by Ali, Samina
I said, “I went to a lady doctor before we came to Madras. I thought that would make the dreams go away, but …” I stopped and shook my head, lips turned down in defeat. “When he came into this room, it was from that door.” I gestured to the one behind Zakir, which led to the hallway.
He went and placed both palms on the wood and moved them in tight circles, the breeze from the cool night gently stirring the bottoms of his long kurta. I watched him feel the entire door, crouching low then reaching up beyond the door frame. He knocked on the wood, then placed an ear against it, listening, grunting, as though hearing some strange tale. Then he turned and stared at Sameer’s boots. “Djinns,” he said. “They reveal everything.”
Sameer stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and shook the fabric loose, and I knew he was trying to hide his weak thigh, feeling exposed. I stood and went to him, then dug his hands out and folded them into mine.
“Baby, I’m not sure about this,” he whispered in English. “I’m a rational man, and this is …”
“The dreams started that same night,” I said, then added what I thought would make sense to him, a reasonable way to look at this. “I’ve read that when some experience really shakes the body, it yearns to go back and make sense of the event. If I can begin to accept that night as part of who I am, even here, then maybe …”
The alim interrupted, raising his voice over mine. “If you do not have any objections, Layla, I am going to ask your husband to leave the room.” He paused before adding, “And I need your permission, too, Sameer Bhai. Without it, I cannot touch your wife.”
“What!” Sameer stared at him, incredulous, and I passed a thumb over his forehead, easing the lines.
“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “I’ve done this a thousand times.”
Indeed, a thousand times, and with each new alim came a new ritual. Only one thing remained constant: faith in its power to mend the body.
ONCE THE DOOR was shut, he changed entirely, gazing into my eyes so fiercely that I had to turn away. I suddenly became uncomfortable with my body, not knowing what to do with it, and I went and sat on the bed again.
As he walked toward me, his kurta swayed in the salty breeze coming in from the balcony door, the long slits pushed back to give away the lines of his firm thighs filling the pajamas. The fabric was the color of his skin, so that I felt I was seeing the whole flesh of him. He surprised me by sitting next to me, the mattress curving under us, and I didn’t move away. He was turned toward me, examining my face, slowly taking it in, and I let him.
“So you have gone to a lady doctor, and yet your husband has not touched you?”
“Yes.”
“And the dreams began …”
“Two months ago.” I glanced at the sliding glass door. “They have grown stronger. The other night, he even spoke to me.”
“The demon spoke to you?” He sounded surprised. “What did he say?”
“That my husband won’t ever touch me. My mother says that when a demon takes a liking to a woman, he won’t let another man near her. Is this true?”
“We shall soon find out,” he said, cocking his head to stare at me full in the face. The overhead light splashed across his nose to cast his features in shadow I filled them in. The hair in back was just long enough to pass a hand through and have the fingers become immersed, lost to me. There was already gray in it. “Tell me, Layla, how much do you know about your new husband?”
“On the wedding night, we vowed not to bring up the past. You see, I have done things I now regret, things that would push … any man away.”
“I’m sorry. I did not mean to hurt you.”
“I did not mean to hurt my husband. I want to make it better, I want … this demon to go away.” I looked into his eyes. “I thought the djinns told you everything.”
He laughed. “Do you really believe you are possessed, Layla?”
I felt the pressure of his body next to mine and turned to examine his wrist, the width of it, the tan skin tanned further by the sun, the dark hair. It was the wrist I loved the most. Then the hand. The fingers so able to manipulate, to caress or slap, to express emotion. “I can convince myself of anything.”
He did not seem surprised this time by what he’d heard. He simply watched me, quietly, before saying, “I don’t encounter these sorts of cases very often. But every now and then … such a pity. Always so much anguish on the wife’s face. The pain and the confusion are always the same. Women are quick to blame themselves. It’s because they don’t know better. All their lives they’ve been protected. Were you protected, Layla?”
No one had ever asked me this before, not even him. “I was guarded. My movements restricted. Is that what you mean by protection?”
He sighed, letting out one long breath, letting out the life in him. I inhaled it, and we sat for a while, inhaling, exhaling, breathing in each other. I was about to say his name when the alim rose and rounded the bed to the top. He patted the pillow.
“Will you lie here for me?”
I glanced at the pillow then his hand on it. I crawled up the mattress and lay on my back on top of the covers, one hand over the other on my stomach. He went to the table and began rummaging in his bag. I was curious to know what he might take out, but he only removed three candles and three sticks of incense. “Three is an Islamic number,” he said. “So are five, seven, and eleven.” Then he went around the room, lighting the candles as he did. He placed one on the dresser, and when he saw it reflecting an image of itself in the mirror, he removed it, heated the end once more, and now set it at a corner. He placed another on the floor by the balcony, then closed the door and because it was dark outside, the glass captured what was inside, some of what I knew and some of what I didn’t. The diminishing moon was hidden behind clouds, the night as dark as that on a new moon. He drew the shade over the lamppost’s light.
Then he returned to the bed with the third candle, shielding the frail flame with a protective palm, and placed it on the night stand next to me. Bending down, he reached inside the lampshade and clicked off the light. Everything was obscured, and I could smell his bitter sweat.
He stood over me and spoke. “To re-create when he comes to you. As I told your husband, demons do not pop up out of nowhere. We must root them out.” He struck a match. A trembling hand lit a stick of incense. He used jasmine. “I need for you to lift up your kurta.”
I pulled it from around me and raised it above my belly.
“Higher.”
I pulled it to just below my breasts.
He sat next to me. The mattress dipped, and I felt my body sinking toward him.
He set a palm on my rib cage. One slender finger on one slender rib. A perfect fit. He followed the bones up to my left breast. The hand closed in on itself, becoming a fist. The knuckles pressed back the breast while a thumb pushed away the underwire of the bra. “This may hurt.”
“I’ve suffered through worse,” I said, meaning Dad’s beatings. Now why did I want him to know about those?
Or perhaps he already did—those djinns telling all—for he didn’t ask what I meant. He simply lowered the burning tip of the incense and dug it into the soft underside of my breast. My jaw clenched. His knuckles relaxed. He was chanting. Then he blew on the burn, sending his healing words.
“When he comes to you in dreams, he touches you everywhere?”
“When he came to me that night, yes, everywhere.”
He withdrew his hand, but left the touch with me.
Another match. I followed its light to the incense and tried to see beyond it, to his face. As though he had caught me, he lowered the match, bringing it next to my chin. He kept himself hidden even as he took me in. He liked to do that. Observe me when I wasn’t aware, from a place hidden. He said he got his best photographs that way. When no one saw what he was doing. No one had ever seen him with me. He might never have been there.
When he spoke, the blaze flickered against the air of his breath. “You are a beau
tiful woman, Layla. It is such a shame about your husband, it is such a waste.”
The match neared its end and he shook it out. He spoke in the dim candlelight, moving in and out of shadows. “When my wife was your age, she was very pretty, too. I was beguiled by her beauty. It is a weakness of mine. Looking back, I think I married her in that state of trance. Now she concerns herself with the girl. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve disappeared.” He paused before adding, “Sadia’s ill.”
I whispered, “I know what it’s like to disappear. To be the ghost or the demon to your family.”
“I see you.”
Yes, he had seen me from the beginning, even before I had noticed those gray-blue eyes, my shape taking form in them.
He lit another match. For a second, both it and the incense burned together. He blew them out with one breath. He placed his palm where he had just burned me, and I thought he’d burn me there again. Instead, he raked the fingertips across my chest to my right breast. The hand rolled into a knuckle. Again, he pressed up the flesh, lifting up the cup of the bra with a thumb, and pushed the stick into me.
I cried out and shoved his hand away.
He leaned closer so I could see his eyes in the candlelight. That look of concern and tenderness I so longed to see on my husband’s face. “You said you were prepared. Should I stop?”
“Just be more gentle.”
He receded once more into shadows. Next to me, the soft click of the stick being set down. He picked up a second one.
“You speak Urdu well, but I still hear the accent.”
“In the U.S., I am told my English has an accent.”
“Your husband tries to be someone he’s not. When I first saw him, I thought he was the foreigner and you …” he stopped.
“And me?”
“And you his pretty, but naive bride. He’s beguiled you. I do not blame you, of course. As I’ve said, I myself become blinded by beauty. It is my one weakness. Human weakness.” He lit the incense. Lips curled and were brought close to blow it out. He curved an arm over my body, pressing the palm onto the mattress. He pushed himself down on the bed, the tan sleeve gliding against my skin. He sat by my thighs, away from even the far reaches of candlelight, enclosed in darkness. A hand tugged at my shalwar. “Will you undo this for me?”
I stared at the point of red hovering between us.
“Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
“I promise to be gentle. I don’t want to hurt you, but …”
“No, I’m ready. I want to go through with this. I have already decided that.”
“Are you sure?”
I untied my pajamas and rolled them down to my knees. His hand closed on my thigh and parted my legs. I drew in air.
“It will be easier if you relax.”
He had told me this before. I loosened my muscles.
His thumb pushed back the fabric of my panty. The red eye drew near and pushed into the skin on my pelvis. I flinched.
“Just once more on the other side.” As he lifted his hand to get the matches, I felt it graze my vagina. I didn’t say anything. Then the match was lit and the incense burned. And before I could see his face, both were blown out. He gripped my other thigh and squeezed the soft inner flesh, the thumb moving up and down. Then he slid it inside my panty. It got lost in the hair. He sighed, a long ache of breath lifting out of his body.
“You mustn’t be beguiled by what is before you.” He whispered it through clenched teeth as he pushed the stick deep into the folds of skin.
I stifled a cry, and felt my body thrust into the mattress, away from him. He whispered again, now chanting or reciting, and blew cool breath at the burn. Then he remained humped over me.
The rain pattered against the glass, the sound like my fast beating heart. It was over. I would never see him again. By the first stirring of morning light, this night, his touch, would be nothing better than a dream.
Without a word, he straightened and pulled up my pajamas, retying them as though I were still a girl. After a moment, he stood with some effort, coming up next to me. I felt his gaze on my face, my belly, my breasts. He pulled down my kurta, covering me.
“Shut your eyes.”
I placed my hands over my lids. He flipped on the light. I saw the glow outlining my fingers. The darkness within. I removed my hands, and the alim was standing before me, just next to the nightstand, prying a candle off the surface. He enclosed it in his palm, and there was wax left on the table, and a ring where the candle had been. He went to the dresser and balcony, blowing out each candle before he collected it. He pulled back the curtain, then returned and picked up the three sticks of incense, the third still unused. He shoved everything back in his bag, then stood next to the round table with his profile to me, staring at the carpet. I sensed he wanted to say something, but didn’t know how.
“What is wrong with Sadia?” I asked.
He continued to stare at the carpet, lips parted. “Tumor in the brain. It makes her hallucinate. She, too, sees demons. But I cannot do anything to save her. It’s why my wife has grown to hate me.” He paused, then added, “She has not much life left in her, I can feel this.” He held up his hands, and I knew what he meant. He had placed his palms on her head, as he had that wooden door, and seen all there was to know.
I stared out the balcony. Nothing but the stale light of the street lamp, the shade over the bulb dripping old rainwater or its own sweat. It dribbled off slowly, then fell as quickly as the water from the sky. The genuine and the disingenuous. You couldn’t tell them apart. Such was the calamity of our existence.
“Layla, as an alim, I cannot tell you what you do not already know. But I will say that as much as your husband hides himself, he has also revealed himself to you.” He turned and met my gaze. “Sometimes we must let go of the very thing we desire the most. Allah tests us in the severest of ways.”
“I thought you understood,” I said, rising to get the money from my purse. “I have already endured that test.”
“No, Layla, your test is yet to come. Remember what I said. You must root out the demon.” When he saw the money, he grimaced and turned away. “I did not come here for that,” he said, zipping up his bag. “I thought you understood.”
I placed a hand on his. “This is for your daughter,” I said. “Take her to a good doctor. Get her cured.”
FIVE ROWS OF aluminum chairs. We sat somewhere in the middle, surrounded by all the others who hoped to get out, young and old alike, male and female, the dream of a better life surging equally through everyone, not holding any distinctions. The nondescript, square room of the Consulate stank as much of that dream’s sticky-sweetness as it did of betel nut and sweat. America’s freedom, from religious riots and curfews, from tainted water and hiring practices, and from whatever personal demon each was escaping. Raga-be had once told me that jadu worked only within the confines of a country, its powers evaporating across cold waters. In that way, did these people hope to shake free what was haunting them? Emigration as exorcism.
Sameer was bent over the immigration forms, rushing to complete them before the overhead monitor clicked our number in red. July fourth, he had scribbled in, stating when we had gotten married. That was what they wanted at the Embassy, not the Islamic date, which was nothing but a number existing underneath the real one, like the narrative of my one life almost invisible underneath the other, palimpsest. He hadn’t asked about the alim.
I said, “My father went over first. He got a job, he rented an apartment, then he sent for my mother. There was a moment, apparently, during his layover in Bombay, when he almost got up and came back to Hyderabad. He suddenly became scared. Where was he headed? He didn’t know anything about America or its people. He didn’t have a place to live or a job. He didn’t even own a winter coat—or know that he should! His pockets were stuffed with rupees. But then he went, leaving behind his family and friends, his country, everything he’d grown to know.” I shook my head, amazed,
as I was each time I thought of him boarding that plane to America. “There’s no turning back when you do something like that,” I said. “It takes so much courage. I don’t think I would be able to … pass that test.”
Sameer crossed his arms over his chest and grinned at me. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say anything good about your father. See, Layla. if you let go of that personal drama, you can see what the rest of us see in him.”
Yes, one narrative on top of the other, it merely depended on which one you followed.
“I didn’t have that dream last night,” I said. “Do you think it actually worked, what that alim did?”
He brought his hand to his forehead and sighed, a drawing in of his presence. Of course he did not believe it worked. If he had allowed me—indulged me—to get exorcised, he had done so in the same spirit he’d allowed me to pray with his mother. My belief in invisible forces. not his, and maybe he even knew them to be in the realm of a woman’s beliefs, her only way to control her world. I should have stuck to talking about my father.
“Listen, Layla, last night, when I left you with the alim, I went to the train station and changed our tickets. We’re leaving for Hyderabad today, right after the Embassy. This whole trip … this bloody honeymoon.” He shut his eyes, shaking his head. “We still have some weeks left before the visa comes through, maybe we’ll go to Ooty. We’ll do this properly.” He grunted in disgust—at me, at this whole journey, I could not tell—and returned to the forms.
“But I’m saying I didn’t have that dream last night. Maybe we could try again, tonight.”
He stuck his finger to his lips, shushing me, as he glanced about at the others, then he threw an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. His voice was edgy and hard. “Are you going to trust me, your husband, or some bloody alim, who you’ve never met before and who doesn’t know a damn thing about us? Now I’m telling you what I need. I need to get away from Madras. I need that moment your father had at the Bombay airport to leave everything behind, everything.” He drew back, tongue pushing through the front gap, lines thick across his forehead. Though he would not say it, his eyes did: tangible forces, the ones that mattered, belonged to him, my husband. And just as he had let me exercise my powers, now I would need to let him exercise his. A wife did as she was told, even a wife who had gotten her husband past the iron bars of the American Consulate and would soon get him through the immigration line at JFK airport. Her life nearly invisible under his.