‘Has anyone tried talking to her?’
‘We’ve mostly been talking “at” her. She hasn’t responded to anything or anyone.’
Adil brushed my poor, bruised forehead with his lips. I realized he was trembling slightly.
‘Achoo …’
Before he learned to enunciate, he used to call me Achoo, like a sneeze. He’d been so very small. I was all of seven when he was brought home, a blotchy red face, body swaddled in a blanket like an exotic spring roll. Everyone hovered around him. Neighbours and relatives came to see him, bearing Johnson and Johnson newborn gift sets, or food for the rest of the family. People walked by me as if I wasn’t there.
‘You have to take him back,’ I announced to my mother, but she simply beamed down at him and turned away.
‘He’s the cleaning woman’s son,’ I told a distant relative entrusted with the task of giving me dinner in the kitchen, away from the flood of guests.
‘I don’t like babies. They cry,’ I told Mamu when he asked me if I’d held him yet.
Abba had picked me up and sat me in his lap. ‘Give her the boy,’ he directed my mother. She hesitated, but obeyed him. The spring roll suddenly rested in my arms, my father guiding me, showing me how to cradle it. The baby’s eyes were closed, his mouth worked in strange sucking motions. He mewled. I grew nervous, chubby fingers reached out and pulled my hand to his mouth, latched onto my index finger. The mewling ceased. We both rested, my new brother and I, on my father’s lap in the midst of silent company as Ammi stood next to us, tired but bright-eyed. All seemed right with the world. Maybe this baby wouldn’t be so bad after all.
‘Achoo, can you hear me? Can you hear me Achoo? If you can hear me, raise your eyebrows.’
He waited expectantly, but my eyebrows just wouldn’t cooperate.
‘Achoo your mehram gives you permission to speak.’
I knew this one. An old jibe, from the time Ammi had wanted to go for Hajj but couldn’t because there was no male relative or mehram to accompany her. Adil was too young. Mamu busy with work. Abba, well Abba was long gone. It birthed any amount of bad mehram jokes in the household, but for all the apparent jocularity it made me more angry than amused. I tried to raise my hand to slap him but it wouldn’t cooperate either.
‘That would generally get a rise out of her. If she can hear me and can’t respond she’s probably fuming,’ he explained to the horrified Amna Mumani, ‘she gets very agitated about little things. And she’s morbid.Very morbid,’ he added helpfully. ‘Oye Achoo, I hope you’re thinking positive in there!’
Ammi and Mamu bustled in and the room became crowded. I don’t know about you, I thought in the direction of my charred roommate, but I think they really need to consider putting in a couple of comfortable sofas.
*
’Any word on the doctor?’ Adil and Mumani were speaking simultaneously.
‘Saad is working on it,’ Ammi replied primly, ‘he’s outside making a few calls. I managed to track him down, no thanks to my brother.’
Saad was outside? He was here? Did I have any facial injuries? How bad did I look?
‘I’m sure Najam tried his best,’ Amna Mumani was turning out to be every bit as territorial as my mother.
‘Quite possibly. I guess you can only feel the urgency of a worried parent when you have children yourself.’
That was cruel, but not surprising. Ammi frequently used references to the couple’s childlessness as a way to tilt verbal confrontation in her favour. Nothing was sacred when it came to putting (most) other people in their place. The only people she had never crossed the line with were Adil and my father. The rest of us were fair game. My father used to say she got her acid tongue from her mother. I didn’t know if she had though; my nani died when I was four. Ammi cried for a week and then stopped. She never mentioned her mother again. Maybe I would get a chance to meet her in the afterlife and ask her. Maybe there would be a clue to Ammi’s lack of warmth for me.
But I didn’t want to waste my time thinking about dead people when Saad was outside. Why was he outside and not inside? If Ammi had appealed to him for help, she could hardly have told him it was inappropriate for him to come in. Maybe he didn’t want to come in himself, maybe he felt obligated to use his influence, to attempt to help save my life and with the favour wipe the slate clean before moving on to another office romance. Mr K, after all, was just one face of a particularly insidious predator.
Saad wasn’t like that though. I just knew he wasn’t.
And just like that, I felt powerless again.
TARZAN BAGHAIR CHADDI
GRAFFITI ON KARACHI WALL
~
Dr Fauzia came in with a well-dressed, handsome man in his mid-forties or thereabouts. With his sharply creased trousers, pinstriped white-collared shirt and designer tie, he seemed like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Dr Fauzia’s deference to him, however, marked him as a doctor. On their own turf, doctors tended to treat all other humans as a sub-species; not of the chosen, as it were.
‘So we’ve stabilized her, but like I told the family, there really isn’t much more we can do at this point.’
‘Yes, but we can run further diagnostics and scans in case we’ve missed something. That will give us a better idea of where we are headed.’
Dr Fauzia looked embarrassed. ‘We’re still having the same old problem with the scanner, sir. We apply for funding regularly for the parts we need but you know how difficult it is.’
‘You don’t have to call me sir, Fauzia. I’m not lecturing you right now. And I’m well aware of the state this hospital is in. That’s why I left.’
‘Actually sir, I’m surprised to see you here.’
‘That makes two of us,’ he grinned, ‘but this was a friend I couldn’t refuse.’
Amna Mumani cleared her throat and the two doctors seemed to notice them for the first time.
‘Salaam,’ she said, and a string of similar mutters came from behind her, ‘you must be the new doctor.’
‘Walaykum salaam. Actually I’m here only as a civilian, at Saad’s request I don’t practise here and I have nothing to do with this hospital, all I can share right now is my opinion.To be honest, I’m sure Dr Fauzia here is quite capable of managing on her own.’
‘Perhaps she is,’ Ammi now stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her sister-in-law, ‘but like you yourself said just now, you know how these government hospitals are.’
‘Filthy,’ Adil said, ‘My friend did a special on all the germs that float around places like this. Even the doctors interviewed recommended that in case of emergency you should rush to a private hospital rather than a government one.’ He paused. ‘He could do another one if anything happens to Ayesha.’
Since when did people in the media get so uppity?
‘And the staff doesn’t care about the patients, that wretch has been alone all this time and not once has anyone seen to her,’ Amna Mumani gestured to the next bed.
‘I had to make a fuss before Dr Fauzia came,’ Ammi radiated righteous indignation.
‘No offence to Dr Fauzia here, but staff here are paid less, maybe that’s why they’re less motivated,’ Adil said apologetically.
‘Post-op!’ Mamu had decided to make a contribution after all. Everyone looked inquiringly at him, convinced there should be more to come.
‘Er … it means post-operative care,’ he mumbled, folding his arms to hide the largest of the mango stains on his shirt.
‘Yes, it does,’ the corporate-looking doctor reluctantly dragged his eyes away from my train wreck of a family and turned to Dr Fauzia. ‘Can you help me deal with the administration on this side? I’ve started the ball rolling at the other end and I’m leaving before the new head honcho realizes I’m here.’
‘I’ll get right on it.’ She left.
‘Now,’ he turned back to my bed, ‘we are going to move her to the Agha Khan. I had to call in a lot of favours to get them to take her, so you need to cooperate wi
th me to make this as simple as possible for everyone.’
‘You,’ he gestured to Adil, ‘go and ask Saad to arrange for an ambulance. Tell him to make sure it’s a St John’s one and not an Edhi. Edhi does wonderful work but his ambulances have only the most rudimentary gear. Maybe if people didn’t keep burning them, he’d invest in more equipment, until then they’re little better than a big car.’
Edhi, of course, was Pakistan’s answer to India’s Mother Teresa. Except he was male, Muslim and married.
‘You,’ he pointed to Mamu, ‘find out what is owed to this hospital and clear it. They won’t let her go till the money has been deposited.’
‘You two,’ Ammi and Amna Mumani stiffend, ‘call my assistant at this number. She’ll give you a list of things you need to get.’
Indicating she would do it, Mumani took the paper and nodded mutely. It was a sorry-looking army, but by God it was determined to march in step with this brave new (corporate-looking) drummer.
‘Well, what are you waiting for? Off you go to do your things.’ He waved everyone off, except for Ammi.
‘You can stay. Keep her company when I’m done. No one likes to be alone, especially not in her condition.’
‘We didn’t know if she could hear us.’ Ammi looked embarrassed, for once.
‘Let’s just assume she can.’ For the first time his tone softened, ‘My intern will accompany her in the ambulance, with one other person. I’m going back to my clinic now but someone will let me know the moment the ambulance gets in.’
‘Thank you Dr … I don’t even know your name.’
‘Ejaz Shafiq. But you can call me doctor. And Bibi … there’s one other thing you need to remember.’
‘What’s that, doctor?’
‘Sure private hospitals are better at keeping germs out, but they’re also more rigid about visitors. Only one attendant at a time is allowed, if it’s allowed at all. Everyone should take turns eating, sleeping and proceeding with your normal routine. With a case like this, you might all be in it for the long haul.’
Dr Ejaz Shafiq left and my mother and I were alone together again. She shivered suddenly, as if someone had rubbed her spine with ice; a wrinkled, frail begum in her sari. Don’t be scared Ammi, I wanted to say, it’s only me. You can’t see me, but I’m right here.
That would probably have made her even more uncomfortable. The only person my mother had ever courted being alone with was my father. And the events of 23 March 1990 had put an effective end to that.
SADA BAHAR CHALAY, DUSHMAN JALAY
BACK OF RICKSHAW
~
I was seventeen, doing my second ‘A’ levels at an all girls’ convent school. Adil was ten, in Class 5 at an all boys’ convent school. Our schools were staffed, headed and partly funded by second-generation missionaries. Sure we looked down on our Christian compatriots as far as important things like relationships, rights and privileges were concerned, but when it came to education, it was widely acknowledged that there was nothing quite like a Goan with a Master’s. And if it happened to be a White Christian, well then, where did people sign up?
Fourteen years ago my mother was beginning the battle with obesity that was to claim so much of her time and attention in the coming years. One of those women who seem capable of expressing love only through food, she had taken to sampling the many delicacies she lavished on her husband and son. She didn’t really care what I ate, or if I ate at all. I resisted all her efforts to join her in the kitchen and was aided in this by my father who, while a staunch adherent of the gastronomic hierarchy, suggested that I was destined for another kind of servitude.
‘Look at these hands,’ he exclaimed in wonder that morning, prying my fingers away from my eyes as I tried not to cry after another of Ammi’s early morning tongue-lashings. This one began from the state of my room when she came to wake me and continued, as it inevitably did, to what an abject failure I would be as a woman. Other mothers had daughters that helped them, but I appeared to have no useful purpose.
‘These hands,’ he whispered so that Ammi and Adil were excluded from our corner of the dining table, ‘are meant for greater things than scrubbing dishes. They are delicate, but they’re strong. You Ayesha, can be just about anything you want to be. Except,’ he paused and flexed my fingers thoughtfully, ‘a mechanic. These might not be long enough to unscrew certain nuts.’
‘Doesn’t matter, her nose is long enough to poke into other people’s business. Whose shadow was that under our door last night when we were talking?’ Ammi had entered quickly and stood next to Abba, her hand clamped possessively on his shoulder.
‘You weren’t talking, you were arguing.’
‘Either way. What adults do in the privacy of their rooms is their own affair. Don’t you forget that. And you,’ the hand tightened, ‘don’t put ideas into this girl’s head. She can’t think straight as it is. Too much in that head of hers might cause a short circuit no mechanic can fix.’
‘Electrical engineer, Ammi,’ Adil surfaced from his bowl of Fauji cornflakes, ‘electricians fix short circuits, not mechanics.’
‘Close enough. You all understood what I was saying. Why does everyone in this house have to be so critical all the time?’ The beast returned to its smoky lair.
‘Ignore her,’ Abbu whispered, squeezing my hand one final time before returning it to me, ‘she’s just jealous.’
He rose, picked up his reading glasses and slipped them into his breast pocket. I followed his movements with a practiced eye, alert to the slightest deviation, but the pattern was unbroken. He retrieved his coat, slung over the back of the rocking chair in the drawing room and picked up his briefcase from the corridor leading to the front door, where he always left it the night before after he had completed any work he had brought home.
‘Jahan,’ he raised his voice so Ammi would hear him above the exhaust fan, ‘I’m leaving now.’
‘But I was making you an omelette. It’ll just take me two minutes.’
‘I had a jam sandwich. That’s fine.’
‘What kind of breakfast is a jam sandwich? Just wait a minute and I’ll give you some proper food.’
‘It’s good enough for Ayesha,’ he winked at me.
But she had already turned away and disappeared back into the kitchen. My father put down his briefcase and went and ruffled Adil’s hair. Adil stiffened and was visibly outraged. I don’t bother anyone, his stiffness seemed to say, why must you people keep coming between me and my Faujis?
Ignoring his reaction, Abbu reached down and shook his hand. Then he picked up his briefcase. By the time my mother scurried out of the kitchen with a steaming plate in her hand, he was gone.
23 March 1990. My father left the house for work like any other morning. He never came back.
My mother still hasn’t forgiven him for not eating that omelette. That’s probably why she’s still searching for his grave, so she can go and throw an omelette at what’s left of his face.
*
‘You are such a brave girl, you have so much courage. Life is so hard as it is, to cling to it in your condition, fight for it like you are fighting … that takes a special kind of courage. God has blessed you, my daughter. You are making your parents proud!’ My mother’s words brought me crashing back to the present. The sympathy, the compassion, the sudden kindness, Dr Ejaz’s mild rebuke seemed to have awakened her dormant maternal instincts. Dormant in my case anyway, Adil got a daily dose of calorific love.
‘You know, don’t you, that Allah never burdens any soul with more than it can bear?’ She continued, as if she had suddenly been given an emotional laxative. ‘Your suffering, your pain, it’s all for a reason. You will be rewarded for it. For every little bit of hurt you feel now, there will be a thousand joys. The life that is poison to you now will be like Roohafza, delicious and refreshing.’ She paused, then went on, ‘Piquant, like when you add lemon to it. You will feast on the laddoos of happiness, savour the gulab jamuns of love
.’ The food imagery was beginning to overpower her senses; she couldn’t keep this up for long before making a break for the nearest edible item.
‘So continue to be brave, daughter,’ she was winding up in anticipation of her own need, ‘I know you feel all alone right now. Trapped. But you’re not. People care about you. I don’t even know you but I care about you. And we are all praying for you. Now I must have tired you out. Forgive the rantings of an old woman. Be at peace. And if it seems impossible to ever again find hope in this blighted existence, remember there is always the afterlife. Men will have their houris, but we are also entitled to our Shehzada Gulfam.’
Ammi turned away from the burn victim’s bed and returned to my side.
‘Oh Ayesha,’ she sighed, experimentally pushing the canula where it dived into my supine form, ‘I’m so hungry. I should have brought some blended suji ka halwa for you.’
When I felt hate for my father, as I did now, it was largely because he’d left me all alone with her.
HUT BHOOTNI KAI!
BACK OF RICKSHAW
~
They moved me within the hour, after confirming that I could indeed breathe on my own. The ventilator I had been hooked up to, needlessly as it turned out, Adil whispered to Mamu, was a standard way to inflate a patient’s bill. A poor person who needed it might possibly have died for want of it while I was in that hospital, he continued. Was there a woman in Adil’s life, I wondered? This sudden interest in the human condition was unusual for him. He was generally more interested in the condition of the abs and biceps on the female form (boys and their magazines, useful blackmail tool for sisters).
I passed clots of humanity clinging to the walls of the ground floor passage that functioned as the hospital’s main artery as my gurney was wheeled to ambulance access. Barefoot and well shod, deodorized and odour-ridden, travel-stained and lemon fresh, they squatted in the corridors or perched awkwardly on chairs in the many consulting rooms we passed. There was a group from the interior, chattering magpies in full purdah herded by a bearded patriarch, that tried to strut to maintain their respect. But his own insecurity about saying or doing the wrong thing in the concrete jungle had effectively emasculated him; his fingers knotted and relaxed as if yearning for a sapling with which to switch his flock so he could regain some sense of power. Even the yuppie on his cellphone in the corner seemed nervous, there was just something about hospitals.
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