by Ali, Samina
“Follow Sameer?”
“Hahn, bebe, to see where he goes all day.”
Bebe. She was reverting back to her old role, calling me ma’am, and so telling me that, whether or not I approved, they had gone out of their way for my benefit, such was their allegiance to me.
“He goes tutoring, I already know that.”
“In the afternoons, he tutors between eleven and four. His college is very far from here, in Banjara Hills, one hour by motorbike. My husband …”
“So where is he in the mornings?” I asked in spite of myself. “He leaves here close to six.”
“He goes to the park.”
“The park?”
“There is a park in the Old City, very close to your mother’s house. It is where he goes to exercise. He runs and lifts heavy equipment.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. From the park, he goes to college.”
What was she saying then? Had she ridden a bus all this way to tell me Sameer’s schedule; that, in the end, her mother was wrong, he was doing nothing to fool me?
“Roshan, I’m not sure why you’ve come today. You made me anxious for no reason.”
She set her cup on the table between us, not having taken a sip, and pushed up her glasses. “Just as my mother is your mother, your mother is like my own. She has always shown me love and given me money and clothes. She was the one who paid for Bisma’s delivery. Layla,” she said, then, “bebe, I know about the … gora man and your bleeding. There is a woman doctor by my house, the one who delivered Bisma. She is very good. Her clinic is open on Mondays and Wednesdays. I could go with you … while your husband is away. Layla … bebe, we have shared the same milk, there is nothing wrong with sharing secrets. We are like sisters.”
WHEN NAFIZA WAS preparing my room for sleep, I went in behind her and shut the door. She was hunched over beside the bed, poking the stick broom underneath it, and a dried up marigold rolled out.
She said, “Why you say no to me daughter, child? She take you to doctor. Doctor clean you inside. Better for when you go home.”
“Go home? Nafiza, after all you’ve done, you’re lucky I’m not sending you home! Please don’t make me remind you of who you are!”
“I no forget me-self, Layla-bebe. You husband, he forget. Look at he! Every day he dress in new Umrikan clothes, looking pretty-pretty. The woman across the street, she tell me today it look like you husband is Umrikan and you with duppatta around you, look like you from here. I tell she, ‘No, no, me no care what me child look like, me no forget who she is. She forget, he forget, but no me.’” She coughed into her shoulder and it sounded thicker.
“Did you only run around confessing my problems, or did you visit a doctor about your own health?” Anger and concern mixed to gether; I was sounding like Amme.
“Me no worry-worry about me-self, child. Me have full life. When me time come, Allah take me, no medicine, no doctor can stop him. Me worry-worry about you. You young girl. You pretty, more pretty than he. No reason you waste life with man like him.”
“Things have changed between us, Nafiza, that’s what I’ve come to tell you. There is no reason anymore for you to go to Zeba, as you have to everyone else …”
“No-thing change, Layla-bebe. I clean you bed each morning, I see me-self. No-thing change. You think because you put duppatta around face and pray with he mama that everything change. No-thing change between you and you husband. Still, he man who no real man. Still, you wife who no real wife. This home no real home for you, child! Tho!” she spat to show her disgust, then quickly swept it up with the rest of the waste.
THE IMAM WAS tapping the loudspeaker, ready to start the azan.
I bit Sameer’s ear. He stirred, eyes staying shut, though he was grinning, drawing me close. I passed a hand over his thighs, then squeezed between them, feeling him harden. Certainly not what Zeba had meant when she’d said that, in the morning, only a wife had the power to rouse her husband.
“Later,” I promised, “if you come now and pray.”
His eyes shot open. “What! Bloody hell, Layla, I knew this would happen.” He turned away the pillow once more bent over his head. I took his thumb into my mouth and sucked in the way he’d shown me, warm lips tugging and extracting the silver ring. He groaned, and an arm swept back and around my waist. He pulled me over him and flattened me against the wall, then rubbed himself against my buttocks.
“I’m doing this for you,” he said, “not her, not her god.”
So I got him to dress, and we joined the others in the prayer room. No one had knocked today in hope of waking us, and when Zeba saw Sameer by my side, her lips turned up in that small grin, the lines around her mouth, the corners of her eyes, deepening, lightening up her face. She handed me Sameer’s prayer cap with its delicate embroidery, and I set it on my husband’s head, and, in this way, she passed on to me what she had, till then, considered her responsibilities. She freed herself of her son.
We aligned ourselves in the small room, Sameer standing ahead of me as Ibrahim stood ahead of Zeba, Feroz by his father’s side. Islamic prayer is a personal ritual, no loud sermons, no priest standing between God and devotee, telling you how to approach him, read him, how to be forgiven, redemption. There is only you, and all of what you have done, and God’s mercy.
I was looking to be pardoned for Nate, who had, from a man, taken the form of blood, then vomit from my husband’s body. From desire had come revulsion. Repelled, Sameer had said on the wedding night, he had been repelled by me, by my flesh, a baby floating in blood, draining out. Now, every night I put him into my mouth, it was to uncoil him, yes, but also to prevent him from pushing into me, fingers, tongue, penis, prevent him from becoming repelled by the very flesh aching to open for him. A month-long punishment for a single night.
So I stood repentant before Allah, behind my husband, bowing, prostrating simultaneously, whispering prayers, my words lapping over his, his over mine, gaining strength, not a sparring at all, but a great union.
Allah raheem.
AT BREAKFAST, IBRAHIM presented Sameer with our rail tickets to Madras. We were scheduled to leave the following Friday, the morning after his tutoring duties came to an end.
Sameer rose from his seat and, rounding his brother at the end of the table, embraced his father. Zeba glanced at me. It was my responsibility now to ensure that her son, the one who carried her handsome face, had a future. And there was no future there.
Sameer spoke into his father’s neck, hopes for a place he’d never seen. “When I get to the U.S., I’m going to work hard, Papa, I’m going to send back enough money for you to retire in two years. You’ve got to take care of your health.”
Ibrahim patted him on the back. “First you take care of yourself and your wife. Then you think about taking care of others.”
“And I’ll bring Feroz over as soon as I can. You don’t worry about him anymore. He’s in my charge.” As he was returning to his seat, he slapped his brother’s head with the tickets. “Keep studying, huh. It may seem useless now, but you’ll need a degree in the U.S. Can’t get ahead without one.”
Feroz grinned, his mouth full of paratha, and nodded his head side to side, eyes glistening with surma. I had never thought of him as wanting to come to America.
When Sameer was beside me again, he squeezed my hand under the table, then leaned over and kissed me, right in front of his family I didn’t pull away.
Zeba did not take her eyes from my face, my behavior unsettling her, making her see the other side of me, my twin, as Sameer had said. Indeed, if she had handed her son over to a woman who had led him to the prayer room, she had also handed him over to the woman who had the American passport to take him away. She said, “Elections are coming up. A young Muslim couple traveling alone. You hear stories. Rapes, killings. Maybe you should wait until it passes.”
Sameer moved back into his chair, and his body stiffened as his presence withdrew. He spoke slowly, “Wait u
ntil what passes, Mum?”
“The tension between Hindus and Muslims.”
“That would mean I could never go.”
She finally turned to Sameer. “The limitations you accuse me of setting on you have always been meant to protect you, save you.”
Ibrahim took Zeba’s hand in both of his, a gesture of affection I’d never seen before between parents.
“I, too, do not want our children to leave us, Zeba, but it is not our decision to make. We are here only to facilitate their dreams.” He turned to Sameer, and me, one eye irritated and red, the way it looked when he returned from work. “Beta, going to Madras is only the first step in your lifelong journey together. As much as your mother and I are excited for you two, you must understand that we also have fears. We want you to be happy we want you not to make mistakes.” He sighed as he glanced at Zeba, and she nodded, urging him on.
“For many years, Sameer, you have spoken of going to America. You have worked hard at school not to find a job here, but determined to make your way there. Beta, America is a great place, and, inshal’lah, it will give you everything you have found lacking in your home. But America’s opportunities will also expose you to a great many new freedoms. You will be tempted, I know, you may even forget yourself … lose yourself there.”
He stopped and stared down at the table, the spots on his scalp the color of his kurta. “You and I have always held countering life philosophies. You have opposed me on many decisions, such as urging me to take rish’wat so that I could afford to buy a house and put inside it those things that you think make life more appealing, a color TV, a stereo and telephone, a car at the front gates. But you must remember, Beta, that possession, any possession, comes with a fee. It is like these politicians you are reading about each day in the papers. They take money from the public, but till today we have no clean drinking water, and day by day so much pollution thickens the air that I have to cover my face with a handkerchief the entire two hours to and from work! Still, look at my eye, always red. And look at what is happening to my skin, look at these spots. No doctor can tell me what they are. See, Beta, who is suffering? We are. Who is benefiting? Only a handful of people. In this way, do not place the good of yourself over the well-being of your family. Yes, work hard, get ahead in life, continue wearing all these flashy American clothes, but do not forget who you are inside. In the many things you will be leaving behind in India, do not entirely leave behind the person your mother and I have raised you to be, so driven by impulse that you become a man his own father cannot recognize … or his own wife!”
Sameer lowered his head and let out a long breath, his shoulders slumping. His lips were pursed, so I knew he was stopping himself from speaking, not wanting to oppose his father. The tickets began to bend in his grip.
Ibrahim set them on the table, then clasped Sameer’s hand into mine. “No matter where you are, keep your life simple—that is all I am saying. Remember, a rich man is not one who has the most, but one who desires the least.”
ZEBA ASKED ME if I still wanted to join Feroz and her in the prayer room to recite the Qur’an as the two had been doing every Friday for eleven years. We had talked about my doing so all week, ever since she started tutoring me and saw how many Arabic letters I could actually recognize and knot together. Guttural sounds, that was what I produced, a hum from deep within the throat, with no understandable meaning for me except that which was nonverbal, nonhuman.
But she was not asking the woman who had been praying with her all week, but the one who carried the American passport, the one who had openly kissed her husband at the breakfast table. What she had been blind to before was apparent to her now: the daughter who communicated with the mother in Urdu was the same who spoke to the husband in English, the daughter who covered herself in a duppatta similar to the mother’s was the same who bared herself when out with the husband, out of her presence. She was seeing all now, what I had been exposed to—would expose her son to—when out of her house. Her limits had limits of their own.
Of course I would pray with her, as we had been discussing---as I had been looking forward to—all week. Family traditions, there were none in our house, save those ancient rites we had inherited, culture passed on along with the knobby bones of the spinal cord, erecting our existence: shaving my head at ten days as the Prophet had shaved the heads of his children; a bismil’lah ceremony at four years to declare I was Muslim; at twelve, the onset of menses celebrated with fireworks and the gathering of one hundred in front of whom I was showcased, marriageable age; at nineteen, the wedding. And there were those other traditions I had practiced, though not necessarily with my family: attaining a driver’s license, getting drunk for the first time, sucking at my first joint, graduating high school, entering college, losing my virginity. What most any Muslim girl, most any American girl goes through, here, there. But what Feroz and Zeba were doing each Friday, voices mingling, backs swaying, this song, this lament, was not about who they were outside, joined with a larger community, but inside, joined together, mother and son. And now, mother and daughter. Sister and brother. Family
Yes, I would join them, if they did not mind my halting breath.
I FOUND SAMEER in the courtyard. He was sprawled out in a chair, long legs stretched before him, head thrown back, eyes shut against the sun. I leaned over him and brushed my lips against his, my veil falling across his face. He reached up and pulled me into his lap, then clasped me in his arms. I rested my head against his chest, unbuttoned his shirt and slid a hand inside, his nipples as sensitive, I had learned, as my own.
“I spoke to your brother after we recited the Qur’an. He’s very bright. Did you know that after his engineering classes he goes and takes other ones in computer languages? Something called CADD and dBASE III. He said you’d send him back money to study even more. He’s really preparing himself to come.”
His face was up to the sun again, and the way his neck rested on the back of the chair exposed the hard bone of his jaw. He turned down his lips and the skin wrinkled on his chin. “It’ll take years to get him to America. I’ll have to talk to him about going to the Middle East.”
“But you just promised him and your father …”
“In due course, baby in due course.” He kissed my forehead, saying, “Don’t tell me they’ve got my own wife thinking I’m corrupt,” and I could hear the pain in his voice for what his father had gone and done.
“I’m sorry” I said. “I wish he had just given you the tickets.”
He grunted. “Papa does nothing without giving advice. Not even a meal can be eaten without a moral, and none of what he says is practical. This country runs on rish’wat, yet he thinks that because I once took money from a student he has to save me from myself. Even something like corruption, baby, is a matter of perspective.”
“You took money? For what?”
“Nothing that would hurt anyone, like he thinks. One of my students told me he was getting married and was desperate to get hired for this post way off in some bloody village I’ve never even heard of. To be considered, he had to have the highest marks. So I gave them to him. It was inconsequential, he had no chance of getting that job. You have two applicants, one Hindu, one Muslim, and even if both are equally qualified, the Hindu will be hired. That’s our affirmative action, baby. Keep the dominant classes dominating.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“I bought this bike,” he said, opening a hand to the courtyard to indicate the blue Honda, eyes still closed. “I needed one after the accident.”
Yes, those great Dabir Pura Doors. I was beginning to see their usefulness. During riots, during trouble, they could be closed up, protecting those inside. I said, “All this talk about Hindus and Muslims … you know, I’ve always stayed in the Old City, and you don’t hear anything but the call to prayer, ten times a day! Sameer, is it dangerous for us go to Madras by ourselves?”
“Don’t listen to my mother, Layla, it’s jus
t her way of trying to keep us here.”
I traced his jawbone, then ran my finger down his throat before kissing his Adam’s apple. How to ask this? “Would it be terrible for you to stay here?”
“Wouldn’t it be for you?”
I didn’t answer.
He scooted up in the chair, and his dark eyes narrowed on my face. He stared at me as though he didn’t know me, that look Dad got whenever he was about to beat me. He pinched my veil. “Don’t tell me this is the life you want, Layla, being stuck in the house with nothing to do but pray and cook and clean. Waiting for me all day, heating up my bath water. I’ve never objected before because there’s nothing else for you to do here. It’s just passing time. It’s not a life, Layla, not one I want for us. And who you are here is not the woman I want, either. The woman I married attends university. She’s heading toward a degree. She wears bikinis and she …” he licked his lips, hesitating, before he said, “she knows certain liberties.”
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I awoke to Sameer and Zeba arguing in the next room.
“I won’t let you take her with you today,” he was saying. “I don’t care what you think or how important this is to you. She’s my wife …”
“Let your wife choose how she wants to spend her day. Why should you decide for her? Let me ask her when she wakes up what she would like …”
“I’ve told you, she’s my wife and she’ll do as I say”
“You surprise me, Beta. You dress in those jeans and speak only in English with your wife, but when the time comes, you are no different from any other Muslim man I know.”
“I am speaking to you in the only language you understand. I will say this once more. I do not want Layla in the kitchen with you anymore. I do not want to come home and find her sweating and stinking of onions and garlic. Her mother has sent Nafiza, use her. My wife is not your servant … or mine!”