Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  “I’ll keep watch,” Jemaal says.

  Arshad crouches behind the trunk of an oak tree, ready to sprint, a rock in each hand, looking back occasionally at Jemaal standing by the street corner to get a better view of the roads, which have a constant trickle of cars speeding by. Arshad’s bike is leaning against the tree, but he still has his backpack on—he’s worried removing it may delay the getaway.

  Twice Jemaal says, “Now!” But both times Arshad’s feet refuse to cooperate.

  “You have to do it as soon as I give the signal,” Jemaal says.

  He offers to take Arshad’s place, but no—Arshad steels himself—he will see this through.

  “Now!”

  He’s running, the rocks heavy in his clenched hands, the straps of his backpack pulling down on his shoulders. He’s out of the shadows of the oak trees, cutting diagonally across the lawn.

  The green of the lawn is a blur, the white of the walls flash past in his peripheral vision, the amber disk of the window hangs suspended like a full orange moon. He’s aware of little else—not his pounding heart, nor his pounding steps, nor his dark little shadow scurrying just half a step ahead of him. His right arm is already swinging, but he knows his physics: he’ll impart a velocity in an unwanted direction if he doesn’t come to a complete halt before he takes a shot.

  He digs his heels in, pivots toward the window, winds his torso, and releases. The rock leaves his hand and sings through the air. He doesn’t wait to see if it has found its mark, he’s immediately preparing the other projectile: wind and release again.

  Alas! He’s not ambidextrous. Even as the second rock leaves his left hand, he knows it’s going to fall short—the thrust is simply insufficient. But he’s already running back now, with hardly a sideways glance. He knows by the crack and clatter of falling glass that at least his first missile has been successful. He fumbles with his bike and leaps onto it.

  Whir go the wheels, whir goes the gray of the road beneath him—relief, then exhilaration, surging through him. Swoosh goes the exhilarating air. He’s vaguely aware of Jemaal’s bike nosing his, the splotches of sunlight dancing over him, the blazing disk of the sun as he emerges momentarily between trees.

  He races his bicycle down the block away from the scene of his triumph, zigzagging now as a delirious jubilant laughter bubbles through him. He wants to whoop, to let go of the handlebar and pummel the sky. He turns back to Jemaal who’s also huffing with laughter, even as he’s calling out to Arshad to stop.

  Arshad has only one regret: that he didn’t think to call out the takbir—Allahu Akbar!—as the rocks soared from his hands. The next time, he promises himself, the next time!

  24

  In San Francisco, Tahera wakes looking forward to a day spent with her mother. She now claims the dinner for Fiaz and Leigh as a gift Allah has bestowed on her, one of her last opportunities to cook a feast with Ammi.

  She’s grateful for it. She won’t let her knowledge about Fiaz distract her; his conduct is a matter between him and his Maker. Who is she to judge, besides, whose is the graver lapse? She’s ashamed now of the jealousy that had consumed her when she’d thought that he and Seema were a couple, destined for an open-armed welcome from their parents. Fiaz has been a support to Seema—she must have met him during her wayward days, which she must have renounced before her marriage to Bill—and Fiaz has brought joy to Ammi. What more can Tahera ask from a relative stranger? Judgment is up to Allah.

  Last night’s conversation with Ammi had been different from all the others since her arrival. Perhaps the music allowed Ammi to return to some earlier, less burdened time. Ammi didn’t try to bring the conversation around to Seema, like in the recent past, but instead persisted gently in learning what was bothering Tahera. She could finally let her guard down, about the events back home and her concerns for her children’s safety.

  Ammi listened, without the derision Abba and Seema might show for what Abba has often labeled the results of her “Allah business.” Her mother gave a look of understanding that Tahera had recognized and reciprocated: Look at what we’ve been forced to accept, what changes the world has wrought in us.

  Tahera holds on to that look, for the hope it brings her: to give and seek solace from each other, as many times as is still possible. The efforts of the day, and the trip, will be worth that reward.

  The day has already brought a few annoyances, but she’s determined not to let them bother her. Her period has been heavier than usual, and she’s had to change pads a couple of times already. Also, on her call with Irvine, Arshad seems sick, but hopefully not enough to be worried about.

  She’d like to start on the cooking, but her mother first insists she check on Seema.

  Seema has been experiencing a few contractions. The two sisters sit side by side on the bed, knees up, backs against the headboard. Tahera is glad for this moment of respite, before embarking on the long session that dinner will entail, for her heavier bleeding portends increasing nausea and headache throughout the day.

  Seema grimaces every time one convulses her, biting her lips to contain her cry, clamping her hands tightly around Tahera’s. This is the second one in the last half hour, and in between, the sisters have maintained a drowsy companionable silence to the sounds of Seema pecking away at her laptop. Tahera finds the pressure on her forearm, where Seema’s nails dig in, strangely soothing—it makes her forget her own discomfort.

  “And this is just the beginning?” Seema asks, after a particularly intense contraction.

  “These are just Braxton Hicks. True labor contractions will grow progressively closer and become more intense, lasting up to a minute.”

  “I can’t imagine how painful those will be.”

  Seema sounds scared. Tahera is reassured: here’s the Seema she’d grown up with, the Seema who’d turn to her in moments of pain.

  “You’ll be okay.” Tahera realizes, with some shame, that she’d looked forward to her sister’s vulnerability, the only moments she’d felt needed, and appreciated. “You can always take epidurals if the pain becomes too much. And we’ll be there as well.”

  A momentary bitterness: Who had been there for her, during her pregnancies? Her mother had wanted to come for her first pregnancy, but she’d refused her, aware of her parents’ disapproval of the life in Islam that she and Ismail were creating for themselves. And she’d been glad for it: going through the process with only Ismail and Islam for support had brought her closer to both. She had fallen in love with Ismail then, the way he and his faith steadied her, finding a peace in the rituals of their life together. And doing namaz together till the last moment had allowed her to get through the delivery without needing an epidural herself.

  But those times seem almost idyllic now, compared to what is currently happening at home. There are too many issues to reconsider. Perhaps the expansion of the Islamic center is misguided, and perhaps Ismail should rethink his involvement with it. And how to protect Amina and Arshad if the situation escalates? Maybe it wasn’t the wisest decision to send them to an Islamic school. Maybe they should dress less differently, less conspicuously in the future—

  But pondering these issues serves no purpose other than to aggravate her headache, sapping the energy she wishes to reserve for the day.

  “I have to go help Ammi with the dinner,” she says, pushing herself off the bed.

  “Tahera, wait.” Seema restrains her. “I need you to witness this.”

  Seema reaches over, awkward in her bulk, to pull a folder from the bedside table. She takes a printed sheet from the folder and fumbles in the drawer for a pen.

  “It’s my will—it names you as Ishraaq’s guardian.”

  Tahera holds out her hand, and Seema hesitates but gives her the sheet. Tahera scans it without really taking it in, except for the line where her name appears: printed like the rest of the sheet. “You already made this?”

  “I like to be prepared. You’re still willing?”

  “Am
I allowed to sign this? My name appears in the will.”

  “I’d like something signed before I go into labor. I’ll ask Fiaz later.”

  But Tahera hasn’t spoken to Ismail yet. She hadn’t expected to be confronted by anything official so soon. Also, she’d meant to clarify with Seema the matter of her child’s upbringing in Islam. Tahera cannot agree to anything else, of course. But given the events in Irvine, she’s not prepared to have that discussion now, when she herself is conflicted about the wisdom, though not the rightness, of some of the choices she’s made for her children.

  Meanwhile, not waiting for her answer, Seema has uncapped the pen and sprawled her signature across the bottom of the page. Then, while extending them to Tahera, Seema calls out to their mother, “Ammi, can you come in here for a minute?”

  Perhaps Ammi would object to the making of a will today, deeming it inauspicious, affording Tahera a delay. But Nafeesa merely dries her hands on her saree and, taking the pen and paper from Seema, signs and dates the form as a witness.

  Tahera cannot refuse now: she cannot appear to be backing away from her promise in the presence of her mother. It has brought her mother some happiness in her last days, and she can’t take it away. She also cannot bear to introduce discord into today. She signs and dates beneath Nafeesa’s signature, trying to recapture the moment that had led her to accept Seema’s request: her face in Seema’s lap, her arms around Seema, with both Seema and the baby comforting her, each in their own ways. It had truly felt like Allah’s answer to her istikhara, that the guardianship and the renewed intimacy with her sister were right and good, for both Tahera and her faith.

  And with this signature I formally gain a could-be mother.

  25

  Grandmother, you’re glad to get the day’s preparations started. There’s a mound of red onions and tomatoes to be sliced, bunches of mint and coriander to be picked, almonds to be blanched and slivered, garlic and ginger to be peeled and ground to paste, meat to be cleaned and trimmed. And of course Tahera is doing most of it. She keeps an eye on you to make sure that you don’t take on anything too taxing, and you keep an eye on her to make sure everything’s done right—she tends to slice the onions too thickly, for example, which won’t meld into the biryani as they should, but she blames it on how unusually pungent they are, making her eyes water so. Seema has closeted herself in her bedroom to avoid the fumes.

  It’s tedious work, and both of you labor quietly through the morning, you making light of your aches and pains and she of her period-related discomforts, so you can embark on the actual cooking in the afternoon. She has mentioned a few times already that she’s lucky to be able to learn from a master, and you hope you haven’t lost your touch.

  You begin with trepidation.

  But how redolent Seema’s apartment soon becomes, Grandmother! First the toasted aroma of oil being heated, then the roasted sweetness of frying cardamom, cinnamon, cloves. Then onions fried till they’re translucent, then the meaty ginger and garlic, then green chilies and fragrant coriander and mint. How the odors harmonize, how they swell and fill the apartment.

  Seema says, coming out of her bedroom, “We’ll never be able to get rid of this smell now.”

  But she’s not complaining—her eyes are closed, a beatific smile plays on her lips. She decides to work at the kitchen table too, finishing her edits on the matter for the campaign. There’s the spitting and sizzling from the pots, the occasional splutter of some whole spice exploding, and overlaid on these, the sounds of mothers and daughters working: chopping, stirring, typing, murmuring questions and directions.

  By unhurried stages the distinct aroma of biryani assembles itself, at first fugitive and evanescent, but then lingering longer and longer, as though being coaxed out like a shy child.

  Seema is overwhelmed. “This is too much. I’ll be so sated by the smell that I’ll hardly be able to eat any of it.”

  You know what she means, how filling just the aroma can be—you and Tahera will be content with just a taste of the biryani when you’re done. Gratified by her response, you shoo her back to her bedroom. You taste for salt the simmering sauce of the yakhni that Tahera spoons out to you, you check its meat for tenderness and give your approval.

  You are relieved, though you still cannot be perfectly at ease until the very end—when the seal to keep the steam in is broken, and the basmati rice, added to the yakhni while still a little short of fully cooked, budded at the core, has absorbed the spices and liquids and blossomed to a perfect tenderness, releasing to the biryani its own distinctive fragrance. And this you will not know for an hour or more.

  Even Tahera relaxes. She’s been an efficient assistant all day, quick in executing your directions. But she’s also been dogged in her efforts, as though she cannot afford to smile until the success of the biryani is assured. She smiles now. She insists you rest, while she takes care of the remaining dishes. But you want your hand in every dish today. As a compromise, you suggest some music to lighten the afternoon, and she agrees, even to ghazals.

  So while Tahera gets the ingredients ready for the chicken, the crackling of Begum Akhtar’s inimitable voice, the breathy harmonium and the bright sitar, the comforting percussion of the tabla, infuse themselves into the kitchen as well. It’s your favorite ghazal: “Woh jo hum mein tum mein qaraar tha.” The understanding that we had between us, you might remember or not: that promise of steadfastness.

  It’s a song for lovers, but it seems appropriate to you this afternoon, so reminiscent of those long-ago festival days in Chennai with the house buzzing this same way. The magic of Begum Akhtar’s voice possesses you to exclaim that you wish your granddaughter would one day be able to sing this very song.

  Once again Tahera hedges, like last night, and you have to draw it out of her: Masha’Allah, Amina has been bestowed a supreme talent, the way she picks up songs after listening to them a few times, reproducing long melodies with a nimbleness of voice, even if she has to substitute words she doesn’t know with made-up lyrics. Yet the question of how—even whether—such talent should be nurtured is not easy to answer. It could be in violation of the Prophet’s teachings if it serves merely to distract and arouse—so the Hadiths say. Ismail himself considers it to be something best enjoyed as a gift, a source of private and personal happiness.

  You listen, old sorrows and frustrations resurfacing. You remember the first time you saw Tahera in a hijab, when she and Ismail had come to receive you and her father at the Dallas airport, your first visit after she’d followed Ismail to the United States. You were meeting Arshad for the first time—your first grandchild, two months old then—and though Tahera was holding the baby up, it was her face you couldn’t drag your eyes off, a face small and scrunched in the hijab’s clutch.

  Tahera has maintained that it was her decision to don the hijab. The decision to later robe her body in loose-fitting jilbabs was hers too, she’d claimed, for the freedom of movement it gave her, as well as freeing her from wasting time worrying about her personal appearance, time she could little spare after Amina was born. She has defended Ismail: Ismail held that he could advise her on the teachings of the Quran and the Hadiths, the various fatwas by learned Islamic scholars, but she must make the judgment call and decide for herself what is required by Allah, as must every Muslim, for Islam was revealed as a forward-thinking religion, meant for all ages.

  How different her life would have been if she hadn’t insisted on marrying Ismail. Even from America, as her father wanted, there were other proposals. But she picked Ismail. “What’s wrong with being a practicing Muslim?” she’d argued. At least she wouldn’t be led astray on sinful paths, like Seema. She’d forced you and her father to give in.

  “Why do this to yourself, Tahera?” you say. Meaning: Why burden herself with additional considerations, like whether the singing that gives one so much joy is a violation, or even namaz during one’s period if it gives comfort, as if life isn’t difficult enough already? />
  “Sometimes I wonder too,” she says, a little shamefacedly. “I worry I’m failing my children, especially with what’s happening in Irvine.”

  In the warmth of an afternoon spent in the kitchen, when everything—the smells, the sounds, the company—reminds you of an earlier time, a time when you were presiding, when your daughters would poke their excited faces into the kitchen to inhale the aroma and then pinch their noses shut “to trap heaven inside their heads,” ready to acquiesce to anything you wanted from mere anticipation of the treat in store, in that heady fog of nostalgia and relived memory, you are compelled to speak:

  Living in America is like living in an in-law’s house, you say. When one marries into another family, one needs to learn their rituals. One needs to adjust and accommodate, one needs to continue charming and beguiling well-wishers, one needs to win over naysayers and adversaries by surrendering a little, by learning how to become indispensable to their well-being. One cannot survive by segregating oneself, by giving others reason to treat one as an outsider. One survives by learning how to fit in.

  By the rigidity of her faith and practices, isn’t Tahera opening her family to charges of fundamentalism, especially at a time when America has good reason to be suspicious of fundamentalists? Isn’t Tahera making it harder for her children to succeed in America by not teaching them the skills they will need to flourish in its culture? If not for herself, she should at least think of her children. This is the lesson to take from the events in Irvine.

  While you speak, Tahera continues cooking—she chops, she stirs, she holds out the ladle to you to taste, she inquires about next steps. She doesn’t flare up, and you grow bolder and bolder in your pronouncements, heartened: maybe you are finally getting through to her.

  Too late you notice that her eyes have hardened. You’ve said more than you intended, led astray by some miscalculation about her receptiveness and a trick of time that made you forget where you are. An unease settles in the kitchen, like from the first day.