by Ali, Samina
MY HUSBAND SLEPT with his father all week, the two sharing the takat in the main room. It was narrower than our bed, so father and son slept inches apart from one another, much closer than Sameer and I had ever lain.
Zeba stayed with me in the bedroom, our bodies enclosed by the thick mosquito netting, the bird’s face turned away from us. She snored in her sleep, loudly, often catching her breath and startling awake, and as the nights wore on, I began to turn heavily in bed, pounding my legs against the mattress, to wake her. In the brief lull, I would try desperately to fall asleep. But, in truth, it was less her snoring than my own thoughts keeping me awake.
Over that week, I began to realize that it was those very nights of sleeping beside my husband, though we did not touch—because we did not touch—that were drawing me to him. His weight next to me, his steady breathing, his withdrawal. Not as complete as Dad’s had been, but enough to make me yearn for him to beckon.
Now he was even farther away, barely visible through the bed’s heavy netting, the darkness of the house, the diminishing moon. New moon. He had come to me on the new moon, sliding in through the back screen door, sliding into my bed, into me. Lying next to Sameer’s mother, I found myself thinking about my lover, his touch becoming my husband’s, and when I finally fell asleep, even the faceless demon who continued to visit me in dreams took on my husband’s pretty form. In the heart of every night, we made love.
If Zeba could only see her daughter’s dreams, she would know the shai-tan was already in her house.
FRIDAY AGAIN. THE first call to prayer.
In the next room, Zeba was leaning over Sameer, shaking him awake. He groaned his protest and she pinched his ear, pulling him out of bed.
“You use your leg as an excuse not to pray anymore,” she said. “But, for one day, you can bear the pain—as I bear the pain each moment of your lack of faith. Now get up!”
He protested again, but soon enough, was standing beside her, offering up dawn prayers along with the rest of his family. That complete, she told him to perform two more, one shuk’rana, thanking Allah for our successful union, and one in repentance for coming to me while I was bleeding.
I was not asked to join them, being impure, and while the family prayed, I bathed, planning to tell Zeba it was my cleansing bath for menses, and my husband should be allowed back into our room.
When I came out, Sameer was standing by the foot of the bed, his trunk of clothes open before him. His cotton pajamas were so sheer that the light shining in the window bared the shape of his legs, the thickness of his thighs. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, his broad chest clean of hair and scars. He was not one to take a blade to himself, aroused by religion. When he saw me wrapped in a towel, he straightened, his tongue swiping his upper lip, his eyes falling down my body, taking me in as even Nate had not been able to in the darkness. If I was seeing my husband’s naked form for the first time, he was also seeing mine.
He stepped backward and closed the door. On his head, a white prayer cap embroidered with the same design as the pillows Zeba rested against. Those dark eyes took on a look God should never see. He came toward me and, without a word, pulled me against him, sucking the dampness from the hollow of my collarbone.
I closed my eyes. It was not enough anymore to be touched only in dreams.
“Why did you tell your mother you would make love to me during my menses? Why did you lie? Is it to keep yourself away?”
“Lie? I did not lie. I want nothing more than to be able to make love to you.”
The bedroom door opened and she stepped inside, a black ghost against the white walls. He did not notice, his back to her, his hands pushing inside the towel. I tried to stop him, but he grabbed my arms and twisted them behind me, the towel falling away.
“Stop it now!” I cried.
He drew back, the look of bewilderment folding into anger. He said, “So, in the end, I’m not the man you want.”
“Sameer!” It was his mother.
He spun around and I tightened the towel about me. The two stared at each other awhile, before Zeba lowered her gaze, as though she was the one ashamed.
She said, “Just minutes before, Beta, you bowed your head to Allah. And now, you are succumbing to shai-tan. It’s as if you have two men inside you.”
Sameer drew in a long breath, his back and shoulders widening. He said, “I do not believe in your scriptures. All these limitations you have put on me.” He lunged forward and picked up his boots, shaking them at her. “Look at what you have done to your son!”
She shut her eyes.
“I do not believe!” he yelled, yanking off his prayer cap. He crumpled it and threw it at her feet.
She raised her chin, her lips curled into themselves, trembling.
He grabbed a T-shirt and tucked it under his arm along with the boots as he walked out. A few seconds later, we heard the sound of his motorcycle blazing down the street.
Zeba did not stir and I went and picked up the cap, smoothing it over a palm. She grabbed my hand, the embroidery’s thread scratching at my skin.
“If he is like this here, what will he become when you take him to America?”
THE MUSLIM NEIGHBORS wanted to meet the new bride.
There were three other Muslim families on the brock, one directly across the street, and two down the road, though in which of the squat houses, I couldn’t be sure.
Only the women came, all veiled in lengthy duppattas like Zeba’s, faces clean of makeup. It was another blazing day, and before Feroz and Ibrahim left for juma prayers at the mosque (then on to work and school), they dragged seven chairs out from the divan and set them in a circle in the courtyard. I sat in the shade of a lean ashoka tree, some of its pointy, long leaves turned yellow and brittle, scattered about the ground. Zeba sat beside me, more animated among the women than I had ever seen her, though whenever a motorcycle or scooter passed, her eyes flitted to the gates as quickly as mine. Both of us awaited Sameer’s return. Above, koyals called to each other.
Nafiza set out chai and biscuits, fresh fruit, then sat on the steps of the house. I wished I were alone inside.
The woman from across the street picked up a cup of tea and scraped the bottom against the saucer. She was glancing down, a coy smile teasing her lips. “My son’s match has been tied,” she announced, suddenly gazing up at me and assessing this other bride. Her eyelids were as dark as Amme’s. I turned away. “He’s getting married at the end of Zil’hij.”
One neighbor had brought along her two adolescent daughters, and the girls glanced at each other and bowed their heads, shyly anticipating their own marriages. Their veils were attractively draped about their fair faces, thick braids pulled out of the fabric, sliding down past their breasts, knotted with matching bows. A flamboyant and daring gesture, meant to catch the eye of men. How different Henna and I had been.
“Mubarak, mubarak, Zehra!” the three friends cried, congratulating her.
Then the plump one with the daughters pouted and said, “Ar’re, I didn’t even know you were looking. Why did you keep it a secret, huh, telling me you were going to wait until he finished college?”
Zehra did not answer, and neither girl looked disheartened, as though having pined for the son.
Zeba said, “The end of Zil’hij? That’s right before Muhar‘ram,” the month of mourning. “Zehra, have you thought about how you will have to keep the two sleeping apart for the month?” She glanced at the gate and said, “Your son may become … cross with you. He will be a new groom, after all. Perhaps it would be better for all if you waited until after Muhar’ram.”
Zehra kept her eyes on me. “They have the rest of their lives to have fun. Best to marry them as soon as the match is tied. Nowadays, these arrangements break so easily. Ar’re, it’s not like when we were young. Then, your parents found someone, you got married, and everyone learned to live together. Now …” her lips curled up into a sneer, her head shaking.
The woman beside her
clucked. She was frail and tall, her eyelids covered with moles. She said, “In times like these, I feel blessed Allah did not grant me children.”
“My daughters will marry whomever I tell them to,” the mother said, staring sternly at the two girls. The two kept their heads lowered, one sliding her sandal back and forth in the dirt. Her nails were painted purple. The mother said, “They are virtuous girls. No one can say anything against them.”
Zehra turned to her. “The truth is, Lubna, it would have been my great kismet to accept one of your daughters, but you see …” her voice faltered. She tried to take another sip of chai, but her hand was trembling too much. She set the cup heavily onto the table, the tea splashing out. Nafiza labored off the steps and wiped it with a rag.
Lubna leaned over the tall neighbor and clutched Zehra’s hand. A leaf from the ashoka tree fluttered into my lap. I pressed it against my palm. Lubna said, “Allah raheem, what is the matter, Zehra?”
Zehra crumpled forward, a hand across her face, hiding it, her back shaking with sobs. The three women exchanged glances. The two girls smiled at each other, an adult’s loss of control always a show for the young. I was as invisible to the group as Nafiza, my role in this drama undefined, no longer a girl, not yet among the women.
Zehra jerked away from Lubna and looked up at Zeba, her face moist. It was to my mother-in-law she spoke. “He wanted to marry a girl from college.” She licked her lips before saying, “A Hindu! He has fallen in love.”
Lubna immediately shifted back into her chair. Her eyes landed on her daughters with a solemn but flat expression.
Zeba nodded, showing no surprise.
The frail one slowly said, “They get these ideas from Hindi films. How many of our Muslim heroes play Hindus? They are never cast as Muslim and all their heroines are Hindu themselves. Then, if that is not enough, they go marry them in real life, forgetting who they are. confused by the parts they play. What kind of role models are they? How can we blame our children?”
There was silence, and in it, Nafiza’s throaty cough, the breeze shaking the slim branches and passing a warm hand down my neck. I began tearing the leaf into small pieces.
Zeba said, “Have you met the girl? Maybe she is willing to convert.”
“These Hindus never convert! There is no reason for me to meet her.”
Zeba selected a biscuit and, dusting the bits of leaf from my palm. pushed it into my hand. I hadn’t been able to eat breakfast after he’d left. “Islam runs through the man’s blood,” she said. “If he is Muslim. their children will be Muslim. That is what is important, that he is Muslim …”
“Their children! Zeba, I have tied his match to someone else. A distant cousin to him. He’s a boy, what does he know? The other day, he even told me that he is the one who has to live with her, not me. Ar’re, we all have to live with her, with each other, the girl’s family and ours, how would that be possible?”
The frail one nodded in agreement. “You did right, Zehra. We are all Indian, that is true, but their culture, their way of life, is very different from ours. We cannot be joined. It is enough that we share the same neighborhood. You must wave and nod when you see them, but that is all, it cannot go any farther than this … friendship.”
Zehra looked beyond her to Lubna. “It is possible he might hurt the girl, and I didn’t want … you and I, we are friends and neighbors …”
“No, no, no,” Lubna said, shaking a plump hand in the air. “There is no need … I fully understand.” She was relieved for her daughters and, gathering them together, rose to leave.
At the gates, the older one turned back, a finger winding nervously through her hair. “Zeba Auntie,” she said, smiling shyly, and I noticed her lips were gleaming with clear gloss. “I didn’t see Sameer Bhai today. I thought Friday was his day off.”
HE DIDN’T COME home until two in the morning.
Zeba was still sleeping in my bed. When I’d told her my menses had stopped, I saw the suspicion in her slanted eyes even before she told me she wanted to make sure and wait the full seven days. It was over her snoring that I heard his motorcycle turn the corner of our street, the only noise outside but for a lazily barking dog. He switched the engine off before he reached the house, coasting in the rest of the way. The gate creaked open, then the front door. Zeba had left it unlatched for him, not fearing, as we generally did, the threat of intruders.
I was rising from the bed to greet him when he dropped onto the takat. All four windows in that room were open, and in the frail night light, I could just make him out. He was sitting with his face in his hands, slumped forward, his back swaying to and fro, the rhythm Zeba and Feroz fell into while reciting the Qur’an. I stopped. It was hard to tell whether he was praying or crying, the sound of any groans washed away by his mother’s snores. His head fell lower, all ten fingers scratching at it, then clutching his hair. He sat curled into himself a moment before he suddenly straightened and turned my way. I was sitting up in bed, but the room was dark and the netting heavy, so it was likely he did not see me. He pulled off his boots and T-shirt and slid onto the pillow next to his father.
In the morning, before the call to prayer, he was gone again.
I WAS SITTING under the shade of the ashoka tree, in the circle of chairs that remained in the front courtyard, when Nafiza came and squatted on the ground by my feet. She had been wearing the same sari for almost a week, the deep green of the ashoka leaves set against a maroon border, a print of mangoes. Just as I hadn’t considered where Zeba and Ibrahim might sleep in the house, I hadn’t thought, until now, where Nafiza would bathe. There were only two bathrooms here, one attached to my bedroom, one in the main area, which Sameer’s parents and brother used. A modern structure, with bathrooms inside the house, unlike traditional houses with an inner courtyard, where, set against the back boundary wall, cement one-room structures with roofs of corrugated steel served as the servants’ quarters, and where, next to the place they ate and slept, was their own hammam. Here, Nafiza slept in the kitchen.
“Why don’t you go bathe in my bathroom, Nafiza? I’m going to be sitting out here for a while. I’m enjoying the peace. I think it’s the first time I’ve been alone since I’ve come to Hyderabad.”
She kept her face lowered, one knee pulled up to her chin, bare toes squashing an ant. Her high bun, coarse and thickly oiled, was almost fully gray, the henna she had applied during my wedding having faded.
“Even if boy here, child, he mama no let him by you side, not in night, not in day. She think boy must-must. No-thing stop him from claiming you.” Must was the word used here to describe animals in heat.
“I’m not in the mood to go around that topic again. You yourself got him pushed out of my bed. Then you saw what happened when he tried to approach me.”
“I no come about that, child. I come to ask other thing. Tomorrow Sunday. I go visit me daughter. After I help you saas with food, I take bus to me child’s house. I miss she, miss me na’wasi,” granddaughter. “Monday morning, clinic by Roshan’s apartment open. I see doctor about me cough. Too many days go on. No-thing help.”
“What have you been taking?”
“Herbs.”
Herbs, no doubt the kind Raga-be provided. It was like those women who had brought the baby to the blind alim, hoping for a miracle when medicine would do. But if it was like them, it was also like me. All of us turned away from doctors, turned away from what we thought it better not to know.
I rose and went to my bedroom and unlocked the almari. I took out fifty rupees, then thought better and took out fifty more. A generous allowance, too generous, in fact, perhaps in it a bribe to keep her on my side. Keep my nanny on my side. Her affections for me, her loyalties, bought and paid for. If we were going on pretending nothing had altered between us, then it was simply because we were acting out what we had learned by heart.
I went to the courtyard and took up my chair again. She was sitting where I had left her, chin resting on a weake
ned knee.
“Get a toy for your na’wasi,” I said, handing her the money. If she was surprised by the amount, she didn’t show it. She simply counted the bills then tucked them into her blouse, against one of her heavy breasts.
THAT NIGHT, IBRAHIM rapped softly at my door and asked me to join him for dinner. Though he didn’t say, I knew Zeba must have mentioned that I hadn’t been eating well since Sameer’s departure. How could I? A week ago, on Saturday night, I had been out with my husband, feeling like I was on a first date, exhilarated. Tonight, after dinner, I would sleep beside his mother, as I had next to my own for years. What kind of virtue was this?
At the table, I sat across from Ibrahim, in the seat I usually took during family meals, Friday mornings, Sundays. There was a plate set out for me and a bottle of the purified water Ibrahim had brought back. Zeba stood over her husband, fanning him with the newspaper, the creases on her face seeming to have deepened overnight. The light in the prayer room was on, Feroz studying inside. Nafiza was already gone.
Ibrahim looked tired, this, the end of his work week. His full cheeks were sunken, his jowls hanging low, his work shirt stained with some sort of grease. Beside his plate, two bottles of medicine to control his ulcer.
He picked up a wooden spoon and began to fill my plate, his own still empty. When I tried to stop him, he snatched the spoon out of my reach.
“There is no shame in first attending to my daughter, only joy. I will think back on this day for many months and, God forbid, maybe even years to come, when you and your husband are in the States. Please, grant me this pleasure.” He smiled, and I saw it was Sameer’s smile, the same sensuous curve of the lips. As he poured curry over the rice, Zeba quietly instructed him to add more meat, saying it would give me strength. When he was done, he sat back, and she attended to him, serving him food and water.