The World We Found

by Thrity Umrigar

  “There is no way I can repay you for all this.”

  Mumtaz smiled shyly. “Actually, there is.” She took out a small piece of paper. “Here is my waist and hip size. If you can bring me a pair of 7 For All Mankind jeans, I’d be grateful. They’re very hard to find here.” She made a face. “Even though Hussein won’t let me wear them outdoors, I can wear at home.”

  Nishta felt her face redden. It was one thing deceiving Iqbal. But Mumtaz? She wanted to caress the innocent face with the big, trusting eyes.

  She looked away. “Okay,” she said. “I will bring these.”

  “Shukriah, Zoha jaan.” Mumtaz turned her head toward the kitchen. “Do you still have any more of those mutton cutlets you made for lunch?”

  Nishta smiled, glad to be able to do something for her sister-in-law for a change. “Of course. Shall I heat some?”

  “Oh, no. I’m full. But I’ll take two for Hussein, if you don’t mind. He loves your cooking.”

  They had had lunch upstairs with Mumtaz’s mother earlier in the day. The old lady was thrilled that her daughter had stopped by unexpectedly. She was even happier to see that Mumtaz was wearing a pink burkha. “Allah be praised,” she exclaimed. “What do we owe this miracle to?”

  “Hussein wanted me to,” Mumtaz said.

  The old woman nodded understandingly. “One must always keep one’s husband happy,” she said.

  Nishta had been stunned at how easily the lies slipped off Mumtaz’s tongue. She’s enjoying this, she thought with amazement. It’s like she’s getting back at all of them. But what for?

  “Shall we warm the food?” the old lady had said and it didn’t escape Nishta’s notice that even though Mumtaz was sitting right there, her mother-in-law was looking pointedly at her. She doesn’t get to see her daughter too often, she reasoned with herself, and then almost laughed out loud at her next thought: What do you care? You’ll be out of here in a few hours. This is the last meal you will ever serve this cranky old woman. “Sure, Ammi,” she said demurely, keeping her eyes to the ground.

  They had returned to Nishta’s flat after lunch, after Mumtaz promised her mother she’d come say goodbye before she left to go home that evening. Now, they sat on the couch making chitchat. “Amazing how time doesn’t budge when you’re watching the clock,” Mumtaz said, and Nishta heard the nervousness in her voice.

  “Promise me you’ll make sure that you’ll leave before Iqbal comes home tonight?” she asked.

  Mumtaz let out a groan. “God, Zoha. What a worrywart you’ve become. I’ve told you a hundred times. When Ammi goes indoors at eight to eat dinner—foos!—I’ll dart out of here fast as a mouse.”

  Nishta sighed. “But what about later?” She gestured toward the note sitting propped up on the coffee table. “After he reads my letter? Your Ammi will mention you were here today. Surely he’ll come knocking on your door to . . .”

  “Bhabi. You’re not thinking straight. You know the plan. I’ll just pretend to be as shocked as everyone else.”

  “But he’ll question you, Mumtaz. You know Iqbal. If he’s suspicious at all . . .”

  “Let him be as suspicious as he wants.” Mumtaz’s voice grew defiant.

  “ . . . and the first thing he’ll do is check the safe for the passport,” Nishta continued. “How long before he—”

  “Hussein can deal with my brother,” Mumtaz interrupted. “None of his violent behavior will work in my house.”

  “I didn’t mean . . . Iqbal would never hurt you. I just meant . . .”

  “Who knows? Would I have ever thought my brother would raise his hand to you?” Mumtaz shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t do anything worse to me than what he’s already done.”

  Nishta reached out to take Mumtaz’s hand in hers. “Sweetie,” she said. “What did he do?” Had Iqbal sexually abused his sister when she was little? It seemed unfathomable, but she’d learned that it was a common enough story—cousins, brothers, fathers, touching little girls, fondling them, doing worse. “Did he hurt you?” she asked cautiously. “Touch you wrong?”

  Mumtaz looked confused for a second, and then, as Nishta’s meaning dawned on her, she gave a startled laugh. “Oh, God, no. Nothing like that. My God, Iqbal was so protective of me when we were young.” She fell quiet, and when she looked up, her eyes were red. “I was molested, didi. But not by him.”

  Nishta let out a cry of outrage, and, at this, the younger woman roughly brushed away her tears and forced a gaiety into her voice. “Forget it. Ancient history. And today’s a happy day. No need for all this sad talk.”

  “I need to know,” Nishta said but Mumtaz stopped her. “Another time. After you come back I’ll tell you the whole story.” She leapt up off the couch. “Now come on. Let’s go pick up Zenobia from her class.”

  Kavita eyed Ma dispassionately, trying to gauge whether the sudden illness was real or a manifestation of the old lady’s usual hypochondria. She remembered that the last time she had gone out of town—not out of town, really; she’d just told Ma that, while she’d spent three days with Ingrid at the Taj—she had come down with the same nebulous symptoms.

  “You go finish your packing, beti,” Ma croaked. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Can you describe what’s wrong?” Kavita asked again.

  Ma sighed. “Just shaky.”

  Shaky. Giddy. Jelly-like. Feeling upside down. Like my brain has turned to yogurt. This was the medical terminology Ma typically used to describe her ailments. It drove Kavita up the wall.

  She got up from the chair next to Ma’s bed and went into the kitchen, where Rekha was making chapatis. “Go sit with her for a few moments,” she asked and then went into her bedroom. She dialed her brother Rohit’s phone.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s Ma. I can’t tell if she’s really ill or what. And I leave for the airport in about an hour. Can you come over?”

  “She’s just upset you’re leaving,” Rohit said in the blithe tone that set her teeth on edge.

  “Congratulations on your medical degree. Not to mention your psychic powers.”

  “Funny,” he said, in that abrupt way of his.

  “Well, can you come over?”

  “Not now. I’m busy.”

  She forced herself to stay calm. “Rohit,” she said, thinking for the umpteenth time how telling it was that her brother’s name rhymed with “shit.” “Ma could be sick. And I won’t be here. She’ll be alone with Rekha. Can you pretend to care?”

  He made an exasperated sound. “Tell you what. I’m going to the club at eight. I’ll stop by before that. Okay?”

  It was the best deal she would get today. “Promise?” she said.

  “Whatever.”

  His callousness stung more than it had any business doing. “Okay,” she said, trying to control the dangerous tremor in her voice. “Thanks. I’ll see you.”

  “Hey, Ka?” Rohit said. “You take care of yourself, understand?”

  Her disproportionate gratefulness at his casual remark told her how much stress she was under, how emotional she was about this trip. She eyed the clock. Did she have time to squeeze in a quick call to Ingrid? “Thanks,” she said. “You, too. I’ll see you soon.”

  Ma had gotten up from her bed and was lying on the couch in the living room. “She insisted,” Rehka said. “Said she wanted more light.”

  Kavita nodded. “Feeling better, Ma?”

  The old woman groaned in reply. “The time of my dying is fast approaching, beta. I’m just a burden to you.”

  Rekha and Kavita exchanged the briefest of smiles. They heard this line every time Ma was unwell. Kavita dug into her jeans pocket and fished out a few crumbled hundred-rupee notes. “Keep this,” she said to the maid. “In case you have to call Dr. Shah or buy some medicine.”

  Ma shot upright on the sofa. “What are you doing, handing out money like sweets?” she cried. She leaned forward to pull the money out of Rekha’s hands. “Giving the girl ideas,” sh
e muttered to herself. “Spoiling her. No sense.” She fell back on the couch with dramatic flair, still clutching the money in her hand.

  Kavita noticed that the little exercise had restored the color in Ma’s cheeks. “Sorry,” she mumbled to Rekha as the servant left the room. “Come see me before I leave.” She stood at the doorway and looked back at the reclining woman. “Your firstborn will drop by for a visit this evening,” she said.

  Ma raised her head slightly. “Will he be bringing that nasty wife of his?” she said.

  “Not sure. But Prince Charming has consented to a visit. That’s good news, isn’t it?”

  Ma glared at her. “It’s not his fault. That wife of his has poisoned him . . .”

  Kavita shook her head. “Oh, Ma, stop.” She had heard this tirade a thousand times before.

  She was still shaking her head as she went into her bedroom. She wondered whether to weigh her suitcases one more time, but she and Rekha had done that twice last night. She had been done with her packing by nine last night, the inside of her suitcases as precise and neat as an architectural drawing. Now there was nothing to do but wait for the phone call that would tell her that Laleh and Adish were downstairs, waiting to pick her up.

  Armaiti noticed Devdas’s eyes widen as she entered his grocery store in her wheelchair. She had not been in here since her diagnosis, she realized. Her heart sank at the thought of explaining her condition to the genial, talkative owner of India Food Emporium.

  “Arre, Armaitiji, kya hua?” he asked, his middle-aged brow creasing with concern. “Accident or what?”

  She flashed a warning look at Diane before she turned to him with a smile. “Just not feeling well,” she said evasively.

  “Arre, Ram,” he breathed. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

  She was about to open her mouth to reassure him when she heard Diane say, “Nothing serious. Just cancer.”

  She turned slowly to face her daughter—any sudden movement made her head spin—and saw that Diane was staring defiantly at her. Please don’t make a scene, Armaiti pleaded silently with her eyes. Even though she had very few ties with India, some ancient sense of propriety made her close-mouthed around people from the home country. Especially Indians who looked at her with creased brows and inquisitive eyes, as Mr. Devdas was doing right now.

  “Cancer?” Devdas flinched involuntarily. “No, no, no. Impossible. Not to someone as sweet and kind as you, madam.”

  Armaiti emitted a low growl of frustration that was audible only to Diane, who pulled the shopping list out of her mother’s hand. “I’ll pick up what you need, Mom,” she said hastily and Armaiti saw that she was avoiding eye contact with her.

  Armaiti spent an excruciating ten minutes listening to Devdas tell her story after story of people he’d known—well, actually, heard about, he allowed—who had beaten cancer. He also suggested a myriad of cures—urine therapy, a mixture made from goat’s milk and six cloves of garlic, a paste made from turmeric, tamarind, and crushed red brick, a massage oil made from tiger’s meat. Yes, tiger’s meat, he repeated sagely, as if it were a common item he sold in his store. Or, if madam was interested, he would phone his uncle’s cousin, who was a faith healer in Milwaukee. Very powerful, faith healing, hadn’t she heard? Armaiti felt her life trickling away as she sat in her wheelchair, unable to get away from the man. A customer entered the store, picked out some Indian snacks, and waited to pay at the counter but Devdas ignored him. Armaiti pointed out the waiting customer but it was useless—Devdas gesticulated wildly, his manner got more and more agitated and persistent, his brow more furrowed. He railed against the dangers of chemotherapy—Armaiti didn’t have the heart or the energy to tell him she wasn’t using it—the perils of vaccines, antibiotics, and Western medicine in general; made wild and dubious claims about the low rates of cancer in countries like India; tried to extract a promise from her to immediately stop eating corn, sweet peas, and chicken, all of which apparently corrupted a person’s aura and caused cancer. “If you eat meat, madam, eat goat. Very, very safe.”

  After ten minutes of this, Armaiti had had enough. Politeness be damned, she thought. Surely dying had a few advantages and the abandonment of good manners was one of them. She spun her wheelchair around in the middle of Devdas’s sentence. “Excuse me,” she said abruptly. “I must find my daughter.”

  She found Diane on her haunches, picking out the cans of sliced mangoes from the bottom shelf. “Sorry,” the girl said preemptively.

  Armaiti was not appeased. “We’ll talk in the car,” she said in the clipped manner she slipped into whenever she was angry. “I’ll wait for you outside. Use the credit card to pay for everything.”

  Devdas insisted on helping Diane load the groceries in the car and then watched with much shaking of his head as Diane helped her mother in. Every few seconds he struck his forehead with his palm, as if swatting invisible flies. It was, Armaiti knew, both a gesture of disbelief and an expression of sympathy. It grated on her enough that she did not respond when Devdas yelled, “Good luck, madam!”

  “What a stupid man,” Diane said as soon as they’d pulled out of the parking space. “He kept trying to tell me what cures you should try while bagging my groceries.”

  “Yeah, I heard them all, thanks to you.” Armaiti was furious and she saw no reason to disguise the fact. She turned to face Diane. “What made you do it, Di?” she asked. “Don’t you think it’s my business to tell whoever I want to?”

  Diane swallowed hard. “It is. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know why I blurted it out. It’s just that . . .” She shook her head. “No. I won’t make excuses. I don’t know why I did it.”

  Armaiti felt the anger leaving her, like a bird flying off her windowsill. “Okay,” she said. “Let it go.” She put her hand on her daughter’s knee. “Shall we stop at Aslaam’s to pick up the lamb? It’s on our way. That way, we can go home and I can rest for a bit before we start working.”

  Diane looked at her immediately. “You’re tired, Mom?”

  Would Diane ever speak to her again without that clutch of anxiety in her voice? She supposed not. It was just one more thing she’d lost along the way—the simple casualness of her interactions with her daughter. What a difference it made to know—to really know—that life was finite. “Just a bit, honey. Nothing that a long nap won’t fix.”

  “Shit. We’re going to be late picking up Kavita,” Adish said. “I hadn’t counted on this bastard wedding procession holding up traffic.”

  “Mommy told you not to stop for the sweetmeats,” Farhad said languidly.

  Adish glanced back at him. “Chup re, chumcha. Remember, you’re stuck with me at home for three weeks.”

  “As if I don’t know,” Farhad said, and Adish and Laleh both burst out laughing at his aggrieved tone.

  “It’s not a punishment living with your father, you know, sonny,” Laleh said as the car inched forward.

  Farhad stretched his long frame in the back of the SUV. “He’s a bloody tyrant, yaar,” he complained to his mother. “He gets grumpy when you’re not home.”

  Laleh smiled to herself. There were worse things in life than her son being aware of how much his parents missed each other when they were apart. “I’ll be back soon,” she said.

  “Okay, listen,” Adish said to his son as he entered the lane where Kavita’s apartment building was located. “You jump out when we get there and help Kavita auntie with her luggage, okay? Think you can manage all the suitcases?”

  “Why can’t you come with me?”

  Adish pretended to be affronted. “What am I paying your gym fees for, you useless bugger?” He pulled inside the gate and eased into a parking space. “Now go.”

  “Janu, careful how you talk to him,” Laleh said gently, after Farhad had exited the car. “Sometimes you are a little rough.”

  Adish looked at her with pity in his eyes. “Lal. Please. This is between us men. I know how to handle that boy. Give me some credit.” He paused. �
��Besides, that little swine knows how much he means to me. He knows I would give my life for him.”

  Laleh felt an exquisite sweetness pierce her heart. They had built something together, she and Adish. Not a brave new world, perhaps, but—a world. A life. A family. “Thanks,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “For everything. For putting up with me. For being in my life.”

  He put his arm around her, pulled her toward him, and squeezed her tight.

  “You just come back to me, safe and sound,” he said gruffly.

  They had picked Zenobia up from her class and dropped her off at her grandmother’s flat an hour ago. And now, Nishta waited in her apartment for Mumtaz to return from saying goodbye to Ammi.

  There was one more thing she had to do before she left this place forever. Nishta picked up Mumtaz’s cell phone and dialed the phone number that she had never forgotten, the number that, as far as she knew, had not changed since her childhood. Please let Mama answer, she prayed. Please let her pick up.

  “Yes?” It was a male voice, old, tentative, but unmistakably her father’s. Nishta’s hand shook. Her mind went blank. She had not considered the possibility of her father answering the phone. Would he stay on the line long enough for her to tell him that she was leaving India? Would he convey the news to her mother? Or, praise God, would he relent and let her speak to her mother, one last time?

  The voice, more impatient now, said, “Yes? Hello?”

  “Daddy.”

  The silence on the other end was different now, heavier, more textured. And then, before her heart could either be despondent or rejoice at the fact that her father was holding on, she glanced at her phone and saw that the call had ended. He had hung up on her.

  For a second her anger was so blinding, she couldn’t see. Hideously proud, bigoted old man. Monster. Keeping her away from her own mother. And then the anger dulled into the usual acceptance, a grudging forgiveness. They had been right, in the end, hadn’t they? Marrying Iqbal had been a bad idea.