Ayesha At Last

by Uzma Jalaluddin

  “Are you sure it wasn’t . . . Stockholm syndrome?” Khalid asked carefully.

  Zareena’s laughter was buoyant, contagious. “Let me show you something.” She rummaged through her suitcase and extracted a photo album. She passed it to Khalid, and he looked through Zareena’s life in Hyderabad with her husband. In one picture, they posed in front of a squat, whitewashed house with adobe tile; in another, they stood beside a small blue hatchback car; another featured the couple in front of a street vendor.

  Iqram was a skinny man with warm, sepia-toned skin, gangly legs and arms, short black hair and intelligent eyes. He didn’t smile in any of the pictures but stood stiffly, a stance that emphasized his angular features and square jaw. He stared directly at the camera, or more often at his wife. Zareena was smiling in each one.

  “I didn’t expect it to happen,” Zareena said, looking at the pictures with Khalid. “It’s not the same as what I felt for . . . him.”

  “You never mentioned Iqram in any of your letters. You kept including the things you missed about Canada. You never wanted any of this!” Khalid said. He took a deep breath and said the words he had wanted to say since Zareena had shown up on his porch. Since the day she had left. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I should have spoken up. I should have said something. I knew what Ammi and Abba were planning, but I was a coward.” His voice broke.

  Zareena gently took the photo album away from Khalid. “Do you remember what I was like, before?” she asked him. “I was skipping every class, getting drunk on weekends, partying with my friends. I wasn’t doing well and I wasn’t happy. I’m not sure where I’d be right now if I’d kept heading in that direction.”

  Khalid shook his head. “That’s no excuse.”

  “Sending me to India was awful. What Ammi did was wrong, and I will never forgive her. But I also came back partly to show her that I turned out okay.” Zareena started laughing again. “You know what I just realized? I’m the one who found love after marriage, and you’re the one who fell in love first.”

  “I told you, all of that is over.”

  Zareena poked Khalid. “I don’t care what you say. You’re not a coward. You never have been.”

  Khalid felt lighter at his sister’s words. He put his plate in the sink and stood in the middle of the living room, consumed by a restless energy that made his feet itch. He had to do something. He had to act.

  “Why don’t you call Ayesha?” Zareena suggested. “Send her roses. People love to forgive. It makes them feel so magnanimous.”

  “I’m not sure that will work.”

  “Do you know why Iqram and I are still together? Those first few months he let me know he was all in. He wanted me, no matter the past. If you run away in the face of a little conflict, you’re not ready to settle down.”

  Khalid considered his sister’s words. He didn’t have an answer for her. So instead he asked, “Who was the guy? Do I know him?”

  Zareena shook her head. “You’re changing the subject. Are you ready for marriage or not?”

  “Did you go to school with him?”

  “Yes. Now answer my question.”

  Khalid sat, mulling this over. “He never contacted you again? Not even after the abortion?”

  Zareena was silent. “He came to the airport. I saw him in the crowd, but it was too late.”

  Khalid thought this over. “I think about Ayesha all the time. I can see us together so clearly.”

  “I haven’t thought about my ex in years,” Zareena said. “I wonder where Tarek is right now, and whether he still thinks about me. I hope he’s moved on, the way I have.”

  Khalid froze, and then the blood began pounding through his veins. “What did you say?” he asked, already reaching for his cell phone.

  He knew what he had to do now.

  HE called Amir.

  “K-Man!” Amir yelled.

  “I can hear you just fine, Amir. Keep your voice down.”

  “Oh, sorry. Let me get out of here.”

  Khalid waited, and the thumping bass and music faded.

  “I have some good news for you,” Amir said before Khalid could say a word. “You’re going to get your job back.”

  Khalid paused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t get mad. You know that hot HR chick?”

  “She has a name. Clara. Use it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, I sort of used our surveillance equipment to bug her office a few weeks ago.”

  “Amir!”

  “It’s cool. I told her, she hit me, we’re fine. It’s not like she ever stripped in the room or anything. But she did have a lot of very interesting convos with Sheila.”

  Khalid paused, then he said, “I can’t think about that now. What do you know about tracking a website? I think Tarek might be running Unveiled Hotties, but I need proof. If we find him, we might find Hafsa too.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Amir said. “Hey, I think I found a place to stay, but I need a roommate. You interested?”

  Khalid promised to think about it, and hung up. Next, he texted Idris:

  Salams, Mr. Killer Code. How would you like to help find your cousin?

  Idris responded immediately: I’m in.

  Khalid made one final call, to Imam Abdul Bari. The imam answered after three rings, and his voice sounded hollow.

  “What I feared most has come to pass. I informed the executive committee of the actions of Brother Tarek, and the missing money. They were quite angry.”

  “What happened?” Khalid asked, his heart sinking.

  “There will be an emergency general body meeting on Saturday morning to inform the community of our dire financial situation.” The imam paused. “The mosque will be sold to cover our debts. I have been in touch with Muslims in Action and they are in complete disarray, their reputation in tatters with the disappearance of Brother Tarek. I have also been informed that my services as imam will not be needed following the meeting.”

  Khalid was aghast. “They can’t do that!”

  “I’m afraid they already have,” the imam said. “May Allah forgive us all.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ayesha returned to the Taj Mahal after school to sit with Samira Aunty. She didn’t know what else to do. Her uncle had been gone all day, driving to the different mosques in the city looking for anyone who might know something. When he returned that evening, he looked pale and ten years older. He walked straight to his office and shut the door firmly behind him. Ayesha followed and knocked tentatively. When he didn’t answer, she entered.

  Sulaiman Mamu had his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Ayesha hurried to his side.

  “It will be all right,” she said. “Hafsa is fine.”

  Sulaiman Mamu looked up at his niece with haunted eyes. “How can she be all right when she’s with that man?” he asked. “I’ve been making inquiries. Everyone I talk to has nothing good to say about Tarek. He has run up debts. He hasn’t paid his vendors what they are owed. There are rumours about other young women.”

  “Has he gotten in touch with you?”

  Sulaiman Mamu looked bleak. “For hush money? He seduced the wrong girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ayesha beti, there is no more money.” Sulaiman Mamu’s eyes were red and bloodshot. “My business has not been doing well. I put off selling the house until after the wedding. Now I’m only sorry I didn’t set aside money to pay off rascals who set out to ruin my daughter.”

  “Hafsa is not ruined,” Ayesha said.

  “Her reputation is in tatters and the vultures are circling.”

  “Let them circle!” Ayesha said loudly. She lowered her voice. “There must be something we can do.”

  Sulaiman Mamu slumped in his chair. “I have called everyone I know. The police refuse to take this seriously, and perhaps they are right. There is no criminal activity here. Hafsa has only turned her backs on us and everything we hold dear. She has shred
ded our hearts, that is all.”

  Ayesha felt helpless. “Tell me what to do. How can I help?”

  Sulaiman Mamu shook his head. “All we can do now is pray.”

  THERE would be plans to make and more people to call tomorrow. Tonight, Ayesha set her alarm for three o’clock. She remembered from Sunday school that the early morning hours were a particularly good time to ask Allah for a favour.

  When her alarm went off, Ayesha made wudu and headed downstairs to the family room, the warmest room in the house.

  She arranged her prayer mat in the darkened space and began to pray. The familiar rhythm calmed her racing mind. When she finished, she sat cross-legged on the prayer mat, her hands upturned in supplication. Please, God. Please.

  The sound of a key in the lock broke her concentration, and she looked up to see her mother home after a double shift at the hospital. Saleha took off her rubber-soled hospital shoes and came to sit on the couch near her kneeling daughter, sighing a little as she sank into the worn cushions.

  “Did you know Mamu was having money trouble?” Ayesha asked.

  Saleha stretched her arms up. “I had my suspicions, but he is a proud man. He will bounce back.”

  Ayesha felt a prickle of irritation. “You haven’t gone to see him since Hafsa took off.”

  Saleha looked at her daughter, who was full of indignation. “I call every day, several times,” she said mildly. “This is a waiting game.”

  Ayesha folded up her prayer mat, her movements jerky, not looking at her mother. Saleha watched silently.

  “I know this must be hard for you,” Saleha began.

  “You have no idea what this is like!” Ayesha shouted. “You have no idea what it’s like to wait for someone you love to come home, not knowing if they’re safe or all right or—” She bit off the rest of the sentence, catching sight of her mother’s bemused face.

  “I do know what it’s like,” Saleha said quietly. “I remember very well. Your father was missing for more than a week before they found his body, but I knew on the first night that he was dead. I felt it, here.” Saleha pointed to her stomach. “When you love someone the way I loved him, you just know.”

  Ayesha looked down at her lap. She had never heard her mother say she’d loved Syed. Most of the time, Saleha sounded bitter and angry when she spoke of her husband, if she spoke of him at all. Ayesha remembered Nana’s words so long ago: Your mother’s anger conceals a very great love.

  “How did he die?” Ayesha asked. She expected to be rebuffed as usual. She expected Saleha to walk away, as she had so many times before. But her mother didn’t move.

  “Syed was a journalist. He covered local politics and he was ambitious; he wanted to cover the big stories. Sometimes he travelled to other cities, mostly Mumbai. This was before cell phones and the internet, so when he was gone, I had no way to get in touch with him. He wanted to be on the scene, to write about the way regular people’s lives were affected by poverty and crime. He thought of himself as a crusader for justice.” Saleha smiled faintly. “I worried about him every time he left the house.”

  Ayesha watched her mother, afraid to speak, afraid to break the spell.

  “In December 1992, the Babri mosque was destroyed by Hindu extremists in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. It was built in the sixteenth century, and a mob ripped it apart in a few hours.”

  Ayesha had heard about this, a long time ago.

  “It made everyone so angry,” Saleha said, her voice low. “The Muslims, the Hindus. The entire country was so tense. I was afraid to go outside with you and Idris. You were just children. Then Syed told me he was leaving us in Hyderabad. He was going to Mumbai to cover the story.” Saleha wiped the tears streaming down her cheeks. “We fought. I was so angry at him for even thinking about leaving us alone, but he said he had to go.”

  Ayesha remembered this, she realized. She had been nine years old, and her parents were arguing in the other room as she ate breakfast. Her parents never fought, or not so she could hear. Her mother was hysterical, her father’s deep voice placating. She remembered running up to her father after he strode out of the bedroom. He bent down to hug her, and she inhaled the scent of him—cardamom mixed with sweat and the sandalwood powder he used for deodorant. He held on tightly for a few moments before releasing her. “Be a good girl. Take care of your mother and brother,” he had told her.

  “The fassaad—” Saleha began.

  Ayesha jerked at the word. Hafsa said Sulaiman Mamu had used the word “facade” in connection to her father’s death.

  “The fassaad—the riots—they started almost immediately. The worst were in Mumbai,” Saleha continued. “All that rage and hate and fear exploded. Shops were destroyed, houses, entire neighbourhoods burned to the ground. So many people died . . . two thousand people murdered in four weeks.”

  Ayesha’s hands began to shake. She did not want to hear any more, but Saleha couldn’t stop now, her words flowing from a newly unsealed faucet.

  “The first few days, he filed his story without any trouble. He called me when he got there, and he sounded so excited. I knew he was doing what he loved, chasing a big story. The third day, he didn’t file his story. His editor called me, asking if he had been in touch. That’s when I knew.”

  Ayesha put her hand to her mouth.

  “Your father was killed during one of the riots. He went to the wrong neighbourhood and got caught up in the fighting. He was beaten to death.”

  A sob escaped Ayesha, and Saleha got off the couch and crouched beside her daughter, cradling her.

  “I couldn’t tell you before,” Saleha said. “I didn’t have the words. After they found his body, I had to go into hiding. He was the journalist who had reported on the riots, and even dead, he was a threat. I took you and Idris and left everything. We moved from house to house for weeks until Sulaiman could bribe the right official in India, and then we came to Canada as refugees. Nana and Nani came too. They couldn’t bear to stay behind, not after everything.”

  Saleha hugged Ayesha again. “You were so brave. You’ve always been so brave.” She smiled through her tears, then straightened, wiping her eyes. “I know Hafsa is all right. I know it in my heart, in my jigar,” she said, using the Urdu word for liver. “If there was anything I could have done to change what happened to your father, I would have done it. I would have crawled on my knees, swallowed my pride, handcuffed him to the door. I would have done anything.”

  Ayesha nodded. Sometimes prayers floated up to heaven. Sometimes they hung around here on earth and waited for you.

  She would help get her cousin back. And when Hafsa had returned, safe and unharmed, Ayesha would focus on her own life, and begin to chase her own dreams.

  Chapter Forty

  Hafsa had been missing for a week when Ayesha accompanied Sulaiman Mamu to the police station to make an official Missing Persons report. A young female police officer, Constable Lukie, carefully noted down the details of the disappearance and accepted the small picture of Hafsa.

  “In situations like this, most of the time the person shows up. Maybe she was angry and wanted to punish you. Was there some sort of argument? Was she being forced into something?” the young officer asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral. Ayesha noticed her cool appraisal of them, the quick glance at her hijab.

  “Hafsa was not being forced into an arranged marriage, if that’s what you think,” Ayesha said, but Sulaiman Mamu motioned for her to calm down.

  “Please. Find my daughter,” he said quietly. Sulaiman Mamu’s face was gaunt and grey; there were deep lines etched under his eyes. He looked older than Nana.

  Constable Lukie softened. “We’ll do everything we can,” she promised.

  Samira Aunty still required around-the-clock attention from her family and help to deal with the steady stream of visitors. The Aunty Brigade were in daily attendance, eager to share increasingly scandalous rumours about Tarek: He was a master in the art of seduction; he was a gambler who
owed money to the Punjabi mafia; he was wanted in Saudi Arabia for public indecency; he was the prodigal son of a Pakistani billionaire; he owned a dot-com that specialized in ethnic pornography. With every outlandish story, Hafsa’s actions appeared more and more foolish, her reputation sinking deeper into the mud.

  When Nana returned from Friday Jumah prayers at the mosque, he looked despondent. “There is a general body meeting tomorrow. The mosque is bankrupt, and Tarek has absconded with the funds. Sulaiman is too proud to go. Will you accompany me, jaanu?”

  She didn’t want to go. She would go. “‘Live like you’re in a comedy, not a tragedy,’ right?” Ayesha said.

  Nana smiled, relieved. “This is simply the plot twist at the end of act four.”

  ON Saturday, eight days after Hafsa’s disappearance, Ayesha dressed quickly for the general body meeting, pulling on a black abaya and a simple white hijab. She felt a knot of anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

  Nana was waiting for her downstairs, dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez and brown karakul prayer cap.

  “I dreamt of Hafsa last night,” Nana said.

  “Was she okay?”

  “It was her wedding day, and she was complaining about the caterers.” Nana smiled at Ayesha, squeezing her hand. “The groom was not Tarek.”

  Ayesha shook her head. “She’s been living with him for over a week. If the groom isn’t Tarek, who will it be?”

  Nana looked straight ahead. “I only wish her safe return home.” He paused. “After that, I will hire some very strong men to teach Tarek a painful lesson.”

  Ayesha laughed as they settled into the car. “I thought you were a pacifist.”

  “Naturally,” Nana said. “Which is why I will simply watch.”

  The parking lot at the mosque was full. A podium and screen were set up onstage, and the crowd was on edge, shifting and muttering. Nana and Ayesha found two seats together in the middle of the room.

  An elderly woman sat beside them. She was holding tasbih prayer beads. “I heard the bank will take the building and turn it into a shopping mall. This is all the imam’s fault.”