“Who took it, Mama?”
“It could be any number of people. I don’t know that I care to find out.”
“But don’t you want to know?”
“I need to leave this behind,” she says. “It’s not useful. I just think of my father, and how sad he would be to see his children stealing from one another. It makes me terribly, terribly sad.”
UNCLE WARIS is giving me a history lesson.
“The trouble between the Jews and the Muslims has nothing to do with the Jews or the Muslims, sweetheart,” he begins. “It’s all the fault of the Christians. . . .”
I’m not sure how I can continue to keep all of these theories straight. I write in my notebook: “Christians?”
“Sadia Apa, do you really have more questions for my grandfather?” Aliyah asks, bursting into the room and seeing me with my head in both hands. “Because we are going to Paradise Stores, and my mother said that you can have any kind of snack that you want, if you want to come.”
“No, thank you, Aliyah. I’ll stay here,” I say. “I want to make sure and say goodbye to Sartaj and Fatima before I go.”
“But it’s your last day!” Aliyah frowns. “I really just can’t believe you are going to leave so soon!”
“I know, but I’ll come over to your house in a little while, I’ll be right over.”
“You get the watchman to walk you,” she says sternly.
Her house is next door, separated by a wall and a short driveway, and I can’t really fathom that it’s necessary to be escorted fewer than thirty feet. But I still don’t know the rules here, I remind myself. This isn’t Bombay.
Fatima enters the living room, wearing a pressed black salwar suit and matching black headscarf.
“You’re going somewhere?” I ask.
“We’re going to see the Imam,” Fatima says. “He’s someone we know from the U.S., actually. He’s here visiting.”
“He’s a very important man,” Uncle Waris says, walking back to his bedroom to lie down. “They are going to pay a call on him.”
“Oh, I see,” I say.
“I was sorry not to be able to spend more time with you this visit,” Fatima says, resting her hand on mine.
“Me too,” I say, feeling suddenly nostalgic, the way I often do at the end of short journeys. “I was hoping to talk more with both of you.”
“What about?” Sartaj says, entering the room.
“About Nana, actually. My mother told me . . .” I begin. I am not sure how to phrase what I want to ask. So much gets left unsaid with this side of my family, and I am not accustomed to speaking candidly.
“My mother told me that the day Nana died she asked to speak with you.”
The moment I have spoken these words, I realize that I have questions, things that only Sartaj and Fatima might know.
“That’s true,” Sartaj says.
“I want to know if she converted, if she accepted Islam, with your help, that day, before she died.”
“Ah,” he says, “that.” He nods to Fatima to indicate that they will leave in a few minutes, and sits down. “The family was all gathered there in her hospital room, and then your grandmother said that she wanted to rest, and so we all said our goodbyes. Fatima and I weren’t sure if we would see her again; it’s a long drive from Atlanta to Miami, and we weren’t sure how much longer she would be with us. But just when we reached the parking lot, your mother called and said, ‘Sartaj, she wants to see you again. Alone.’ So I went back upstairs, and I went into her room, and I said, ‘How can I help?’”
“Did she have questions for you?”
“She had . . . concerns, as you know. She was mainly worried about her parents—how she would face them if she no longer shared their religion. But she was also very worried about God, whether God would accept her. ‘Sartaj,’ she said, ‘I was born a Jew, but I do not know the Jewish prayers. I only know the Muslim prayers. I only know how to pray in Arabic.’”
“What did you tell her?”
“Some of what we discussed that day we spoke about in confidence, and I cannot reveal it.”
“I understand.”
“And some of it, some of it is between your grandmother and God.”
“I understand.”
“There is some of it that you and I will never know.”
I nod, hoping that he will continue.
“But, yes, your grandmother said her kalimah, the Muslim prayer.”
Sartaj gets up, smoothing out his kurta with his hands. “I believe that she died a Muslim.”
I get up, putting my hands on the table, not sure of what to say and conscious of trying to make my voice steady.
“Thank you,” I say. “For telling me that.”
Sartaj raises one hand in a wave of farewell and walks out the door and toward the car. Fatima lingers, sensing that I am about to cry, and puts her arm around me.
“Sadia, I want to tell you something,” she says. She smiles tentatively. “I dreamt of your Nana, after she died.”
“You had a dream about her?”
“It’s strange, I never have dreams like this. But in my dream, your grandmother was wearing a white sari, and she was standing on a curved balcony, overlooking the ocean. She was standing there with her arms on the railing and talking to me, and she said, ‘I’m so happy, Fatima. I’m so happy here. I’m home. I’m in my own home.’ And somehow I knew that she was in her old home place, her original home.”
“You mean in India?”
“In India. The ocean was behind her, and there were other people there with her in the house. . . . I didn’t know them. . . .”
“Her family . . .”
“I don’t know who they were, but they told me that she was happy, and I could tell that she was.”
“Fatima, that is her house in Bombay, that’s Rahat Villa.”
“I don’t know anything about that house—we never discussed it—it’s so strange that I would dream of it. But you know, they say that when you dream of someone after they die, and if they look well, then their spirit is in a good place, they are at peace. I think your Nana is at peace.”
“She’s in Bombay,” I say. “Nana is in Bombay.”
BEFORE IT’S TIME for me to leave for the airport, I go to visit Nana’s flat one last time. This visit has a feeling of inevitability, of memorization, like the last time I saw my childhood home in Massachusetts, before my parents moved to Miami. I walk through the gate. It seems likely that this will be the last time I will do this. I don’t know when I will be able to return to Karachi, how I will be different then, how this house and its inhabitants will have changed. I don’t want to imagine a high-rise standing in place of this house, the last chip of my grandfather’s dream of a unified family pulverized. But this outcome seems likely enough so that I have to push the thought, sharp and crystallized, out of my mind.
I turn the key in the door of Nana’s flat and enter, prepared now for the sight of pigeons making a nest. I place my hands on the armoire again, and recognize the feeling of my hands on this wood as if I have stood here a million times. I have the sense that I am walking through someone else’s memory, Nana’s memory. Then, as if I have done so a million times, I take off the chain around my neck and remove the key. I don’t know how I didn’t realize it before. I am suddenly sure that the key is going to open the armoire, and that whatever I am looking for will be hidden there.
I am unsurprised to find that it is a perfect fit. I feel that Nana has guided me here, that she somehow knew all the time that I would come. The door is jammed, and I feel a slight panic. What if I can’t get it open? I wrap my arms around the armoire and pull, and the door swings open with a thud, the latch popping open. There are three shelves inside. On the top shelf are tablecloths. I open them eagerly, releasing clouds of dust that make me sneeze. The middle shelf is empty. The bottom shelf is empty. I feel a sinking feeling of disappointment.
Then I notice a small drawer, just underneath the mid
dle shelf, and pull it open by its small brass handle. Inside are sheaves of paper and two crumbling books. My heart skips a beat, tripping over itself. All of this time, I think. This has been right here.
I sit on one side of the armoire, spreading the contents of the shelf before me. A deed to Rahat Villa, in her original name, Rachel Jacobs. Three IOUs from Choti Amma to Nana, stamped and dated, all from the 1950s. An English translation of the Talmud. A stack of letters, written in both English and Devanagari script. Holding these remnants of my grandmother’s life feels eerie. It’s as if she left me signs, a map to follow.
I fold these precious objects carefully inside my dupatta, cradling them to protect them from questions. I place the key inside the cupboard, and shut the door.
This time, my trip back to Bombay is maddeningly slow.
Matar.
Dist.Kaira.
13th.May 33.
My dear Rachel,
It is strange that you have not written to me all these days. I am anxiously looking out for your letter. I trust you are quite comfortable. xxxxxx Do let me know if you want anything. I am busy these days. Any way,
I will give you a look up on hearing from you.
Give me all the details of your work and the time that will be convenient for you to see me. with best wishes,
P.S. Very sincerely yours,
I had a letter from
Papa. He too was complaining
of not having received a letter from
you. I have given him xxxxxx your news.
Write soon.
Address. Inspector of Customs,
Matar. Dist.Kaira.
20
NANA’S PAPERS
BOMBAY, JUNE 2002
On my first evening home in Bombay, I start with the Talmud. It’s a fragile leather-bound volume with a tooled cover and embossed gilt letters, and I open it gingerly. The flyleaf is loose and nearly falls into my lap. I hold it carefully between my thumb and forefinger and see that it is stamped, in fading purple letters: “Property of Ralph Jacobs.”
So this was Nana’s father’s book, then. I’ve never before touched anything that he owned. Underneath his name it reads: “For my children and their children after them.”
The book is an English translation of portions of the Talmud, most of which are organized around themes—love, family, faith. I can imagine Ralph reading this book aloud to his children. Like her mortar and pestle, this object made the journey with Nana from India to Pakistan, from her girlhood to adulthood. Now these papers travel back to Bombay, with me.
I open the bundle of letters, which are threaded on a crumbling piece of string. They vary in color and weight, from a sepia scrawl on parchment to heavy rag paper nearly perforated with type. Pieces of the fragile paper, perhapsuntouched in decades, break off in my hands. Carefully, I begin to make sense of their order, laying them gently on my round glass table. I chart their progression from 1933 to 1940, making rough notes and calculations in my notebook as I muddle my way through the unfamiliar handwriting. The first folio of letters is from Nana’s father, Ralph, to his twenty-five-year-old friend Ali, the man who would become Nana’s husband. The second is a series of letters from Ali to Nana. There are no letters from Nana to her father, or to her husband, so I have to imagine what her replies might have been.
I recall that Nana’s father and husband were business partners in a mining venture in remote Castle Rock, the town where Nana and her siblings spent some of their childhood. Uncle Waris told me that the preceding generation of the two families had known each other, but the correspondence surprises me; Ali describes how much he misses the times he spent in Castle Rock with the Jacobs family, where “our two families lived as one,” and details the various remote postings he has received as an inspector of salt and customs in Gujarat. Ralph asks after Ali’s two wives, who are now managing separate households in different parts of the state. Ali asks Ralph to send his “salaams to everyone at home.” The substantive part of their exchange is about Ali’s help in arranging for Nana to enroll in nursing school a few hours from his government posts in Gujarat. Ali instructs Ralph on which letters and certificates Nana will need, and in one letter suggests that she obtain a letter that states her age to be “about 18 years.” But the postmark tells me that at the time she is only fifteen.
Ali’s letters to Nana are in a second folder. The first ones are typed, circumspect. They are addressed to “My dear Rachel.” He asks after her family, and assures her that she will be happy at the Female Hospital in Ahmedabad, where “you will be quite close to us. . . . I will write and tell you all about it. In the meantime keep on studying hard. . . .” He closes his letters by saying, “Reply soon, will you? Very sincerely yours, A. Siddiqi.”
Once Nana reaches Ahmedabad and settles into the nursing school of the hospital, Ali seems to grow more anxious that she is not responding to his letters.
My dear Rachel,
It is strange that you have not written to me all these days. I am anxiously looking out for your letter. I trust you are quite comfortable. Do let me know if you want anything. I am busy these days. Any way, I will give you a look up on hearing from you.
Give me all the details of your work and the time that will be convenient for you to see me.
With best wishes,
Very sincerely yours,
Ali
Ali occasionally refers in his letters to things he has obtained for Nana that she misses from home—mango preserves, a fountain pen, a packet of sweet limes. He advises her on how to handle her housing arrangements at the hospital, and worries about whether her blanket is keeping her warm enough in the cool weather. Then, three months after Nana arrives in Ahmedabad, the tone of the letters changes.
My dear Rachel,
Dear, you were one day late in writing to me. I expected you would write on 12th. Why so? This letter should reach you on 16th and if you reply the same day I will get it on 17th. Let me hope you’ll do so.
I have started counting the days and within eight days I’ll be there.
I’ll ring off my dear with an X.
Yrs as B/4
Ali
With each letter, Ali seems to grow more persistent. The letters now address her as “darling,” or “dear-heart,” and in them Ali worries about Rachel’s feelings toward him.
I find you indifferent toward me these days. Why so my love? Am I to understand that you do not care for me or is it that you are so busy that you do not find time to think about anything else? Anyway, I hope you are comfortable and happy. Have you been able to get a cot with mosquito netting? You must sleep under a net. . . .
I feel very lonely. I do not know what to do.
Since I am missing Nana’s half of the correspondence, there is no way to know what her feelings were toward this man—her protector, her guardian, perhaps her lover, soon her husband. From his references to her replies, Nana seems by turns reluctant and responsive. But, judging by the tone of the letters after Nana turned sixteen, I am convinced that Ali has seduced her.
My darling Rachel,
When would it be possible for you to take leave and come here? Do inquire and let me know. You must come on 7 days leave at least . . .
I cannot help thinking of you the whole time. So much so that I always dream of you at night my young darling. . . .
Ali’s letters continue, with increasing passion, through the next five years, while he continues to send money and gifts and to complain that she does not write often enough. Once Nana moves back to attend nursing school in Bombay, he begs her not to go unaccompanied on trains, or to attend movies at night, where she “might be followed, or worse.” I remember Nana’s story about her friendship with the Sikh doctor Mr. Singh, which must have taken place during this period. Then, in 1938, when Nana is about twenty-one years old, the letters take another abrupt shift.
The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir Page 30