The taxi lurches forward, only to stall in Mumbai’s never-ending rush hour. My thoughts surge like the traffic pushing around us. I count my breaths, and try to focus amidst the chaos inside and around me.
I am protective of Maasi, yet was unprotected by her.
I brought her into this mess, yet she was the one who brought me into it, all three of us, all those years ago.
I feel at fault and yet she wronged me.
“Ma’am? Ma’am?” The driver interrupts my thoughts. Incredibly, forty minutes have passed. “It’s this place, correct?”
I look at where he is pointing. It’s Maasi’s building, her home since the beginning of my memory. How many times have I arrived here, stepping out of a taxi or rickshaw as a child, an adolescent, a grown woman? I collect my bag, bulging with my rida, and pay the driver.
I take the stairs, need to centre myself, move my muscles.
She greets me at the door, a surprised look on her face.
“I was just passing by.” My voice trails off, my mouth dry. Her smile tells me she’s pleased. She hasn’t heard yet about the online piece, the protest.
“I was just going to have some chai,” she says, ushering me in. She asks me a half-dozen questions about Zee, Murtuza, and Mom, which I mechanically answer. I follow her to the kitchen, and she sets two cups on a tray with a plate of butter cookies. I carry them to the living room.
I stir my tea, take a cautious sip. As always, Tasnim Maasi pours half of hers into her saucer and slurps it down. I study her papery, liver-spotted hands that remind me of her mother, my nani. And then Nani’s kind presence fills the small flat. What would she think of all that has happened?
As I watch Maasi, I think, It is going to happen today, this afternoon. Our lives are going to change irrevocably. I cannot stop this moving train. I swat away these dramatic thoughts, remind myself to stick to facts, to describe things chronologically, to keep the explanations honest.
And yet I am afraid, the child in me whispering that I have done wrong, for I have not kept our secret. I’ve told my mother what happened. More than that, I’ve made the secret public. Maasi will see me as a betrayer.
The scalding teacup burns my palm like penance.
Before I stepped into the taxi, Fatema poked her head in and reminded me that what we are doing is good, important. That it’s not about a personal grudge, but rather, it’s for all of us, the non-specific but sprawling number of us, here and across the world. They were grandiose, Fatema’s words, but that’s Fatema. I met her gaze, nodded, just so she would go away.
Maasi appraises me. She lifts her right eyebrow and looks at my full cup of tea. I shake my head.
“Still too hot.”
“You should do it like me.” She playfully demonstrates, emptying the rest of her cup into her saucer, but I can’t help but imagine she is speaking of bigger things. Why do I have to make an issue of a tiny cut? Things would be simpler, easier if only …
“Really, try it, haven’t you ever had your tea this way?” She beams mischief. Of course I have, many, many times, always at her play-urging.
“All right.” I tip my teacup to my saucer and chai dribbles onto her coffee table. I pat the spill with a tissue. “Sorry.”
“Anything wrong, Sharifa? You are quiet today.”
I look into her eyes. They are chestnut-brown and shinier than they used to be. These are my eyes, too, the eyes of my mother, of all my cousin-sisters, our daughters.
“Haa, Maasi. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. There’s something I need to tell you.”
The doorbell tangs and the coward I am, I am relieved. I rush to the door. It’s Jaya, her servant, returning from an errand, her arms too full to use her key. I let her in, and she drops her packages, and embraces me like an old friend. Jaya has been working for Maasi since she was a teenager, and I a girl. We’ve witnessed each other growing up. She is now in her early fifties, but still has the vibrant smile of an adolescent. She lets go, and somehow, her touch has left me taller, more solid. When she closes the door behind her, I go back to the living room, calmer.
“Maasi, why did you take me for khatna when my mother made you promise not to?” My voice sounds ordinary to me, unemotional, almost flat. Yet, my eyes are watery, threatening to overflow. I sit across from her.
She straightens her orna, which has slid to her shoulders, tucking it behind her ears. She, too, is calm, as though she has been expecting this question for decades. Her chest heaves as she takes in breath, and then she settles her gaze on me.
“Your mother was lukewarm, and your father was the one against it. She didn’t want conflict with him, so I promised her I would not take you. Just like Murtuza, your father was.”
“My mother was lukewarm?” She nods, looks down into her lap. The resemblance between her version and my recent, made-up one is uncanny. Did my mother need the lie of a husband’s anger, too?
“I was planning to leave you behind that day, but your Nani pushed me so … strongly. She said that if we didn’t do it, then we would be personally responsible for any troubles you had later.”
The adults are speaking in hushed tones. And something doesn’t feel right; Maasi — younger Maasi, a woman about my age — looks tense and wafts a piquant sweat.
I shake the image away, refocus on the present, realize that she is telling me the truth.
“I agreed with her, thought your mother’s decision was shortsighted, that she had lost her way after moving to America, but I was torn … in the end I chose my mother’s wisdom over my sister’s request.”
I can’t look at her, so I stare down at my bare toes, the polish from last month’s pedicure now chipped.
“I made sure your cut was very, very light — I arranged that in advance, without your nani’s knowledge. I thought that would be a good compromise between what your mother wanted and what your nani wanted.”
I listen and breathe, keeping my gaze on my feet.
“You see, it was only symbolic for you. It was so you’d be included in the community. If we hadn’t taken you, you wouldn’t be seen as a Dawoodi Bohra woman today. You wouldn’t be naik. As we talked about for Zee.”
My eyes travels to her toes now, stuffed into her house chappals. Her nails are milky, the skin at the bottom edges of her toes rough. Tough. A part of me knows I need to respond to her, but for now, I’m storing her words away. I will hold them inside, work them through, sort them.
compromise, very light, symbolic, included, naik
“Are you all right, Sharifa? Have you heard me?” I finally look up to see her pained expression, her wet eyes. She passes me a tissue, and I just then notice I’ve been crying. I wave her offering away.
“I’m sorry if I … if I upset you.” Her words yank at me, demand a reply. They sound too rehearsed. Has she been preparing for decades?
“You did do the wrong thing,” I say, reacting to her “if.” The couples’ therapist Murtuza and I saw years ago harped at me about my “ifs” and “buts,” telling me this was not a proper way to apologize, and I want a proper one now. Maasi’s shoulders slump under my words, their weight too heavy for her frame.
“But … but I thought you were in favour of it — for Zee — at least until you talked to Murtuza.” She stares at me like she wants to say more but cannot find the words.
I plough ahead. “There’s something you should know. I shared your email about the doctor with Fatema so that her group could take action against her. It was all a setup to get Rubina Master’s name. At first, I went along with it half-heartedly. I didn’t want to lie to you. But I suppose I made a compromise of sorts, too. Between wanting to support Fatema’s cause, and wanting to keep you out of it. But somewhere along the way, it became my cause, too.”
“The email?” She blinks, making sense of my words.
“That email was published online today and will be in tomorrow’s paper.” I tell her about the mistake in the online version, and its correction. “However, some
people will already have seen it. I apologize if that causes you stress, but it was not my error. It was the newspaper’s. Then —” I hold my hand up to stop her from interrupting.
“Then, today, there was a protest outside of the Shifa. And an audio recording of the doctor admitting that she does khatna was collected. It will be public now, all of this. Your words, her words. The paper will publish the transcript and post the audio file online.”
“So you never really wanted khatna for Zee.” She is still catching up to me. She blinks twice, looks to the ceiling.
“No.”
“You were just trying to get the name of the doctor for Fatema?” She puts her hand over her heart. Closes her eyes. I snort; I have no time for her dramatic body language.
“Yes.”
“And … and what’s this about my name in the newspaper?”
“Check WhatsApp.” I don’t have the energy to repeat myself.
She picks up her phone, opens the app, and she squints at it. “Read it for me, will you? This bloody screen is too small!”
I do as she asks. Someone has shared a screen shot of the article that contains our email exchange. It’s the first version. I wince at my own words, glad my name is nowhere in the thread.
It takes her a minute to absorb everything and for her to turn scolding. “I really don’t know why you’d participate in this nonsense, Sharifa. Why you’d think this is even a cause! Khatna is harmless. I did what was best for you.”
I taste strawberry ice cream then, milky, creamy, sweet.
“Did we go for ice cream after the khatna?” The strawberry flavour grows stronger on my tongue.
“What?”
“After the khatna? Did you take us for ice cream?”
“Yes. To cheer you up. All three of you were upset, especially Fatema. We went to Kwality.”
“What flavour did I have?”
“I’m not sure.” She looks confused.
“Try to remember.”
“I think your favourite was strawberry? Yes, that’s right. You had one of those strawberry girl dolls, so you’d only have that flavour.”
“I’m allergic to strawberries or, rather, I became allergic to strawberries after that.” I swallow, and the fruit disappears from my mouth, replaced with something sour like vomit. “Mom always thought it was about the pesticides, because I used to love them when I was younger. Then they started to give me an upset stomach. After the khatna.”
She’s now scrutinizing me, as though I’ve said the sky is purple. “You’ve been brainwashed by Fatema. I wondered sometimes if maybe you’d have had an easier time of things if I’d allowed them to do a proper khatna. You might have taken more of a straight path, gotten married younger.”
Her lips are downturned, her gaze disapproving. I open my mouth to speak, cannot. Is this what she thinks of me? What of all that non-judgmental special-aunty treatment she dolloped on me all those years? What of the loyalty, the secrets shared? I resist the urge to throw my now-cooled tea in her face. I pick up my purse, stand to go.
“Wait, Sharifa, wait.” Her expression has neutralized, turns pleasant again, a mask slipping off, or perhaps slipping back on. I can’t tell which is the true one.
“Please wait.” It’s a request, a plea now. Her entreaties follow me all the way to the door.
But I can’t. I won’t. I burst out of the flat, run down the stairs. Everything is different, everything changed. I speed-walk home.
SIXTY
Ahmedabad, 1922
“I still think it was petty and selfish for them to contest the will,” Rumana grumped to her husband, Saifuddin. “They think they are entitled to have a say over his money when he clearly laid out everything in writing.”
“It was your brother Husein who led the effort. I feel everyone else was not so sure about going to court.” Saifuddin held Rumana’s hand, sensing the sadness under her anger.
“Yes, it was Husein. Ever since Papa started favouring Gulamhussein — getting him into Cathedral and John Connon, then putting him in charge of India Stationery Mart — he’s held a grudge.” Rumana’s eyes filled and she dabbed at them. Since Abdoolally’s death, she was often close to tears. But why? She hardly saw the man as a child, and even less often as an adult.
“People expected your father to put his eldest son at the helm of his largest enterprise,” Saifuddin remarked. “Husein must have felt overlooked, even if he wasn’t the most qualified.”
“It was simple jealousy. Well, now he has his bigger share of the pie through his inheritance.”
“And you, too. “
“Yes, and I want to do something important with it, continue Papa’s charitable legacy, since it was intended that way.” She dried her eyes and bit her lip.
Later that evening, she mulled over the story Zehra had told her about their divorce. Each time she did, she remembered the two visits to the khatna lady. There had been a jovial mood the first time, when she’d gone with Zehra. The second, it was a stranger who had taken her. She hadn’t been afraid until she felt the intense pain that sliced through her being. It might be all in her mind, but sometimes, if Saifuddin went too fast, that phantom pain returned, if only for a few minutes. It left her feeling violated, broken.
And now that her father was gone, she had a new thought: he was such a powerful man. What if he’d stood with his wife instead of against her? What if he and Zehra had remained married, their family intact?
Yes, she thought. He’d made a mistake. And she would find a way to correct it. She wouldn’t allow her daughters or granddaughters to be broken by khatna.
SIXTY-ONE
In the dark, just before we fall asleep, I tell Murtuza, “Maasi wanted me to belong, didn’t want me outside the bounds of the community. She felt my parents were straying.”
Murtuza turns toward me, interrupts, “Why did you leave like that today? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to talk to her? I would have come. I could have helped.” I’ve heard this tone before — excluded, frustrated, cloying.
“Sorry.” I explain that it wasn’t planned, “It was like my legs were telling me to move, that it was time, and that I had to go. And I had to go alone.”
He sighs, and I sense the mild movement of his pillow as he nods in weary understanding. Recovering, he returns to where I left off. “How do you feel about her intention, to help you belong, to be a good Dawoodi Bohra girl?”
“Well, that last part is bullshit. But the rest, well, I kind of like being part of the clan. I like knowing who I am, where I belong.”
“I know.” He kisses my cheek. “And I should be glad for it, too. It’s what got me invited to your parents’ place that night we met.”
“Yes, a good Dawoodi Bohra girl was set up with a good Dawoodi Bohra boy.” My tone is light, joking, my second attempt at apology. He rolls toward me, and I shift onto my left hip so that he can hold me.
I stay awake thinking about Maasi, questioning the authenticity of our connection. Was it real? Or was it a way to keep me close, keep me loyal, so that I’d never break my silence, disclose the khatna to my mother? A way to protect the secret? What she didn’t realize was that I held no conscious memory of it, so her good-Maasi act, if it was one, wasn’t necessary.
Or maybe it was the deal she made with herself after the khatna, when she reckoned with her conscience. She could permit herself to respect my mother’s parenting and my individuality, suspend her judgments and morality, all hands-off precisely because she’d overstepped when I was seven.
Late into the night, I also think about Nani. Was she the real culprit, the one Maasi had to obey? Both she and Nana died when I was still a child. My memories of her are simply benign, as the hostess of our Secret Cousins’ Society, a kind grandmother. Was she?
I suppose kind aunts and grandmothers can also cause harm.
We stay home the next day. Zee has a bout of diarrhea; she’s been fine most of the trip, but this is the third time in the last few weeks
. I have to wonder if she’s picked up on the tensions roiling in my own belly.
While Zee naps, Murtuza reads the news articles out loud to Mom and me. Every major paper is running a photo of the protest. You can see Murtuza’s profile in one and the back of Mom’s head in another. The Post, as Adnand promised, carries an edited version of the recording in their online edition and a transcription in the paper. The stories have also spread over social media, with people on both sides adding commentary. Zainab and I are either villains or heroes, as is Rubina Master. I’m relieved to be an anonymous actor in all this. I laugh at the insults directed at us: “they are not real Bohra women”; “heretics”; “should be better controlled by their husbands.” These are too ridiculous to matter. What does impact me are the positive comments for Rubina: “I trust this doctor with my health and my children’s health”; “Dr. Master delivered my three daughters, the last two were very high-risk pregnancies.” I don’t doubt these testimonials. Could she lose her licence to practise medicine? It’s daunting to think that I may have helped ruin a doctor’s career.
As though reading my thoughts, Murtuza mutters, “How could a ‘good’ doctor practise khatna? Isn’t their edict to ‘do no harm’?”
“Anybody can rationalize their actions.” Mom shakes her head. “Tasnim felt it was right to follow our mother’s beliefs rather than mine.”
Mom is reflecting on what I shared with her when I returned home yesterday. “I can’t believe she told you that I was on the fence about khatna. It’s not true.” She shakes her head and I think that perhaps it’s partly true and she doesn’t remember, or maybe it’s not true at all and how Maasi remembers things. Memory and truth are not the same.
Zee stumbles into the living room, rubbing her eyes.
“How are you feeling?” I reach for her and she lands in my lap.
“Okay.” She rests her head heavily against my chest.
“Your stomach?” Murtuza asks.
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