Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  “I just remembered,” Tahera’s voice is unsteady, “how we used to do Ammi’s hair. If only—” But she can’t continue, instead holding out the muddle of bands to Seema in a trembling palm.

  Seema takes the bands and gestures to the chair in front of her. “Sit.”

  Tahera sinks instead to the floor. She looks at Seema for an instant, then buries her face in Seema’s lap, even though there’s little space there, the swell of Seema’s belly obstructing most of it. Her entire body shakes, her shoulders shuddering.

  This is unexpected. Seema has seldom seen Tahera cry. She’s always envied her sister’s strength, her capacity to contain her pain, her refusal to seek solace from anyone, her stubborn rejection of any offered.

  “Tahera, don’t cry.” Tahera’s head lies in her lap. Is she even allowed to comfort Tahera, in light of having abandoned her, the anguish she’d caused her?

  “Tara, don’t cry,” she repeats helplessly, as Tahera struggles to regain composure, smothering her sobs in Seema’s pants.

  Seema begins, hesitantly, to stroke Tahera’s head. Her sister’s hair is in a loose, untidy bun. As girls, her sister had the longer hair, thick and luxurious like their mother’s. But now her hair is much diminished, much streaked with premature gray. Feeling like a trespasser, Seema undoes the knot of the bun. Then, since Tahera still doesn’t stir, she shakes out the tresses, running her fingers through them to straighten and untangle.

  Tahera’s face lies against Seema’s belly. Seema’s fingers passing through her hair, and the warmth of Seema’s body, are too comforting for Tahera to let go of. She reaches her arms around us both.

  She tightens her grasp. I feel the pressure, and Tahera can feel me shift as I respond to it, my slightest movements magnified by the proximity. The heat of me dries the wet from her tears, and the moving life of me calms and soothes.

  She says, voice muffled by her mouth against the sky of my world, “Seema, you can name me as Ishraaq’s guardian.”

  Seema cups Tahera’s face to study it. “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  Tahera’s face is blotched with tears, the loosened hair disheveled and straggly. “Turn around,” Seema says. “Let me fix your hair.”

  As Tahera sits cross-legged on the floor, like all those years ago in Chennai, my to-be mother combs my could-be mother’s hair and gathers her tresses into the twin plaits of their girlhood, both silent now—for what more can be said?—while rain patters against the windowpanes.

  Two

  2003–2008

  1

  My to-be father Bill, seven years ago, at thirty-four: He’s marching down San Francisco’s Market Street, carried along by the largest crowd he’s ever seen. There are people swarming around him, thronging pavements, filling windows of buildings above, even swinging from lampposts. There are flags and banners and placards everywhere: Not In My Name. Drop Bush Not Bombs. No Blood For Oil. The air is feverish with the sound of chants, throbbing with the sound of drums.

  It is February 2003. Earlier that weekend, millions had poured out onto the streets in other cities across the world—London, Madrid, Rome, Paris, New York, Baghdad, Sydney, Tokyo, Calcutta—to protest the proposed U.S. invasion of Iraq.

  Bill, at that time, heads a Bay Area start-up with his friend Josh, developing software to make medical records available across hospital networks. The work has been especially demanding the last year, after the tech bubble collapsed and investor funding dried up. In its struggle to remain afloat, the company needed to downsize, and Bill is now its entire legal team, as well as its chief operating officer. He should be working today, to put together a presentation for a prospective client that could underwrite the costs of future development. Instead he’s here, chanting with the group he’s fallen in with, shouting his throat hoarse.

  Bill has never taken part in such demonstrations before. There are blue-uniformed riot police everywhere—on foot, mounted on horseback, seated on motorbikes—all armed with lethal-looking batons, geared in shields and helmets. Placing himself in any situation that invited the attention of the police was high on the list of activities that displeased his grandmother. He can almost feel Mame’s fingernails pinching into his earlobes, showing her disapproval.

  But he’d chosen to march after all.

  Bill doesn’t consider himself a pacifist—he supported the first Gulf War, the rooting out of the Taliban from Afghanistan, and the broad outlines of “The War on Terror”—or an activist. Until now, he’s never joined any political or politically inclined organization, not even the Black Student Union at Stanford, where he got his undergraduate and law degrees.

  Bill has always believed what his grandparents spent their life impressing on him—that his life is what he makes of it. That if he stays out of trouble and works hard, he’s bound to succeed. That there’s nothing stopping him, not the color of his skin, not his race, not his background, only the powers he lets control him.

  His life has borne this out. Years of hard work in a mostly White and Asian high school pay off. He graduates from Stanford with distinction, and without debt, cobbling together a slew of scholarships. A phenomenal LSAT score enables him to enroll in Stanford Law School, allowing him to remain close to Mame after his grandfather’s death during his sophomore year. His success at his first job, at a large firm in San Francisco, allows him to quickly clear his law school loans. This positions him well to make the switch when the dot-com boom takes off, joining his best friend, Josh, also from Stanford, to start a company that angel investors salivate over as a probable emerging market leader in healthcare software.

  But when the dot-com bubble bursts, it also unfairly devastates their start-up. The last two years have been a series of setbacks, with their VCs pulling out and their flagship product floundering, despite all their efforts to turn the tide.

  Bill, for the first time in his life, is facing the certainty of failure, of all his hard work of the past few years coming to nought. Many of his friends cashed out before the bust, selling their half-baked start-ups at the first opportunity, as though they understood something he didn’t—that knowing how to ride the wave and knowing when to get off was more important than hard work.

  Now the purveyors of the war are setting in motion another wave, one they intend to ride to wealth and fortune, a wave that will destroy another country in its wake. Even to someone as politically uninclined as Bill, it seems obvious that the proposed war is a cynical misuse of 9/11, initiated by oil companies and their Washington enablers seeking access to Iraq’s oil fields. The ever-changing rationales for the war—Saddam Hussein’s purported links to 9/11; next, his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; finally, freedom and democracy in the Middle East—strike Bill as similar to the ever-changing explanations that Wall Street had spouted to justify its exuberant evaluations of the dot-com start-ups before the bust. Wall Street had claimed that the market was no longer constrained by outdated laws or history, just like the proponents of the war are now claiming the right to preemptive strikes and expressing an optimism not supported by past misadventures.

  There seems to be hope in the air, though, as Bill marches down Market Street. Surely such a massive demonstration of the people’s will cannot be ignored. The moment is pregnant with possibility, as if this march were not only about preventing a war but also about reclaiming strengths left unused, about rediscovering kinship long forgotten. Bill, whose only experiences of comparable crowds were football matches in Stanford’s stadium, is jolted awake to a boisterous, almost joyous new world bursting all around him.

  Someone hands him a placard. Peace, it says simply, a sentiment he can get behind wholeheartedly, something Mame could have no objection to. He thrusts it in the air in time to the drumming and the ringing of a temple bell somewhere ahead, as do the others marching beside him.

  By Powell Street, near the cable-car turntable, there’s a sudden commotion. A minute ago the march was proceeding peacefully, but now a sec
tion in front charges to the left into the Nordstrom mall. Bill stands rooted as he sees figures dressed in black jeans and black long-sleeved T-shirts emerge from the group ahead. They have black ski masks pulled down to cover their faces, and armed with skateboards, they pound away at the display windows. Chants turn to hoots and shouts; the sound of breaking glass replaces the drumming.

  Soon the air is rent with screams as the riot police swoop in from both sides of the road, their batons raised, their bikes careening toward the mall to seal off the entrance. Bill’s section of the march is in disarray. The street flashes with the chaos of batons, placards, and banners caught in sunlight, the black of the vandals, the blue of the riot police, the gleam of motorbikes, the glitter of glass shields.

  A policeman on a motorbike chases a vandal running in Bill’s direction. Bill is convinced that underneath the black attire the vandal is black-skinned like him, despite glimpses of fair hands and fair rings around the eyes visible through the ski mask. Mame was right, he should have listened. He backs away, fearful now, without looking behind him, and stumbles against someone, bringing them both down, even as the vandal veers away and the motorbike follows.

  He’s unhurt, but he has landed on a woman, who has twisted her ankle.

  2

  Bill, as a fifteen-year-old: he’s in his room in Oakland, the sheets pulled around him, shielding him from the lonely dark of the attic and the darkness beyond, the night sounds of the world muted, the city silenced.

  He hears Mame and Grandpa in muffled conversation downstairs—Mame moving from room to room, Grandpa following her around in his creaking wheelchair, asking her what she’s looking for, growing crosser as she continues to ignore him. His chest clenching, Bill slips out of his room to the staircase landing to keep watch.

  He hadn’t expected Mame to discover the loss so quickly. It’s too late now to slip downstairs and replace the note where he found it. Mame wouldn’t believe she hadn’t looked there already.

  Her face grim, her glasses high on the bridge of her nose, she’s done looking. She finally says to Grandpa: She’s missing a hundred-dollar bill. She dropped it while counting money she withdrew from the bank, had found it later and placed it—where? she’s losing her memory—intending to return it to her purse. And Grandpa says he’d have saved her the trouble if she’d told him earlier. He came across it and put it away but forgot to tell her about it—he’s growing old too. A minute later he returns from the bedroom with a bill.

  Mame must know, or at least suspect—even if Grandpa has handed her a spanking new bill—but she accepts it without demur. Bill spends a sorry sleepless night, dreading the inevitable interrogation in the morning. Why had he so easily succumbed to temptation, with no clear idea what to do with the money? And Mame was never one to overlook his misdeeds—This is for your own good!—even the ones Grandpa sometimes took the fall for, like pilfering cookies from the pantry.

  And yet, the next morning Mame says nothing, handing him his lunch with only a soft look of reproach. Still he cannot work up the courage to confess. He must seek out his grandfather and return the money to him.

  It’s not much easier confessing to Grandpa. I can’t believe you would let her down this way, Grandpa says. How hard Mame worked, two jobs, and sometimes weekends too, to keep this house running, to make sure Bill would have a future. She’s beyond sad, and discouraged.

  Bill hangs his head and promises then, the weight of the world on his tongue, never again to let Mame down, never again to take for himself the fruits of someone else’s labor.

  3

  That February morning at the protest, Bill is smitten. The woman is dressed to draw eyes—a spaghetti-strap scarlet dress, matched with scarlet lipstick, shocking like freshly spilled blood—and he is indeed transfixed. He gives her a ride to an urgent care center and waits with her, solicitous and apologetic, his face an echo of empathy at her grimaces of pain. Afterward, her foot braced and bound, he procures a crutch for her, and when she expresses a desire to return to the rally, he offers to accompany her.

  Seema is thirty-three and by now used to such attention from men. She’s amused by Bill’s bashful solicitude, and since her current plight is his fault, she doesn’t think twice about making use of him.

  The march has emptied out in the Civic Center Plaza, and they stand under a tree at the back, Seema leaning against him for support, the lawn in front of them rippling with shoulders and heads, banners and placards.

  Beside them stands a group of protestors dressed like Iraqi mothers, in black hijabs and abayas, wearing mournful masks and holding rag dolls that resemble dead children. They mime grief, raising hands to lips in slow motion as though to stifle a cry or beg for a reprieve. Seema notes that Bill is shaken. He can’t take his eyes off the group of mourning mothers, as if only now becoming conscious of the human toll of the war.

  “The imagery is very effective,” she comments, to which he nods mutely.

  He’s also clearly discomfited by the speeches—standard vehement denunciations of the war, peppered with words like hegemony, subjugation, colonialism, racism—and squirms at the violent invective directed against Bush and Cheney, Wall Street, Israel, America. He tries to hide his discomfort from her, though, by cheering and clapping with the crowd, especially during the songs.

  “That’s Joan Baez singing,” she points out.

  “Who’s Joan Baez?”

  She opens her eyes wide at him. “She marched with Martin Luther King Jr.? She sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ at the March on Washington, the one where he delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech?”

  Seema is a veteran of such protests, a little disillusioned. She knows what to expect: a parade of minority speakers before a self-congratulatory liberal White crowd that will afterward return to its safe White slice of the world, while the rest of them will still have to deal with whatever is transpiring.

  Seema is also a little bitter. She’d moved to Boston two years ago to join her girlfriend Ann after four years of a long-distance relationship. Just months later, Al-Qaeda strikes on 9/11, and what starts as heated arguments—in response to Seema calling Ann’s and America’s reaction to the collapse of the Twin Towers “White hysteria at the loss of its privileged security”—ends in acrimonious fights and a breakup a year later. Seema had returned to San Francisco earlier this month, while Ann was now moving to a safe White suburb with her new, more suitable White lover.

  An Iraqi duo begins an Arabic version of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and the crowd accompanies the refrain lustily in English. Bill has a comforting baritone, and he sings with sweet conviction, swaying to the music, clearly a ploy to have their bodies touch. But she sways along with him, eyes closed, her head now and then resting on his chest as she leans back for support—she’s a foot shorter, barely making it to his shoulders. It’s a new experience, having a man stand this close to her.

  It’s also weirdly exciting. Bill reminds her of her first girlfriend, Chloe, with the same tawny skin, the same frizzy close-cut hair, even the same lips, and only a little taller. With his glasses he looks more like an academic than the lawyer he claims to be.

  What would her old friends think if they saw her like this? Few even know she’s returned to San Francisco, for that would be admitting failure. She should claim Ann made her straight! At least that is worth a laugh.

  After the rally, Bill insists on dropping her off at her apartment in Bernal Heights.

  “Can I see you again?” he stammers, as he helps her up the stairs.

  “There should be another protest soon,” she replies, smiling.

  “Well, call me if you need any help before then. I feel awful about your ankle.”

  They exchange numbers, though she expects never to see him again.

  4

  My to-be mother Seema at twenty-one, twelve years earlier: Riding through the streets of London in a red double-decker bus, a banner emblazoned on its sides, Visibly Lesbian. The bus is packed with women,
all dressed in black T-shirts, a bomb with a lit fuse printed on the front, with the name of their group inscribed around it: The Lesbian Avengers.

  It’s a raucous bus, the women are whistling, clapping, stomping, hanging out of windows, flashing breasts, snogging, calling out through megaphones to pedestrians and drivers, to shoppers and tourists, even to the traffic police and bobbies: Hey you, in the brown coat, in the blue jacket, in the high heels, in the uniform, in that absurd hat, yes, you, we’re talking to you, hello, we’re lesbians, we’re dykes, we’re butch, we’re femme, we can smell your homophobia.

  And though it’s a gray day in London, with clouds threatening to rain on their parade, nothing can bring Seema down, for standing next to her in the bus, her hand threaded around Seema’s waist, her chin resting on Seema’s head, is Chloe, lithe muscular Chloe, buzz-cut Chloe, Chloe whose smile can burn through Seema, whose whisper can make Seema tremble at her knees, whose touch can make the hair on Seema’s skin stand on end, whose hands and lips can reduce Seema’s body to feeble quivering flesh. Chloe, Seema’s first lover, if not her first love.

  What a day it is! They hoot and toot their way around early 1990s London. They scatter leaflets over bewildered disapproving crowds. They descend on Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street and pose with mannequins clad in lacy underwear in the lingerie department. They take over squares and circle fountains chanting, “We’re here, we’re lesbians, get used to it.”

  For the pièce de résistance, they head to the Tate, and in front of Rodin’s The Kiss, they stage a kiss-in.

  “Babe, shall we?” Chloe murmurs, her tongue in Seema’s ear.

  Seema hesitates only for a moment. She’s come a long way in the few months since she’s been recruited—We recruit! screams the Lesbian Avengers’ tagline—and taken under Chloe’s wing.