Tanya Tania
Page 11
The rest of the day passed in a daze. We had thought that we would be sent home but we weren’t. The rumours began. He was with MQM and PPP did it. He was with PPP and MQM did it. He was a Baloch sympathizer and the government did it. He was a Kashmir sympathizer and the Indians did it. He was a spy and the Americans did it.
Throughout the day, I kept thinking about my mother. It had occurred to me that when she found out she would want to comfort Mrs. Iqbal. I imagined it over and over again. The phone ringing and someone telling her about it. Her hand going to her heart and tears coming to her eyes because a woman who cried over a dead plant would surely cry over a dead husband. I imagined her getting out of bed and phoning Mrs. Iqbal. I imagined her listening and making crooning voices on the phone and then going over to help Mrs. Iqbal pack to go back to America.
I almost ran home.
But when I got home, everything was exactly as I had left it. Bibi and Chhoti Bibi were in the kitchen. The door to my mother’s room was closed. When I opened it, I could tell from the smell that she hadn’t left it all day. She didn’t say anything to me because she was crying, turned over on her side, her arms tucked deep into her chest. And I knew that she hadn’t picked up the phone, hadn’t left her bed, hadn’t done anything else all day but cry at the red curtains she had made herself so many years ago when she had let me hem stiches into the lining and had laughed and laughed when I had stitched my dress into the curtain.
Mrs. Iqbal is not leaving. Pakistani men are persuasive. American women are foolish. But I, who come from both, am going to be neither.
Love,
Tanya
8
April 29, 1996
New York, NY
Dear Tania,
Can you believe that there are only two months left of college? Well, for me. Your college was three years, I know. You’re in the real world already. What do you do now? Do you miss college? Did you make good friends there?
You would have loved the sports here at Columbia. I’ve enclosed some pictures with this letter. I just wanted you to see how pretty it is. Maybe you can send me some pictures of Xavier’s? You don’t even have to write me a letter. You could just send me the pictures.
I’m doing something quite peculiar. Well, peculiar for me. It’s exactly what you would have done if you had come to college in America. Instead of going straight for my PhD, I’ve decided to postpone graduate school and go work in New York for a year.
I know. It’s crazy.
My mother was surprised, I could tell. My professors are disappointed in me although they’re all very polite here in America. Amrita asked me if I was sure. I almost said, no I’ve changed my mind, I’ll apply for PhD programs in Political Science.
But my therapist has been talking to me about this. She thinks I imagine that I’m letting people down. I don’t know how she can think that I imagine it because I’ve told her everything. Every single detail, Tania, I swear. But she’s American. They don’t get these things.
I’m applying for jobs in New York. Investment banking jobs. Management consulting jobs. Their salaries sound like lottery tickets.
You used to get angry with me for being so desperate to come to college here in America. Do you know that by the time I left for college, we couldn’t even afford to pay Salman Bhai or Bibi? They just stayed on. Salman Bhai is still with my father. I don’t know where Bibi is. I think of her much, much more than I ever thought I would.
There were people in Karachi who loved me. Ali loved me. Salman Bhai loved me very much. Bibi loved me.
Except I can’t tell if it is out of love or if it is out of allegiance. The odd thing is that Bibi lived with us in Karachi for nineteen years but her mind never left the village. And Chhoti Bibi lived with us for six months but she left the village the day she arrived.
Amrita would say that is ethnocentric of me. To posit urban mindsets as more progressive, as better. But the truth is that Chhoti Bibi overtook me in days. It shows even in my old letters to you.
You haven’t asked about her. I thought you would have. She’s fine. Or at least she was three and a half years ago when I left. She stayed with me through the whole time at the hospital for mad people. That was when she called you and you didn’t pick up. I think she called you every day that I was there. You never picked up.
After that she came to visit me once before I left for college. She had found another job in a house with a child in it the age of her brother, Mohammad. I wonder what happened to him. I asked for her address to write to her and you know what she said to me? She said no. She said she doesn’t want letters from me and she doesn’t want to write me letters.
Isn’t it odd how I’m the one who has always been unsentimental and cold and yet it is all of you, who say love in the first letter, who hug and kiss, who spent hours braiding my hair, who move on without looking behind? And here I sit, unmoved, unmovable me, holding onto old pictures, re-reading old letters, living in an imaginary world three and a half years later in which you pick up the phone when I call you and write back to my letters.
What are you doing now, Tania? Are you in an office somewhere, looking out at the rocks by the sea? What kind of work do you do? What do you wear to work, Tania? Do you wear saris like your mother? Don’t you ever think about my mother, Tania? Don’t you ever think about me?
Love,
Tanya
July 24, 1992
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
Shit dude, that’s insane. I’m so sorry. Nusrat and I are both so sorry.
Your reaction is a little weird. I mean your teacher’s husband died and all you can think about is your mother.
Don’t get mad at me but I told my mom about this. Not just because your mom’s reaction is super weird and creepy but you too man. It’s like you don’t care about this teacher at all. Her husband died man.
I told Nusrat. About Arjun. I told her everything. I started crying. She just put her arms around me and held me. I cried for hours and hours. We were sitting on the rocks by the sea. At some point my head was in her lap and she was stroking my hair and kissing it. I closed my eyes and I could hear the waves and Nusrat’s bangles against my hair. Her hand was so soft on my face. It’s the first time I’ve felt like a full person since that night.
She wrote to me in her notebook, ‘No matter what you do, I will always love you.’
Is that what you meant about love? That someone should love you all the time? Even when you’ve fucked up and feel like yesterday’s spit on the ground.
My parents are still not talking to each other but they have both noticed that I’m sad. My mother asked me what’s the matter and if it is to do with Arjun. I said no. My father never asks questions. He just hugs me. Once I was crying about something to my dad and when I looked up he was crying too. My mom is right. He is too soft.
Nusrat thinks I should break up with Arjun. But how can I break up with him when I don’t want to?
Today Samara came and talked to me and was like crying and stuff because she wasn’t invited to a party. I mean she’s mostly fine now but still a few people act like she’s a leper. I wanted to get angry but I felt so tired. So lethargic. Worrying about Arjun takes up all my time and energy.
Will I ever go back to being normal? I don’t even want to go to the party. I don’t know if Arjun will be there. It’s like he has already broken up with me and has forgotten to tell me.
Love,
Tania
August 2, 1992
Karachi
Dear Tania,
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t even get my mother to come to the phone. I tried. I really tried. She wouldn’t even look at me when I went to her room. I begged, Tania. I begged her to take your mother’s call but she wouldn’t get out of bed.
I finally managed to get Navi to talk about it. All he will say is that he doesn’t know what to do and that it’s not his fault. And that he has a squash match over the weekend.
How worried is your mother about my mother? Should I write to my grandparents in America? I’ve started letters to them but can’t bring myself to finish one and send it. It feels disloyal.
It’s 1 am at night and I’m waiting up for my father to come home. Things can’t go on like this.
I’m so sorry. Please apologise to your mother. I did on the phone but please do it again.
Love,
Tanya
P.S. Your mother seems nice.
9
May 3, 1996
New York, NY
Dear Tania,
I want to tell you the things I have been mad at you for. And I’m not doing this because my therapist thinks I should. I’m doing it because it’s time you know. Neither one of us is perfect.
You shouldn’t have loved Nusrat. You could have done all the things you did with her without that. This is your problem, you know Tania? This is your issue. Everything black and white, everything all or nothing. America is terrible, Bombay is everything. Your father good, your mother bad. School a victory or an indictment. It couldn’t be enough for you to be friends with the girl who washed your dishes.
Oh you were such a cardboard stereotype. With your overbearing mother and your unfulfilled father. I don’t believe they looked at each other at parties. I don’t believe they held hands. I bet you made it up.
I’m mad at you for your holier-than-thou attitude. How many letters will it take? How many times have I tried to say I’m sorry? You know I am. I told you about the nightmares. I told you I can’t have sex. I told you I can’t sleep. I told you I’ve been going to a shrink for four years. I told you Chhoti Bibi left me. Do you think just because you were there it only happened to you? IT HAPPENED TO ME TANIA. IT HAPPENED TO ME. If it happened to you it happened to me.
You used me. For all your talk of popularity and being the queen bee at school, you didn’t have anyone to talk to either. You also came home alone and ashamed because the only person you could talk to was your servant.
You used Nusrat. If you hadn’t pretended like Nusrat was your best friend then none of this would have happened. But no, Tania Ghosh doesn’t see that her best friend is a servant, is Muslim, can’t speak, lives in a ghetto, has an illiterate father. Not Tania Ghosh. She is above class. She is above religion. She is just so cute with her sassy eyes and sassy tongue sashaying around with her servant best friend.
We all prepare and present a version of ourselves. I tried so hard and always, always failed but you never even tried. Not with your mother, not with Nusrat, not even really with Arjun. I hate you for that.
Today I went for a recruitment session with Goldman Sachs and saw an Indian guy. He was short, balding, dressed in really tight pants and had a little teapot of a belly from which a black hair curled out between the buttons of his shirt. But he was also the only guy who was funny. He took off his tie halfway through the presentation and tied it around his waist like a cummerbund. He spoke well. His air of irony about working for Goldman Sachs went down very well with a crowd of liberal arts students because all of us felt slightly ashamed for being there.
It was your brother. Sammy Ghosh. Will you be offended if I say that I detested him on sight? Anyway, what does it matter. It’s not like you’re ever going to write back. I don’t even know if you get the letters. Maybe your parents hide them from you. Your family may be a lot more cogent than mine but at least I make my own decisions. I’ve been making my own decisions for some time now, Tania.
Anyway, the Goldman Sachs recruitment session was the most waited-for session in the recruitment calendar. Everyone wants to apply to Goldman Sachs, everyone wants to work there. I don’t care particularly if it’s Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan or Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers. I just want to be rich. A marble bathroom that’s only mine.
And don’t you dare judge me, Tania Ghosh. I work three jobs to pay for things and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of being a dishwasher in the dining hall, the only one who is not part of a high school rehabilitation program. I’m tired of professors looking through me when I serve them canapes. I’m tired of dropping package slips in mail boxes for J Crew Sweaters that cost 98 dollars. It would take me 17 hours of stuffing mail to make enough money for that sweater. I want to be the girl who buys a sweater for 98 dollars and then rejects it because it’s the wrong colour. I want to order steak. I want to buy a dress that’s not on sale.
I’m not going to be my mother. She also worked three jobs to put herself through college and where did it get her?
I know Amrita thinks I am selling out although she’s too kind to say it. I am selling out. She had introduced me to an old student of hers who now does human rights law in the Bronx. He shares a chilly apartment with three roommates and wears double sweaters at night because heat is expensive. His law school debt is being paid off slowly by the government because she doesn’t make enough money to pay it off himself.
I know the type. I know the life. Living in the far reaches of cities where everyone looks resigned and the shops have bars on the windows. Or in the middle of nowhere where the only Pakistani food is at a parrot green four-table restaurant called Taj Mahal with Christmas lights illuminating a doped out Rastafarian asking you if you want salad with your meal.
I’m not going to be like that. I want to be one of the people who signs a cheque for ten thousand dollars as a security deposit on an apartment that looks out on Central Park. I want to buy a three dollar cup of coffee every day and take a taxi home whenever I want. I want to buy organic juice in glass bottles. My mother will come live with me. We will find a new psychiatrist, buy the best drugs. She will take art classes at NYU. We will go for long walks on the promenade and complain about the heat.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I went up to Sammy to speak with him and he knew immediately who I was. Which is flattering really. He looked at me and turned away. In front of everyone. My friend asked me why he cut me like that and I told her that he was anti-Pakistani.
I’m going to apply to Goldman Sachs and I’m going to get in. And then I’m going to work real hard and I’m going to be real smart and one day I’m going to be the boss of your fat, oily brother.
Wait and see, Tania, wait and see.
Love,
Tanya
August 11, 1992
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
So just FYI you aren’t the only one whose country has weird shit going on. All everyone talks about anymore is the BJP. It’s damn boring. Yesterday Nusrat told me that an Urdu-medium school near her house was attacked because it had a Pakistan flag. And I was like why do they have a Pakistan flag and she got super mad and said that every green flag is not a Pakistan flag. Like I care.
She doesn’t talk about anything else and doesn’t want to hear anything about Arjun or school or anything. All she can think about are these stupid political people and their pointless issues. It’s damn annoying.
You know what’s weird? Nobody phoned me yesterday and no one has phoned me so far today also. Usually I get like six to eight calls a day.
And at school today, Ritu was absent and no one else sat next to me. I mean the last time Ritu was absent there was a fight about who would sit next to me. But today, no one even looked at me when the bell rang. Do you think they didn’t notice?
And at lunch, I sat in our usual spot, but no one came and sat with me except Neenee. She was damn happy to have me all to herself. But where was everyone?
Okay I better go, my mom just came home. Just see. It’s 10 o’clock at night. Who comes home at this hour? It’s not decent. I’d be so pissed if I was my dad. But all he does is make her tea with fresh ginger.
I mean seriously Dad. You never get what you want by being a pushover.
Ciao,
T
August 23, 1992
Karachi
Dear Tania,
Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible if your letters are for real. You’re blind when it comes to your mother.
The two boys in my class are Humayun and Mohammed T. Humayun has been in my class since nursery school. He’s not very clever but he’s very, very sweet. I don’t know Mohammed T very well but apparently his family is “involved” with MQM. He’s flying out immediately. He doesn’t even have a school to go to in America. He’s going to go stay with his aunt and uncle in New Jersey and apply from there. I wonder how this will affect his college applications.
I did something bad today. I destroyed Navi’s squash racket. He left it on the stairs again and I picked it up, took it to my room and cut the strings. I’ve told him many times not to leave his racket on the stairs. My mother doesn’t really look where she’s going. I don’t want to imagine what would happen if she tripped on it and fell. She has no meat left on her body.
When Navi saw the cut strings of the racket, he grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard I bit into my tongue. I have welts on my arms. I love looking at them in the mirror. Dark blushes slowly turning purple.
But I hadn’t known that Navi has a club championship coming up. If only I had money, I would buy him a new racket. I’ll ask Ali to look in their sports room. Can you believe they have a whole room filled with sports equipment? There’s a brand new scuba diving outfit in there. Every time I go in there I wrap the arms of the suit around my head and smell the rubber. It always smells new and promising.