The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  “Adeeba Auntie’s niece?” His hand was extended.

  I took his and spared him the effort that the furrow of his brow indicated. “Saira Qader.”

  “Saira. Yes. Have you been writing?”

  I hesitated, then said, “Um. Not really.”

  He nodded knowingly. “Nothing you want to share yet.” He paused. “You didn’t enroll in any of my classes.”

  “I couldn’t. I’m an undergraduate. A senior.”

  “Ah.” Our eyes were locked together, had been since he’d approached. “You didn’t ask any questions—after that first one. I didn’t scare you off?”

  “No. I figured I’d ask more later.”

  One eyebrow lifted, a little too self-consciously, I thought, giving the appearance of cultivated surprise. “Coffee?”

  I picked up my bag and led the way. We went to Au Coquelet, my favorite café in Berkeley because it was open late, had a restaurant in the back, and was the only one I knew of with a liquor license. It was also farther away from campus, making the journey there, on foot, a long one.

  Majid Khan kept up a slow and steady conversation the whole way to the café, mostly downhill, along curving pathways that led through some of the prettiest parts of campus. I nodded and listened—less rapt than I had been at Dwinelle Hall. I worried about stupid things, I remember, like what to call this man. He was old enough, technically, to be my father—though he was younger than mine. (I knew this because I had looked it up.) Old enough to call uncle. But the title didn’t fit—he was too youthful, and that was not how I saw him. He was a visiting lecturer at the School of Journalism, so I couldn’t call him “professor,” and, as far as I knew, he didn’t have a PhD, so “doctor” was out.

  We passed Krishna Copy Center on the way to the café, down University, past Shattuck, along with Viceroy Indian Restaurant, Long Life Veggie Chinese, Papa’s Persian Cuisine, and McDonald’s. At Au Coquelet, I hesitated before ordering, wanting desperately to know what he would order first. I turned backward and made a great show of looking at the fruit tarts, waving him forward when the server asked, for the second time, if we were ready. He laughed and ordered a carafe of red wine—the laughter fading quickly when the woman behind the counter asked to see my ID. I handed it over proudly, having passed that milestone and put away my fake one months earlier.

  Majid Khan. I was sharing a carafe of wine with Majid Khan. He wanted, he said, to know all about me. He recalled, again, my story—even remembering the photographs that had accompanied it, asking who the photographer was. I told him about Mohsin, about his plans and mine. He was an excellent journalist, ferreting out information I didn’t realize I possessed.

  At the dinner hour, we were still there, at Au Coquelet. We ate something—pasta—and drank some more wine, achieving a steady and decorous level of intoxication that left our speech free of slur and our gait free of sway. As the evening progressed, we spoke less and less. His eyelids became heavy, closing like a hood over his eyes so that his thoughts were difficult to read—making me feel breathless and exhilarated at the same time. Silence reigned, now, but we remained where we were. Suddenly, it was closing time—1:30 am—and we were forced to leave, forced to resume some semblance of conversation, though I don’t remember what it was about. We headed uphill to the North Side—where I shared a house with close friends whose affection had survived the close quarters of dorm life in our first two years at Cal, and where he was renting an apartment for the duration of the semester he was spending at North Gate Hall.

  My house came first. We stood outside in silence, having lapsed back out of the pretense of forced conversation. Then I said, “You asked about my writing.”

  By the light of the streetlamp, I saw him nod.

  “I—I have some things—rough drafts, really. That I’d like you to read. If you would.”

  “Of course!”

  “Will you come in?” I had turned already to unlock the door and ushered him inside. He waited in the living room while I went upstairs to find my stories.

  He was on the couch when I returned, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. He held his hand out and I handed him a folder, which he opened.

  “‘Ballroom Dancing.’ ‘The English Teacher.’” He was reading the titles out loud. The third one made him pause. He looked at me as he said, “‘Bearing Witness’?”

  “What you talked about this evening. Funny coincidence, huh?”

  “Coincidence? Happenstance? At my age—people become superstitious. They no longer believe in coincidence. They begin to believe in fate. In kismat.” His eyes were running down the pages of my writing as he spoke, absentmindedly, making me feel naked and vulnerable in a way that I knew all writers would recognize.

  I laughed nervously. “Do you? Believe in fate?”

  “Absolutely not.” He was replacing the papers in the folder. “My choices—good and bad ones—are my responsibility.” He held up the folder. “Are they fiction?”

  “No. Creative nonfiction, I guess. They—they’re about people in my family. My two grandfathers. And my great-aunt—Adeeba Anwar.”

  He stood up suddenly, slapping the folder of stories shut, making his way to the door. We said good-bye there. And that was it. Except that it wasn’t.

  I knew already. I knew it was more than that—had designed it to be so by giving him the stories, which would be the excuse, if I needed one, to stay in touch.

  I didn’t need the excuse. We met again two days later—by chance—at Three C’s Café. I was there first, with two of my roommates—a desi, Smita, American-born like me, and Lamiya, who was half-Arab and half-Iowan. He entered alone and took a seat without seeing me. Smita gave me a pointed look, the same kind we always gave to alert each other to the presence of another desi—a warning, I suppose, to not speak in the broken Hindi-Urdu that we occasionally used as code and that we would have to translate later for Lamiya’s sake.

  Under her breath, Smita said, “Gorgeous. Think he’s a grad student?”

  The restaurant was tiny and I was afraid he’d hear me, so I didn’t explain—suddenly self-conscious because I hadn’t told them about him already. That was when Majid Khan saw me. I felt his gaze catch, from the hyperconscious periphery of my vision. He rose and came to stand beside us.

  “Saira.”

  I nodded, still not knowing what to call him. I introduced my friends to him and told them, “This is Majid Khan. He’s lecturing at the J-School.”

  “Wow! Oh! Majid Khan!” That was Smita.

  Lamiya, who was majoring in engineering, had no idea who he was.

  After an awkward moment, I asked him to join us and was surprised when he did. I don’t remember what they talked about, only that the conversation flowed between Majid Khan, Smita, and Lamiya, through the arrival and consumption of our blintzes and crêpes, and despite the conspicuous silence that I maintained and that Smita and Lamiya would tease me about, mercilessly, later. Smita stood first, showing us her watch by way of explanation. Lamiya joined her, on her way to the library, where I had planned to be with her, studying for midterms. But I stayed where I was. So did Majid Khan. I didn’t watch them as they left. Neither did he.

  “I read your stories.”

  I braced myself.

  “You are a leech, Miss Saira. You have stolen the stories of your family and made them yours.” He watched my face to gauge my response, but bracing myself had worked. I could feel the blankness of my own expression, consciously maintained as my mind struggled to understand what Majid Khan was saying. “That is what a writer does. You have listened, observed, researched, and reported. But you have also stepped out of line—an inevitable temptation, I suppose. One of the dangers of creative nonfiction. You are too presumptuous, putting words in the mouths and feelings in the hearts of people that you have no way of knowing are accurate. Yet, you have done it in a way that seems to honor them, with such sympathy that I can almost forgive your literary hubris.”

  I relea
sed the breath I had been holding and smiled. “Almost?”

  “Go ahead—smile, laugh, you cheeky girl. From now on, you do all the talking. I refuse to give you any stories of my life to steal and make your own.”

  “But what’s wrong with that? Putting yourself in the place of the people you’re writing about, so you can write from their perspective?”

  “What’s wrong with it? Where will it end? You can’t feel your way through facts. If you do, every last pretense at objectivity is gone. You made your grandfather a hero—”

  “Not a hero—just human.”

  “—what if you were writing about a murderer? Or a terrorist? Would you put yourself in their place, too?”

  I thought about it. “Yes.”

  “Would you, by God?”

  “Yes. I would. Everyone has a story.”

  “That’s true—and that would be absolutely fine in a novel. But in journalism, you have to maintain your distance. You can’t bear witness if your eyes are full of tears. You’ll be blind—blinded by emotions.”

  “But—as long as I’m crying for everyone—the innocent victims as well as the bloodthirsty terrorists—what’s wrong with that?”

  “You’ll be accused of bias. By everyone.”

  “So—you think a journalist has to stand back and take the humanity out of every story so that no one will accuse them of bias? Nobody does that. Everybody chooses sides.”

  “Bad journalists do. Good journalists stand back. They tell facts—all the facts, please, regardless of who you’re offending. If you’re feeling your way through—you’re lost. You don’t know what objectivity is.”

  “There’s no such thing.”

  “Of course there isn’t. Not pure objectivity. But that is the goal—”

  “What’s the point of having a goal that’s unattainable?”

  “Miss Saira!” Majid Khan banged his hand on the table.

  I banged mine so that it landed right next to his. “Mr. Majid!”

  “Mr. Majid?” He fell silent. “Is that what you’ve decided to call me?”

  “You started it.”

  “I did. To maintain my distance.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  He laughed. “Don’t you think it is?”

  “No. I don’t.” Our eyes were locked in some kind of struggle.

  “I remember that look. A shameless teenager stared at me in just that way once. In Karachi. At Gymkhana.” He laughed at whatever he saw in my face.

  It was my turn to laugh. “I’m not a teenager. Not anymore.”

  “Saira, this is ridiculous. You’re half my age. Go home and be a good, respectable girl. Instead of hanging out with rogues like me.”

  “I don’t want to be good. Or respectable.”

  “Then find someone your own age.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Saira, this will never work out.”

  “I know that. I don’t expect anything to come of it.” I moved my hand an inch to the left, so that it was touching his. “The here and now will do.”

  FOURTEEN

  MY BRIEF AFFAIR with Majid Khan, the defining relationship of my college years, did not remain the secret I had planned it to be. And with discovery came consequences. Painful consequences from which I had to escape.

  Exile. I found haven in the unlikeliest of contexts—in the aftermath of forgotten wars, in the midst of ongoing conflicts, in the miseries of forsaken peoples. After I graduated from college, Mohsin and I traveled the world, bearing witness, with his camera and my words, to the callousness of humanity’s indifference.

  But exile, even when it is self-imposed, is by definition temporal. When Ameena summoned me home, I did not hesitate to comply.

  Daddy opened the door when I knocked, letting out a yelp of surprise so subdued that I knew the urgency of Ameena’s call had been sincere. Any awkwardness I may have felt at arriving, unheralded, after five years of absence, was dispelled by the sight of him—a gray and grim shadow of what I remembered him to be. I asked him for all the bleak details, and knew the whole truth when he was done. Mummy was dying.

  I made my way to my parents’ room. There she was, a small, shriveled shell of life. I stood and stared for only a second before her eyes opened to see me.

  Her hand came out from under the covers, reaching out as she said, “Saira. You’re home. My little girl is home.” She started to sit up, I was at her side, fluffing up pillows and smoothing blankets around her, with one hand only, the other firmly in her grip. She moved over and patted the space at her side. I climbed into bed with her and rested my head on her shoulder as she stroked my hair and wiped my forehead clean. “I have worried so much about you, Saira. The places you’ve been! The risks you’ve taken! My fearless little girl. That is what you have always been, Saira—fearless, fearless, heedless of danger.”

  I was crying so hard that her words seemed to come from a great distance. I knew what I owed her—an explanation, excuses, contrition—all that I had not offered before.

  “Mummy, I—I’m sorry—I—”

  “Shhh. Shhh, Saira. No tears. What is done, is done. You are here with me now—thank God—and that is all that matters.”

  “You’re not angry, Mummy? About why I went away? That I stayed away so long?”

  “Of course not, Saira. I knew why you went. I understood. You kept in touch. Those letters you sent were from so far away. They made me realize and learn what I should have learned long ago. About anger and forgiveness.”

  “I wasn’t angry with you—I told you—”

  “I know. I was speaking of myself, Saira. The anger I felt at my father. Who was human, I know. I learned that from you, from your stories, which opened my eyes. See? Here they are.” She pointed to a copy of my first book at her bedside. “The one you wrote about him—you made me see. How I wasted the last years of his life. But I acted on what I learned. I wrote and told you what I did.”

  I nodded, my hand on her wet cheek.

  “Let me show you”—she was reaching for the drawer at her bedside—“see these?” Pulling out photographs and letters. “They’re pictures of my sisters and their families—Tara and Ruksana. And of Adam.” She had separated one photograph from the rest. “This is Ruksana’s son. Kasim. Born last month. I didn’t have time to write to you about him. She named him after our father. You see? I am in touch with them all, Saira. Even Belle. There is no room—no time—in this short life, to stay angry and hold grudges.”

  I knew about it all—about the trip she had taken to London two years before, about the visit Ruksana, Tara, and Adam had made to Los Angeles in return. But I made her tell me again, the new ending to an old story.

  “You see, Saira? I’ve been busy in your absence.”

  “How is Ameena?”

  “She is well—she and Sakina and Shuja. They left only an hour before you came. You know that they live here now? Only two miles away? They moved soon after—but you know this already.”

  We fell silent.

  Resting her head back against the pillows, closing her eyes to block the pain and weariness of her illness, Mummy said, “I have read everything you’ve written. Such beautiful, horrible stories. From Rwanda to Chechnya. From Mozambique to Afghanistan. I want to hear it all in your voice, now. Instead of reading it from a distance.”

  On these words, Mummy’s eyes closed again. I kissed her forehead before standing up. “I’ll tell you everything, Mummy. Later. You should rest, now.”

  She squeezed my hand for a second, then let go. “Yes. For a little while. I’ll rest. And then, you’ll tell me all of your stories.”

  Before I left the room, Mummy spoke again. “Saira?”

  “Yes, Mummy?”

  “The reason you went away—? Will you be able to—”

  “I’m fine, Mummy. I’ll be fine.” I shut the door gently, hoping I was right.

  Another reunion awaited me in the kitchen. Ameena was there, and whatever I had anticipated f
eeling at the sight of her flew from my mind, so changed did I find her—not her features, though, which were remarkably the same.

  “A hijab?” I was stunned to see her in a scarf, every hair tucked out of view. “You wear hijab?”

  She nodded as she embraced me, but I had to step back to take in how she looked. What she saw in my face made her laugh nervously. “You don’t approve.”

  The fact that she wasn’t asking made me realize how transparent my feelings were. I reined in my expression and said, “It’s not my place to approve.”

  She didn’t answer, and the subject was added to a list of others, begun long ago, which we never talked about.

  “Daddy called you? I thought I wouldn’t see you until tomorrow.”

  “I had to come right away. I didn’t want to disturb you while you were with Mummy. It must have shocked you to see her.”

  I nodded and bit my lip. “Thank you for calling me, Ameena.”

  “I knew you’d come.”

  “Of course.”

  “Saira—when you went away—”

  I cut Ameena off, sensing that she was going to venture into the vicinity of that forbidden list. “It’s so good to see you, Ameena. When will I see Shuja? And Sakina?”

  “Tomorrow. But—are you—?”

  “I can’t wait! How old is she now?”

  Ameena was silent for a long moment. And then took my cue, however reluctantly. “She’s five. In kindergarten.”

  “And Shuja? He’s happy in L.A.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me all about them.” My voice was bright and cheerful, incongruously so, given the scene I had just been a part of and the fact that I had been away so long.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up, keeping my eyes shut, to the feel of her breath on my face. Little, shallow breaths. Very slowly, I opened my eyes to the sight of a small face, inches from mine, peering at me with wide, curious eyes of its own.

  Beyond my room, I heard Ameena calling, giving a name to my intruder, “Sakina! Sakina, where are you?”

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway. The door opened. “There you are, Sakina! What are you doing?” My sister’s whisper was loud and raspy. “I told you not to disturb—you see, you’ve woken her up!” Ameena was in the room in an instant, her hold on Sakina’s hand tight and firm, tugging her away from me in a motion that was protective. “I’m sorry, Saira. Go back to sleep.”