The World We Found

by Thrity Umrigar

  “Yes, my darling. I’m so sorry.”

  “And she’d said she wanted to come? When you saw her?”

  “I, I think so. I got the distinct impression that if Iqbal had—”

  “Give me her phone number. I’ll call her directly.”

  “You can’t reach her. I told you. He doesn’t want us to contact her anymore.” Laleh sighed. “I just hope Adish showing up doesn’t get her into trouble.”

  Armaiti forced herself to concentrate. Because she was having difficulty comprehending. “Trouble? With whom?”

  “With Iqbal, of course. He obviously doesn’t want her to have anything to do with us.” Laleh made a mocking sound. “He’s probably afraid that we would infect his begum with our godless, secular ways.”

  “I don’t believe this. Why does Nishta put up with this? She has a degree in French from a good college, dammit. Surely that’s worth something? Why doesn’t she put it to use? With all these multinationals flocking to India, surely there’s a need for translators?”

  Even across the phone line, she heard the smile in Laleh’s voice.

  “You’ve lived away from India for too many years, my Armaiti. You’ve forgotten how hard it is to do anything in this damn country. There’s probably ten million graduates with more skills than Nishta. And they’re all unemployed. Besides, I told you—she’s changed. There’s something—I don’t know—sluggish about her.”

  “Nishta? That’s impossible.”

  “Anyway. Kavita checked her work schedule today. She can leave in about twenty days. Adish is working on booking our tickets. A lot depends on when they give us an appointment for our visa interviews. I’ll keep you posted, okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll fax the letter from my doctor tomorrow. Hopefully, that should help with the visa.”

  “I’m not worried,” Laleh said. “It’s all going to work out.” There was a brief pause, and then she said, “I feel like I’ve let you down, Armaiti. About Nishta, I mean.”

  “And it’s raining here today. Feel guilty about that, too, would you?”

  Laleh laughed. “Bitch.”

  “Better believe it.”

  She laughed again. “You’re in a feisty mood today. You feeling better?”

  Laleh had become the one person with whom she could talk freely about her health. “Not really. My hand-eye coordination is pretty bad. I’m fine with large movements. But if I try to break an egg on the rim of a cup, half of it might land on the counter.”

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Not much. The steroids are helping with the headaches, thank God.”

  “Thank God,” Laleh repeated. “You take care of yourself, okay, my darling?”

  “Oh, I do.” Armaiti was quiet for a moment, and then she chuckled. “You know what’s funny? For years and years I told myself that if I ever found out I had six months to live, I’d have potato chips, French onion dip, and a Coke for breakfast every single day.”

  “So do it. What the hell.”

  “That’s the funny part, Laleh. I tried doing it once. And I hated it. I’ve become more paranoid about eating healthy than I ever was. Isn’t that strange? It’s like I’m training for a marathon. Turns out even dying is hard work.”

  “Armaiti . . .”

  “I’ve depressed you. Sorry.”

  After she hung up the phone, Armaiti remained on the couch, trying to process the incomprehensible news about Nishta. She remembered so clearly the morning Nishta and Iqbal had bounded into the college cafeteria and announced that they’d decided to get married soon after graduation. Despite the obstacles they all knew she faced, Nishta had looked so sure, so confident. As for Iqbal, he had kept whistling “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” until a groaning Adish had offered him a ten-rupee note to stop. How to reconcile that happy memory with what Laleh had just told her? Could time really alter things so much? If so, the devil that every religion taught people to fear and loathe was simply the passage of time.

  She was lost in her thoughts when Diane entered the room and flopped down on the armchair across from her. “Okay, that’s it, Mom,” she said in that take-charge tone that set Armaiti’s teeth on edge. “I’m going to confiscate the phone if you’re gonna look so glum each time you talk to your friends in India. The whole idea was to cheer you up.”

  Confiscate the phone? Armaiti bristled. Was their role reversal really that complete? Already? She was thinking of a suitable response when Diane asked, “So, what’s the word on Auntie Nishta? Were they able to reach her?”

  Her disappointment about Nishta not coming was still too raw to discuss with Diane. “No,” she said shortly.

  “Why not? What’s the problem?”

  Armaiti couldn’t keep the frustration out of her voice. “The problem is her husband. He won’t let her come, it seems.”

  “Why not?”

  Her words came out in a rush. “Because he’s turned into a religious fanatic. He’s become this pious, fundamentalist Muslim who apparently prays five times a day and—” She stopped, noticing the look on Diane’s face. “What?”

  “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “Said what?”

  “That you called him a fundamentalist, just because he’s religious.”

  She loved Diane deeper than life, but right now Armaiti’s fingers itched to slap the smug off that young face. “He used to be a socialist,” she said. “He used to laugh at the person he’s become. He’s become a caricature of the person he used to scorn.”

  “So? He’s not allowed to change?” Diane had that righteous look made Armaiti fume. “How come you’re so contemptuous of people of faith, Mom? You’re so dogmatic. Don’t people have the right to believe whatever they wish to?”

  Her daughter had never seemed as much of a stranger to her as she did right now. Diane had gone to a prestigious private school where political correctness was extolled, where tolerance and multiculturalism were buzzwords. She had grown up in a town that proudly—if inanely—labeled itself a nuclear-free zone, had gone to the nondenominational Unitarian church the few times her parents had bothered taking her to church, and now attended a university that was famously liberal. Diane had become exactly the person she and Richard had wanted her to be—progressive, broadminded, tolerant.

  So why did she feel like she and her daughter were not speaking the same language? That there was something simplistic, even childlike, about her daughter’s understanding of the world? That right now Diane seemed more like Richard’s daughter—good-hearted, well-meaning Richard, whose American innocence had always felt endearing and dangerous to her—than her own? That the Diane who was looking at her with a slight frown on her face was truly the child of the American Midwest—sweet but bland—with not a trace of her mother’s heritage of spice and vinegar?

  And you, Armaiti asked herself, what language do you speak? A dead language. The language of a faraway time, of a world that no longer exists. Of a time when they had believed the prophet who claimed that religion was the opiate of the masses. They had not seen religion as a polite, innocuous, private issue, as Diane did, or a topic for cocktail-party conversation. Not for them the benign, New Age, crystals-and-angels view of religion shared by so many of her American friends. She and the others had seen religion as a ferocious beast to be tamed, as a weapon that the ruling class used to keep the masses in servitude. Or a demon-genie that the politicians let out of the bottle every time there was an election to be won. And then mobs of Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs bludgeoned each other to death, set houses and people and children—children—on fire. Or threw acid on the faces of young girls walking to college. Or rioted to ban books or movies or paintings that offended their religious sensibilities. Several times Armaiti and the others had gone on fact-finding missions after a riot or a massacre, traveled into the hinterlands of Bihar or Orrissa, witnessed the aftermath of religious fervor. It had turned her off religion, forever. Or, rather, it had given her a new faith. She and the other
s had proudly called themselves secular humanists, the words honey in their mouth. The only gospel they could believe in was one that preached food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and justice for the oppressed.

  She looked now at her daughter, lovely and guileless, and was torn with conflicting desires—the protective, motherly desire to have Diane always remain this innocent, secure in her small outrages over small grievances. But there was another part of her that wanted her daughter to know—not just the world she had grown up in but to know her, the wars she’d fought and lost, the idealism that she wore like a tarnished shield. It felt like a dereliction of duty somehow to die before passing on some of this knowledge to her only child. Because she feared that the world had changed too much, that this new, jittery world of global capital and virtual friendships would never again nurture the kind of community and optimism that she had known. Diane would be a good person—she would put milk out for stray kittens and remember to refill the bird-feeder, she would send money to sponsor a child in Africa and she would give up her Fridays to read to old people in a nursing home—but she wouldn’t know the meaning of a collective struggle, wouldn’t know the heart-pounding thrill of marching along with tens of thousands of others, or the cold fear of facing down a police barricade.

  In short, Diane would lead the same happy but dull middle-class life that she had for the last three decades. Armaiti sat up in her chair at the realization.

  She must’ve looked stricken because she heard Diane say, “Hey, Mom, I’m sorry. I wasn’t really angry at you or anything.”

  She struggled to respond but found it hard to concentrate on what Diane was saying. Because she’d suddenly realized why it was so important to her to see the others again. It was because of Diane. They were the heirloom she would pass on to Diane. They would help explain her to her daughter.

  She needed to be alone for a few minutes, needed some time to think. “Listen,” she said. “You know what I have a real taste for? Some rum-and-raisin ice cream. But the only place around here that sells it is the market off Emory. You wouldn’t want to go get some, would you?”

  As she had predicted, Diane rose immediately. “For you, my dahling, anything.” She blew her mother an exaggerated kiss. “Be back in a jiffy.”

  “Take your time.”

  It was a rare pleasure to have the house to herself. Ever since she’d received the diagnosis, Richard had practically moved back in, and Diane hovered and fussed over her more than her own mother ever had. Armaiti knew she should be grateful, but sometimes she forgot to be. They were making her feel more and more of an invalid with each passing day, and where they left off, her own stupid, unreliable body took over.

  She sat luxuriating in the solitude for a few moments and then rose slowly to her feet and made her way to her bedroom. Cotton was sleeping on the bed and greeted Armaiti with a yawn and one outstretched paw. She patted his bony head absently as she moved toward the closet. Standing on her toes, she reached toward the stack of photo albums balanced precariously on the top shelf. But she misjudged the distance and her hand hit the bottom album so that three of the books fell down. She moved out of their way just in time. “Shit,” she said out loud. “I’ve become a total klutz.”

  The cat cocked one ear back and remained motionless. But he got up to rub his face on the books as soon as Armaiti put them on the bed. “Move, Cotton,” she said, pushing him away. “You’re gonna get hair all over my wedding album.”

  Her wedding album. The first year after the divorce, she had caught Diane thumbing through its pages. How inconsolable the girl had been then. And now, a few years later, how hard she was trying to be the responsible one, making sure that Armaiti ate her meals on time, helping her with the yard work.

  Her daughter would be home soon. Using her good hand to steer the other, Armaiti flipped through the album, past the pictures of Richard and her. She lingered a few times when she came across a picture of her mother at the wedding reception in Bombay. She peered closely, scanning her mother’s face for any sign of the cancer that would eat at her body a few years later. But the older woman looked uncharacteristically happy in the picture, beaming as she looked up adoringly at her tall, handsome American son-in-law. “Probably was glad I didn’t marry a black man,” Armaiti muttered to herself, and then giggled at the thought of Diane’s face if she’d said that out loud. Diane wouldn’t know how to deal with the obsession that Indians had with skin color.

  She had to focus while thumbing through the pages of the book, had to compensate for that fractional disconnect between the true position of things and what her brain told her. But at last she came across the photograph she was looking for, toward the middle of the album. A large picture of the four of them. Nishta, Kavita, Laleh, and her, at her wedding reception in Bombay. All of them dressed in expensive saris, all of them looking more grown-up and glamorous than she ever remembered them being. No one was being a cutup in the picture, no one was crossing her eyes or making a face. Just four young women staring straight into the camera’s eye, their postures erect, their faces composed and steady.

  They were beautiful, Armaiti realized. Even she, although she had always felt mousey compared to the three of them. Kavita was probably the least conventionally beautiful one among all of them, but Armaiti noticed the warm brown eyes under the bob cut, the even, white teeth, the slender waist. Kavita was standing with her arm around Laleh’s shoulder. Laleh’s thick, long hair framed her face, and Armaiti took in the straight, patrician nose, the arched eyebrows, and the thin, sensitive lips. Laleh wore a look of ironic bemusement that Armaiti recognized immediately, as if she were enjoying some private joke. Beside her stood a radiant-looking Nishta, her hair tied up on her head, her lips parted in a big smile, so that Armaiti could see the gap in between her teeth. Armaiti caught her breath. She had forgotten how gorgeous Nishta was.

  She looked at herself, standing next to Nishta, ready to criticize her own appearance. But her two years in America must’ve agreed with her. Or maybe it was being in love with Richard. Or perhaps simply being back with the others. Whatever the reason, she looked good.

  She heard Diane’s car in the driveway as she pulled the picture out of the album. She flipped through the album faster, wanting to find a few more pictures of the others before she put it away. The side door slammed and she heard Diane come in. “Mom?” Diane yelled. “I’m back.”

  “Hi, darling. I’m up in my room,” she yelled back.

  “Be up in a minute.”

  “Put the ice cream in the freezer first.”

  She came across a picture of herself, with Richard and Kavita on either side of her. She peered closely at Kavita’s face. It was as blank and expressionless as a winter sky. She felt a pang in her heart. How hard it must’ve been for Kavita to meet Richard. “I’m sorry, Ka,” she whispered, running a finger across Kavita’s face. She wondered whether to pull that one out of the album but decided against it.

  She had shoved the wedding album under the bed—she’d get it out later, no point in risking upsetting Diane—and had fanned out the four pictures she’d pulled out onto the bedspread when Diane entered the room. “Hi, Mom,” she said. “Whatcha doin’?” She noticed the photographs. “What’s this?”

  Armaiti picked up the one that had the four of them in it. As she lifted it gently, careful not to get her fingerprints on the photograph, and passed it on to Diane, she was aware of handing something precious to her daughter. She thought of the gold jewelry, family heirlooms, that her own mother had given to her at her wedding. She had protested, refused to accept it. But her mother had insisted. “This never belonged to me,” she had whispered as she’d kissed Armaiti’s bent head. “I was only holding it for you. Just as you will hold it for your daughter, until her wedding day.”

  She wouldn’t be alive to see Diane married. Just last week she’d considered passing her mother’s jewelry on to Diane. Now, while she was alive. But she’d decided against it, knowing how mu
ch it would upset her daughter. And Diane was a flower child, more interested in bead necklaces and costume jewelry. Despite their beautiful craftsmanship, the gold bracelets and ruby rings would not impress her, would never have the emotional weight of family history that they still had for Armaiti, no matter how much she chided herself for being so hopelessly bourgeois. So she had decided to leave her mother’s things with Richard, with instructions to give them to Diane when the time came.

  Diane’s hair fell across her face as she studied the picture. “These are your friends? At your wedding?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re so good-looking.” She perched on the bed next to her mother and took Armaiti’s hand in hers. “Of course you’re the loveliest of them all.”

  “Isn’t it pretty to think so.” She made a face. “I was the ugly duckling of the group, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you kidding me? My God, Mom, you’re beautiful. Jeez, have you seen how Dad looks at you, still? Like he—like he could just inhale you or something.” Diane sucked her cheeks in.

  Armaiti squeezed her daughter’s hand. “You’re funny. Anyway, it doesn’t matter who was pretty and who wasn’t. What matters is”—and here she hesitated, wanting to get it right the first time—“that . . . that these three women gave me something. A sense of belonging in the world, but more than that. A sense that the world belonged to me. Do you understand? A belief that it was my world—our world. To shape it as we wanted. That we never had to settle for things as they were, you know?”

  Diane was looking at her intently, her big eyes searching her face, and Armaiti saw how perilously young her daughter still was. Something about that look broke her heart. “You still believe that, Mom? About changing the world?” Diane asked.

  How simple, how lovely, it would be to answer with a direct, honest yes. But Diane was looking at her with such trust, looking at her with the same hungry eyes as she used to when Armaiti was breast-feeding her a lifetime ago. She hesitated. “I—I don’t know.” She looked around the room, trying to find the right words. “I don’t know if the world we dreamed of is an illusion, a ‘children’s palace,’ as Laleh’s father used to call it.” She looked at Diane sharply as a thought hit her. “But I do know this—that my desire for that world was true. It was the truest thing I’ve ever felt, as true as my love for you. And—and I’d like to believe that that means something. You know?”