“Really?” Nasreen asked, returning the receiver to her ear. “July? Yes, we are going in June to India and then Pakistan. I know! I know! It has been six years since I have visited my grandmother, my aunt and uncles, and my cousins.”
Partly listening to the one-sided conversation between Nasreen and Krishna, Kate rolled onto her back and lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, praying that Nasreen wasn’t pregnant and utterly dismayed that she might be. To distract her mind, Kate thought about the first time she had meet Nasreen and Krishna freshman year.
Nasreen’s and Krishna’s families did not share the same religion, language, or customs, yet the two girls were bonded on the neighborhood playground in a middle-class neighborhood by their “India-ness.” Although both of their mothers were from South India, Laila was from Telangana and Saritha was from the coastal state of Kerala, making their daughters culturally divergent in a sense but both bound by their epochal duties to define their parents’ legacy in America.
Krishna’s parents, Saritha and Suneel Desai, each came from different Indian states divided by geography and dialects. They met in America, landing on the same college campus surrounded by Illinois cornstalks. After a peek through the library stacks, Saritha was drawn to Suneel’s long jawline and thoughtful intensity as he sat studying; he was intrigued by her wide-eyed curiosity. Suneel was from the western state of Gujarat, making his marriage to Saritha a marriage never bechanced in India, only in an American college town. “A love marriage,” Krishna called it with a hint of defiance in her voice. “About the only thing they had in common was that their home states shared the same Indian coastline!”
On the other hand, Nasreen’s parents were born, reared, and married by arrangement in Hyderabad, their consummation blessed by ancestral order and progeniture prosperity. Her father brought his new wife to the Midwest in search of a promising engineering career.
Both sets of parents arrived in the same American neighborhood in the mid-1960s to start new lives. Their American-born daughters found friendship in hopscotch, running through the malls holding hands, and prancing around the dinner table dressed in colorful salwar kameezes.
In high school, Nasreen met Kate, a freckle-faced redhead, and the only other girl in her computer class. Kate and Nasreen listened to music, passed the time in mindless chatter in the pink and white bedroom, giggled about boys, and complained about home economics class. Laila often set a place for Kate at the evening meal, something fried, too spicy, peppers soaked in cumin and turmeric in a spiced bubbling ghee.
On weekends, Kate spent the night at Nasreen’s and attended family gatherings—feasts at dusk during the holy month of Ramadan, and Eid parties signaling the end of Ramadan that lasted through the night. On these occasions, even in the middle of August, the house, strung with bulbs, danced in the wondrous light on an otherwise dark and quiet Midwestern street, the walkways decorated with luminary candles guiding the women in flowing saris bursting with color and outlined with gold diamante trim, all hours of the night.
At every wedding ceremony celebrated in traditional stages—the mehendi, the nikah, and the walima—in the Rockfield Muslim community, Kate was the fair girl beside Nasreen. The women were always separate from the men on these occasions during meals and prayer. Kate found comfort sitting cross-legged on the floor among a sea of veiled women, hips touching hips, so close she smelled henna dye in the women’s hair. It was an earthy smell of the dye mixed with camellia-scented hair oil.
Kate imagined her mother’s face under each veil, a beautiful face fading in her memory over the five years since she had passed away. There among the mothers and girls waiting to be mothers, she could feel her own passions in the waves of soft murmurs and prayer hymns.
Nasreen placed the phone gently against its base after saying goodbye to Krishna.
“What are you going to do?” Kate asked. “When you go to India, you will be…” She wiggled her fingers as she counted the months in her head. “…Showing!”
“Shhh,” Nasreen warned. “I am just late a few days. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Nothing? Nasreen, this isn’t like you!” Kate exclaimed. “You’re shaking!”
“Come with us.”
“To India?” Kate asked astonished, eyeing Nasreen suspiciously.
Nasreen lowered her head. “I’m tired,” she said. “We are supposed to go to the mosque tonight. I can’t go. I told my mother I’m ill. It’s not really a lie.”
Kate pictured Nasreen, her cropped hair wrapped underneath a dupatta, kneeling on her prayer rug, a baby growing inside her.
Yes, she thought, best to stay here surrounded by the butterfly wallpaper.
1 *See glossary for definitions of italicized words throughout text.
Chapter 2
Wrapped in Faith
Ten Years Later • Chicago 1998
Café Trois Oeufs on Chicago’s north side was beginning to quiet down as breakfast business meetings came to an end. Clients glanced critically at their watches, while morning procrastinators prepared for their mundane Midwestern jobs.
The wooden chairs moaned loudly as patrons pushed them forward, allowing others to pass with an “excuse me,” “pardon me,” and “have a nice day.”
Beneath shuffling feet, the hallowed floorboards of the renovated Victorian house—now a French restaurant and bakery—creaked with patrons glancing at the bright showcases of gleaming pastries and handmade glazed bread swirled in knots or twisted in ropes.
A little bell on the door mantel rang as Kate entered. The January cold drifted in and skirted across the floorboards. Kate searched among the tables and spotted Nasreen and Krishna, sitting at a table in the corner of the bakery.
Nasreen had just returned from visiting family in Pakistan with her husband, Mustafa, and called Kate and Krishna to meet at her favorite café.
“Hi. Sorry I’m late,” Kate apologized.
She gave both women a quick hug, dropped her backpack on the floor, and plopped into the French wicker chair.
“I am so glad we could finally get together. It’s been months!” Krishna said.
Krishna had shoulder-length straight, black satin hair that hung down along her face covering her right eye. She hardly wore makeup and didn’t really need it. She had full lips, deep dark eyes, and a slight nose that was challenged to support a set of square spectacles. Krishna was constantly pushing the spectacles to the bridge of her nose with one finger. She looked critical at times, particularly when she didn’t have the patience to explain what it meant to be Hindu, who Lord Ganesha was, what her family did during Diwali, if she wore Indian clothing at home, or what language her parents spoke. At other times, she was excitable, and her voice rose to a high pitch.
“How was your trip to Pakistan?” Kate asked Nasreen as she pulled off her coat and draped it on the back of the wicker chair.
Nasreen inhaled soulfully before responding.
“Mustafa and I had a great time. Karachi is very romantic at night. The buildings and marriage halls light up the evening sky. Even the bazaars glow like magical tents.” She smiled, her lips glistening soft brown. “The city has changed so much since you have been there, Kate.” Her walnut eyes widened with emphasis. “Can you believe it has been ten years?”
Ten years? Kate tried to comprehend the time, a void from then to now. The thought of how a decade had passed since she had traveled to Hyderabad, India, and Karachi, Pakistan, with Nasreen and her family as an inquisitive sixteen-year-old was incomprehensible.
“I visited Mamujan and Mumanijan in Karachi,” Nasreen continued, referring to her eldest uncle and his wife. “Mumanijan threw a large dinner party in my honor. You remember her parties. Nothing has changed. Anees and Rayah were back visiting from Sacramento with their two boys. Aunty Zehba was ecstatic to see them. A wonderful thing because she was in a good mood!”
Kate laughed picturing Nasreen’s overbearing aunt nagging everyone about something.
“And
my cousin Azra! Azra is engaged!”
“Little Azra?” Kate’s interest was piqued.
“And Yasmine!” Nasreen exclaimed. “It was so great to see Yasmine. She has the most adorable three-year-old boy.”
Nasreen hesitated.
“Anees told me that Tariq is living in New York.”
At the sound of his name, Kate felt a ripple through her heart—the same ripple she had felt every time he looked at her with such intensity, his slate-blue eyes searing through hers.
She had been enraptured by Nasreen’s cousin, Tariq, during their summer in Asia, but the hope for anything more dissipated into summer dust once they returned to the US and dissolved with Nasreen’s words: “Don’t be foolish. My cousin will marry the Muslim girl his mother chooses.”
“New York?” Kate asked, intrigued.
“Anees says he is getting his MBA then returning to India.”
“Tariq said there will be jobs in India. The telecommunication industry is flourishing, and he wouldn’t have to come to America for work,” Kate stated flatly. “Good for him.”
Nasreen slowly sipped her tea. “Everyone remembers the red-haired girl, Kate McKenna.”
Kate tried to envision herself as the girl of ten years ago transplanted for eight weeks in a foreign place—the girl who walked by slums, past architectural wonders, alongside a bombed bazaar, and through stone fortresses and glorious mosques. The teenage Kate had learned customs, gestures, Urdu words, prayer times, how to eat with her hands, how to wrap a sari around the curves of her body, and squeeze glass bangles over her knuckles without breaking them.
As strange and alien as she had felt on the streets, Kate felt the opposite in the homes of Nasreen’s relatives. She joined the cousins sitting on the floor, listening to the elders, singing to the pounding dholaks, and watching Indian movies over several days. She had embraced what she didn’t understand, absorbed it with an unbiased faith, wrapping it around her like a veil.
Kate was jealous now of that girl who had wandered through a land of virtuous domes and arched walkways, rising from the heat and sand, unfettered and uninhibited.
“You would not believe the places we went in Karachi!” Nasreen exclaimed, bringing Kate back to the present.
The right side of Nasreen’s mouth curled in a seductive half-grin. She tousled her hair. The red of her fingertips peeked forth from her thick dark brown waves tinted with bold maroon-colored highlights.
Kate had noticed the red highlights now fully illuminated by the light from the hanging Tiffany lamp.
“Did you dye your hair with henna?” she asked, reminded of the henna paste that had decorated their hands and palms with intricate mehendi designs during the wedding ceremonies in Pakistan.
“Yes. I just felt like a change of color.”
Nasreen often changed her hairstyle, adding highlights or straightening her curls with a flat iron. Kate remembered the time in high school when Nasreen had chopped her long wavy hair severely short so that the ends wisped under her earlobes. Nasreen’s mother was distraught for weeks and insisted her daughter cover her head with a dupatta when they went to the mosque, at least until the hair grew to shoulder length. Nasreen was going through a rough time then, confronting the possibility that she was pregnant.
“The nightclubs are dazzling,” Nasreen continued, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Mustafa and I are treated like royalty when we go out with his friends.”
“Nightclubs?” Krishna was adding sugar to her tea and looked up above the rims of her glasses clinging low on her nose.
“I tell you, Karachi has changed,” Nasreen said.
Kate had read articles on the new Pakistan. Beyond the conservative streets was a pulsing other world of young businessmen and entrepreneurs armed with an imperious aura. They exuded independence and carried money shoved in silk-lined suit pockets. The “new” business professionals prayed toward Mecca, fasted during the holy month of Ramadan, and danced and dined in upscale clubs bestowing largesse upon their beautiful wives clad in heavily filigreed saris and wrapped in diaphanous veils.
Nasreen’s husband, Mustafa Abdel, was from Pakistan as were most of the young couples he and Nasreen associated with. Their friends had married in Pakistan and were now settled in Pepperwood Grove and the surrounding northern Chicago suburbs. Nasreen claimed Pakistan, at least in part, as her family’s place of origin even though her parents grew up and married in India.
The house in Hyderabad, India, where Nasreen’s mother was reared was gone, demolished by bureaucrats and investors. Nanima, Nasreen’s grandmother, stayed in the house as long as the developers would tolerate. Then she went to live with Nasreen’s aunts Zehba and Samina in the adjacent neighborhood of Jubilee Hills. The Banjara Hills neighborhood was transformed into a high-priced hotel district with shopping areas and swanky restaurants catering to tourists and professionals in the growing telecommunications industry.
Kate visualized Nanima clutching the tin full of ingredients to make traditional paan and the stack of old photos from the armoire. She wondered what happened to Rahmsing and his family who had lived in the mud shack at the end of the driveway; his sole income was earned tending to Nanima and the house in Banjara Hills. Even the intertwined tamarind trees that had sheltered the corrugated-roof house from the city’s commotion were, as she imagined, ripped from their roots.
Nanima died last July from pneumonia, and Aunty Zehba and Aunty Samina no longer lived on Old School Lane in Jubilee Hills. Nearly all of Nasreen’s cousins had migrated with their families to Karachi, Pakistan. Sadly, there was now no reason for Nasreen to return to India, no reason to claim Hyderabadi lineage. Kate felt that Nasreen had all but banned India from the conversation, pushed the country aside like parsley on a plate.
Kate looked down into her tea of swirling herbs and took a slow sip, wishing she had decided on the raspberry tart with glazed kiwi instead of a plain croissant. She was on a graduate student budget and the croissant was the cheapest item on the menu. She counted her monthly finances in her head: $900 received for teaching; $400 went to rent, $200 for car expenses and insurance, and $150 for student fees. That didn’t leave much for raspberry tarts served on a doily.
900, minus 400, minus 200, minus 150.
“I told my family you are getting your doctorate in biochemistry.”
“What?”
“You are always daydreaming,” Nasreen said, sighing. “I said that you were working on your PhD in biochemistry. Aunty Zehba was impressed, and nothing impresses her as you know!”
“Well, let’s see if I do eventually get that PhD,” Kate said.
Graduate school was like stumbling through a dark cave, she thought.
“Of course you will,” Krishna remarked emphatically.
Nasreen changed the subject. “Mumanijan asked if you were engaged yet. She is still playing matchmaker.”
“Engaged?” Kate asked as though the question were absurd. “Hardly.”
Kate had no intention of revealing that she and Neil, whom she had been dating, had broken up last week. She didn’t need the pity. She did not want to admit the mistake she made in dating her closest friend on the Master’s swim team. Neil had provided sanity to her day, as they rendezvoused many mornings at the university union for coffee after swim practice. He was a graduate student in the English department and a good listener. He let her spill out all the demons in her head to eventually soak into the residual coffee grounds at the bottom of her cup. He made her laugh at the absurdities and the demands of professors. But he had broken off their relationship, stating that he needed to focus on graduating like it was his New Year’s resolution.
“How is married life, Nasreen?” Krishna asked after a long pause.
“Married life is great.” The corner of Nasreen’s mouth curled coyly as she answered Krishna’s inquiry. “The information technology company Mustafa works for is opening a branch in San Francisco, and he just got promoted to senior specialist. He has to
travel more, but no matter how busy he is we always go to mosque on Fridays, and every Saturday we get together with a few Pakistani couples, go to dinner, or stay home and play games. Seems every weekend there is a wedding, baby shower, birthday, kids running around everywhere, it’s crazy! Oh, gosh…” Nasreen paused distracted by a thought.
“What?” Krishna looked around nervously.
“I just remembered! Mustafa’s siblings and their families will all be here for the month of February for my niece’s wedding. The entire Abdel clan! Come for my niece’s wedding!” Nasreen exclaimed.
“I can come,” Krishna said.
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Umm, I…” she stammered, trying to find the right words to decline the invitation.
Kate had by far attended more Indian weddings than traditional American weddings in her youth, thanks to Nasreen. She found Indian weddings to be more entertaining, rich in textiles, tralatitious music, and rituals that transported her to a different place.
“I would love to attend the wedding,” she began, “but it is a really busy time, you know.” Kate looked away from Nasreen’s gaze. “Undergraduates have exams coming up so I will be swamped with grading, and I am trying to finish my thesis.”
“Let me know when you are free then,” Nasreen responded impatiently.
Free? Kate thought. For four years she had been secluded in a lab. She had been trying to be free forever it seemed.
As teenagers, she and Nasreen had similar ambitions. Nasreen had been accepted to the top schools for pre-law. But instead of enrolling, she attended the community college to be close to home before getting married.
Now, as twenty-seven-year-old women, their lives were diverging.
Which was the better path?
Mehendi Tides Page 2