Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  11

  Afterward, Leigh suggests they get a bite to eat, and Seema says she can’t, she needs to return home.

  Leigh grumbles that she’d been waiting for Seema for more than an hour. “Why were you late then?”

  “I had to stop by the campaign office.”

  “Did you see Divya there?”

  “Yes, we spoke about the fundraiser.”

  Leigh sits up, pushing the comforter off. “I’m your lowest priority,” she says, arms locked around her knees.

  “Don’t be silly. I’d stay if I hadn’t promised my mother I’d be home for lunch.” But Seema knows that she’s still unprepared to answer the question Leigh will want to discuss: Is Leigh to be present at the delivery? Seema has managed to stall the discussion by pleading that they wait and see how things turn out when her family’s here.

  “You’re avoiding me. You didn’t call me once last week—I called you each time.”

  “I cannot neglect my mother.”

  “What I don’t understand is why you worry so much about what your family will think. They’ve already disowned you.”

  “Not my mother. And I have very little time left with her. I don’t want it to get complicated.”

  Leigh turns Seema’s face toward her. “Do you want me at the delivery or not?”

  “Yes, of course”—Seema pauses—“if it won’t rock the boat.” The issue is not only Leigh’s role during the delivery but her role afterward as well. Seema is relieved that Nafeesa and Tahera provide an excuse to hold Leigh from weaving herself inextricably into her life before she has figured out what Leigh really means to her.

  Leigh swings out of bed and fishes her clothes off the floor. She wriggles into her briefs, facing away, her body pale and shimmering, vulnerable—narrow sinewed shoulders, jutting hip bones, high buttocks, hollowed-out butt cheeks. As always, Seema finds the curve of Leigh’s spine expressive. The groove along the backbone ripples now with barely contained emotion—heartache, despair. She wants to touch it, to console Leigh, who is standing just beyond reach.

  “We’ll figure it out. I promise.” She knows she’s promising more than she ought to.

  Without replying Leigh pulls on the rest of her clothes.

  12

  There are many aspects of Seema that remain mysterious to Leigh. They’ve never discussed Seema’s marriage to Bill, for example. Seema rarely speaks about her pre-Bill past either.

  But Leigh knows more about Seema than she’s let on. She’s had a crush on Seema since her college days, when she was required to view an interview between Seema and Deepa Mehta, the maker of the movie Fire, for a paper in her gender and women’s studies minor at Berkeley. Her paper’s focus is the dialogue Seema engages in with the filmmaker—about Mehta’s decision to subordinate lesbian desire to themes of women’s equality and emancipation in India—but it’s Seema’s sparkling eyes and lips Leigh ends up paying more attention to. For days afterward she wastes the time set aside to research the paper by searching instead (obsessively) for trails of Seema on the internet, spurred by the proximity of the vision, just across the bay.

  Seema’s name pops up, associated with various queer South Asian groups all over the country: Trikone in the Bay Area, SALGA in New York, Masala in Boston. There are photos of Seema with June Jordan, with Urvashi Vaid, with Pratibha Parmar, luminaries Leigh has only read about in class. Seema appears to have volunteered with queer organizations across the country and has even written articles for The Advocate and other queer publications.

  Over the next few years, at random moments, Leigh scours the web for Seema, as she does for her celebrity crushes—Yang Li-Hua (thrilling in both her male and female roles in Taiwanese opera), Michelle Yeoh (Leigh has seen all her kung fu movies, and has watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at least half a dozen times), and Salma Hayek (since that amazing tango with Ashley Judd in Frida). When—many years later—she spots Seema at the party, she recognizes her instantly. Seema seems to have aged little. That evening, Leigh hunts for her again on the internet. To her surprise she finds little new, only tidbits about Seema’s recent professional activities, as if the queer Seema has ceased to exist. Leigh puts out feelers to her South Asian lesbian friends and her journalist friends, on the pretext of working on a piece. Various rumors filter back to her: Seema is a hasbian, Seema has married a man, Seema is divorced, Seema is pregnant. If she’s puzzled how someone so involved in the queer scene for a decade could have turned her back on her past so completely, she doesn’t let it discourage her. She goes to interview Seema giddy-eyed. She’s prepared for rejection when she asks Seema out; Seema’s bemused acceptance drives her ecstatic.

  Every one of their initial dates—a stroll among roses in Golden Gate Park, an open-mic evening at a local Mission café, a Chihuly glass exhibit at the de Young Museum—is a roller coaster. For, surely, each would be the last one; what could possibly continue to interest Seema in her? Yet each is followed by another.

  After their fourth date, a dinner at Leigh’s favorite Chinese haunt in the Inner Sunset, where she orders in Mandarin a meal that delights and impresses Seema, they take a cab to Dolores Park and end up on a bench at the very top. And there, with the lights of the city spread at their feet, they kiss for the first time. And later that night, while Seema lies in her arms blissfully spent, she summons every ounce of courage she possesses to whisper, “If you ever get tired of me, you should let me know. I promise I won’t make a fuss, you can send me away whenever.”

  Had she uttered those words merely to allay Seema’s likely misgivings about her youth? For now that Seema is finally tiring of her—what else could explain her recent remoteness?—persistent anguish has eroded her resolve to back off from pressuring Seema, as she’d promised, as all her friends have advised. But every moment away from Seema is crushing; every moment with her is punishing.

  13

  Leigh is present when Nafeesa calls about the diagnosis.

  It’s a Sunday, about a month ago, and they have spent the afternoon in Seema’s apartment poring over a list of names for me. A name is the first decision Seema is called to make on my behalf, and she finds the responsibility stressful.

  Seema has never forgiven her parents for her name, which means face, expression, or likeness in Urdu. Not beautiful face or sweet expression or likeness to a flower, but those plain and ugly words, vague and ambiguous, as though her parents had been unsure what she’d turn out to be. The meaning in Hindi is worse—limit, boundary, frontier—restrictive and constraining. And though her father had finally placated her—she can be the expression of anything she wants to be, and as for the limit, she’s unsurpassable—in some corner of her mind she believes her name is linked to the trajectory of her life. So she has roped in Leigh to share in the burden of picking a name for me, even though she worries that Leigh may infer from this invitation a depth to their relationship that she’s not yet ready to grant.

  Leigh goes over each name, ponders its meaning, labors over its pronunciation—they’re all Muslim names. She gets Seema to speak them aloud. She makes a game of it: Speak it softly, she says, speak it loudly. Now as though you’re waking him up. You just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar—scold him. He’s crying—comfort him.

  They take turns calling out to me. Some names are easier to reject—too harsh, too many syllables, too much of a strain on the vocal cords. Some names Leigh rejects—she assures Seema that no American tongue can wrap itself around those specific combinations of consonants and vowels. She also nixes names with corruptions that would deliver my future American school life into the hands of bullies: “No, not Faqr.”

  They come finally to the name they’ll pick. “Ishraaq, where are you?” Seema calls out from the futon where they’re sitting, and Leigh echoes it, producing a passable match for the q at the end. They pause, looking at each other—there are no obvious objections.

  “What does Ishraaq mean?” Leigh asks.

  “Radianc
e. Light of the rising sun.”

  “A new beginning.” Leigh puts her lips to Seema’s belly and whispers the name, now a caress, now a low growl, running her kisses along the skin stretched taut as a roof over me.

  My could-be mother Tahera would never have chosen that name for me. Consider the names of her children: Arshad—rightly guided; Amina—faithful.

  Do I choose that moment to kick? My mother is sure she feels something.

  The phone rings. Seema answers, cautioning Leigh that the call is from her mother, but Leigh pays no heed as she continues her kisses down the slope of the belly and toward the thighs. It’s only when Seema stiffens that Leigh looks up.

  “What?” she mouths, but Seema doesn’t answer, jerking her T-shirt down and scrambling off the futon.

  Leigh becomes fearful. The Seema who drifts around the room is not the Seema of a few minutes ago but rather the Seema who seals herself off. This Seema doesn’t see her even when looking in her direction, this Seema brushes past her as if she were not in the room at all. Whatever Seema hears over the phone is clearly distressing, but when Leigh tries to comfort her, she is shrugged off, recanting the intimacy of the previous hours.

  Seema doesn’t notice Leigh leave the apartment. Seema’s world has contracted to her mother’s trembling voice, the delayed echo of her own, the words they both struggle to form, and the silences that are more threatening than the words themselves. She’d been aware of the tests her mother had undergone; she cannot believe that something this devastating could be established merely by ruling out more likely and more testable conditions. There must be a mistake somewhere, there must be questions she can ask that would expose the lie. But she’s ill equipped to find the right ones, and anyway her mother is not the right person to ask.

  Only then does she notice Leigh’s absence. All at once the present and the future reveal themselves to her—she is to be left utterly and devastatingly alone, with only me as anchor.

  14

  Tahera and Nafeesa have spent the morning in chai and cozy gossip about relatives in Chennai and are now cooking lunch together. Tahera has ordered her mother to rest, so Nafeesa sits by the kitchen table, chopping some vegetables and directing her daughter, who keeps up a commentary of everything she’s doing on the stove. “I am adding the onions now, the mustard seeds have just spluttered.”

  It reminds Tahera of the Saturday mornings in Chennai after Seema left for college, when she was allowed into the kitchen to help her mother. She falls back easily into her old role of assistant, deferring to her mother on the quantity of spices to add, how long to stir, when to cover the pot. Occasionally she mentions the changes she’s made to the recipes over the years: “It’s simpler to do the seasoning right in the beginning.”

  Nafeesa sometimes accepts the changes, other times explains why her method is superior. Sometimes she insists Tahera do it her way, because that’s how Seema likes it.

  Tahera doesn’t argue. She promised herself she would not let Seema spoil the time she has left with her mother.

  She has forgotten, too, how enjoyable cooking is when not crammed between her practice at the clinic and domestic chores. Here she doesn’t need to optimize every step—preparing and refrigerating boiled dal, steamed vegetables, fried onions, spice mixtures, all in bulk quantities—and there’s nothing else she needs to keep an eye on in parallel.

  But it’s impossible to ignore how slow and halting her mother has become with the progress of her symptoms. Nafeesa grasps the knife tightly as though it could slip from her hand at any moment, sometimes needing to steady one hand with the other. And she takes frequent breaks, though only behind Tahera’s back, the silent knife giving her away. But Tahera’s offers to take over the chopping are met with resistance, much like how her daughter, Amina, would resist if some conferred responsibility were retracted.

  Amina has recently taken to pleading with Tahera to be given chores in the kitchen. Tahera was inclined to be strict at first, insisting the child finish her homework before getting distracted. But now she enjoys having Amina there, with her books and crayons, enjoys instructing Amina in the small tasks she gives her—shelling peas, picking mint leaves, counting out raisins and cashew pods. She loves the care with which her daughter applies herself to these, her small fingers busy, her face furrowed with concentration. Much in the same way her mother now chops the tomatoes, slices and cubes the eggplant.

  A rush of affection overcomes Tahera. She bends down and kisses her mother on her forehead before sweeping up the chopped vegetables and adding them to the pot. They are good together, good mothers and good daughters.

  15

  Inevitably, whenever Tahera thinks about Amina, an image of Arshad presents itself in contrast. This bothers Tahera, because there’s nothing about her son to merit the anxiety he provokes in her.

  In every way he’s an exemplar: solicitous toward his parents, caring toward his sister, studious in his schoolwork, proficient in sports, disciplined. And he’s responsible beyond his years—he can be trusted to look after the house or babysit Amina whenever Tahera is called away on an emergency with a patient.

  And now that he’s old enough, he’s thrown himself with equal fervor into his Quran studies and his namaz. He wakes up before dawn for fajr with his own alarm, refusing her offers to rouse him, and performs his wadu and is ready to unfurl his janamaz beside his father’s without morning fuss, something that Ismail himself is sometimes guilty of. At these moments she can’t help feeling proud, but then she also regrets that her one daily intimacy with Ismail is diminished by the boy’s presence.

  Perhaps it’s Arshad’s self-sufficiency that makes her feel superfluous, as if she has little to contribute to his well-being. “Masha’Allah,” Tahera says, every time she recounts Arshad’s many virtues to friends, but she wishes that her feelings for him were as uncomplicated as her love for Amina.

  16

  “How different daughters are from sons, don’t you think?” Tahera says.

  Grandmother, you don’t answer immediately; your fingers continue to slowly feed the beans to the knife. There is a meditative aspect to the chopping, and it prevents the cramps that can shoot through your hands when you keep them idle too long. You reply only when Tahera repeats the question. “I wouldn’t know. I only have you two.”

  “Do you ever regret not having a son?”

  “Your Abba may have wanted a son at one point. I’m satisfied with my daughters.” You fumble on the satisfied and hope Tahera doesn’t notice.

  “Poor Ammi—no sons or daughters to take care of her now.” Tahera says it laughing, but you catch the sharp edge of something else under her words.

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  But that’s a lie. Already there have been days when your husband made chai, his bitter overboiled chai, because you couldn’t manage even that, and your sister bustled about your home, preparing meals, sorting out the laundry, tidying up. And soon—perhaps even in a matter of months—you’ll be too debilitated to move. But you know you can’t burden yourself on your daughters the same way in America, nor can you expect them to leave their lives and return to Chennai to look after you.

  An augury: your fingers spasm, and you must put down the knife. Despite the pain, you automatically begin separating the cut pieces from the uncut, forming two piles.

  Tahera sits down and pulls the knife and cutting board toward her. She says, “How is Abba taking—all this?”

  You know from her gesture that Tahera is asking about her father’s reaction to your visit to San Francisco. You reach to take back the knife from her hands, but she refuses you and begins slicing the beans. “What am I supposed to be doing now?” you protest.

  For the next few minutes the only sounds are the clacking of the knife against the cutting board, the pot bubbling on the stove, the hiss of the gas flame. It’s just the two of you. “Your Abba didn’t want me to come here. You know how he is when he doesn’t want you to do
something. He stopped speaking to me for a few days.”

  “How did you change his mind?” Tahera asks.

  “We went back for a second consultation. The results were the same. I said I wanted to see my daughters while I still could. They should come here, he said. Even Seema? I asked. He didn’t say anything, but he let me call Seema from our phone. It still makes him angry if I speak to Seema from home.”

  “Seema wanted you to come to San Francisco?” The knife flashes in her hands, the beans reduced to thin green rings.

  You want to complain that she’s cutting too finely, but her expression warns you against it—she’s waiting for your reply. “I said I wanted to be with her for the delivery. She said she’d visit Chennai later with the baby. She can be quite stubborn—just like you, you’re both like your Abba, don’t deny it.” Tahera winces at that, and you rush on, before she derails what you need to finish saying. “That’s when I told her. She called home the next day, and your Abba answered. They didn’t speak, he just handed me the phone. Seema said she’d buy my ticket. He refused. He’d pay for my ticket or I couldn’t go.”

  “You told her before you told me.” Tahera has gone rigid, knife paused midair.

  “I had to tell her, Tahera. Otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed. I was planning to tell you both when I came here. I didn’t want to break it over the phone.”

  “I’ve been a good daughter, haven’t I?” Her words are clipped, matching the rhythm of the knife as she resumes, hewing through the beans. “I would have come to Chennai. I didn’t because you said you were coming here. You didn’t give me a chance. Are you even planning to come to Irvine?”

  Now you understand the earlier bitterness in Tahera’s voice. You do want to visit Irvine, perhaps after a few weeks of helping Seema with the baby—but who knows what your condition will be by then. “Seema’s alone,” you say. “How could I let her go through the delivery by herself?”