by Ali Sethi
In May, Daadi wrote a will. And she agreed to pay for Naseem’s accommodation in Jeddah, because the return tickets from the Zakat Ministry had arrived.
Naseem and her husband left for the Holy Land on the PIA flight from Lahore, and returned the following week with two Samsonite suitcases that opened and closed with buckles. For weeks afterward Naseem claimed that the weight of her suitcases had made the porters stumble. And she attributed this weight to the cartons of the Aab-e-Zamzam, the holy water, which she stored in Daadi’s fridge and served in glasses to the people who came to congratulate her.
My Dear Zaki,
Will you be coming home for the summer holidays?
I wasn’t going home because I had won a grant to conduct research in New York City for my sophomore tutorial. (I had said in the essay that I wanted to explore the discursive space allotted to Other cultures in the American media.) The grant paid for housing and airfare, and I saved some money by sharing a room.
My Dear Zaki,
So glad to know that your summer was a success! I am quite envious of your travels.
At the start of the autumn term I became a subscriber to Women’s Journal. My copy arrived by post and was always two weeks late. But I read the editorials and wrote to my mother:Read “Supremacy of Parliament” (WJ, 20-27 Sept.) and disagreed completely. How can you ask the same people—the very same people—to come back and run the show? Can you give me a better example of a compromise?
And she replied:My Dear Zaki,
These are processes. At the end of the day we must look beyond the limitations of individuals. And we have to work with what we have.
But I am glad you disagree. It would be so boring if you didn’t!
In October I joined the editorial board of a magazine called Peace and Justice. The day after I joined it the editors participated in a sit-in with the janitors who were working on the campus. And the week after that we led a protest march from Kendall Square to Downtown Crossing, waving flags and chanting slogans to condemn the occupation of a country with which I had no connection, but which I had found, in this time of new kinships, similar to my own. I was in charge of magazine publicity, and took their flyers everywhere. I went to the Nineties Dance, to the South Asian Dance, to the Islamic Society Banquet, and I went to the Queer Dance, and stood beneath the colors of the rainbow, which were mine.
Inbox (1)
Subject: Great News!
Samar Api had met someone. His name was Imran. He had an LL. B. from London and had returned to join his father’s law practice in Lahore. The engagement had taken place, and my mother had waited to tell me until she could accompany the news with a picture.
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The image appeared in small, evenly spaced bursts of color, and I closed my eyes until it was complete. When I opened them I smiled.
He was clean-shaven, a cutout in his outfit—black suit, white shirt with broad collar, bright red tie—and his cuff links were sharp white dots in the camera’s flash. His arm was curled confidently around his fiancée, who wore a green shalwar kameez that had the broad gleam of silk. She was slimmer now, blossomed with blush, and wore rings on the hands that she had folded in her lap. Her expression reminded me of the Mona Lisa’s: I couldn’t tell if she was smiling.
My Dear Zaki,
I cannot begin to tell you just how delighted we are to hear of your decision. You will reach just in time for the wedding. Will you send me your flight details? I will make arrangements.
I returned to Lahore in late December, to unshed leaves that were silver in the daytime and thickened with shadow as the light withdrew into evening. Bombs had begun to go off in the north of the country. And they said that it would come to the roads of Lahore, where there were more bicycles now, more rickshas, more cars hastened by bridges and underpasses where once walls had stood.
The house had aged. The tree was stooping in the garden, the walls bulging behind the paint. My mother’s hair was threaded white now, and Daadi descended the steps of the veranda with caution, lifting her shalwar at the ankles as if preparing to step into water.
Samar Api was in her room. I was told to knock on the door. She was covered in uptan and didn’t wish to be seen until the paste had come off.
I knocked.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. Your cousin.”
I waited.
“You can come in.”
She was talking on the phone. The turmeric in the uptan had rendered her complexion a flat beige, conceptual like a cartoon character’s. The bed was a mess of magazines, bridal specials with flashing covers. The walls were blank.
She indicated a place by her side on the bed. With one hand she passed me the two-hearted picture frame that was again on her bedside table: she was new in it, withdrawn and watchful, posing on the night of her engagement.
I pointed at the grinning boy in the picture and pointed to the phone in her hand.
She nodded.
I read a magazine.
Then she had hung up the phone.
“That’s him?” I said.
“Ya,” she said.
“You love him?”
She thought about it. She watched the words form on the ceiling, then watched them form in her hands. She spread out her fingers on her knees as if to make sure there were ten. “He loves me,” she said, “and I’m happy.”
I said, “Good. As long as you’re happy.”
“I am,” she said.
“Good.”
It was over, and we were quiet.
She had started going to a new gym with my mother, and she had a trainer who had caused her to lose weight. She said she was on a diet now that was designed for women like her, women who had little time.
But I said, “There’s time. There’s time.”
They were thinking of going to London for their honeymoon. She had suggested it, and he had agreed. She said they were thinking of stopping in Boston on the way back.
“Boston’s on the other side,” I said. I indicated the otherness with my head. I had no way of describing it.
“What’s better?” she said. “London or America?”
I said I hadn’t been to London.
“We’ll come to Boston,” she said.
But I told her it was a bad idea. The wind, the snow, now was not the time.
Then she asked about college, and I told her that I liked it, and that it had been good for me in many ways.
She said, “Is it nice?”
I said, “Very nice.”
She said, “I know you’re having fun.”
“How do you know?”
“I can see it in your face!”
And she told me about the wedding, which she had planned herself. There were going to be flowers on the walls, flowers on the gate and around the tree, flowers around the pillars in the veranda and flowers on the car that would take her away. “I want marigolds,” she said. And then she said, “I want you to hold the Quran when I’m walking to his car.”
I said I would.
And she said, “Good. Good. That’s how I want it.”
I took the flask from her hand and put it to my mouth. It was empty. I peered into the black hole. “Khatam,” I said, making a smacking sound to mimic the suction, “finito.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said, and hiccupped. The bridal necklace jangled.
The chatter of the guests outside had stopped. The opening gate made its dragging drumroll noise. Now there were trumpets. I rushed to the window to see.
“Who is it?” she said from the bed.
A car, decorated with tuberoses and marigolds, was entering the house at the pace ordained by the band. The women of my family stood to either side of it, showering the bonnet with rose petals. A man in white clothes and white shoes stepped out, his face hidden behind strings of jasmine, and my mother came out of the marquee with her arms stretched out to receive him.
“Samar Api,” I sa
id, drawing the curtains, “your Amitabh has arrived.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following:Farzana Munawar, Aliya Iqbal Naqvi, Jay Butler, Huma Farid and Amitav Ghosh for early encouragement and support; Salman Toor and Komail Aijazuddin for peace and quiet; Sajjad Haider and the late Khalid Hasan for their help; Zahoor and Parveen Noon, Moni Mohsin and Shazad Ghaffar, and Omar and Latifa Noman for providing rooms when they were needed; Sitwat Mohsin for sharing stories; Megan Lynch and Simon Prosser for their patience; and Donna Poppy for her timely intervention.
The author is grateful to his parents and sister for putting up with him, and to Barney Karpfinger, who has enabled this book in every way.