Seven

by Farzana Doctor

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Give her some rice and a banana. Maybe some ginger ale,” Mom counsels.

  I nudge Zee to her feet and she takes my hand for the short walk to the kitchen; she’s a big toddler when unwell. I half-peel a banana, pass it to her, and she chews lethargically. I pour her a glass of a red sports drink, stored in the fridge for just this circumstance. She gulps it down, and within minutes, she goes from sleepy to silly, bouncing from adult to adult, buoyed by electrolytes and sugar. Watching her, I realize that I, too, feel slightly better today. Even the little muscles around my eyes aren’t so tired. I know nothing is resolved — how could it be so soon — yet I sense a shift, a micro movement. I tell Murtuza and Mom this.

  “A cure by activism?” Murtuza asks.

  “Or by confrontation? I’m proud of you for talking to Tasnim.”

  “Not a cure by any stretch. But it’s like ripping off the Band-Aid. Not my usual way, that’s for sure.”

  “You’re more of a ‘leave it alone, let it heal under there, then peel it slowly away once it’s well scabbed over’ type of woman.” Murtuza laughs, enjoying his wordplay. I roll my eyes.

  “True! So true, Murtuza!” Mom claps and Murtuza takes a bow. Zee watches the show, trying to comprehend.

  “Zee, your nani and father are teasing me!” I explain to her. “About Band-Aids?”

  I look to Murtuza for help.

  “About being fiercely independent. Which is a great quality,” he replies. “But sometimes it’s nice to rely on others, too.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  Zainab takes Zee, Mom, and me to a store called Global Desi, one last shopping trip before we fly out in three days.

  “You’ll like the styles, very modern,” Zainab insists.

  “So are the prices,” Mom mutters. But Zee and I move from rack to rack, pointing out patterns and colours.

  “We have to get something matching.” At least once a month, Zee’s reminded me of the promise I made before we left New York. This is the first store we’ve visited that sells similar designs for women and girls.

  “I told you they’d have something for you both.” Zainab shows Zee and me an orange kurta with a red flower print.

  The clerk finds our sizes, and we emerge from the changing room to model them.

  “You have another one in medium for me?” Mom asks.

  “Yes! Everyone has to have one!” Zee insists, and then Zainab and Mom try on tunics. Before the mirrors, we resemble a folksy girl band. Mom pulls out her credit card, insisting that she wants to buy us all gifts.

  “Could we pick up one more, in a large size?” Zainab asks the clerk, and then says to us, “For Fatema. I think she should have one too, no?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”

  I check my phone, and read the eight texts sent by Fatema, two a day since the demonstration, that I’ve ignored. I tap her a message.

  can Zainab and I come to your office in twenty minutes?

  Within ten seconds she replies.

  Yes, great.

  I ask Mom to take Zee home.

  “I have a better idea. Let’s go have ice cream, my Zee Nut!”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “What? When do you ever say no to mint chocolate chip?” Mom asks.

  “Is your tummy upset again?” I stroke Zee’s head.

  “It’s a little sore.” She leans her head into my waist.

  “Best to take her home, then,” Mom says.

  Zainab and I grab a taxi to the Bombay Press. During the ride, she chatters on about the ongoing news spreading over WhatsApp, and the angry phone messages she’s received from Rubina Master who has accused her — both of us, though she doesn’t know my name — of harassment.

  “She can’t do anything to us. She knows it. She was letting off steam.”

  “You’re sure? We didn’t do anything illegal?”

  “Ya Allah! No way. She is the one who is doing wrong, and she knows it.”

  “And your business? What if people decide to shun you?”

  “Nah, we only get the goras anyway. Tourists.” She looks confident but I know that things could get complicated for her, her husband, her daughters.

  The cab drops us across from Fatema’s building, and we traverse the busy intersection, me grabbing on to Zainab’s sleeve. I consider what to say to Fatema, how I’ve been holding tight to a shard of resentment, one that makes no logical sense. At this point, it’s only cutting into me, releasing nothing.

  The doorman smiles, is expecting us, and directs us to the elevator. We ascend three storeys, and are greeted by Fatema’s assistant, who escorts us into her office.

  “Oh, I see you went to Global Desi.” Fatema points to the plastic bag in my hand.

  “Mom bought this for you. We all have matching ones.” I pull the orange printed tunic out of the bag, present it to her.

  “Lovely,” she says, holding it before her.

  “A team uniform seems the right thing after all of what we’ve been through together,” Zainab says, creating a segue for me and for Fatema to start talking.

  “Listen, I’m sorry I pushed too hard, talked you into something you weren’t really prepared for. I’ve been thinking about this khatna stuff my whole damn adult life, you know? I forget that you haven’t, that all of this has come to you as a shock. Even Zainab, who was aware, but —”

  “— was in the dark,” Zainab finishes Fatema’s sentence, and I suspect they’ve already had this conversation.

  “Yes, things have happened very quickly. We went to Dholka, you told me everything, then suddenly I was an email spy for your group.”

  “Yeah, and then a spy again with me at the doctor’s office!” Zainab adds.

  “It was very fast. All of it.” Fatema nods. I meet her gaze, see the regret in it.

  “And then I talked to Maasi.” They wait, their eyes curious. I ask Zainab, “You haven’t spoken to her yet?

  “I’ve been avoiding her this last week. Been a terrible daughter. I made Nafeesa check in on her so I wouldn’t have to.”

  “I’ve been avoiding her, too. She texted me twice asking me to visit before I go home. I don’t think I can talk to her for a while. Definitely not before we leave. Maybe not even for a month or two …” The idea is a heavy grey stone in my chest.

  “But what did she tell you?” Zainab prods.

  “So … she said that it was Nani’s idea, Nani’s pressure, but that she agreed with it. She intentionally ignored Mom’s request, and probably didn’t bother getting your mother’s permission,” I say, looking at Fatema, “because she felt that it was in our best interests.”

  “She knew best,” Fatema says, with a sarcastic edge.

  “She was always so good to me. Now, I don’t know who she is, who she was all those years.” When I picture her face, the ugly, judgmental mask glimmers chimerically just below the accepting, comforting one.

  “She does love you, and you really are her favourite,” Zainab coos. “But she’s very misinformed, very unquestioning, like I was.”

  “At least you’re trying to stop it from happening to others,” Fatema adds. “That’s being accountable for your actions. I doubt your mother will ever be accountable to us.”

  “I didn’t mean what I said, Fatema,” I break in. “I don’t blame you for what happened with the newspaper. I was overwhelmed by everything just then.”

  “Well, sometimes I do steamroll,” she admits sheepishly.

  Zainab laughs. “Friends again?”

  “The SCC again. We’ll never stop being that.”

  In the silence that follows, I remember something. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to tell you both, I found out why Abdoolally and Zehra divorced!”

  As I give them the rundown — keeping my promise to Banu to only reveal the part I’m allowed — their eyes bulge and mouths gape.

  “The divorce was because of khatna?” Fatema asks. “Abdoolally was pro-khatna?”

&
nbsp; “Well, it was because they weren’t happy together. But then on top of it Zehra caused a minor religious scandal. A public embarrassment.”

  “So Rumana also didn’t allow it for her descendants?” Zainab clarifies.

  “Yes. The practice ended in that line. The cycle ended there.”

  Before we leave, I visit Abbas Kaaka. I bring along my laptop, and show him the draft blog I’ve created, and we sit side by side, reading.

  “Anything to correct?”

  “Not yet. This is so interesting, so good,” he says, adjusting his glasses and leaning in. He scrolls down to the part about Abdoolally and Zehra’s divorce.

  “I collected that from Shaheeda’s great-granddaughter, Banu Aunty.” I relate the story of how I met her.

  “Are you sure this is true? About her religious disobedience? It’s quite the story. And it reveals much about Abdoolally’s beliefs.”

  “It’s the story that was passed down from Zehra to Rumana. And Banu heard it directly from Rumana, who was her daadi,” I assert. “So I suspect it is accurate.”

  “I saw the write-up in The Post a few days ago about the protest at Shifa Hospital.”

  “What did you think?”

  “You know, I hadn’t really thought about the issue until I read the paper, saw all the arguments against it. It seems like a practice that is unnecessary, outdated. Like iddat. I wish our community would modernize.”

  I sigh, and tears well up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Well … I recently learned that it was Tasnim Maasi who took me and my cousins to have it done. She is … was … my favourite aunt. It’s caused a rift between us.”

  “Give it some time. Like Abdoolally, she was obeying the rules of the day. Now we know better. Now we can change things.” He pats my hand. His advice is both true and too simple.

  The bags are packed, and we wait in Fortune Enclave’s lobby at 5:00 a.m. for Varun to arrive. A van, not his usual vehicle, pulls into the circular driveway. He rushes out to help with our luggage and Fatema and Zainab poke their heads out the windows, surprising us.

  “Hey, look!” Murtuza points at them.

  We said our goodbyes last night at Zainab’s place, and I thought that was the last we’d see of them, at least for a few years. Too long. I’m relieved that they are here now.

  Once on the road, Fatema asks Zee, “So, what did you think of this trip?”

  “Good, a little long.” Zee is still not quite awake.

  “Short vacations from now on?” I ask her, but she doesn’t reply. She is limp against my side, asleep again.

  While the others talk about the highlights of our India stay, I think about how I’d imagined these eight months would be. I only had the tiniest tip of Abdoolally’s iceberg before and now I’ve probably dived a foot or two below the surface. In contrast, I’ve plumbed the depths of my own life story.

  I wonder what the year ahead will bring. I asked Murtuza to contact our previous couples’ therapist for an appointment to help us navigate our sex life. Perhaps I will ask for some individual sessions as well. I will hate it the whole time. But maybe this is what it means to be in a marriage.

  I still haven’t returned any of Maasi’s calls. That will have to wait.

  SIXTY-THREE

  Within a week of being back in Queens, Zee is at school and I’ve had my first work meeting with Lenore, reviewing her draft questionnaire for home-schooling parents.

  I also allow the Abdoolally blog to go live, finally setting it free. I worry what the family will think, if they will have criticisms of my work, for in the end, I’ve brought more of myself into the story than I’d first intended.

  Here is the introduction:

  This blog is about my great-great-grandfather. It is the summation of eight months of research, but I can’t help think it is a terribly incomplete account of his life, for we know so little about him and the people who came before: what of his grandmother, his great-great-grandmother? I imagine counting back and back and back. Who were all these ancestors, what were their stories? Did they live, as I imagine, in more or less the same fashion for generations, all of them in Dholka, villagers expecting predictable lives to unfold in pretty much the same way as their forefathers and mothers?

  It was Abdoolally, my great-great-grandfather, who changed everything, or rather, his mother Amtabai, a widow whose story we know even less about, who grew annoyed with village life and the lack of opportunity there. She is the great woman of this story, is she not?

  So it was the two of them who took the first steps into the unknown, to venture into the noise and stink and strange ways of the city. They were the first to disperse us, to be the wind that sent seeds floating south across India, and then westward and eastward across oceans. Others followed their path, but it was Abdoolally who had the foresight to learn the colonizer’s language, to build businesses, purchase land, to amass wealth that built schools and clinics, wealth that has trickled down and down and down.

  We don’t know much about his relationships. He married four times. His first two wives, Sharifa and Shaheeda, died in childbirth. He and his third wife, Zehra, divorced. The fourth, Maimuna, outlived him. See the “family” tab for more information. I wish I knew more about each of them.

  Abdoolally’s wealth and legacy ensured that women, like his first two wives, wouldn’t die so frequently in childbirth and that village children, like the boy he once was, would receive education. It also meant that a clergy, who’d lived simply, offering spiritual advice to its followers, would become empowered to operate like a business. Today they are a kind of multinational enterprise, and seek to control nearly every aspect of their congregants’ lives in order to maintain power. Yes, Abdoolally was part of that shift, the great man, unwittingly perhaps, helping to move them away from their original and divinely planned spiritual paths.

  And he wouldn’t have been alone. Other rich men, some devout, and those making donations to stay in their religious leaders’ favour, would have lined the clergy’s paths with gold coin. Too many. Too many still do.

  My research also led me to an unexpected revelation about the family and broader community: the problematic practice of khatna, which this clergy actively promotes. In doing so, it has caused harm to so many of our naik women, to us. Yes, me included.

  But there were women in the family who resisted khatna for their girls, including Zehra, who tried to spare Rumana, her stepdaughter (Shaheeda’s daughter), and it’s believed that this resistance was part of why their marriage ended. Rumana carried forward Zehra’s protest and refused khatna for her daughters and granddaughters.

  I’ve learned more about the movement of strong Bohra women who are speaking out against this practice, quietly and loudly, who are labelling it what it is: sexual violence. They are the new heroes, or heroines, of this story.

  If Abdoolally’s story has taught me anything, it’s that we each have the power to be a part of our community’s legacy. We have the power to leave archaic practices behind, create new wealth for our women. We can protect future generations of daughters, not allow them to be broken by violence.

  I think Abdoolally, if he were with us here today, five generations later, would be pleased.

  EPILOGUE

  FGM Symposium, April 2026, New York City

  The auditorium dims, and the audience stills. The moderator welcomes the crowd and introduces me as the first speaker. God, why did she have to put me first? I take a sip of water, clear my throat, and click on a slide that shows a compilation of news headlines from 2016 to 2025.

  “Much has changed in the last decade. As you can see, khatna was made illegal in India. There have been dozens of court cases — starting in Australia, then Detroit, and later all across the U.S., Canada, Europe, India — cutters and parents prosecuted. There are now hotlines for victims, specialized therapies for survivors.”

  I run my thumb down the cool glass of my tablet’s screen, and provide the audience wit
h background information and statistics about Bohras and khatna’s emotional, physical, and sexual impacts. The energy downgrades in the room. I move on to the next slide, a photo of our high priest posed with a dead lion five times his size. I hear a couple of gasps. Good, I have their attention again.

  “Anecdotal evidence suggests that khatna is still being secretly practised amongst those who are most closely aligned with the apex leader of the Bohras. Thankfully, he has fewer acolytes now as more Bohras have shrugged off his control and have formed more democratic communities, including a large alternative masjid here in New York City. There is even talk that the Indian government might seize his funds and properties and redistribute them to these new configurations. Fun fact about this photo: it circulated on WhatsApp and Facebook in 2018 and people say it was a catalyst for change.” Finger snaps popcorn through the auditorium as audience members show their support.

  I click on the next slide, a photo of me with my mom, her cousins, and my nani, all of us wearing identical orange-and-red tunics. There is a collective “Awww.” I feel a sudden light-headedness. I exhale. Time to get personal.

  “So, that’s me, at seven years old, in India with my family. I’d like to tell you a little about my personal connection to khatna. Like every other khatna story you’ll hear, it’s about secrets, lies, and shame.” This last sentence sounded better when I rehearsed in front of my full-length bedroom mirror. Now it seems cheesy.

  I click on a photo of Mom and Dad, smiling for the camera. Dad’s holding a placard that reads FGM IS GENDER VIOLENCE!

  “My parents were dead-set against the practice, and even attended a rally, the first of its kind in India, while we were there in 2016. Oh, I should give credit to my mom, who provided me with all these old photos.” My gaze slides to the left of the auditorium, where my parents and Nani sit. I told myself I wouldn’t look their way until the end of the speech.

  “One day, I was supposed to be babysat by an older cousin, but I ended up with my grand-aunt, for an hour or so. Now, Maasi was fully aware of my parents’ views about khatna.” The audience is quiet, as though holding its breath.