The World We Found

by Thrity Umrigar

  “Even if I agreed, Iqbal would never let me.”

  “What the hell? How could he stop you?” Laleh demanded. “And why would he?”

  In reply, Nishta rose from the couch. “Wait,” she said and went into a room behind a curtain. When she returned a minute later she was holding a picture frame. “Who is this?” she asked.

  It was a picture of a thin-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard. He was wearing the traditional Muslim garb of a white skull cap and kurta and pajamas. “An imam,” Laleh said. “So?”

  Nishta laughed. “Look closely. It’s Iqbal.”

  Iqbal? The Iqbal they knew wore bright floral shirts over tight jeans and usually had his sunglasses perched on top of a headful of long hair. Their Iqbal was a young man who cussed and joked easily, with a mouth that was forever curled into a teasing smile. The man in the picture looked so serious, as if he had not cracked a joke or said a cuss word in years.

  But wait. There was the nose, straight and pointed. Iqbal’s nose. And the thin lips. And something about the flat-footed way in which the man stood, his hip jutting out slightly.

  When they looked up, they couldn’t keep the wonder out of their eyes. “Wow,” Laleh said.

  Nishta nodded. “Wow. This is my husband.”

  There was an awkward silence. “So, does he always dress like this?” Kavita asked delicately.

  Nishta’s eyes were amused when they looked at her. But beneath the amusement was something else. “He’s changed,” she said finally. “He’s not the boy you knew. He’s become very religious. Goes to mosque regularly.” Her mouth twisted. “And he dislikes Hindus. So of course, he couldn’t have a Hindu wife. So I had to convert. He badgered and badgered me until I gave in.”

  “This is too much, yaar,” Kavita said. “Iqbal was an atheist. He cared less about religion than any of us.”

  “You knew him many years ago, Ka,” Nishta said gently. “People change.”

  And you? Kavita wanted to ask. Have you changed, Nishta?

  As if she were anticipating her question, Nishta said, “As for me, I’m sure I’ve changed also.” She patted her round belly. “In fact, the mirror tells me that everyday.” She pulled a face. “How come the two of you still look so beautiful, yaar? What’s the secret?”

  “I certainly don’t feel beautiful,” Laleh said. She frowned. “Seriously, though, Nishta. How could Iqbal buy into all this religious bull?”

  Nishta’s face grew red and she blinked rapidly.

  “I’m sorry,” Laleh said. “I wasn’t trying to be insulting. Honest.”

  “Don’t. Don’t apologize. I’m not insulted. Just the opposite. You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve been with people who feel the same way I do. You don’t know—I’ve spent years now with people whose lives are governed by religion. My mother-in-law, even Iqbal’s young niece—they live in this building, you know. One floor up, only. Those are the only people I see all day. All God-fearing people. There was a time when Iqbal was my defender against them. When he used to laugh at his parents when they started on the virtues of Islam. Now the only member of his family I can really talk to is his sister, Mumtaz. But she’s married and lives in Jogeshwari. So I don’t see her as much as I’d like. Mostly we chat on the phone.”

  Nishta got up again. “Something else I want to show you,” she said. She crossed the room and rummaged through a file folder that rested on top of a small corner table. She returned with a business card that she handed to Laleh. “Ahmed Electronics. See? It’s a little shop in Fountain. Iqbal works there with his uncle. They sell plugs, sockets, cables, that kind of thing.” She flipped the card over. “But even on an ordinary business card they had to have a picture of a mosque.” She sat back, an odd smile on her face. “That’s the kind of family I’ve married into.”

  As the extent of Nishta’s isolation and loneliness hit Kavita, the room that she’d felt so comfortable in earlier suddenly felt oppressive. She caught Laleh’s eye and knew that she was feeling the same claustrophobia.

  “Why didn’t you put your foot down, Nishta?” Laleh asked. “When he first began flirting with all this stuff?”

  Nishta smiled. “You don’t have enough time to hear the answer to that, my Lal,” she said gently. “It’s a very long story.”

  Laleh flushed, as if she’d heard the deflection and the mild rebuke in Nishta’s voice. “Sorry,” she said. She looked sheepish for half a second but then let out a snort. “We can’t leave you like this, Nishta. Not after having found you after all this time. Tell me, how can we help?”

  “She’s the same old Lal,” Nishta said to Kavita. “Still wants to fix the world.” She shrugged. “It’s okay, really. I’ve probably made my life sound worse than it is. Iqbal’s a decent man. And I don’t usually feel sorry for myself. It’s just that seeing both of you is reminding me of the gap between my life as it is and what I’d dreamed it would be.”

  Laleh leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. “But maddest of all—to see life as it is and not as it should be,” she quoted softly. Man of La Mancha had been one of their favorite movies. They had often skipped classes to take in a rerun at the Strand.

  The other two smiled in immediate recognition. “Too much sanity may be madness,” Kavita recited.

  “Perhaps to be too practical is madness,” Nishta added. She paused. “God. I used to know the entire speech.”

  “He was a handsome man, that Peter O’Toole,” Laleh said.

  Nishta turned toward Laleh. “Speaking of handsome men, how’s Adish?”

  “Nice.” Laleh grinned. “Smooth. Good transition. I’ll tell him. He’ll be flattered. He’s fine. About ten kilos more than I’d like him to be, but fine.”

  “And you, Ka? Any man—anyone special in your life?”

  Kavita caught the stumble in Nishta’s voice. Nishta knows, she thought. Ingrid’s warm, attentive face swam before her eyes briefly. “Nobody special, I’m afraid,” she said, hating the quiver in her voice, hating herself for her dishonesty.

  “Kavita’s one of Bombay’s top architects, you know,” Laleh said. “She has no time for romance and all that stuff.”

  “And I look after my mother,” Kavita added. “Rohit—you remember my older brother?—lives in town, but he’s married. So of course the spinster daughter has to take care of Ma.” She tried to keep her tone light but thought that it came out petulant.

  Nishta’s eyes darkened with an emotion Kavita couldn’t read. “It sounds like a good life, Ka,” she said vaguely.

  There was a short, awkward silence, and then Nishta said, “So you’re both going to see Armaiti?”

  “We are,” Laleh said. “And we’re still hoping you’ll go with us, Nishta. Surely Iqbal will understand.” Her voice took on a new urgency. “She—she probably won’t make it until the end of the year. She’s hoping we can go while she’s still feeling good.”

  “I’ve only been out of India once,” Nishta said. “Imagine. Remember how we used to talk about traveling together to see the Pyramids and the Galapagos Islands and the Louvre? Well, he’s only taken me out of the country once. And guess where? To Dubai. Only because his brother lives there and sent us tickets. It was awful. A totally artificial place. I hated it. Iqbal was very impressed. He’s easily impressed, these days. Especially if it involves Islam.”

  This time, they heard the anger in her voice. “Perhaps we could travel a little bit around the U.S. after we see Armaiti,” Kavita ventured. “If you came, that is.”

  Nishta made a dismissive sound. “It’s no use, Kavita. He’ll never let me go.” Something flared in her eyes. “He’ll be afraid I’d never come back if I went.”

  Kavita looked away, embarrassed by what she saw in Nishta’s eyes. But Laleh looked her squarely in the face. “And would you? Come back, I mean?”

  Nishta held her glance for a moment. “I don’t know,” she whispered. Then she recovered. “Of course I would. Where else could I go?” Her
voice took on a forced gaiety. “After all, a woman’s place is by her husband, as my dear mother-in-law reminds me at least once a day.”

  There was another short silence and then Nishta got up reluctantly from the couch. “You know, I could talk to you for a year and still my stomach wouldn’t get full. But I have to go pick up Zenobia from her typing class.” Seeing their blank faces, she said, “Iqbal’s niece. Her parents are in Dubai, so she lives with my mother-in-law. She’s sixteen. Iqbal doesn’t like her to walk home alone, even during the day. So I have to go. I’m so sorry.”

  Kavita couldn’t bear the thought of parting from Nishta so soon. “How about if we hang out until you come back home?” she asked. “And then maybe we can go out for a chai or something?”

  Nishta bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry, yaar,” she mumbled. “Iqbal doesn’t like me to leave the house once I pick up Zenobia. As it is, I’ll have to stop and buy the groceries on our way back. And then I have to start cooking dinner for the family.”

  Laleh looked stricken but Kavita nudged her and rose to her feet in one graceful motion. “It’s fine,” she said smoothly, signaling Laleh with her eyes to also rise. “We understand. We’ll just walk out with you, okay?”

  Nishta hesitated. “If you don’t mind, you two leave first. My mother-in-law sits at her balcony all day long. And even though she claims her eyesight is bad, she keeps an eye on all my goings and comings. And I—I haven’t decided yet when I’ll tell Iqbal about this visit.”

  Laleh looked like she was about to argue but Kavita spoke first. “No problem,” she said. “But we’ll see you soon, yes?”

  “I’ll give you my mobile number,” Nishta said. “And let me have yours.”

  Ten minutes later, they were outdoors again, their eyes adjusting to the ferocious glare of the afternoon sun. “God,” Laleh said as soon as they were on the street. “She’s like a prisoner in her home.” She dug through her purse for her sunglasses. “Could you believe that picture of Iqbal? What the hell?”

  Kavita didn’t reply, distracted as she was by one incessant thought. The small apartment they had just left reminded her of the jail cell where she and Nishta had spent the night after their arrest. She had never seen the inside of a jail again, had made sure that she never would. Whereas Nishta had apparently spent the rest of her life in one. And the bitterest irony was that it was Iqbal, Iqbal, who was her jailer.

  Over the years, she had worked hard to suppress the memories of that horrific night. But now she remembered the suffocating, claustrophobic feeling. The panic and the desperation. We have to get Nishta out of this place, Kavita thought. It would be a repudiation of everything we once were, to abandon her now.

  Chapter 7

  Armaiti stood in the middle of her lush backyard, feeling the soft earth beneath her feet. Her eyes followed the movement of a gray squirrel madly chasing another. The sun felt like a warm, steady hand on her back. The morning silence was so deep, it felt audible to her, like those high-frequency whistles only dogs could hear. This is the world, she thought, and I am here in it. I am here. In this time. And then she caught herself, caught the thoughts that tilted toward morbidity and self-pity, saw the clichéd direction in which they were headed—woman with six months to live finally learns to live in the moment—and felt a rush of embarrassment and anger. Whatever the tumor did to her, whatever it whittled her away to, she would not allow it to reduce her to a cliché. There would be no deathbed conversions, no New Age transformations, no spiritual awakenings. She would not permit it. She would not.

  She brought the little Rubbermaid stool from the garage and placed it in front of the spot where she’d buried the two dead cardinals. Sitting down, she began to weed near the area. After a few minutes, as always, she felt her heartbeat slowing down. Let the Christians have their Sunday mass and the Muslims their call to prayer. This was her church, her temple, her religion, this soft soil that got under her fingernails, this thin morning air, this single note that the robin struck over and over again. This large backyard with its looming trees and its merry flowers and trilling birds was the only taste of heaven she would ever need.

  After fifteen minutes of weeding, she reached for the flat of petunias Diane had brought home last evening. She was eager to plant them over the grave.

  She swiveled on the stool, ready to pop a plant out of its plastic container. She missed. Her right hand couldn’t find its way to the bottom of the container. Her fingers missed their mark, clutching air for a few puzzling seconds. She frowned and tried again. And was unsuccessful. Her mind told her that her hand should be curling around the green box, but somehow her fingers remained a few millimeters removed from their destination. She turned her whole body around this time and, holding her right wrist in her left hand, tried again. There. Now her fingers were gripping the plastic.

  She let go of the container, shaken by this abrupt refusal by her body to obey her commands. She sat still for a moment, waiting for whatever this thing was to pass. After a few seconds she reached for the box but struggled with coordinating the movement of her hands with what her eyes were telling her. Once again, she gripped one hand in the other before she could get hold of the box. And when she protruded her index finger to push the delicate plant out, she felt the same frustration as her finger kept missing the hole in the container. Finally, more by touch than sight, her finger found its target.

  She spent ten minutes on this fruitless task before giving up. During that time Armaiti fought a rising terror. What was going on within her body? How would she manage if her coordination was this bad? And how could it have come on this suddenly? She wondered if she should call out for Diane, but dreaded facing a fresh bout of condemnation from her daughter. Maybe this thing is not related to the brain tumor, she told herself. Maybe I’m dizzy, maybe it’s a touch of vertigo or sunstroke that will clear up as soon as I go indoors.

  She rose cautiously from the stool and stood still for a minute before she risked taking a step. She almost cried out in relief when she realized that the strange thing that was affecting her hand didn’t seem to be affecting her balance or her gait. Still, she was careful. She took another step toward the house, and then another. She was walking fine. Whatever was affecting her hand had spared her legs.

  “Hey, Mom,” Diane called as Armaiti walked into the house. “Want some brunch?”

  “No thanks,” Armaiti replied as she came up behind her daughter.

  Diane turned around. “How about I make you a waffle?”

  “I already ate. Hours ago.”

  Diane’s blue eyes settled on Armaiti’s face. “What did you eat?”

  Armaiti looked away, flustered. The truth was she had not eaten a thing since she’d had some pasta last night. “What is this? An interrogation?”

  “Damn straight.” Diane’s brow furrowed. “Mom, you gotta eat. You can’t lose weight when—”

  Armaiti smiled. She caught the indignant look on her daughter’s face and tried to stop.

  “What? You think everything is funny?”

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Armaiti said. “It’s just that you sounded so much like I used to when you were a child that I’m—I guess I’m just laughing at the role reversal. You know what I mean?”

  “What are you talking about? I never gave you a hard time about food.”

  “Are you kidding me? Do you know what you ate for dinner from the time you were two until you were four? A boiled egg. Every single night, I swear. I got to the point where just looking at a boiled egg made me sick. I couldn’t even participate in those elaborate Easter egg hunts your dad used to plan each year.”

  Diane grinned. “Remember the time he accidentally hid a raw egg inside one of your shoes?”

  “Do I remember? He had to take me shopping the very next day.”

  “Good old dad.”

  There was a sudden silence in the kitchen. Armaiti had heard the wistfulness in her daughter’s voice and knew that Diane was thinking back to th
e years before the divorce. As far as she knew, Diane had never found out about Blossom.

  The waffles popped up in the toaster and Diane moved to get them out. “Can you pass the butter?” she said, gesturing toward where the tub of Earth Balance sat on the kitchen counter.

  “Sure,” Armaiti said as she reached for the plastic pot. Her fingers missed the container. Mortification made her face flush as she tried a second time, focusing as hard as she could to pick up the box before her daughter noticed that anything was amiss.

  Diane was staring at her with her mouth open. “Mom? What’s wrong?”

  Armaiti tried to keep her voice light. “Who the hell knows? I’m just clumsy this morning, I think.”

  Diane didn’t bother to keep the panic out of her voice. “You can’t pick that thing up?”

  “Sure I can. Watch.” And guiding her right hand with the other, Armaiti gripped the container. “Here. Butter your waffles before they get cold.”

  “What is going on, Mom?”

  Armaiti eyed Diane’s plate. “Your food is getting cold, honey,” she repeated.

  “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe you’re talking to me about my waffles when you’re—you’re . . .”

  “Diane. Calm yourself. I don’t know what’s wrong, okay? Chances are it’s nothing, just, y’know, like a tic or something. Let’s just wait and watch.”

  “Wait and watch?” Diane sounded incredulous. “You can’t use your right hand and you’re telling me to be calm?” The young face grew teary. “What’s wrong, Mom? Don’t you care about anything? I feel like you’ve just given up or something. It’s hard enough that you’re refusing treatment, but why do you have to be so—so—cavalier about this? Can’t you see what this is doing to Dad and me?”

  Armaiti took the two steps that separated her from Diane and put her arms around her daughter. Diane made to pull away but Armaiti merely tightened her grip until the girl relaxed. “I’m sorry, my darling,” she murmured. “I know you don’t understand my decision. I can’t even explain it to you except to say I must live on my own terms. I must. As for this thing, it just happened, you know? I haven’t even had a chance to figure it out. I’m scared, too. But I’m hoping it’s temporary, you know?”