by Nawaaz Ahmed
What Seema would like to say: I want to know what you see in me. Why do you want to be with me?
She senses the futility of the question, for no one could answer it fully, truthfully. At best an answer would contain truths, half-truths, and fictions one wanted to believe. Leigh has answered before: because Seema is beautiful, Seema is resilient, Seema doesn’t let the world push her around.
But her resilience has come at the expense of keeping everyone at bay. She recalls her family, her friends, her lovers, her homes, the many she’s left behind or escaped from, so easily, so cavalierly, over the years. Only to foolishly grasp at the next whoever or whatever offers passing succor. Like Divya, and perhaps even Bill. At least she has resolved the matter with Divya: yesterday, after the meeting at the campaign office, she’d told Divya she shouldn’t have led her on, that she has no current intention of leaving Leigh.
If Leigh asked her the same question, Seema might reply: because Leigh is at ease with the world, Leigh makes life look easy, Leigh makes her happy.
She only knows how to fight the universe, as if there were no other way to access its secret store of happiness. Leigh is one of these afternoon revelers, who know what they want and are willing to accept it when offered.
If Seema were forced to be more truthful, she’d have to add: because Leigh also reminds her of her first and truest love, because she also fears having to bring up a child alone.
Perhaps it’s better to accept without scrutinizing the reasons too deeply, to not try to separate them into truths and fictions but value them as a whole. Much like religions do—she’s thinking now of Tahera—like faith does: For isn’t love just like religion, this faith in someone other than oneself to help steer through the flow and ebb of life, to give meaning to life?
“I’m thinking about you,” Seema says.
“What about me?” Leigh says.
“I’m thinking I can’t go through the delivery without you by my side.”
This at least is the truth. She is not promising anything beyond it—she cannot. She will speak to her mother—and if needed, her sister—about this. “I’m so happy,” Leigh says, but quietly, resting her head on Seema’s shoulder.
It must count for something that she, in some way, contributes to Leigh’s happiness. She takes Leigh’s palm and presses it to her belly. “Feel how strongly he kicks. He’s ready to meet us.”
It’s a signal of my growing distress, but they don’t know that. The sun is setting behind them, the city is flaring in front of them. She holds Leigh’s palm there, as they sit in their favorite spot—steeped in light that’s growing thick and darkly honeyed now, under a sky that sings in reds and oranges, then in pinks and purples. My two could-have-been mothers watch as the city first bursts into flames, then dies to ash-blue embers.
28
Tahera is on the terrace, the dinner ready, the kitchen cleaned up, seeking a moment to herself before Seema’s friends arrive. But she must call and check on her children, and she’s stressed, too, by how to tell Ismail about Seema’s will. The usually restoring namaz is not a possibility today, and her body is leaden with exhaustion, having plowed through the day’s exertions while battling her period.
Over the phone, Ismail announces that Amina has been crying all evening, and he can no longer soothe her. “She’s not listening to anything I say. She wants you.”
Tahera hears Amina in the background: thin whimpering cries, different from the gusty sobs when she misses her mother. Drained of the energy to determine the cause of her daughter’s distress, she suggests that perhaps Arshad can calm her down. He’s so good with Amina.
“I’ve asked Arshad to stay in bed,” Ismail says.
“Does he have a fever? Why didn’t you call me earlier?” she asks, moved to guilty concern for having forgotten about Arshad’s illness until now.
“I can take care of Arshad,” Ismail says. “Just calm your daughter, please.”
She recognizes in the way he’d inflected his words—your daughter!—that he, too, is close to a breaking point. She braces herself to face Amina’s querulousness.
How is mother’s sweetheart doing? Why is she crying?
A jumble of sounds answers her: sobs, swallowed words, panic-stricken wails. Tahera can’t get a word in edgewise. Amina isn’t listening: she has created a wall of sound around herself to keep her mother out. This is no time for words or reason, the ways Ismail must have attempted to quiet her. She knows what her daughter needs at this moment, and the knowledge helps her overcome her weariness.
Tahera begins by hushing her daughter, patiently repeating the shushing sound over and over again, a little louder each time, like a rising tide. Next she croons a lullaby, from her own childhood days, the song she sings whenever Amina wakes up frightened by nightmares.
Slowly Amina responds, her wails giving way to sobs, then to sniffles, then to silence.
So Tahera asks, “What is it, Munni? Why are you so upset?”
“Bhaiya said I’ll burn in Jahannam for playing with the princess doll,” Amina says. Bhaiya snatched the doll with the tiara and threw it away. Bhaiya threatened to never play with her again.
Amina’s voice breaks, and Tahera is once more forced to pacify her. “Your Bhaiya would never do anything to hurt you, Munni. Did you bother him? You know he’s not feeling well today.”
To distract Amina, Tahera explains what happens when someone becomes ill: how germs invade a body, how the body grows feverish and the mind grows tired and irritable as white corpuscles in the blood fight the invading germs. Eventually her Bhaiya will return to his normal loving self.
“Please come home, Ammi, make Bhaiya better. Abba is upset with Bhaiya. He won’t even speak to him.”
Here Ismail interrupts, taking the phone away from Amina. In response to Tahera’s queries, he denies Amina’s report: Nothing’s going on with Arshad, the boy has perhaps been acting up a little, from not feeling well. When Tahera insists on speaking to her son—she must learn how he’s really doing, and besides, it’s so unlike him to frighten Amina—Ismail becomes evasive. She has enough to worry about with her mother and sister. Isn’t Seema’s delivery approaching? He’s taking care of this. What can Tahera do from there anyway? He’ll tell her when she returns.
Panic-stricken, like her daughter had been a little while ago, Tahera sputters: What is wrong with Arshad? How can she wait till she returns, worried as she is about her son? She has every right to know now.
Ismail finally tells her: Arshad was only pretending to be sick. Jemaal’s uncle Selim was driving to his construction site when he happened to see Jemaal and Arshad on their bikes during school hours. They wouldn’t stop when he called out to them, and he had to follow in his car to catch up to them. They gave every kind of excuse for being outside, and when he inspected their backpacks to see what they were hiding, he found rocks in them. They were planning to stone many churches in town. Unfortunately, by then they’d already inflicted damage on the church next to the mosque.
At first Tahera is too relieved to comprehend the extent of Arshad’s transgression: a broken window is surely a small forgivable offense. “Should we offer to pay for the window?”
“Do you want to call attention to your son?” Ismail chides. “The fools left a trail. They wrapped paper around the rocks, signing themselves Ar-Ra’d or some such nonsense. The police are investigating. One window, and the boys will be labeled jihadis for life, with the FBI after them.”
She hadn’t considered this. She blanches: What will happen if Arshad gets caught?
“We can only pray that nobody saw them,” Ismail says. He talks vaguely of keeping Arshad out of sight for some time. If Tahera were there to take care of Amina, he could take Arshad out of town. Perhaps he can coordinate with Jemaal’s father.
But what about Arshad? What do they tell him? Surely they can’t ignore what he did. What if it leads him down some terrible path?
“First, let’s get the situation under
control, then we’ll worry about that,” Ismail says.
“Let me talk to Arshad,” Tahera begs.
No, Ismail says, not now. “I’ve already spoken to him, but everything I say only seems to make him more willful, more defiant. We’ll have to be careful how we treat this. I’ll talk to Imam Zia. Arshad won’t listen to anything you say anyway.”
Ismail hangs up before she can protest. His matter-of-fact assertion that she can do nothing to help her son stuns her with its authority, its truth. She’s tempted to let his father and Imam Zia handle him their way.
But there’s this: the anguish in Arshad’s voice when he’d asked her, barely three days ago, “Why do they hate us so much, Ammi?” And she’d forsaken him, convincing herself his father was the right person to counsel him.
And also this: Amina’s voice on the phone, trembling at the mention of the brother she loved, her desperate plea: Come home, Ammi, make Bhaiya better. As if Amina sensed—but how? by what sisterly connection?—some fever waiting to carry her brother away, some tragedy poised to change their lives.
But what can she do?
What has she ever offered Arshad, anyway? A son to whom she has never felt the way she should feel toward a son and who, perhaps in retaliation, treats her with the same remote and ambivalent affection. A son who slipped away from her even as he slipped out of her, and now may be slipping away even further.
She’d been pregnant with Arshad during her residency in family medicine and felt resentful at the disruption to the career she needed in order to rebuild some semblance of the life she’d left behind in India. Following the delivery she’d left Arshad in Ismail’s care, to return almost immediately to her rotations. Had Arshad sensed her resentment? After her daughter was born, she’d smothered him with the same affection and endearments she lavished on Amina, but perhaps by then it was too late. She had to be content with his forbearance, his quiet eyes always watching her as though he could see through her.
She has failed not only her son but also her daughter, who loves him, whose happiness depends on him. Just like Tahera’s happiness once depended on her sister.
She recalls her mother’s words from the afternoon: Why do this to yourself, Tahera? You must learn to fit in. If not for yourself, at least think of your children.
Meaning: there is no one to blame but herself.
She feels it in her body, a sharp and searing pain: a grief deeper than she has ever known. For she’s not just grieving the past but also some cherished future for her family, which seems on the brink of collapse. It includes the losses of the past—a sister, a father—and the losses yet to come—a mother, a son, perhaps even a daughter. The grief comes upon her so suddenly that she has to grip the terrace wall to hold herself up, as though the bones in her legs have melted.
But no! The floor under her has vaporized. She’s hovering over the city of San Francisco, whose trees and houses and streets and hills are shimmering under her, awash in a fiery light she hadn’t noticed until now, as though the city were burning and its flaming tongues were leaping toward her, threatening to swallow her up. The scorching flames of the guilt and remorse of mothers, daughters, sisters, unable to love or incapable of protecting those they hold dear.
This is Jahannam, she thinks, this is how it feels to burn in hell. Jahannam is the fire of grief, Jahannam is the fire of guilt and remorse. And above her the sky blares its reds and oranges. The sky is a warning screamed at her.
How long does she stand there looking at—but not seeing—the city as it slowly turns to cinders? Here’s what she sees when the fire has finally burned itself out:
Up the street, two figures, hand in hand. The way one of them waddles instantly identifies her, even from this distance. At the apartment entrance, precisely below her, they turn toward each other and kiss. It’s a long lingering kiss, meant to satiate some deep hunger. Then they part and, amid laughter, disappear into the building.
29
Evening’s here, so come home please. I know no peace, there are no words for my heart’s longing.
Noor Jehan sings, and you, Grandmother, are struck yet again by the pathos she wrings from the words. You’ve listened to the song a few times since yesterday, but twilight is the perfect time for it—as the sky darkens against the windowpanes and the universe shrinks to the room you’re in, while promising to expand to the moon and stars.
“The resurfacing moon and stars revive your memory, pledges of your love,” Fiaz translates from the song with a sigh. “But that’s beautiful. Thank you.”
Eyes half-closed, you both listen to the song. It seems to you, Grandmother, that Fiaz too is no stranger to this long wait at dusk.
“Why do you thank me?” you say. “It’s I who am in your debt.”
“For introducing me to Noor Jehan,” Fiaz says. “I may never have listened to her otherwise.”
You’ve been waiting to express your gratitude since he arrived half an hour ago. But the words have been difficult to pin down: so weighty, yet they flit like wary dragonflies. He arrived with flowers—brilliantly colored gerbera daisies. He followed you into the kitchen praising the aroma of the biryani, peering into the dishes for dinner, lavishing you with fulsome compliments in high Urdu, which made you laugh. He then busied himself arranging the flowers in a vase and later prowled around the living room on the lookout for Seema, until the song cast its spell, and you both fell quiet in its enchantment.
“You are such a good friend to Seema,” you say. “You take such good care of her.”
“She’s like the sister I never had,” he says.
“Then you’re like the son I’ve never had.” You hesitate, then continue, “You’ll make someone a very good life partner one day.”
You stumble on the phrase life partner—how cumbersome it is. But that’s the only phrase you know and the only way you’re comfortable talking about what you think of as his condition. You can’t look at him as you speak, so you gaze out the window. You wonder if he’ll acknowledge your clumsy attempt at declaring your acceptance.
“That’s the nicest compliment anyone has given me,” he says. “I have a partner. He knows how lucky he is to have me.”
There, it’s said. Now an uncomfortable silence settles as you both readjust to this new intimacy.
You cough. Fiaz clears his throat and wonders aloud: Why isn’t Seema back yet? And where is your other daughter?
You say Tahera is still on the rooftop. And Seema and Leigh should be back soon.
You peer out the window, as if expecting to see them from up here. And having taken one plunge, you’re primed for the next: “Are Seema and Leigh partners?” you ask.
The alarmed look on Fiaz’s face is sufficient confirmation. You feel guilty for putting him on the spot, but how much longer could you have held back, after your suspicions were aroused by the way Seema and Leigh sat primly sipping their chai, like the many times you’ve witnessed Seema and Tahera put on a show of innocence after having concocted some mischief? The air around them had crackled with some shared secret.
“Seema didn’t tell you,” Fiaz replies, half question, half statement.
You’re grateful again to Fiaz for not evading you. “I guessed.”
He comes and stands beside you. “What are you thinking, feeling?”
“I’m glad,” you say. But it’s only a half-truth. You’re sad, too. It explains what happened between Seema and Bill, but you don’t understand it any more than you did years ago. “If it makes her happy. And it’ll be better for the baby.”
How challenging your promise from last night is turning out to be: to try to understand Seema. “Please don’t say anything. I’ll talk to her later, when we’re alone.”
You wipe your eyes and turn away from Fiaz: “Are you hungry? Maybe I should start heating the food.”
Luckily, Seema and Leigh trip in, with apologies for being late: the sunset was so breathtaking they couldn’t drag themselves away. Both of them glow, as though
they’ve bottled up the last rays of the sun and brought it in with them.
“You said you were going for a short walk,” you chide Seema.
You chide Leigh, too, for breaking her promise to bring Seema back early. She listens meekly, and you feel like a fretful mother-in-law.
After helping Seema to the futon, Leigh takes the chair opposite. They continue their pretense of being only friends, carefully monitoring their behavior for any slips.
You want to tell them: I know, so you don’t have to hide any longer.
You want to say: Leigh, you should sit next to Seema.
You want to see them together, so you can reassure yourself of the value of what they have together—love, if that’s what it is. But Grandmother, you don’t, because—
“Where’s Tahera?” Seema asks, looking around.
30
It’s a while before Tahera returns to the apartment.
Nafeesa says, “What were you doing on the rooftop for so long? I even sent Fiaz to call you. You look chilled, dressed so lightly.”
Tahera gives no answer. Yes, she’s almost numb, but the warmth of the apartment is more jarring than welcome. She’d been pacing in the cold pale reality of the rooftop with only the moon for company, like the many times as a girl in Chennai, but there was only so long she could avoid the gathering in her sister’s home.
Fiaz rises to greet her, Leigh waves. Tahera returns a perfunctory smile, a mere tightening of her lips, and fends off her mother hovering about her: “I have to pray my isha namaz.”
Ignoring everyone in the room, she rummages through her suitcase for a fresh set of clothes, a fresh pad, then heads for her shower. A wadu will not be sufficient today, she will need to do a full ghusl. Her period isn’t over yet, though the major flow has perhaps ended, but there is still some bleeding. But she can no longer go without her namaz. She needs its strength to face a world that feels even more hostile than it did just yesterday, with everything that has happened since the news of the arson. The room, with Ammi and Seema and her friends, feels almost like a battlefield she must steer through warily.