by Ali, Samina
“Pagan sacrifice,” Sameer said.
“Hahn ! Right! Pagan sacrifice.” He picked up his glasses and pointed them at Sameer. “You’ve always had the better mind, yaar, even in classes you never struggled.”
“Did you also study engineering?” I asked. “Is that how you met?”
Naveed gulped down his chai while he watched Sameer over the cup’s rim with a look I could not read. Blue hollows shadowed his light eyes, flecks of gold in them as I’d never seen before.
“The park,” Sameer finally said. “We met at the park where I go exercising. A long time ago, hahn, Naveed? Seven, eight years.”
“Seven,” Naveed said. “I still remember the exact day.”
The two stared at each other a moment, before Sameer took my hand and brought it to his lips. “We’re leaving for Madras this Friday,” he said. “Then off to the U.S. A different life for me, Naveed, one I choose.”
Naveed laughed. “Oh, yes, the modern arrangement. Passport for degree. I am telling you, yaar, India is changing, you don’t have any reason to run away. Just look at these marriage rites, hahn, the very thing that defines India. It used to be two people came together over commonalities, religion, family status, wealth,” he counted by pressing his thumb into the three joints of his pinkie. “Now, these very ideas of family status and wealth are obsolete, replaced by passports and degrees, all the dowry cartable in a single purse or pocket. Who cares who you are and what you were, let us only see what you can change into! I am telling you, yaar, America’s influence is here. It won’t be long before even the idea of marriage is obsolete. Or, if marriage must continue, it won’t matter who marries whom.” He sucked in air before saying, “Please, yaar, there is no reason to run off to the U.S. when the U.S. is coming to your very doorstep.”
Nafiza entered the room and asked if Naveed was staying for dinner. She looked especially tired, the dark skin of her neck and jowls taking on the yellowish hue I sometimes saw on people here, jaundice from the water and food. I would have to force her to the doctor, much as she was trying to force me.
Sameer jumped up and peeled the wet jeans from around his weaker thigh, hiding its form behind the thick denim. If Naveed hadn’t been there, I would have gone to my husband and taken his hands in mine, stopping him from such embarrassment.
He excused Nafiza by saying, “Naveed has to get back to open his repair shop.” She limped out, and he turned to me. “I’ll just take him to an auto-rickshaw.”
Without meaning to, I stared at his wounded leg. “In this rain!” I cried. “No, no, no, I won’t let you go!” Limits to keep him safe, Zeba had said, even this, a broken-and-not-properly-healed right leg to keep her son from venturing too far. From mother to wife, duties to Sameer had been passed on, along with, it seemed, those same fears that he might not return home. “Your motorcycle was skidding, Sameer, please, don’t go.”
He grabbed ahold of the two arms of my chair and leaned into me, whispering into my ear, “I was losing control because of you, baby.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Naveed said. “The shop is closed. Let me take you two out somewhere, as a wedding gift. A Hindi film? You know, Chandni is currently the biggest hit. Ah-ha, Sri Devi, what a star !”
Sameer was running his lips up and down my neck and didn’t answer. The front of his shirt ballooned down to expose his clean chest.
“Ar’re, yaar, stop this show. You tell me not to talk to your wife about such things and then you … Bhabhi, this is my closest friend, Bhabhi, you have no idea how much he means to me. I’m begging you, please do not take him so far away without letting him spend one last day with me. Please, I am asking you for just one day. You have him for the rest of your life.”
NAVEED CAME UP with the idea of going to Golconda Fort, a two-hour journey from here. Though I could sense my husband’s reluctance, I readily agreed: the excursion was a good way to see Henna, my closest friend, the one I wanted to spend a day with before my return to the U.S. The road to the fort was narrow, lorries overtaking lorries, overtaking smaller vehicles, the drivers reckless and drunk, and Sameer insisted he wouldn’t bring me by motorbike. We had no car at our disposal. For a moment, it seemed the whole thing would be called off. Then Naveed said he would rent a car, on whatever little money he must have earned at the TV repair shop, and Sameer didn’t offer to pitch in. Wedding gift.
Early Sunday morning, Naveed showed up in a flashy red Maruti that reminded me of a VW Golf, hip and urban, the newest arrival to India’s car market of lumbering Fiats and Ambassadors, and yet another of the country’s latest gestures toward the West. It had tinted windows and a tape recorder, Chandni playing so loudly I couldn’t hear what the two friends were talking about in front. I rolled down my window and got lost in the hum, my husband’s low voice and the auto-rickshaws puttering along, the woman on the cassette singing her regrets—no, she would not leave her parents’ home to go to her in-laws’. An outdated lament.
We picked up Henna, and I knew from the moment I saw her face that something was wrong. I hadn’t seen her since the wedding, and I quickly sidled up next to her and took her hand in mine. In just under a month, her belly had swelled so much that I could make out the shape of her belly button right through the kurta, which was stretched taut about her.
We took off again and, under the music, I asked Henna what was wrong. She shook her head while eyeing the two men, and I understood she wanted to wait until we were by ourselves. I flattened my palm against hers to let her know we were one.
We fell into silence, unable to banter as the two friends up front, and after about an hour, Sameer turned in his seat and took my other hand. He stared into my face in that way of his, trying to perceive what I was seeing. Though he did not say it, I could see the question in his eyes: Why are you so quiet, when you had been the one to insist on this adventure?
For a moment, gripping both his and Henna’s hands, I felt a surge of happiness I’d not known before, and I gave him a smile.
Henna cried, “Sameer Bhai, you’re wearing a toe ring! Why did you take off that gold band?” The one she had put on, representing me in marriage.
Sameer looked from her to me and his gaze fell down my body even as his tongue pushed through his front teeth, so unabashed in what he was revealing. No longer the man who did not want to confront my relatives, be confronted by them.
Henna released my hand and began fumbling with her kurta. I knew she felt as though she’d come between a husband and wife, and I laid my head against her soft shoulder, taking her hand again and not letting go of Sameer’s.
WE WERE INSIDE the great walls of Golconda Fort, standing on what seemed a stone verandah up at its highest point, overlooking the citadel. The fort had been built on a granite hill, and we had parked in a lot filled with tour buses and cars, the spot where the Mughal armies had camped for eight months, besieging the impregnable fort. The door that had at last been opened, allowing the enemy to slip inside, easily, finally, I could not find. But on the way up to the terrace, climbing hundreds of steep stone steps, we had passed an ancient well inside which, I overheard a guide saying, the women of the harem, the women of the Qutb Shahi family, had drowned themselves, unwilling to let their bodies also be invaded. This was the heritage I carried.
Off in the distance, beyond one of the twisting masonry walls, the rolling grasses and stone outcroppings led naturally to the Qutb Shahi tombs. Seven majestic domes were all I could make out from here, out of perhaps thirteen, a denseness of bushy green trees huddled about each, a lushness I did not find elsewhere on the high plateau. The wind was cool against my skin, clean of diesel fumes, offering respite from the city’s heat. The sun was fierce, the ground having greedily swallowed up yesterday’s storm.
Sameer asked me to go with him to the top of the Darbar. It was a two-story structure with tall arches, inside of which was the stone takht. The steps leading up to the throne were narrow and winding, pulsing with visitors. Henna had already been co
mplaining about the climb, and seeing it as a chance to finally be alone with her, I stayed behind. Naveed and Sameer went together, lighting cigarettes the moment they stepped away. Naveed wore jeans that were baggy around the waist and thighs, as though cut for someone else. Behind the large lenses of his sunglasses, I couldn’t make out his eyes, those flecks of gold that had caught my attention. Sameer, as always, was in the clothes Amme had brought back for him, his heavy boots clicking on the stone floor, and guides kept rushing up and touching his arm, speaking the few English words they knew. They thought he had dollars. Henna and I in our Indian dresses were left in peace.
As soon as the two had disappeared inside the building, Henna grabbed my hand and said, “Hanif is coming home. He’s coming back, Layla, to me.”
“What! Henna, why then do you look so sad?” I could not help but take her face in my hands, the flesh plump and full of water. I began laughing in relief, and her eyes filled with tears. “My God, Henna,” I said, “do you not want your husband anymore?”
She nodded, her tears warm on my skin. “It is all I have prayed for. He has arranged to come before the delivery Layla,” she whispered, gazing about. Who could be here to overhear this, save the wind and the ghosts still presiding over Golconda? “He hasn’t told his parents, no one from his family He’s quitting his job. They wouldn’t let him, you see. But we can’t be apart anymore. He’s going to live with me. My parents are readying my room. They’re so happy!”
“But why aren’t you?”
She tried to pull away but I kept ahold of her. Kajal was smudging black at the corner of an eye. The dark circles I’d first seen during the wedding days had deepened. She said, “I don’t understand it myself. All this time, it’s all I’ve wanted, for him to be here with me. I’m having his baby!” She held onto her belly with both arms, as though already clutching the child. “But now that he’s coming … I don’t like the way he’s coming. Slipping into this country, invisible. It makes me feel that something will go wrong, no, something is going to go wrong. I’m scared, Layla, I’m so scared something is going to happen, to him, to me, to the baby, I don’t know to whom, but I can’t sleep anymore. It’s all I think about.” She wiped her face with her duppatta. People walking by gazed at us, always moving so close that I could feel their fingers or clothes swipe at me. Too many people in India, too many differences in culture.
I tried to lead her to another corner when, from above, Sameer began calling my name. I found him standing at the edge of the Darbar’s first floor, framed by an arch, waving. Naveed was nowhere in sight.
“I love you!” he suddenly called, surprising me, and his voice echoed through the walls. Those beside him stopped and stared down at me. A tour guide behind him was clapping to show the visitors how the sound carried all the way to the front of the fort, by the Grand Portico, though it could be heard nowhere else. So brilliantly had the acoustics been designed for signaling. When I said nothing, he shouted it again, words we had not yet uttered to each other, “I love you!” Once more, the echo, seeming to raise up all the ruins about me so that I could see what it had been like here before, the stables, the palaces, the gardens, the life. Not just survival, but a way of existence, it was possible here.
A group of young men yanked Sameer away from the arch, and I laughed and dragged Henna far from the view of tombs. I felt guilty being happy when she felt so sad, but these fears she was describing, this premonition, were nothing more than disguised excitement. I told her as much, her turn to confess, my turn to give courage.
“When you’ve wanted one thing for so long, Henna, and it finally is happening, it feels … it feels like this baby. A gift you don’t want to lose. It feels fragile, but it’s not, it has a force of its own, beyond us. I swear, we’re all going to remain safe and happy. Nothing is going to go wrong. Henna, our lives are just beginning!”
“There you are!” Sameer called, bounding toward me. Naveed strolled behind him, hands thrust deep in his jean pockets as he whistled the song from Chandni. I passed my fingers through my husband’s hand as I released Henna’s, letting him know that I would be walking back with him. Related or not, Naveed could accompany my cousin.
When we had climbed down the winding steps and were nearing the imposing Balahisar Gate, twenty-five feet tall and covered in spikes to keep elephants from charging, I heard Naveed’s voice from behind. “Wa wa, Henna Apa, that’s a great idea! Ar’re, yaar,” he called, and Sameer and I shuffled to the side to let others pass as the two came up. In his dark glasses, our reflection, smiling and content, the image of a newly married couple. “Henna Apa is right,” he said. “With elections so soon, it is not safe for you two to travel alone to Madras. It is better if I come along.”
THAT NIGHT IN bed, I told him I loved him, too. The words came out easily, even with some relief, the first time I had said them to anyone. And I knew, the instant I heard them aloud, just how long I’d been waiting for this moment, this sensation to take over me, as strong as any demon, though, I prayed, not as fickle. Let it forever possess me.
I was lying with my head on his chest, a hand flat on his belly feeling the steady pulse within, against my fingers, against my temple. matching my own rhythm. Around us, the maroon walls of the mosquito netting, the whir of the ceiling fan above, Zeba’s distant snoring. I couldn’t imagine my life in any other way. How to make him understand? Perhaps in increments.
“I wasn’t able to attend Henna’s wedding,” I began, “but I’d like to be here for the delivery. She told me today that Hanif is returning. He’s going to live with her. They’re so close to our house, Sameer, just like that, we’re already part of a small community. And you have Naveed. He cares so much for you. Renting that car must have cost him so much. For you, he did it for you.”
He sucked in air then blew it out of his mouth, and my hair tickled my face. “Did you ask your cousin to invite Naveed to Madras?”
“On our honeymoon! Of course not. She’s just scared, like your mother. I think it must be because she’s so close to delivering. Besides, he took it well, he understands, he’s not coming.”
He was silent, still brooding over what had become, for him, an awkward situation. Turning away a close friend in what would be considered here, where honeymoons did not really exist—another import from the West—a generous offer.
“Listen, Sameer,” I said as I slid a hand under his pajama bottoms, “by the time we get the visa and arrive in Minneapolis, it’ll be November, right when it’s getting cold. With wind chill, it can drop to seventy below; you can’t know what that feels like. Then, it just keeps getting colder. If we waited six months—I’m used to being here, remember—we could go in spring. If we go back now, there’s nothing, no job for you, and my semester will already be under way. My dad says you’ll even have to take your engineering classes over again. Until you have an income, we’ll be stuck inside my mother’s house.” Right back where I’ve always been. No future there, Zeba was right.
He shoved my hand aside and turned away to face the wall. I latched onto his back. Draw away, draw closed, but I would say it this time.
“It can’t all be about getting ahead and building your career, Sameer. You keep talking about my father, but what good did making all that money do for my family? What you and your family have here is so much better. Your father may not have given your mother a house, but he did give her a life. If you could only have known me there, you would see how different I am with you, in India, in your home. Sameer, you’ve given me what you promised, please don’t take it away so soon …”
“You cannot know what you’re asking …”
“I do know, Sameer, I’m not as ignorant of India as you think. I’ve spent half my life here. It’s where I’ve always felt more comfortable. I’m part of something here, I’m not just gazing out.” I fell onto my back and stared up at the mosquito canopy, the fan’s wind hardly reaching us. I could taste the salt of my own sweat on my lips. “What do you know abo
ut the U.S., Sameer? I mean other than what you’ve read or seen in film. What do you really know about what you’re asking?”
He rose and fumbled out of the mosquito netting, then threw on a shirt. From a dresser drawer, he grabbed his pack of cigarettes and stuffed them into his pocket. He wouldn’t look at me. “I promised to give you a home, Layla, and I will, there. I’ll find a job, any job, and we’ll move out of your mother’s house. Two weeks, three weeks, that’s all. We’ll start our lives over, new lives, both of us, away from your past, away from my past.” He stopped and hung his head, as though hating what he was about to say, the right he possessed to exert his power over me, his wife. “On Friday, we’re going to Madras … alone! As soon as I get my visa, we’re off to the U.S. That’s it. Don’t talk to me about this anymore.”
SHE WOULD HAVE known by her own sense of intuition, the slightest stir in the air, that her son had disappeared again, but she didn’t ask, nor did she provide me comfort, as I had been hoping she would. She was done with her duties to her son. The rest was between us, husband and wife.
After breakfast, when I took my usual spot on the takat, against one of her embroidered pillows, and tried to assist with the preparations for the evening meal, she stopped me, her voice sharp in a way I’d not heard before. Her son’s prohibition, not hers, the one who wanted me to have a place in her home as much as I wanted it myself. I knew better than to try to press her: no matter that Sameer did not follow her mandates, she had to follow his, for her son was, before all else, a man like any other.
As I was scooting off the takat, there came a woman’s voice from the front door, calling to see if anyone was home. She spoke a halting Urdu, so I knew it was not her first language.
“The tho-bun is here,” Zeba said, then set aside the ginger she’d been peeling and adjusted the duppatta around her heavy chest. “Can you ask her inside?”