The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  Under cover of all of this commotion, Mehnaz leaned close to say, “You’re here ’til the end of the week? Mohsin wants to see you. Can you meet him day after tomorrow at Hyde Park? Speakers’ Corner? At noon?”

  I looked around nervously and nodded, wondering what excuse I’d give to get away from my parents.

  But my cousin had thought of that. In a cozy voice, loud enough to be heard above the howls of her children, Mehnaz said, “Shabana Chachi, I was just telling Saira that I’d love to take her shopping. Day after tomorrow.” Mehnaz turned to me smoothly, pointedly, “Shall we meet at noon? At St. John’s Wood Station?”

  I nodded again and saw my mother do the same, happily absorbed in my uncle’s grandchildren, patting their heads a little wistfully. Pestering Ameena to provide her with grandchildren had become a hobby.

  A little while later, in the minicab that took us to the tube station, I couldn’t help but wonder out loud why my father and his brother had so little to say to each other. “Daddy? You and your brother—you’re not very alike, are you?”

  My father shushed me, pointing with his head in the direction of the Sikh cab driver seated in front of us. I smiled to myself, thinking of Razia Nani and the awful time I had restraining the urge to shush her the last time I had been in London, on my way to Karachi—realizing for the first time where my own theory of diminished desi degrees of separation may have originated. When we got out of the cab at the station, I looked across the street at the place where Magda had sat. There was no one there now.

  I turned back to my father and tried again, “You and Ahmed Chacha are very different, aren’t you, Daddy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t seem to have much to talk about. Is it because you’re only half brothers?”

  “We never thought of ourselves as half brothers! We’re brothers. Bas.”

  “But, you’re so different. You wouldn’t have thrown Mohsin out in the cold if he were your son. Would you?”

  Daddy shrugged.

  Mummy said, “Really, Saira. Out in the cold. As if his grandfather hadn’t left him a nice pot of money.”

  “Yeah, but he’s still been kicked out of the family.”

  “It’s true that your Ahmed Chacha has been very harsh—but it is not something that anyone could have expected him to accept easily.”

  I ignored Mummy and focused back on my father. “And you don’t seem to have anything to talk about. With Ahmed Chacha.”

  Daddy shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t have much in common, I suppose.”

  “Ameena and I don’t have much in common. But we still talk. We’re still close.”

  “That’s different, Saira. You’re sisters. It’s different with men,” Mummy said with a smug tone, one I had noticed before, when she’d brag about how close she was to her sisters, despite the miles that separated them.

  Our train pulled in and we boarded.

  MY MOTHER’S SUPERIOR assertions were tested the next day, when I woke up to the sound of an argument taking place between her and her sister. It was still raging when I shuffled into Jamila Khala’s kitchen after brushing my teeth hastily and washing the sleep out of my eyes.

  “Oof, Shabana! Stubborn, stubborn, you’ve always been stubborn! He’s been dead for so many years! Today of all days—enough is enough! I insist that you come with me!”

  “I will not, Jamila!”

  My father came into the kitchen, apparently oblivious to the sounds of shouting that I had woken to, placed an empty teacup in the sink, and said, “That was excellent tea, Jamila. You should teach your sister how to make tea the way that you do.” When no one answered him, he looked up and around, took in the stony expressions on the faces of his wife and sister-in-law, the puzzled look on my face, and made a hasty retreat, mumbling something about what a good cricket game there was on television.

  “Who are you trying to punish, Shabana? A dead man? You’re only hurting yourself with this grudge you won’t let go of. Everyone has made their peace. Lubna went to the kabrastan last time she came. Just go and say Fateha at his grave, Shabana. For your own sake. Let go of the past.”

  “I cannot. For Amee’s sake, I cannot forget. You may have forgotten what he did to Amee—you and Lubna also, keeping up with that woman and her children, treating them like family—but I will not!”

  “Oof-ho! You act as if it was you he abandoned! What he did to Amee—that had nothing to do with any of us, Shabana. You were not even there. You had gone to America already, begun your life with Nadeem. He didn’t leave you. He left Amee.”

  “He left Amee and forgot all about me, Jamila. You don’t know what it was like for me—alone in a new country, dying from homesickness, waiting for them to come and visit, when I heard what he’d done. How can you know what I felt? As if I had lost both of my parents. Especially later, when I became pregnant. You had Amee and Aba with you when you delivered Zehra. When I had Ameena, I had no one. No friends, no family. Just Nadeem and me in that hospital full of strangers. Ameena was two years old before I was able to go and visit Amee. In Pakistan. He threw Amee out of her home and I lost mine, also, because of it. Pakistan was never my home. But he left me no home to visit in India.”

  “Oh, Shabana. You never gave him a chance. He wrote to you so many times. You never answered his letters. He talked to me about it, was so hurt that you never wrote to him. He was human, Shabana. Only human. And that is why you are so angry with him. Because you thought of him as perfect—you worshipped him, Shabana! More than any of us ever did. That is why you have to come with me today, on his birthday. I only go to his grave twice a year. On his birthday and on his death anniversary. And I think that your being here, in London, in my house, today—it’s like it was meant to be, Shabana. I will not take no for an answer.”

  “You have no choice. I am not coming.” Mummy turned to me. “Go get ready, Saira. We’ll go shopping while Jamila Khala is gone. I have to buy some chocolates for everyone in Karachi, a sweater for Big Nanima, and Lubna Khala wanted me to buy her some bras from Marks and Spencer. Ask your father if he wants to go with us.”

  Having measured the mood of his wife on his brief foray into the kitchen, my father had decided to make a day of it in front of the television and declined to come with us. I decided to brave the scowl on Mummy’s face, to go with her, in the hope of hearing more about the subject that had—after so many years—finally ruptured open in my aunt’s kitchen.

  It turned out to be a strangely portentous decision on my part. If I hadn’t gone with Mummy, she might have gone shopping alone or not at all. And then what happened, a reckoning of sorts, which Mummy had tried to duck out of, might not have taken place.

  Mummy and I got on a bus to the West End. We sat downstairs with a clear view of all of the passengers who got on and off at each stop during the long ride into the city. At one stop, a young woman got on the bus. She flashed her pass to the driver as she boarded and stopped short in the aisle when our eyes met.

  “Saira?”

  I had seen her already, without registering the vague sense of familiarity that had tickled my mind. I knew who she was as soon as she said my name.

  “Ruksana?”

  She had to move over, leaning in closer to Mummy, who sat in the aisle seat, to let another passenger pass. I was farther away, by the window.

  Five years had passed since I’d last seen her. But I knew who she was. Mummy’s youngest sister. The one who looked most like the father they shared.

  “Oh my God! How long has it been? What are you doing here? Is this—your mother?”

  I looked at Mummy, wondering, for a second, if she knew who stood beside her. The pursed lips, the pinched eyes gave me my answer. I didn’t know what to do.

  Ruksana had answered her own question: “Shabana? Oh my God! Can you imagine? What are the odds that we’d meet like this? Are you staying with Jamila?”

  Mummy’s lips tightened even more, hearing this stranger refer to
her sister with such familiarity.

  I stepped in, finally. “Yes. With Jamila Khala. How are you? And Tara and Adam? And—how are you all?”

  “Very well. I—this is ridiculous—we can’t talk here! Let’s get off of this bus and go get some tea or something.”

  I looked at my mother, who sat, staring at Ruksana, still frozen.

  Tentatively, I said, “Mummy?”

  She didn’t look at me, her eyes still on Ruksana. “You look like him.”

  Ruksana reached her hand down to take my mother’s. Then she moved her hand to press the yellow stop request button, ringing the bell, saying, “I know just where we’ll go—they have the best scones, freshly made. Very English.” She was smiling when she took my mother’s hand again, leading her off the bus when it stopped. I followed them, listening to Ruksana, who chatted on as we walked, “He would have been seventy-seven today. And this is the best birthday gift he could have asked for. I wish Tara were here, and Adam, too. She’s in Paris, with her husband and kids. And Adam’s off in Greece. On holiday. Here we are.” We had reached a quaint little tea shop, which Ruksana led us into. She ushered us over to a table by the window and sat us down, both Mummy and I pliant in her managing wake. “I was just on my way home from college. I live there, at college, but I wanted to be with Mum. So that she wouldn’t be alone today.” A young woman came to take our order. “Right. We’ll have—is tea all right for everyone?” I nodded. Ruksana glanced at Mummy, took in the blank expression still on her face, and turned back to the server. “We’ll have a pot of tea for all of us to share. And some scones, please. And can I have a few extra for takeaway? Thanks.” Ruksana turned and looked at me as the server walked back to the counter. “I still can’t believe it! To just bump into you like that on the bus!” She turned to my mother, taking her hand again. I saw my mother flinch just a little, not enough for Ruksana to notice. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally be able to meet you. And today of all days—like it was meant to be! Now, I finally get to see the sister who was Aba’s favorite daughter.”

  Still tongue-tied, Mummy shook her head slightly.

  “Yes, you were! Mum always said so and Aba never denied it. Do you know that all of our bedtime stories, the ones that Aba would tell us when he tucked us in at night, they were all about you and Jamila and Lubna? He told us about the little kitten that you rescued, do you remember it? Mothi was its name, wasn’t it? And the time that your cousin Masood bought a little chick but was too scared of it to hold it. Aba said you were the one who ended up taking care of it. And then Masood finally screwed up the courage to hold it one day and it jumped out of his hands and a crow swooped down and caught it and devoured it all up in just a few minutes. Aba said you cried and cried, Shabana. And we all cried, too, just hearing about how upset you were.

  “Oh—Tara is going to be so jealous! That I’m the one who met you first. She’s the one who’s good at keeping up with everyone—asking about you and Saira and Ameena from Jamila. She’s been back to Pakistan twice more since that trip when you were there, Saira. Did you know she’s married to a Pakistani? Like Lubna. It was quite a dramatic thing—the way they had to fight his family. They’re very conservative and didn’t like that Tara is half-English. But she won them over in the end. And now she’s become quite a good Muslim—she reads the Quran—I don’t think any of us ever picked up a Quran the whole time we were growing up—and fasts in Ramadan and prays five times a day and everything. She’s more religious than her husband is!” Ruksana laughed and I had to laugh, too, without really finding anything that she said to be funny.

  She talked on and Mummy and I sat, both of us forming separate impressions of the plump, vivacious young woman who sat across from us at the small table now laden with a pot of tea, cups and saucers, and a plate piled high with scones. Her skin was darker than Mummy’s, a shade of gold that set her apart from the other white, English patrons in the tea shop, but which still did not look desi. Her eyes and short, straight hair were only slightly lighter than the dark, dark brown of ours. She was wearing a camel-colored skirt that ended just above the knee, sensible-looking shoes and stockings, and a ruffled blouse topped with a blazer that matched her skirt, all combined to create an effect that was a little older than I knew her age to be and yet very attractive all the same.

  I realized that Mummy and I had both said nothing since we’d first seen her on the bus and that one of us had better start talking so that Ruksana wouldn’t start to doubt our social abilities—something she obviously had no problem with.

  “Um—so, Tara’s in Paris? On vacation?”

  “No—she lives there. Has lived there for the last three years. The kids speak better French than they do English. They speak Urdu, too. Better than I do.” The corners of Ruksana’s lips turned down wryly in an expression that was disconcertingly similar to one I had seen on my mother’s face.

  “And Adam? What does he do?”

  “He works with a public relations firm here in London. Political consulting mostly. I think he’s assigned to Labor nowadays, but it’s a fickle business and I know he’s done work for the Tories, too—Mum doesn’t approve.” Finally, Ruksana stopped to take a breath, a sip of tea. As she did, her eyes moved back and forth between Mummy’s face and mine before settling on me, finally. “Mum was right. Last time we saw each other, we were both kids, weren’t we? She said we looked alike. But I didn’t see it then. Now I do. I don’t think anyone could doubt that we’re related—aunt and niece.”

  I laughed now, not just to keep her company this time. “I don’t think anyone would guess that. You’re younger than me!”

  “Only by a couple of years, yeah?”

  I turned to look at my mother, to check if she was all right, without being too conspicuous about my concern. Her eyes were a little less pinched at the corners, her lips relaxed a bit as they opened delicately to take a sip of her tea.

  Ruksana had turned to her, too. “You don’t favor Aba at all, do you? You must look like your mum. You certainly are beautiful. And Aba was always talking about how beautiful your mother was.”

  Mummy nearly choked on the sip. “He—talked about my mother?”

  “Oh, yeah. How could he not? He talked about all of you—he had to talk about your mum, too, didn’t he?”

  “How do you remember all of this? You must have been just a child when he died.” I shrank a little at the accusatory note in my mother’s voice.

  But Ruksana, still cheerful, didn’t seem to notice. “I was ten. And I remember everything I’ve told you about. But there’s more to know, I’m sure, that you could hear if you talked to Tara and Adam. And my mother.”

  Mummy had nothing to say to this. We all sat around the table in silence, watching each other. I wondered what was going through Ruksana’s head—whether this was all as lovely and nice for her as she was making it out to be. But there was nothing insincere about her that I could trace—and I was trying hard to look for some kind of inconsistency.

  “Shabana?” Ruksana had my mother’s full attention already, but she said Mummy’s name in a tone so sweet and tentative that I felt my mother brace herself beside me for what would follow. “I know that my mother would love to meet you. It was—she’s always regretted that you and Aba were—estranged. She’s been so happy to be able to meet the rest of the family. Jamila, of course, we were in touch with even when Aba was alive. But Lubna, too, after he died. I know that you’ll probably say no, but she would kill me if I didn’t ask. Would you come with me? To my mother’s house? To see her and talk? I was just a kid when Aba died, you’re right—and I’m sure I only remember half of what she could tell you. About how much he missed you.”

  I remembered Belle then, the sincere warmth with which she had spoken to me, a sulky fourteen-year-old whose resentment, I realized suddenly, might have been more obvious than I’d imagined. And then it struck me—that Ruksana’s warm effervescence may not have been as artless as it appeared to be,
that no matter how much she may resemble her father, her nature came from her mother. She was charming and affectionate and had known just what to say to pique my mother’s curiosity, to ease some of the anger she must have known her to be feeling.

  After a long, thoughtful pause, Mummy shook her head and said, “No, Ruksana. Not yet. I’m—uh—glad that I’ve met you. But—I’m not ready for anything more. Next time.”

  Ruksana lit up at those last two words. “When will that be? Are you on your way to Pakistan?” I nodded for Mummy. “Then you’ll be stopping here on your way back again?”

  I waited for Mummy to answer, then rushed in to fill the gap of silence that lasted for just one second too long: “We’ll be back in three weeks.”

  “Then, please, Shabana.” Ruksana was pulling a little pad out of her purse. She scribbled a few numbers on it. “Take our numbers.” She was pointing them out. “That’s mine at college. That’s Mum’s. And that’s Adam’s. And, of course, Jamila has them all if you lose this. Please call us. We’ll even get Tara to come over from Paris, if you could possibly give us some notice. Please think it over, Shabana. You won’t regret it. I promise.”

  When we’d all finished our tea, after an awkward good-bye—even more awkward than the one from the day before, at Ahmed Chacha’s, because there, at least, we had a script to follow, which provided a routine and rhythm that was familiar, if vacuous—we walked away from Ruksana. But not before she gave each of us a quick peck on the cheek and a tight hug. I felt myself stiffen slightly during the embrace, and forced myself to relax, an effort my mother did not even try to make.

  We were on the bus, back on our way to the West End, when my mother asked, finally, “What is she like? Ruksana’s mother? Is she very beautiful?”

  I thought about her question as the bus lurched forward. We were upstairs now, out of sight of the passengers that got on and off at each stop. “Not beautiful, no. But attractive and very charming. A nice lady who you couldn’t help but like. Like Ruksana.”