Daanish continued reading without noticing her.
She’d kept her part of the agreement. Daanish had agreed to see Nissrine on the condition that Anu would not pressure him into a commitment. That was nearly two weeks ago. Though yearning for their engagement, she remained silent, with the occasional, ‘That Nissrine is so slim and educated. Just the type for young boys your age.’ Most of their conversations, whether about dinner or rain, began that way. It was just a suggestion. Not pressure.
She stood beside Daanish, the lawn outside conspicuously without birds and crumbs. The sky was overcast, soporific. The room, even with the fan above her head, a sauna. Perhaps July would bring rain. But then the roof would leak. More plaster would crumble onto the frayed carpets. It had been an ongoing fight between them: she wanting to spend on the house, the doctor on his travels. She save, he surprise. The worn carpets were visible again since the white sheets for the Quran readings were removed. She’d preferred the sheets.
Today was the fifty-first day after his death.
She was waiting for his presence to diminish. Waiting to stop counting the days. But she knew tomorrow, upon awakening, she’d think: fifty-two. Sitting up on her right side of the bed, she’d smooth the sheets carefully, afraid that her hand might stray over to his side, and touch, not emptiness, but him. And she’d rest her head on her knees and try not to hear his last words to her, spoken from the space her hand dared not venture. But she’d hear it, louder tomorrow than even today: There’s one gift you still haven’t found. But then, neither have I. She’d resolve not to let it haunt her. And all day, it would.
Anu sat down with a heavy sigh. ‘That Nissrine is so slim and educated …’
From behind the newspaper, Daanish cut in, ‘Just the type for young boys my age.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You’re enjoying keeping me in suspense.’
‘I admit I’m fascinated by your self-control. It would be interesting to see how long it lasts.’
She clicked her tongue. ‘You sound just like your father. He was always studying things. A man should not study his mother.’
‘Then what should he do with her?’
‘He should,’ she said emphatically, ‘listen to her every wish.’
‘When have I not listened to you?’ He smiled, putting the paper down.
‘I’m a very lucky mother,’ she said. ‘My son always listens to me.’ Then she added, ‘And always will.’
He laughed. ‘Unless his happiness is at stake.’
‘I think only of your happiness.’
‘But,’ he started to say, then hesitated. ‘I know you do, Anu.’
She was pleased. ‘Well, she is slim and educated.’
‘Do I detect you beginning to give in?’
‘You can at least tell me what you thought of her.’
‘I thought we’d already established that. She’s slim and educated.’
‘Did you like her?’
‘Her? Oh yes.’
Anu’s face lit up. ‘I knew you would. Well, I’m not going to, you know, put pressure.’ She stood up and walked over to his chair again. ‘You keep thinking that way,’ she patted him.
‘All right.’ He returned to the paper.
Protest March, it said. Anu peered closer, but the print began to swim. She was distracted. Snippets of the conversation she’d had with Nissrine’s mother the day after the tea returned to her.
‘Who was that horrible girl?’ she’d asked. ‘I’m so surprised someone as sensible as your daughter would be friends with, with that. And that’s twice now she’s spoiled it for her.’
‘You’re absolutely correct,’ Tasleem had answered. ‘She’s a terrible influence on my child and always has been. That’s what I’ve always said. And when Nissrine told me she’d actually invited her, I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, after that disgraceful episode in front of everyone. That be-shar’m has always made my daughter look bad. She has no sense of, of form. No social grooming What So Ever.’
‘What’s her family name?’
‘Dia Mansoor. Whoever heard such a silly name? What can you expect, given who the mother is …’
Her child.
She looked out again at the spot where the doctor would put the saucer. He was standing there, a touch blue in the arms and face, clad in the dirty white hospital gown he’d died in. When alive, he’d sat in the sofa and looked out. Now he looked in, as if she and Daanish were the sparrows his hand fed. After fifty-one days, he was still in charge. She panicked, growing increasingly desperate for Daanish to answer her.
She cleared her throat. ‘What are you reading? Anything interesting?’
‘Just sobering.’
‘Why don’t you read it to me?’
He looked up skeptically, then quickly summarized the article. ‘The office of an English-language daily has been raided. The five men in khaki claimed the paper had been making “anti-Pakistan” statements. So they confiscated its printing press. This was the two hundred and thirty-third attack on a newspaper office in the past six years. Journalists are protesting.’
Anu tried to read but the newsprint again flew in her face. Instead, she saw Daanish in Tasleem’s drawing room, twiddling his thumbs nonchalantly. He’d barely even looked at Nissrine.
She began combing his thick hair with her fingers. ‘This is,’ she said. ‘I mean this must be very interesting for you. Since you’re studying journalism.’
‘Yes,’ he pouted reflectively. ‘It is.’
In Nissrine’s drawing room, he’d turned to the girl with the bent nose. Riffat’s nose. Not much more resemblance. Her messy hair, for instance, was not like the mother’s. That woman had nothing better to do than trim and set hers daily.
Her son had smiled at her. She knew that smile.
Now Daanish was saying, ‘Aba never wanted me to be a journalist. He said I’d spend my life fighting, not just for the right to speak but to live. Poor Dada, who wallowed alone in jail all those years.’
His knees had been inches from the girl shamelessly pulling closer to him. Just like her mother. It was all in the blood, wasn’t it? And Nissrine’s blood was pure as the mountain air her ancestors had breathed centuries ago. Anu’s ancestors too. That’s why her flesh was so fair, her walk so measured, her eyes so lowered. But that one – shamelessly throwing her head back, cooing, ‘Really? What? Amazing!’
He did not even notice poor Nissrine offer the tea. Did not watch her pour the milk, mix the sugar. It sat on the table, cold, untouched. And all the while, the dark girl blinked flirtatiously, and he swiveled, and swiveled.
‘And yet,’ continued Daanish, ‘Dada was my hero. And so are these men and women,’ he pointed to the newspaper. ‘They live for a cause. What else is there to live for? They make me proud. There was no protest march by American journalists when a few came forward and confessed how they’d been silenced during the Gulf War. They admitted that if they’d spoken, they’d have lost their jobs. Speaking up at all was brave, but journalists here risk much more.’
What did he see in her?
‘But I wonder sometimes, Anu, am I as tough as them? It would have been easier if I were just like all the other Pakistani boys in the States, studying engineering or business. I’d come home fat and bouncy, like Khurram.’
Perhaps he liked them slightly boyish. Like that short, brown one in the photograph. She wore a cap that said Fully Food. An apron too. She didn’t appear to be wearing anything else. But there was hardly anything to see.
‘And then I read how the US insists we sign the non-proliferation treaty and I know I have to write. Never mind that not one member of the UN Security Council has signed. Never mind that all five permanent members began the arms race. Never mind that the weapons on our streets came from them, or that US arms exports continue to escalate. The Cold War has ended, and we’re no longer useful against the Soviets, so we’re the enemy.’
No, he liked them buxom too. That blonde one, well, she coul
d have been lactating.
‘Yesterday, the paper printed a statement issued by US Intelligence. Know what it said? It said the risk of missile attacks against the US was on the rise, so America must increase defense spending. Can you believe it? While poor countries are punished for defending themselves, the strongest military power in the world comes up with excuses to keep building its weaponry.’
He talked, looked and behaved just like his father.
Daanish folded up the paper irritably. ‘The problem is that we require aid at all. Beggars, that’s what we are. We can either join the bullies or stay the beggars. Those are our two choices.’
She stroked his cheek. He shrugged her off. ‘You haven’t been listening at all, have you Anu? You’re not interested.’
‘Oh, don’t be that way,’ she pulled him.
But he stood up and walked up to his room, adding over his shoulder, ‘Aba would have listened.’
She glowered at the doctor still looking in.
2
The Clue
She had stood beside him, fanning his forehead.
He grasped her wrist and said, ‘I must talk.’
She was terrified of what he would say next. Why should she listen? She’d heard enough.
‘Haven’t you ever sinned? Done anything reprehensible, disgusting, vile?’ He shook her wrist.
She begged to be released.
‘No. I want you to listen.’ He began stroking her hair with his other hand, tenderly kissing its tips. ‘I’ve tried to always stand by you. Even though, sometimes, I failed.’
‘It’s too late for this,’ she sobbed. How dare he ask for her forgiveness now, when she’d lost the appetite for it! Why was it her job to absolve him of guilt? He’d had an easy life. And of her he now demanded an easy death.
‘No,’ she pulled her hand away. ‘I won’t hear it.’
‘You will,’ he laughed. ‘And you will know there’s one gift you never found. But then, neither did I.’
She climbed the stairs to Daanish’s room, hearing him call and cough. She began removing her boy’s things and never saw the doctor open his living eyes again.
Fifty-two days later she woke up thinking: fifty-two. She had to find the gift.
She wondered what clues he might have left, and where they’d be hidden. It was cruel indeed: during his life she’d never played along. But now she was consumed. Would he leave any hints in the house? Perhaps. Most of his gifts to her somehow related to food and drink. She started in the kitchen, emptying cabinets, poking through drawers and under the stovetop. Once he’d left a camel bone fan for her on a blade of the ceiling fan, and it had shot into the window when she pulled the switch. Nothing up there now.
When the kitchen was thoroughly searched, she dug around her plants. These were also his favorite haunts. Nothing. Nor in the television room, not even near his sofa. She couldn’t find it.
Daanish passed her on his way out. He was going somewhere with Khurram again. He kissed her goodbye. She watched him leave – the strong arms, long limbs. It could have been the doctor, twenty-three years ago. Before he began balding and his midriff started to sag. Before she became the shadow in the cave.
She stepped out into the lawn, watching Daanish recede down the street to Khurram’s house. Then she held her clammy face up to whatever breeze blew. She didn’t want to go back inside. What she wanted was to stand here till the compulsion to play the doctor’s game left her. She looked around her small garden, where the plumbago bush was a spring of blue stars, and each anthurium blossom a pink palm with a white middle finger rising. The doctor had always said it was the most obscene thing he’d ever seen. He’d had such a one-track mind. Still did. She wanted to forget him and enjoy the flowers, simply because they were hers to enjoy. She wanted to let the sluggish day pour into her. She wanted to touch what was hers before she’d married him.
Leaves rustled. A stray cat had given birth to four kittens that huddled beneath a banana palm. One kitten, black with a white spot on its tail, pounced on the others and swatted the air. His mother growled softly.
Before her ovaries were removed, what gift had the doctor given?
She couldn’t stop. She was his sparrow yet. Sighing, Anu went inside to start cooking.
Entering the kitchen it hit her. Of course: the doctor’s first gift was their son. The last gift would be connected. She’d found the clue. It was Daanish.
But what next?
She stood at the sink, cleaning a chicken, feeling his presence still. She would learn to accept this too. She’d adjust, wrap up the guipure and spread the tea. Throw out the tea and make it fresh if he wanted. It was like lying still beneath him when he awoke in the middle of the night, no doubt dreaming of her, and, without caring whether she slept or not, entered Anu roughly in the dark. He’d never die; even this could become routine.
Leaving the chicken to simmer on the stove, she consulted her watch: just after noon. Daanish was coming home later each time.
3
The Doctor Looking Out
The child was leaving again.
‘Where do you keep going?’ she pleaded.
‘I go to have fun, Anu,’ Daanish answered, exasperated. ‘Why don’t you get together with your friends?’
‘But,’ her voice trembled. ‘Maybe I could come with you. Khurram’s such a nice boy. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’
He stood in tattered shorts and a T-shirt, gaping at her from under a cap. ‘I’ve been trying my best to stick around you, but I need time away too.’
He made it sound like a favor. As if her company was penance. Just like the doctor. ‘I won’t be getting in your way,’ she whimpered. But he was stubborn and pulled free.
She spent the day pacing from one window to the next, frequently moving outside to prune her hibiscus bushes bare. Several times, she walked up to Daanish’s bedroom, believing the door had miraculously unlocked. Foolishly, she’d forgotten to remove the key from the knob before his arrival. If Daanish was the clue, perhaps the gift was in his room. Should she get a locksmith?
Every time he returned from these outings, his clothes were matted with sand. Rivulets of salt hung in the dense hair of his legs and his lashes were like a dusty paintbrush. Once, she was sure of it, his upper lip was cut. Just where it curved, under his right nostril. He tried to hide the smear of blood by pointing his chin away from her, sucking it in, keeping the cap on all day. But the shadow of its bill had not fooled her. The thin nip was prominent. There was little doubt in her mind that he went with Khurram to the cove. Probably, he’d fallen on rocks, though why only that centimeter of upper lip was struck was a mystery. And why the secrecy? He’d loved her to go with him as a child.
She started on the bougainvillea. Unlike the uppity wives of the doctor’s friends, she’d never relied on domestic help to get her work done for her. The gardener came once a week to mow the lawn – most of the watering and pruning she managed on her own. She required no help with the cooking. They had no driver or chawkidaar. Then again, she sighed, why hire someone to guard property in obvious decay? The house’s exterior should have been repainted years ago, and the cracks filled. Perhaps that would be her next project. She’d have to wait though: the money spent on refurbishing Daanish’s room had come out of selling the pearl necklace and other gifts, and she didn’t have many left to sell.
Clipping the thorny bougainvillea stems, she gazed up at the muted sky. It was the color of the pearls. She mopped her forehead. Humidity was in the nineties but still not a drizzle. Barely even a breeze today. Her modest garden lay in a stifled haze. She walked barefoot on the prickly grass with browning roots. The doctor had given her a monthly allowance enough to purchase only one tank of water per week. Not enough for the lawn. Those wives he flirted with bought American grass seeds, and their lawns were soft as pillows. And hers, that horrible Mansoor woman with the horrible daughter, hers had won every horticultural award since Anu first learned there even was such a
thing. She pictured it: green like the jade box the doctor once hid for Daanish. The child had of course found it the same day. How did they communicate so flawlessly with each other?
She’d left something for Daanish to find too. But he’d said nothing about the picture in the lacquer box. For twenty-three years that face had followed her: wind-blown curls framing a smooth high forehead, nose a touch pink, lips parted in a jubilant smile. Shoulders pressing into his. His scarf grazing her cheek. Both laughing as though unable to believe they could be so happy.
She’d wanted Daanish to know how the image taunted her. But he’d said nothing.
The clouds sailed sluggishly by, occasionally yawning, letting her peer inside a charcoal gray window. Sometimes the picture on the other side was blue. At others, impenetrably black. Then the window swallowed itself and opened somewhere else.
Would God forgive her wrath? She wanted only to be sure of one thing, and that was her son. The doctor had stripped her clean of all pleasures but that one. He’d never touch it, though even in death, he kept trying. That’s why he’d left the gift with Daanish. If she could find and destroy it, at last, Daanish would be hers alone.
She sighed: she’d over-pruned the bush.
It was just after one o’clock. He’d left three hours ago. If he’d let her accompany him, she could be sitting with him on the shoulder-boulder, and together they’d look out at the roiling sea, under the roiling clouds, and perhaps the first monsoon of the season would fall on them. The thick plump drops would strike their teacups and they’d sip the rainy brew down, watching the drops bounce in the same way over the vast sea. She’d wear her blue shawl, and they could hunker beneath it.
Anu clipped her way over to the plumbago bush, the fantasy so vivid she could smell the rain. It occurred to her that since she knew where her son went every few days, she could follow him. She could ask her brother to take her, or perhaps one of the neighbors. The boy had always liked the doctor’s surprises; why wouldn’t he like hers?
The top of her head was like a hot plate. She’d been outside far too long. Her fair skin would burn. Gathering the trimmed branches and mound of fallen leaves into a plastic bag, she opened the front gate. She was about to drop the bag in the basket by the mailbox when she paused: it was Monday, the load would not be picked up till Friday. She decided to walk to the empty lot at the end of the street, where everyone left their trash.
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