A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  In the garden, the oldest boy asked Hadia where her parents were, digging in the dirt with the edge of a long stick, and she said she didn’t know. Inshallah, God willing, they’ll be back and all will be well, he said, and Hadia thought that it was weird that a boy her age was talking to her like the grown-ups and she told him so. He shrugged and said he was just trying to be nice. He had green eyes and in the sun she saw specks of gold and orange in them. That was before Hadia started to wear a scarf, and she played soccer with the boys in the backyard, their lawn that was as wide as a park. He was rough with his brothers but slowed as he approached her and passed her the ball gently. That night Baba came back and told her to get her things and Hadia knew that Mumma was home. She was surprised to find that she didn’t want their visit to be over. Amar held her hand while they walked to the car and she turned around to wave at the boy whose name she had forgotten and he stood on his doorstep, waving back.

  At home Mumma was sitting on the couch and Hadia stopped walking when she saw her, because Mumma looked so much smaller. She looked back at Baba to see if he thought she looked strange too, but Baba looked as he had for the past few days, like only his body was with them. She felt obligated to hug her mother. Once Amar climbed into her lap he did not leave it, and he refused to look at Hadia. She watched the two of them, the way Amar followed Mumma, the way Mumma did not put him down but carried him from room to room even though he had become too old for that. Hadia ran upstairs and wished her mother had not come back, then felt so awful for thinking it that she began to cry, and she said to God, I am sorry, please forgive me. In the weeks that followed, Amar hesitated before responding to her, as though her presence now reminded him of Mumma’s absence. When Amar began first grade, and the school days grew longer, Amar would call Mumma to pick him up right after lunch, and he would go home early. But that made Baba too angry; he hit Amar once with the shoulder of a hanger and told him that he had to stop being a baby, that he had to stay in school for the full day like everyone else, and after that Amar had only called for Hadia.

  In the nurse’s room she takes a seat next to him. The tissue paper crumples beneath her weight. He thanks her, speaking in English again.

  “Your lip looks funny,” he says, twisting his mouth to one side.

  She presses her tongue against the bruise.

  “Is it from last night?” he asks.

  Hadia does not say yes. Recently, Amar has begun sensing when Baba gets even a little irritated with her, or with Huda, and he acts out in a way that guarantees Baba will only get angry at him. If Huda complains about the dinner and Baba gives her a look, Amar will chime in, say he does not just dislike the dinner, he hates it, until Baba is only looking at Amar, willing only Amar to test his patience.

  “It’s just a small bruise,” she says. The clock ticks. The nurse types in the other room, hitting the keys quickly and loudly.

  “Once there was a boy who cried wolf,” she tells him again. “The whole village rushed to his side. His sister too, who was afraid for him. But when they reached the clearing and there was no wolf, only a boy with a mischievous look on his face, people thought to themselves, Now we can’t trust this boy’s word. Next time when he calls wolf, wolf, wolf, we will look away. We will busy ourselves.”

  Amar blows at the hair on his forehead like he’s not even listening to her.

  “And eventually,” she adds, trying to make her voice very serious, “even his sister convinces herself that she should not listen to the boy, that there is no wolf, and she should just keep taking notes in class instead.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he says.

  “You don’t have to believe it, it’s the lesson part that’s true.”

  “What is the lesson?” he asks.

  “They stop going to help him. He gets eaten by the wolf because the whole time he said it was there when it wasn’t, so they didn’t believe him when the wolf actually did come.”

  Before she leaves, she will tell him that he has to stay in class, no matter how hard it is, and that he can’t disturb her classes anymore.

  “But you would not do that. You would still come,” he says at last.

  She gives up. She wonders how long she will have to stay until Amar is calm, until he is ready to go back to class. She rubs the marks her nails made on her arm with her thumb.

  “Why do you always do that?” he asks her.

  She pulls down the sleeve of her sweater until it covers the marks. She feels as though he has uncovered one of her secrets. She watches the hand on the clock move.

  “Hadia?”

  “Hm?”

  “Don’t tell Baba, please?”

  “I won’t.”

  They sit. There is nothing left to speak about. Even though he was lying about his tummy hurting, he holds two arms folded over it anyway. He really does look like a little teddy bear. His feet don’t touch the floor and he swings them back and forth. He leans his head against her arm and she looks at the poster in the nurse’s room, of the body and the food it needs to eat to be healthy, and she studies it, thinking that if she memorizes at least one fact, her time will not be wasted.

  * * *

  EVERY WEEKEND THERE are countless functions and family-friend parties, and Amar hates almost everything about them. The ceaseless small talk. The constant gaze of his father following him, making sure he is treating elders with respect, that he is not fighting with or being vaguely rude to the other boys his age. Or disappearing with the few he is friends with and offending the host, sometimes to smoke a cigarette a few streets away, sitting on the curb and complaining with them about everyone else, mints at the ready in their pockets. Other times just to drive to the nearest 7-Eleven and get a soda, despite the endless supply of soda at the party, just for the thrill of that ride, for that momentary escape, for the pleasure derived from the click of the ring pull on the can that is his, purchased by him in secret. He detests, most of all, the importance placed on maintaining a sense of decorum that feels stifling, false. Always the same menus, the same combination of dishes. Even the segregation annoys him—males confined to one side of the house, females to another, sometimes divided by a wall or a cloth pinned between walls.

  But still, he would go. Because Abbas would be there, as well as Amira’s other brothers, and maybe one of them would bring her up in conversation. He would catch snippets, little clues that he could piece together. From them he learned how she loved peanut M&M’s, because Abbas would purchase a packet for her every time he went to the 7-Eleven; and how she wanted to go to college on the East Coast in a few years, had already begun improving her grades and researching schools despite the resistance of her parents; how she hated the sports her brothers watched; how she did not shy from fighting with her middle brothers and that she demanded her parents treat her the same as them. And of course, he could not resist the pull of the possibility that she would be there, that he might catch the sound of laughter that was hers, note the shoe in the pile of shoes that was hers. If the timing was right, if all aligned, if he stood near the divider just as someone was passing with a tray of food or jug of water and they lifted the curtain, and if she happened to be standing behind it, maybe he would catch a quick glimpse of her, her delicate features, her slender body, always clothed in bright colors.

  Today, at yet another function hosted by a family friend, he walks into the backyard and leans against the rough wall. Young women have found seats at the garden table. One glance informs him: Amira is sitting with them, in the center, dressed in a midnight blue shalwar kameez, sipping Coke from an orange-and-white-striped straw, her hair cut shorter than he recalls. She is one of the few young women who does not wear hijab, does not even pretend to during gatherings. The young women are all laughing, as if trying to get his attention in obvious ways. He sees only her. The girls whisper among themselves and she looks up at him. She blushes. Looks away
. He turns to the thin telephone wires cutting across the sky, focuses on the little birds perched on them to avoid looking at her, and puts his headphones on and begins to play a song. His father had been engaged in a conversation with boring Samir Uncle—meaning he would be occupied for a while—but he still looks once to the sliding door to make sure no one is coming. Headphones alone are enough to ignite his father’s anger, an anger that will fester during the party, escalate to a fight in the car, and become a disaster by the time they reach home. He attempts to appear as though he wishes he were anywhere but here. He knows it is a lie. This moment. That one glance. The color that rose to her cheeks, the way it suited her—it is the best thing that has happened to him this week.

  When he thinks that his luck at being in her presence unnoticed is sure to run out soon, she stands. The folds of her clothes fall and straighten. She walks toward him. He tries not to look. Birds on a wire, one flapping its wings, rising into the sky. The girls she left, still seated at the table, have stopped giggling to watch her walk; they meet each other’s eyes, some turn to one another to whisper. Others would consider her steps indecent. He thinks her bold. Bold to stand, bold to leave the flock of women, bold to be beside him, at a gathering full of community members, all with a penchant for exaggerated, condemning gossip. Bolder, he thinks, than he could ever be.

  He lowers the volume of his song with every step she takes, just in case she speaks when she reaches him. And when she does speak, when she asks a question so simple—what are you listening to?—he realizes that though he may not have known it until that very moment, he has been waiting his whole life for her to walk through the crowd of whisperers and speak to him. Amira with her laugh louder than the others beyond the partition, Amira running in a game of tag in the mosque parking lot, so fast that neither he nor the other children playing could ever catch her.

  He removes a single earbud, keeping the other in, an attempt to appear nonchalant. He has been listening to a song he did not think anyone knew, had chosen it because it reminded him of her. He tells her its title. Her face lights up and she tells him that she knows it, her voice quickening. This must be how she is when she is excited, and sure enough she tells him she loves it, with such generosity of expression that it takes him by surprise, that someone could be capable of being moved, in that way, by something so small.

  He almost smiles. She asks him if he wants to know her favorite line. At the realization that there could be nothing about her he would not want to know, he suddenly feels shy, a word he has never used to describe himself before. He raises an eyebrow and waits. Unbothered by his reticence, she shares the line. He looks at her then and says, Mine too.

  It turns into a game. One question leads to another. Back and forth they try to find things that connect them. They have the same first initial, Amar offers this one—even the fact that his sisters shared the same initial had felt to him, as a child, like an exclusion. Do you like waking up before the rest of the world? Do you wake up in the middle of the night after a bad dream and find that you cannot remember it, but you can taste having had it? When you stand in prayer, with everyone, all in a line, does your mind wander? Do you try to break those thoughts, stop them, but can’t, and everything you’ve ever wanted to think about comes spilling out? Do you feel, then, like you are pretending, like you are the weakest link in the chain of worshipers? When you were little and you caught sight of the moon from the car window, did you feel like it was following you? And what do you see when you stare at the moon? Do you see a face, or Imam Ali’s name in Arabic? Does your father’s voice shake the walls? Would you run away if it weren’t for your siblings? Do you like to catch glimpses into strangers’ living room windows? Wonder what their life is like? Do streetlights make you sad too?

  At that she confesses, so unguardedly that he hopes he will remember it, “Sometimes I sit on my bed and focus on the closest streetlight when I don’t want to cry, when the day has been long, when I feel the stillness, that feeling of being awake when no one else is.”

  In this new game they do not respond to their responses, so he moves on to the next question. “What is one thing you’re afraid to lose?”

  Her mother’s sharp voice from the open sliding door startles them both before Amira can answer. Seema Aunty looks at the two of them and frowns. Amira rushes inside, aware that she has stayed too long. She does not dare turn back to look at him.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, HE stares out his window, at the quiet street and magnolia tree, at the streetlight a few houses down, and tries to picture her looking at one just like it. The moonlight illuminates the white-painted wood that frames his window. With the thin tip of a pushpin he carves out her initial, A, then realizes again that his is the same as he carves another beside it, and he feels as though he is committing his affection to the world, that a decision has just been made.

  He hopes that tonight is not a night that she has sat up in her bed and focused on her streetlight, hopes that the look her mother gave them when she saw them talking hasn’t led to trouble. And if she is awake, on the other side of the city, he hopes she can sense that he is awake too. He looks down at the initials, as if for the first time, as if he had not realized what he was doing until it was done, and he takes comfort in how thin the strokes are, how almost indistinguishable, how no one but he would ever notice them there, carved so close together that they appear not like two letters but an M with a line cutting through it, or two mountains with snow that has fallen on a straight line.

  2.

  LAYLA OPENS HER EYES TO THE SOFTEST MORNING LIGHT AND Rafiq’s face, so close and half obscured by his arm. He will remain asleep until their alarm rings or she reaches out to touch his shoulder. All night she woke to the dark, then blue light and knew there was still time, turned around to try and fall asleep again. But the light that comes through their still curtainless windows now fills their whole room, washes out the shadows. White comforter and white pillowcases and Rafiq’s dark hair and dark lashes and dark skin she often feels affection for—odd, to feel affection for the color of his skin, but it is true, there is something comforting about it. Layla feels nauseous. He is leaving in a few hours. His small suitcase is ready and waiting by the front door. Three days, two nights. The first time he has to fly to another branch, a city six hours away. It was a requirement of his promotion, from now on he would leave for days at a time, every other week almost, and Layla knows she should be proud of him and happy for what it has allowed them: purchasing a used car that would be hers, moving, just a few weeks prior, into their new home, an actual house, still oddly empty and quiet to her, as if it were a size too big, and Layla unsure if her life would ever expand enough to fill it. Soon, Layla will leave the warmth of their bed to pack Rafiq’s lunch, and Hadia’s and Huda’s too, and Rafiq will sweep Hadia off to preschool and Huda to a daycare they are trying for her because she also wants to have somewhere to go with a backpack. Then Rafiq will drive himself to the airport and she will continue unpacking in the empty house, attempting to create a home.

  What will it be like for her to fall asleep tonight without him? She cannot remember the last time she slept alone; before Rafiq, her bed had been an arm’s length away from Sara’s. Tonight she will be the one to go from room to room, closing windows and locking doors, checking them twice, turning off all of the lights. She will have to become comfortable driving at night—she has only ever driven in the daytime, when he was not there. She never thought of him as responsible for doing these things until now. She moves closer to her husband, breathes in his scent. So familiar that she never notices it anymore, almost five years into their marriage, unless she seeks it out. His most beautiful face is his sleeping one, no stern expressions, just eyelids, lashes, defined nose, jawline. She pictures those cartoon cottages in shows her daughters watch, where a woman inside the cottage throws open the shutters and appears at the window singing. That is how it feels today
to wake up and see his face, like a window in the room of her heart is being thrust open. Rafiq stirs. Layla shuts her eyes, not wanting him to see her looking at him. What is it about caring for another, feeling love, feeling affection, at times desire, that makes one shy? Even in front of her own husband she feels that hesitation of expression.

  “Is it time?” he asks.

  How he knows she is awake.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  She rises to wake the girls. Her sight goes black for a moment, and she stands very still, presses her fingers to her eyelids until she feels steady. She must be stressed, which is natural, they are all growing accustomed to the new home and the new city, slowly getting to know the mosque community. Hadia has just started preschool, three days a week for only three hours, but still, the emptiness of her home is new to her. From their doorway she watches her little girls sleeping in their shared bedroom. Who am I without them, she wonders, having become so used to them—her husband’s face in the morning, her daughters’ steps throughout the day.

  Her girls are easy to wake. She is a lucky mother. They do not resist or fuss, she only has to walk in and move the blanket off their bodies and they begin to blink, rub their eyes.

  “Wake up, wake up,” she sings, and leans in to kiss Hadia’s forehead. She taps her little nose, until Hadia sits up and yawns. Layla reminds her she is in charge of helping Huda with the morning routine: the brushing of hair, of teeth, the changing into clothes Layla will have laid out on their beds by then. Hadia nods. She is Mumma’s little helper. She rises to every occasion.