more jewelry and more clothes than they had collected already.

  “A trousseau fit for a fairy-tale princess,” my mother had declared her goal to be. “It will be the same for you, Saira. When your time comes. Lovely clothes and jewelry. A loving husband. And a lovely life ahead of you.” It was her way of softening the blow—I wasn’t invited to go with them on that trip. “We are going to be there for a whole month—you’re only off from school for two weeks, Saira. Hardly worth it. Besides, you were just there. Don’t pout, Saira. Your lips droop enough as it is.”

  “Aw! Poor Saira!” Ameena was laughing at me.

  My back stiffened, rejecting her sympathy for me the way I had already rejected her pity for Big Nanima. “So, I guess Nanima didn’t tell you everything, did she?” I crowed, eager to fill in the gaps of her knowledge.

  “I guess not. She never told me that Nana had a whole other family. What was she like? The ‘other woman’?” The quotation marks hovered in the air.

  I wrinkled my nose a little, still oddly reluctant to admit the truth of what I had seen. “She was—charming. That’s the perfect word. Everyone was kind of pissed off about Belle being there, at first.”

  “Belle? That’s her name?”

  I nodded. “But then she charmed everyone.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “She talked to me. Told me I look just like Nana.” A thought occurred to me then. “Do you think that’s why Nanima didn’t like me?”

  “Nanima liked you! She loved you!”

  “Not the way she loved you.”

  Ameena didn’t say anything to this. “What were the kids like?”

  “Nice, I guess. I didn’t really interact with them. Zehra and Tara—that’s the oldest daughter—are very close.” I paused, remembering Razia Nani’s fingers. “The second oldest is Adam. And the third one is Ruksana. She’s younger than me.”

  Ameena shook her head, muttering, “That just blows me away.” I saw the realization dawn on her face as she said, “They’re the reason Mummy didn’t go to the wedding?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “They’re her sisters. And her brother.”

  We lapsed into silence.

  Then, “Saira?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You don’t like him.”

  It wasn’t a question. And the use of the pronoun didn’t obscure her reference. But when she said it—just like that, as a matter of fact—I knew it wasn’t true. But I wasn’t ready to admit that yet, maintaining a silence that I knew to be stubborn.

  “He makes me happy, Saira.”

  My throat suddenly filled. I had to wait for a few moments before saying, “I’m glad. I’m glad you’re happy, Ameena. I—it’s not that—he—he’s a nice guy. It’s just that—everything is different. You—you’re going to be married.”

  Ameena nodded, managing to contain her happiness—for my sake, I realized—so that her face remained sober. Sober, with sparkling eyes. The expression that cameras would capture, later, at her wedding.

  “Shuja had an idea, Saira. He noticed—who couldn’t?—that all you talk about is Big Nanima—how she went away to college. I’m guessing that you want to be able to do the same?”

  I nodded slowly, warily.

  “You know Mummy will never let you go.”

  “It’s not fair—it’s what I want more than anything—”

  “I know. You have a few years, still, to convince her. So—Shuja and I thought—we could work on her, too. After we’re married. You should think about applying to schools in the Bay Area. You’ll be far away enough to not be able to live at home. And close enough to us so that it might make it easier for Mummy. To let you go.”

  My eyes widened at the thought. “You think—you think she’d let me—yes, of course, if Shuja said so—” I trailed off on a note of renewed resentment.

  “It was his idea, Saira. He understands how you feel.”

  “I—I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t like him, you know. Not really. He’s impossible not to like. That’s one of the things about him that irritates me so much.”

  “One of the things? You have a list?” Ameena was laughing. She suddenly seemed so—mature. So grown up.

  “Ameena? Are you sure?”

  Her smile faded. She took my hands in hers. “Yes, Saira. I’m absolutely sure.”

  “But—how can you be? So sure?”

  Ameena shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s—I just am. That’s all.”

  We were both quiet for a long moment.

  Then, I pulled my hands away from hers, tucked them behind my head, and asked, “What does it feel like? To be kissed?” I laughed to see my sister blush. She didn’t answer me. But I found out for myself a few months later.

  NINE

  WHEN I STARTED high school in the fall, a month after Ameena’s official engagement, I became a disgustingly dedicated student. Big Nanima’s story had done that for me, given me a focus for achievement that I may have lacked before. The way I saw it, high school was a stepping stone leading to where I was determined to go, where Ameena had given me reason to hope I could go. To college. Away from home.

  I decided I would be the ideal college applicant. Taking the exhortations of our school guidance counselor very seriously when he told us to demonstrate leadership and well-roundedness beyond the classroom, I signed up for every extracurricular activity I could. I was in the Spanish Club, the Young Scientists’ Club, and the Speech Club. I was on the school newspaper, the yearbook, and the literary magazine, too.

  Just after the winter break, when Mummy and Ameena were still in Pakistan, the drama teacher announced that tryouts would be held for the spring production of Grease. As a lowly freshman, I had no hopes of getting in the play. But I tried out anyway, for the role of one of the Pink Ladies. Wary of what my parents would say, I hoped to get the role of Jan—Jan of “brusha-brusha-brusha” fame, whose sexless, side-role status would, I hoped, be cute enough to overcome the objections Mummy would raise to the idea of me performing on stage with boys. I ignored the little voice in my head—the Mummy-impersonator—that said, What about the dance scene? Even Jan has to dance with a boy!

  A week before Mummy and Ameena came back, Mr. Jenkins, our drama teacher, posted the audition results on the door of the school auditorium. I was one of the last of those to elbow my way forward to see them. I stood and stared at the list of cast members for a long time, unable to believe what I saw. My name was up there, next to the name of the character I was slated to play. Rizzo. Rizzo the a
nti-virgin. Rizzo of “false alarm” fame. Who had to swing her hips—no, her pelvis!—around in the Sandra Dee number. In her underwear. Who went around with not one, but two guys. Two guys!

  I don’t know how long I stood there, rooted to that place. Eventually, I turned, hearing congratulations from other students, all older than me. I saw Mr. Jenkins standing in the hallway, surrounded by excited students who were asking about scripts and rehearsal schedules. I waited until they’d dispersed, before approaching him, dragging one foot in front of the other for what felt like an interminable distance.

  “Mr. Jenkins?”

  “Saira. Congratulations!”

  “Uh—thanks. I—I wasn’t really trying out for the part of Rizzo.”

  “I know. But you’ve got it!” He hadn’t noticed yet that he was much more excited than I.

  “But—I—”

  I saw Mr. Jenkins’s eyes narrow. “You know what an honor it is? For a freshman to get such a major part?”

  I think I tried to say something but could only produce a strange sound from somewhere deep in my throat. I nodded emphatically to compensate, to let him know that I understood.

  “You nervous?”

  “I’m—terrified!”

  He laughed. “That’s not how you came across at the tryouts. Don’t worry. You’ll do fine.”

  I nodded again. And backed away from him, unable to say what I knew I should. That there was no way I could play Rizzo. That I wouldn’t live long enough to do it anyway, if my mother found out.

  I went home. And fretted. Sometime in the night, as I stared up at the ceiling of my room, tracing the crags and crevices that were cast by the shadows of my bedside lamp, it hit me. What Mr. Jenkins had tried to convey. This wasn’t a bad thing. It was something to be proud of. But there was no way I could find to convince my mother of this. I thought about not telling her at all, but discarded the idea pretty quickly—there was no way I could not tell my mother I was involved in the play. Because between now and spring, I would have to stay after school, even beyond the hour or two for which she had grudgingly granted permission to accommodate my extracurricular fervor.

  “Why?” she had asked. “Why do you have to join all of these clubs, Saira? One club, two clubs I can understand. But you have to stick your nose into everything that’s going on in school? I don’t like it. I don’t like you spending so much time there, away from home. Ameena didn’t join all of these clubs. She was a good student also.”

  But telling Mummy that I was in the play wasn’t possible either. Because then she would ask what role I was playing and what that role called for. So, I decided, I would tell her that I was the stage manager, that I had to be there for all of the rehearsals. She had never had reason to doubt my word before.

  A week later, when she and Ameena came back from Pakistan, she accepted my story with only a sigh and a grumble—and signed the blank permission slip distractedly, without question. She had other things on her mind. Ameena and Shuja had asked permission to be married in the summer, a year ahead of schedule. There was a wedding to plan—“a million things to do!” My deception was easy to carry out.

  I stayed after school until five o’clock every day for two and a half months. I learned my lines. Got over those first few days of paralyzing shyness. Mastered the Sandra Dee number. And worked on my solo. I kissed Kenickie—only stage kisses, true. But kisses all the same. And danced with the Scorpion. Every day for two and a half months.

  A whole new world opened up for me. We in the cast were a kind of family. We’d pass each other in the hallways, we who had been strangers before, and smile, wave, hug. We were a federation of very divergent states—a microcosmic cross section of the often contentious population of our school. There were jocks among us, and cheerleaders. Band geeks and science freaks. There were people like me, people who were too lowly, too anonymous, to even be noticed by those who were more easily typecast into the clearly defined factions that formed the makeup of our daily lives in high school. We were all the objects of Mr. Jenkins’s perverse sense of humor—pawns that he cast against type, turning shy, repressed, insecure teenagers into flamboyant sluts on the stage. Nerds were cast as icons of cool while a famous pothead became a jock. All of us were given the opportunity to walk in each other’s moccasins in a play that provided the perfect context for such role-reversals. Grease, with all of its stylized reinforcement of classic American stereotypes that still held true at the end of the eighties, became a deep metaphor for life for all of us.

  I loved playing Rizzo. I loved her rebellious nature, loved that she was the smartest character in the whole play. Someone who knew and understood the social order of Rydell High better than anyone else—all of its rules, which she flouted in the pursuit of happiness. She suffered the consequences, but it was a price she was willing to pay. She was nobody’s victim. I borrowed Rizzo’s cynical view of the world and made it a part of who I would become.

  Those days of preparation, practice, rehearsals—those were the high points of my life so far. Any fears I may have had about these two worlds colliding—the world at home, Mummy’s world, with the world at school, which was my own—were completely submerged in a heightened kind of awareness of myself as something more than what I had been before.

  But they did collide. As I suppose I knew they would. In the process, I hurt my mother by my deceit. At a level that I think she never quite recovered from.

  Mummy asked, a few weeks into rehearsals, about coming to see the play.

  “You don’t have to come, Mummy. I’m just the stage manager.”

  “But you’ve been working so hard, Saira. We want to see it, too. To see the stage and the costumes you have been working on.”

  I had paused, not wanting to protest too much. “I’ll get you tickets.”

  She smiled, satisfied.

  A few weeks before the play, at the dinner table, on an evening when Shuja was in town, she asked again, “Did you get the tickets for your school play? Because Shuja and Ameena said they would like to come, too. I hope it’s not too late?”

  Again, I had paused. Just for a second, before slapping my hand on my forehead. “I totally forgot to even get your tickets! Oh, no! I—I think they’re all sold out. I’m sorry.”

  The second had been long enough. I had seen the glimmer of a suspicion born in my mother’s eyes. But it was gone, aborted, before its first breath could be drawn and I was witness, for the first time, to the power of parental denial. Curiosity stifled out of fear. “Sold out? Oh, Saira! We all wanted to see it.”

  “I’m sorry. Next time.”

  She was looking down at her plate, forming her next bite, and didn’t look up as she said, “Yes. Next time.”

  I looked away from her, guiltily, to find Ameena watching me, her eyes squinting. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again.

  I wasn’t surprised when Ameena pursued the subject again later that night. She’d been out of high school for less than a year, after all, and knew that tickets for school plays were usually still available at the door. She came to the doorway of my room a little while after Shuja left, stood with her hands on her hips for a moment, and then entered, closing the door carefully behind her before asking what she had refrained from asking in front of Shuja and my parents: “Saira—why did you lie to Mummy?”

  Having anticipated this conversation since dinner, I had already decided to come clean with Ameena—to throw myself at her mercy. “I had to. I—I’m in the play, Ameena.”

  She blinked. “In the—in the play?!”

  I covered my face with my hands and spilled it all out, the whole story. How I had tried out for the part of Jan, how Mr. Jenkins had cast me as Rizzo. I looked up at her as I revealed this, the most shocking part, and saw her mouth fall open and stay that way for the rest of my explanation.

  All the way until I asked, a little desperately, “Are you going to tell, Ameena? Are you going to tell Mummy?”

  “I—I
don’t know what to say, Saira. I can’t believe it—you—you know she’s going to kill you!”

  I buried my face again. “I know! I know! But I can’t drop out now. There’s only two weeks left before the show! I can’t drop out—I—the whole school would—I would die, Ameena!”

  “Either way, Saira, you’re dead!”

  “Ameena—you know I can’t drop out. You know I can’t.”

  Ameena’s silence gave me hope.

  “You won’t tell, will you? You can’t! Please, Ameena! I—I promise—no more plays! Just let me get through this one. I promise.”

  “I—Saira—it’s not just about staying out of trouble! How could you?! You—Rizzo, Saira? Rizzo! She’s—she’s a slut! The whole play—Grease—the whole story—it’s—so inappropriate! What is Mr. Jenkins thinking, anyway?”

  I forgot all about my own dilemma and the need to be contrite and hollered out, in defense of Mr. Jenkins and in defense of the play, “What?! What’s wrong with the play? It’s a great play!” as if I had been personally attacked.

  “A great play?! It’s horrible! Cheap and immoral! And degrading! To women!”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes! The main character—Sandy. She’s a nice, sweet, innocent girl who has to go and dress like a slut to please the man she loves. And somehow that’s supposed to be liberating.”

  “That’s not what the story is about!” I was thinking of my part, of Rizzo. And I felt my hackles rise.

  “Yes it is! What it boils down to, anyway.”

  “But—you can’t! You can’t boil it down like that. I mean, there’s so much more to it. It—it’s about Adolescence! And Innocence!” I could hear my own capitalization. “It’s about America and Individualism—and the Struggle against Authority—and Freedom, to be your own Person!”

  Ameena laughed scornfully. “So—Sandy becoming a slut in the end—like those other girls—that’s about being her own person? Pleasing her boyfriend? Becoming what he wants her to be?”

  “But—but—”