by Nafisa Haji
“What did Ameena say? When she got my e-mail?”
“She was surprised. Uncomfortable. Relieved, for his sake.”
“Did she tell Sakina?”
Shuja frowned. “No. I don’t think she did.”
“Will you tell her? Tonight?”
“Saira. You should tell her. He’s your father.”
“Shuja. I can’t talk to her. She won’t let me in.”
He stares at me for a long moment and I see the conflict in his face—the inverted, mirror image of what I feel.
Reluctantly, he asks, “Do you want her to let you in, Saira? Maybe she’s waiting for you to let her in first.”
I don’t have any reply to give him. And the silence descends upon us again.
Shuja closes his eyes. He opens them. What I see in them makes me want to shrink away.
Too politely, he says, “Is there anything you’d like me to pick up for dinner?”
“No. Thank you. I’ll cook up something.”
“Thank you, Saira. For everything. For taking care of Sakina.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that, Shuja. For anything.”
“Saira—”
“Shuja—”
We have begun at the same time. Both of us wait, deferring to the other. And realize, at the same time, that neither one of us really wants to say anything. Too much hangs in the balance.
Shuja stands up, tosses some bills on the table, and walks out of the restaurant without a backward glance.
I try to rein in the pace of my breathing. Panic hovers at the edge of my consciousness as I realize how close to the edge Shuja is, too. It occurs to me, suddenly, that he and Daddy were equals for a while. Both of them widowers. Daddy’s bereavement had been a needy one. And Shuja’s—his suffering is twofold. I don’t know how to help—I know, in fact, that I am part of the problem.
A little while later, I am in the kitchen with Sakina. She is at the table, working on her homework while I stand at the stove, stirring what I hope will be a palatably healthy meal. I have told Sakina about the conference with her teacher. I set the rice to simmer and have a seat at the table to look over her work. She packs up her pencil and eraser, her crayons and glue.
“Sakina, I have something I want to tell you.”
She lifts her face and her eyes meet mine so directly that I have to resist the urge to look away. “You know that Nana’s in India? Well, he’s going to be there for a while. He—he’s gotten married, Sakina.”
Sakina’s nose wrinkles. She looks down at her papers. Begins to shuffle them together, to put them carefully into her folder, and I am afraid that this news, too, will be greeted with silence.
Her eyes are still cast downward and I barely hear the words she utters, “But. Nana is already married. To Nanima.”
“Yes. But—Nanima’s not here anymore. And he’s very lonely. So—he found a very nice lady. And asked her to marry him. They’ll visit us soon. Maybe early next year.”
“So?—he’s not married to Nanima anymore?”
“He—he is. But she’s not here. With us.”
She looks up and I see it all. Clear and undisguised. The hurt. The bewilderment. I realize what I have done, the worry I have caused her. The parallel I myself drew—at the café—has not escaped Sakina’s thoughts.
“Will Daddy find a new wife, too?”
TWENTY-THREE
SHUJA PUTS SAKINA to bed as I hover in the doorway of Ameena’s room. This is a nightly ritual. When he is done, we make our way to the family room. I sit on the couch and Shuja sits in one of the recliners. He clicks on the television and we drown ourselves in what passes for war coverage. Pundits and experts from around the world are called upon to offer their august opinions. A familiar face flashes on the screen, offering somber admonition to deaf ears.
“It’s him, isn’t it, Saira? He’s the one.” Shuja nods toward Majid Khan’s talking head.
I close my eyes. This is the first question. There will be others, I know, that I will not know how to answer. I only know how to ask them, to turn the answers into stories that bring alive the gory, inconvenient details that others would rather forget. This story is one I left behind. That is how Ameena and I agreed it would be. But she is dead—leaving me stuck in the aftermath of what she convinced me to do. In any case, what I remember is not a story—merely a series of snips and snatches, disparate memories that I have severed from significance, like the sound bytes that comprise the news playing on in front of me.
Majid Khan. I remember saying good-bye at an airport. The semester was over and so was the affair. He took me in his arms and gave me a final kiss. I turned from the departure gate and saw Ameena standing there. I was caught.
I was home for Christmas and violently ill. Stomach flu, I told Mummy, even though I had begun to suspect. Then, back in Berkeley for my final semester, Ameena showed up for the lecture I ran away from before. She took one look at my green face and headed out the door, returning shortly with a bag from the drugstore, forcing me to confront what I already knew. When the blue line appeared, I was strangely calm. I knew what I would do. An appointment at Planned Parenthood was all it would take and I had no qualms about it.
Ameena was quiet. I didn’t know what she was thinking—whether she would tell Mummy my secret. She was quiet. And thoughtful. And had secrets of her own. Four inseminations. Five attempts at IVF. As she told me all of this, the look in her eye was not hard to understand—something I had to look away from because I knew what it meant. This time, I had something that she wanted.
I made the appointment. But Ameena came again. What she asked was not something I thought I could do. But she begged and pleaded, her beautiful face enhanced by the trail of her tears. How could I deny her? What difference would it make to me? I canceled my appointment. By the end of that semester, I resorted to wearing baggy clothes that would not serve their purpose for much longer. Hiding the shape of what was taking form inside of me—the shape of what I thought would make no difference. I felt her move. And I realized, too late, what it was I had committed myself to.
Mummy knew. She broke the angry, months-long silence to tell me—arriving at the hospital as my labor intensified. Do you know what you are doing, Saira? Do you understand what you are giving up? She held my hand, going back on her word to never forgive. Writing the words of the prayer on my forehead—praying for a safe delivery.
When I was done—when Sakina was born—she held her grandchild and brought her close to me. Look at her, Saira. Hold her. You can change your mind. Ameena does not realize what she has asked you to do.
I shook my head. No. I can’t hold her. I can’t take her in my arms. If I do, I’ll never let go. She’s Ameena’s child. Not mine.
When I open my eyes, the news coverage has shifted to scenes of destruction from a hurricane that has hit Cuba.
Shuja is speaking, and it is no effort to divert myself from my memories in order to listen to his.
“I was absolutely against it. That day—when Ameena came home and told me what she wanted to do. Which was ironic. Because I’m the one who had suggested adoption in the first place.”
I am listening. But I cannot respond.
It doesn’t matter. He is ready to talk and what I feel or think seems to be of little importance. “After our third try at IVF, I told her. It was futile to try anymore. But she was adamant. Every time, she believed it would happen. I went along. I gave her the shots. I watched her go through the torture. Of hoping and believing. I had given up myself. Medicine had failed. There was no explanation. No reason the specialists could ever give us for why we couldn’t conceive. Unexplained infertility. What a ridiculous diagnosis. I am a doctor. I can understand cancer and disease. They have a cause. There’s a pattern to them that you can understand at least, even if there’s no cure. But our medical verdict was so absurd. Unexplained infertility. That was what kept Ameena’s faith alive. If science had no answer, then the answer had to be found somewher
e else. In the realm of miracles and faith. But after that fifth time, even Ameena had a hard time understanding. Until then, she didn’t want to adopt. She—she wanted us to have a child of our own. But a few months had gone by since that last failed try. And she had stopped talking about trying again. Then—she came home that day utterly convinced. That this was the answer to her prayers. I tried to talk her out of it. I told her we should adopt, yes, but not this child. Not yours. But she wouldn’t listen. So—I agreed. Thinking that you never would.” Shuja stops talking and waits.
What can I say? “I’d already made the appointment. To have an abortion. When she asked—begged—I hated her. For putting me in that position. No matter what I said—it would always be there, between us. If I had said no—the question would have lingered over us forever. It seemed—it seemed so little. I had something I didn’t want. To destroy it, knowing how much she wanted it—it seemed so churlish. So wasteful. In the end, I couldn’t say no. I tried to. But I couldn’t.”
“She never told me. About him. Only that she’d seen you with him. At the airport. That he was a desi man. Does he know?”
I shake my head. “No! No. He doesn’t.”
“Don’t you think he has a right to know?”
“No. I—as far as I’m concerned—it never happened. I got pregnant. I would have had an abortion.”
“But you didn’t. You had her, Saira. You had Sakina. You carried her inside of you. And gave birth to her.”
I close my eyes again briefly. Then, I open them and say, with more hostility than I intend, “It’s a bit late, isn’t it? To be worrying about him now?”
He has no answer to that. Of course he doesn’t. The answer is the whole point—the whole crux of the story. Now. Who could have ever conceived of now? It occurs to me to ask, “So—if Ameena didn’t tell you, how did you know it was him?”
Shuja shrugs. “I guessed. I—I don’t know how. You mentioned him once or twice. That he was at Berkeley. After Sakina was born, Ameena bought all of his books. She read them. And kept them on the shelf. I pulled one of them out one day. When Sakina began to grow. There was a picture of him inside the jacket of the book. I saw the resemblance.”
The resemblance. Yes. I had noticed it, too. That day at Gymkhana. In passing only. A detail that registered. But that was before now. Now.
Finally, Shuja breaks the stalemate. “What are you going to do, Saira?”
I look at him. His eyes are bright with the tears he won’t shed. His hair—is it grayer? And those lines on his face, the grooves around his mouth—the result of the ready smile and easy laughter that I had seen as smug and mocking when we first met—are they fading? Yes. At least when compared to the creases on his forehead, the result of the fear I hear in his voice—the same fear Ameena had felt, the kind that had hovered over us since the day her daughter was born. He won’t put words to that fear—to do so would be to assert a claim he is afraid I will challenge. But he wants to know what I am going to do. You, he said. Not we.
“I don’t know, Shuja. Tell me. Tell me what I should do.”
He shakes his head. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know either.”
I cannot stand it. I am desperate to see him smile again and laugh. “There’s always that other option. The one the aunties proposed.”
But he doesn’t laugh. Or even smile. He nods his head. And says, “Yes,” as if in answer to a question I haven’t asked.
TWENTY-FOUR
SHUJA IS LONG gone—leaving me to wrestle with a bad joke that fell flat. I prowl around the house, in a vain attempt to avoid the vision of death that descends upon me nightly. Vain, because the phone rings. It is Lubna Khala. Big Nanima is dead. I lie down on my bed and let the tears flow.
A little while passes and I am there again—at Gymkhana. The ghosts dance, the glasses clink, and the walls shrink. Big Nanima is there, issuing her warning. So are Nanima, Belle, and Dada. A gunshot sounds. Ameena falls. There is Sakina, beside me, her arms outstretched. And the gun? Where is the gun? There it is—hovering over us, in no one’s hands tonight.
I wake up, again, from my nightmare. Bathed in sweat. Breathing hard. Resigned to the sleepless routine that will follow. I close my eyes and long, once more, for the touch of my mother’s hand on my forehead.
I get out of bed and begin to make the quiet, nightly journey to the room across the hall, but am suddenly diverted by my longing. In Mummy’s room, in the drawer of her dresser where she kept her prayer rug, I find a copy of the Quran. I look up the verse—Ayatul Kursi—and find the words. Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem. “In the Name of God, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate,” I read, in English and in Arabic. He knows what lies before them, and what is after them, and they comprehend not anything of His knowledge save such as He wills. I trace the words with my finger, over and over again, and realize what I did not before. That not all questions can be answered. That some truths are beyond the capacity of our minds to understand.
Then, my feet resume their original purpose. I approach the bed where Ameena’s daughter is asleep and stare down at her for a moment. Quietly, I sit down on the bed, remembering when she was born—this child, conceived in Ameena’s imagination, whose life I would have ended before it even began. But these are secrets—details—I can now never disclose. Because they will be forever wrapped in the tragedy of Ameena’s death. Sakina has lost her mother. That is the end of the story she will know—a story that leaves no place for me as her mother, because to claim that place would be to kill her mother all over again.
But there is another way, one there is plenty of time to contemplate and that has no bearing on the assertion I have yet been unable to make. I remember something else—the greatest truths can be hidden in fiction. That is what Majid Khan had said before she was conceived.
Sakina stirs in her sleep. “Mommy?”
I force myself not to recoil. I see the glint of the whites of her eyes and know that she is awake. “No. It’s Saira Khala. I’m sorry.”
Her hand reaches up. She touches my cheek.
“You’re crying.”
“Am I?” I lie down next to her.
“You can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Did you have a bad dream?”
“Yes, Sakina.”
She is quiet for so long that I think she has gone back to sleep. But she hasn’t.
“I have bad dreams sometimes.”
“You do? What do you dream about?”
I feel her shoulders shrug next to mine. “I don’t know.”
“You know that you can come to me? If you ever wake up in the night?”
“I can?”
“Of course.”
She is quiet again, but now I know that she is not asleep.
“I miss Mommy.”
“I miss her too, Sakina. Very, very much.”
“Did your dream make you afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Mommy used to write on my forehead. When I was afraid.” Her hand reaches up and her fingers trace a random pattern on my forehead. “But I don’t know what she used to write. Do you?”
I recite the words for her. Allahu la ilaha ill huwa, Al-Haiyul-Qaiyum…
“Do you know what the words mean?”
I hesitate. “I think they mean that there are many things that we can’t understand. The past. The bad things that have happened. Like what happened to Mommy. And we become afraid. Of what might happen in the future. It’s okay to be afraid. But we have to keep hoping and believing.”
“We do?”
“We do. That’s what Mommy would have wanted us to do. To keep hoping. And trying our best to be good and do good. Even when we’re afraid.”
Sakina moves a little closer to me. And I can resist no longer. I take her in my arms. I hold her close. Whatever it takes, I will never let go.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many debts were incurred along the journey that led here. First, to all of the teachers who taught me to re
ad and write, to think and to feel—foremost among them, Dr. Nahid Angha and Dr. Ali Kianfar, whose teachings of the heart continue to enrich my life.
With gratitude, I wish to acknowledge all of the support and input offered by friends and family along the way: from Anabel, Sudha, Zafar and Preeti, Roya and Khaled, Nuzha, Michelle, Shaila and Vishal, Patty and her mother, Marianne and John, Hina, Simi, Pam De Ferrari, Valerie, the teachers and students of Olive Elementary, Raissa, Mariyah Khala, Mumtaz Auntie, Papa, Fazila, Batool, Farah, and Hani. Thanks also to JoAnn and her friends at the Santa Rosa Symphony League for their patronage of art in all its forms; to BJ Robbins, my agent, whose early and abiding confidence kept me at it long after I alone would have given up; to Laurie Chittenden, whose keen insight and bright enthusiasm made editing painless; and to Juliette Shapland, Brenda Segel, Lisa Gallagher, Will Hinton, and the team at William Morrow for the ride of my life; to Daddy, who believed enough to refuse to read a word until he could buy a copy of his own. (Hope you paid full cover price!)
And finally, I am grateful to those who walked along on every step of the journey, who I am blessed enough to be able to take for granted—to Mimi and Mummy, for inspiration and for reading and listening to every word in every draft; to Khalil, whose birth was the excuse I needed to begin writing again; and to Ali, for all of the above, for earning the right to say I told you so like no one else, and for far more than I can ever express.
About the Author
NAFISA HAJI is an American of Indo-Pakistani descent. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in northern California with her husband and son. She is currently working on her second novel.
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