But I doubt any of this was on my great-grandmother’s mind as she pushed and pushed and pushed and Taj held up first one and then another and then another baby boy, and said, ‘Did you hear the midnight chimes?’
The quality of my great-grandmother’s shrieks was different enough from her labour cries to bring the women of the family rushing back into the room. Taj handed the triplets to the Begum, who was the first through the door, and then disappeared out of the room, out of the palace, out of my family’s life, three twined and bloodied umbilical cords in her hand.
So, three sons. One born just before midnight, on 28 February. One born just after midnight, on 29 February. One born at midnight, on the cusp of the leap year, his head emerging on 28 February, the rest of his body following the next day. My great-grandmother couldn’t have been more successful in birthing not-quite-twins if she’d planned it. Though I don’t suppose you can plan a thing like that. Of course, everyone still blamed Taj for the whole thing, quite overlooking her previous forty-eight years of midwifery, during which there were no not-quites and only three stillbirths.
‘As a feminist I feel I should object to the Taj story.’ I was lying flat on the floor so that Samia could pound airport tension out of my spine, my voice rising and falling with every thump. ‘I mean look, it’s got two of the archetypal female elements. The crone and the mother. The only thing it needs to fulfil all stereotypes is the virgin.’
‘Well, don’t look at me.’ Samia practised dance steps along my back.
‘I think you’ve just paralysed me.’
‘Such gratitude!’ Samia lay down and rested her head against my back. More than anything else, more than mangoes, gol guppas, nihari and naans, more than cricket mania, more than monsoon rains, more than crabbing beneath a star-clustered sky, what I missed about Karachi was the intimacy of bodies.
‘Besides,’ Samia said, ‘aren’t crones full of … What’s that term? You know, like Ego in Oh Hello?’
‘Iago in Othello. I hope you’re just trying to be funny.’ I traced the lozenge-shaped pattern on the rug with my forefinger and remembered playing a strange form of hopscotch in my grandmother’s bedroom, along with Samia and her brother Sameer, with the geometrical designs on Dadi’s carpet standing in as hopscotch squares.
‘Motiveless malignancy, that’s it. Can’t get into Crone School without it. But Taj had a reason the size of Everest to hate the family.’
‘If you’re willing to consider the possibility that Iago is in love with Othello, then—’
‘Oh, shut up. Who cares?’ Samia rolled over, propped her head on her hand and looked at me. ‘But listen, is it true that you once asked your Dadi if Taj’s name appears on our family tree?’
‘No.’ Until Samia asked that question it hadn’t really occurred to me that, yes, Taj was family too. God, it was even larger than I had thought, this pool of my relatives out in the world, generations of people with Samia’s hair, my father’s eyes, Mariam Apa’s smile, and if I saw one of those cousins on a street would I recognize something in them, would I say, We’ve never met but I know the jut of your clavicle, the curve of it. And what if, what if, in addition to the hair, the smile, the collarbone straining against the skin, what if there were also veins rising a centimetre above the backs of the hands?
‘Really?’ The disappointed voice of someone who’s just had a family myth shattered. ‘You never said anything like that at all?’
‘Nuh-uh. Though there was that time I got frightened by a squirrel and Dadi just looked at me in such disgust and said something like, “And to think you are descended from the Nawab who killed a tiger with his bare hands.” And I—’
‘Did you just say, a squirrel?’
‘It was a big squirrel. And I said to Dadi, “That paragon of bravery you just mentioned – isn’t he the same guy who raped Taj’s mother?”’
‘No, wait!’ Samia held up her hand for silence. ‘Let me guess. She said, of course it wasn’t rape. He was a Nawab.’
‘Worse. She recited “Leda and the Swan”.’
Samia fell forward, laughing. ‘Abida Nani! Always full of surprises.’
If you’re trying to understand how exactly Samia and I are related you might suppose from Samia’s words that my Dadi is her Nani, which means my father and Samia’s mother are siblings and, therefore, Samia and I are first cousins. It’s never that simple. Dadi is my father’s mother; she is not, however, Samia’s mother’s mother as Samia’s use of the term ‘Nani’ implies, but rather Samia’s mother’s mother’s sister, and so Samia and I are second cousins. While I’m climbing up the family tree let me add that my grandparents, Dadi and Dada, or Abida and Akbar if you prefer the familiarity of first names, were also second cousins, and Dada was one of those three sons, the not-quite-twins, who brought such heartache to the family. But that comes later. Of course, it really came earlier.
‘You can laugh,’ I said, looking up at the painting of an emperor and his courtiers on a hunt, which has hung in the flat as long as I can remember. The emperor on a horse, surrounded by armed men on foot. What courtier would ever allow a ruler to get within wrestling distance of a tiger? ‘But it really sums up Dadi’s view of royalty. The Nawab as Zeus; I mean, consider the implications. She thinks he was a god. And he wasn’t even a Nawab when he raped Taj’s mother. He was still just heir apparent. Not that I’m saying the title or lack thereof makes the slightest difference.’
Samia stood up, pulled an anthology of poetry off the shelf, and thumbed through the pages. ‘Suno,’ she said. ‘“How can those terrified vague fingers push/ The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?” Give your dadi a qatra more credit. The poem is about the seductiveness of power, right? Was it rape or seduction? The question is there. The fingers are terrified, the thighs loosen. Both things go on. We’re too modern to appreciate the aura of kings-to-be. And of gods disguised as swans. And, hang on just a … Now that I think of it, in what rash of clairvoyance do we presume Taj’s mother was unwilling?’
I turned away. ‘Dadi doesn’t understand complexity.’
‘Your view of her has changed one hundred and twenty-three degrees since we last met.’
‘Everything changed four years ago. Everything.’
Samia put her arms around me and pulled me close, my head resting against her chest. ‘Wasn’t there something about Zeus’s rape, seduction, jo bhi, of Leda that had something to do with twins?’
‘You’re right! Leda had sex with her husband, Tyndareus, on the same day that Zeus did what Zeus did. And nine months later Leda laid twin eggs. From one came Helen and Pollux, children of Zeus, and from the other came Castor and Clytemnestra, children of Tyndareus. Talk about not-quite-twins!’
‘Arré, maybe we’re descended from Leda.’
‘It’s mythology, cuz. And from a cultural tradition not our own.’
‘Actually, Point A, ancient Greek texts were kept alive through Arab translations, which were translated from Arabic back into European languages when Europe was ready to stop being barbaric and have a cultured moment. My grandmother in her little house on the Mediterranean is very adamant about this matter. And, Point B, it doesn’t sound a whole cartload more mythical than some of the stuff that’s gone on in our clan. Speaking of which, did you hear about Sameer’s lizard experience? In the loo. The bloody chhipkali practically attacked him. It was the same colour as the floor and it moved with speed.’
And then she was off, recounting a tale worthy of a place beside all the best lizard stories of our family. The one about Samia and Sameer’s grandmother ripping off her sari at a state dinner because she thought she felt a lizard run down her spine; the one about Dadi’s grandmother, who saw a lizard nestling between the pillows by her foot and reacted by leaping off her palanquin, thus showing her face to men who were neither eunuchs nor close relatives; and the one about the lizard, red and large-throated, which clambered on the grilles outside our cousin Usman’s window, prompting screams that tur
ned into full-blown hysteria seconds later when Usman’s mother uttered the four most terrifying words imaginable: It’s in the house.
At college I was famous for my storytelling abilities, but I never told anyone that my stories were mere repetition, my abilities those of a parrot. Oh, they are a talking people, my relatives, and I have breathed in that chatter, storing it in those parts of my lungs (the alveoli, the bronchi) whose names suggest a mystery beyond breath and blood. And yes, when the need arises I can exhale those words and perpetuate the myth that is nothing more than myth because it forgets Mariam Apa; the myth, that is, of my family’s across-the-board, no-exceptions, one-hundred-percent-all-the-way garrulousness. But when I am my only audience, the wit and the one-liners, the retorts and the rebukes are just so much noise and I crave something silent as a wisp of smoke.
I can think of no one who knows me who would believe any of that. Maybe not even me. Maybe.
‘But Aliya,’ Samia said. ‘A squirrel?’
Chapter Three
‘So, please now, while I have your attention undivided and can threaten to withhold lunch until you answer, explain to me why, I mean why, are you planning to return to the Blighted Estates of America to get a Master’s in Education?’ Samia rolled up her sleeves as she spoke.
‘What, are you planning to punch me?’
‘No,’ she said, taking my mug. ‘I’m immersing dishes in soap suds. Come to the kitchen and answer my savaal.’
‘Decisions,’ I said, hoisting myself on to the kitchen counter. ‘Where, what, why. Can’t handle them. So I’m prolonging the indecision with higher education.’
Samia pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, which made me think irrationally that she really had grown up entirely. I wondered if the same could be said of me, even though I was quite liable to scald my hands while attempting to wash the dishes and I didn’t care what the washing liquid did to my nail polish. Samia pointed a yellow finger at me. ‘My quesh is, Education, colon, why?’
‘Oh, the postcolonial why!’ I shrugged. ‘A friend of mine had application forms to various Schools of Ed.’
Samia threw a dish towel at me. ‘What happened to studying history?’
‘You’re the historian in the family.’
‘Aloo, when I was eighteen you knew as much about history as I did. And you were fourteen.’ Samia could deliver the simplest comments in tones of high outrage.
‘I knew more. But my first week at college I got a letter from Dadi.’
I would like to be proud of you again one day. But you can only make me proud if you first understand what pride means. Pride! In English it is a Deadly Sin. But in Urdu it is Fakhr and Nazish - both names that you can find more than once on our family tree. You must go back to those names, those people, in order to understand who I am and who you are. This is why it is good you are in America, where there are so many books. Study history, my darling Aliya, but not the history of the Mughals or the British in India, although our stories intersect theirs in so many ways. Study the Dard-e-Dil family. I know you don’t trust the history that comes from my mouth, so go to that continent which denies its own history, and when you find yourself mocking its arrogance and lies, go to the libraries and search among the cobwebbed books for the story of your own past. And when you do that, and you see in print the old tales that thrilled you to sleep at night, I defy you to feel no stirrings of Fakhr and Nazish.
‘Aliya? You got a letter saying what?’
‘Saying she wanted me to study history. So I didn’t.’
I opened the fridge and crouched down beside it. My cousin Samia had become a sandwich eater. Bread, mayonnaise, mustard, salami, sliced roast beef, lettuce, tomatoes, gherkins, tuna salad. Good God, how dreary.
Behind the loaf of bread was a sauce boat, not dissimilar in size and shape to Aladdin’s lamp. I lifted it out of the fridge with both hands and held it to my face. Tamarind!
‘What’s in there?’ Samia held out her hand for the sauce boat. ‘Imli?’
‘Friday nights.’
Fridays used to be Masood’s day off. He’d cycle out at sunrise and be gone all day, leaving Ami, Aba, Mariam Apa and me to lay tables, wash dishes, heat up frozen food. More often than not, at lunchtime, Mariam Apa would end up eating last night’s leftovers and Aba would drive me to the bazaar where we’d buy aloo puri with carrot pickles, and halva on the side to sweeten our mouths. Masood would return well after sunset, clothes wet, hair smelling of salt, sand glistening silver against his skin. He’d hold up two clenched fists like a boxer ready to jab, and when I tapped one he would twist his wrist, unfurl his fingers, and reveal a tamarind-based sweet wrapped in clear plastic. For a while, not so long ago, I had lost these memories of Masood; I’d like to say it was the better angels of my nature which restored the memories to me, but really it was embarrassment at the way my reaction towards him mirrored that of so many of my family members. Embarrassment, and also the visceral tug of food smells. When the taste of chillies sometimes brought tears to my eyes it was not because my palate was overwhelmed by the heat.
I held the sauce boat up to my nose again. Tamarind. It was only at college, when the racks of spices and international foods at Stop ‘n’ Shop forced me to confront the inadequacy of my culinary English, that I ran for my Urdu-English dictionary and discovered that imli was tamarind. It was several days later that I thought, Sounds a little like Taimur Hind.
Taimur Hind. To explain what that name means to me I must return to the triplets, those not-quite-twins. Their father, my great-grandfather, was so terrified to hear the circumstances of their births that he put yaks and their milk out of his mind and concentrated on averting disaster. He was well intentioned, of course, but in my family that’s just a euphemism for stupid. He said, ‘We’ll call them Sulaiman, Taimur and Akbar.’ He thought bearing the names of great kings would enable his sons to face up to any crisis, but he never paused to think what would have happened if their namesakes – Sulaiman the Magnificent, Akbar the Great, and Taimur, sometimes called Taimur Lang or Tamburlaine, but so unimpeded by his lameness that no one ever pictures him crippled – had been born brothers. Romulus and Remus, Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh, Richard the Lionheart and King John would seem, by comparison, merely to bicker affectionately. (Though in the case of John and Richard it seems that their legendary disharmony may have been exaggerated by the Robin Hood tales, and incidentally I’ve never had much sympathy for the Crusaders.)
Of the triplets, Taimur was the one born on the cusp. His brothers adored him and were always arguing over which one of them shared the same birthday as Taimur. Are you born at the moment your head emerges into the light, as my grandfather, Akbar, claimed, or at the moment when every last inch of you is caressed by air, as Sulaiman insisted.
Taimur, when asked his date of birth, said, ‘I was born between my brothers.’ And when he grew older he added, ‘There is nothing more arbitrary than the chime separating one day from the next.’
Things I know about Taimur: he was the most beautiful of the brothers, while Akbar was the most dashing and Sulaiman the most charming; when he was four he bit the nose off Dadi’s stuffed reindeer and Dadi, in retaliation, bit his index finger; he was the sweetest timer of the cricket ball that you could hope to see, but at boarding school in England his run average remained lower than Akbar’s because he so often forgot to ground his bat after completing a run; he loved the poems of Emily Dickinson; before he left for boarding school he had an English governess who called him Percy (Sulaiman was Alfred and Akbar was Gordie); he played the sitar; also, the harpsichord; it was he who persuaded his brothers to join him in leaping off a second-floor balcony in the Dard-e-Dil palace when home for the holidays at the age of sixteen, their broken legs and the intercession of the Nawab on their behalf finally convincing their father to allow them to finish their secondary education in Dard-e-Dil with their cousins, under the guidance of the private tutors at the palace; he despised politicians before it was fashionable to
do so, but his most prized possession was a cane belonging to Liaquat, which he either stole or received as a gift from Liaquat after mockpretending to steal it (the stories here vary, but I prefer the latter version); he could devour pounds of fried okra at a single sitting, though his appetite was otherwise unremarkable; in 1938, shortly before the brothers were due to leave for Oxford, he disappeared.
He disappeared and remained that way. For two weeks his family was made efficient by terror, until the arrival of an envelope with an indistinct postal stamp and Taimur’s looping Ds made the postmaster spill his morning cup of tea and sent him pedalling frantically to my family’s home.
Dadi was with her cousins, Akbar and Sulaiman, when the letter arrived and, though she swears she read it only once, she can still recite the letter from memory, her fingers tracing Ds in the air as she speaks:
My brothers, we were born the year after the Jalianwalla massacre. Think of this when you are strolling down paths in Oxford, studying how to be Englishmen and do well in the world. I lack your gift for erasing, nay! evading history. The writing of this letter is the last thing I do before entering into the employ of an English army officer, as a valet. I have accepted my historical role, and when you return from Oxford and take your positions in the ICS or in English-run companies the only real difference between us will be that I am required to wear a grander uniform. You will not hear from me again for I am repudiating English and, alas! those years of English schooling have robbed me of the ability to write Urdu. From the time of our births we have been curses waiting to happen, but now the suspense is over. This is our curse: Akbar, Sulaiman, we are kites that have had their strings snipped. We went to school in a place without sun, and believed this meant we had no need of our shadows. I am not an Englishman, nor are you. Nor can we ever be, regardless of our foxtrots, our straight bats, our Jolly Goods and I Says.
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