A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  “I have to go home.”

  “Now?”

  It is a five-hour drive and it is already eleven at night. Tariq’s concern appears genuine. He has been so open with her. Maybe she will allow herself to become closer to him than she has been to anyone. But how can she be certain he will not look unkindly at her family?

  “Do you want me to come with you?” he asks.

  He is good-hearted. She is grateful. She lifts her purse and grabs her keys and shakes her head no.

  * * *

  THE SKY IS pale by the time she arrives. In a daze she enters her house and at this hour, even the furniture appears at peace. Sofas draped with white sheets. The plants growing in their pots by the staircase. The shoes left by the door. No one knows she has come. Even she had not known she would until after she hung up with Baba, saying to him, well, maybe you should talk to him without anger and he would trust you too, which she regretted saying—not because she did not mean it, but because instead of calling her batamiz, Baba had gone quiet. He had been slow to respond throughout the conversation and then he only said, yes, well, if you could come.

  Once she is home she heads straight to Amar’s bedroom, and he is there, fast asleep, his window wide open and cold air rushing in. All night she drove in a steady panic, not knowing what it had been like at home, not knowing if she was arriving too late. She does not know if her body is dizzy from the lack of sleep and excess caffeine or from the immense relief at the sight of her brother. She shuts his window, sits at the edge of his bed. A faint memory: the light gray, and Amar telling her that Hadia would always come for him if he called. Thank you God, she thinks, maybe I have been selfish, but You have allowed me to return before it was too late. She feels strange after the thought: it is how her mother would think to thank God, and Hadia considers her relationship to God to be slightly more sophisticated than her mother’s. But if God is the one to thank, then she will thank Him, and she stands from the bed and kneels on the floor, touches her forehead to the carpet.

  * * *

  IN THE GARDEN Hadia leans against the plum tree and Amar sits by her, pulling grass from the ground and dropping it like confetti. This time of year the plums are still small and bitter. Every once in a while her mother’s face appears at a window, but when Hadia looks again her mother is gone. Usually, being around her siblings is like returning to her original self, with no need to think of what to say or how to say it, but today she is hesitant. She is trying to get a sense of what the problem might be, or gauge the extent of it, but anytime she circles close to asking Amar directly, she retreats, afraid to anger him or lose his trust.

  “I didn’t mean for it to be like this,” he confesses.

  “Like what, Amar?”

  “I can’t describe it.”

  “Try.”

  “I know you don’t trust me.”

  “I trust you.”

  He plucks blades of grass, then lines them up on his palm.

  “I owe somebody money.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I know you don’t trust me, Hadia.”

  “I do, Amar. Who do you owe? For what?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  He flips his palm and some of the blades fall to the ground. Others stick to his skin and he shakes his hand. She rests her forehead against her palm.

  “That’s a lot.”

  “Will you help me?”

  He is not looking at her.

  “I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “You’re a doctor.”

  “I’m still a student.”

  She tries to hide the hurt from her voice.

  “I’ll pay you back. I know you don’t think I will, but I will.”

  “I know you will.”

  “You do?”

  He looks up. His eyes are wide. He is still like a child. He has not cut his hair in months and it falls into his face. She only saw him recently and she is alarmed by how much weight he has lost. His cheeks are sunken and his cheekbones even more pronounced. Is she a fool to trust her brother because he is her brother? Against her own instincts, her own intuition, because she wants to believe him, because she has known him his whole life and cannot fathom a change so drastic he would be made unfamiliar to her.

  “I do.”

  “Don’t tell Baba?” he asks her.

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I do. I knew I could ask you.”

  * * *

  A NEEDLE, BABA had said earlier that morning, when she first spoke to him alone in the hallway while everyone slept. Baba hugged her and she braced against his embrace, realized in that moment that she did not trust him when it came to Amar. He agreed, almost too eagerly, to let her speak to him first. He could not control his anger and Amar could not control his reaction to it, and they found themselves in unpredictable territory.

  “I don’t understand how he could sin so severely,” Baba had whispered, shaking his head.

  “Baba, sinning does not even matter anymore, not in the face of this.”

  She was speaking with such little patience. Baba blinked at her. Hadia sensed a new space opening between them—a space in which he looked to her for answers—and realized she could say anything. Was it respect that allowed Baba to listen to her now, or desperation? Right and wrong, halal and haram—it was her father’s only way of experiencing the world. She should do what she could to bridge the distance between his understanding and Amar’s actions.

  “Baba, what he is gambling on is not just his standing before God. This is much graver. This is about him surviving this life, here.”

  She had never seen her father so bewildered, so helpless. And she found herself not wanting to protect his weakness, as she might have hoped, but wanting to attack it, wanting him to blame himself the way she faulted him.

  “You cannot approach him now as you always have,” she said.

  “Tell me how.”

  “You cannot get angry. It will only make everything worse.”

  Baba lowered his face and nodded.

  * * *

  HUDA IS READING in her bedroom when Hadia steps in. Hadia says nothing as she crawls into Huda’s bed, lays her head in her sister’s lap, curls her legs up close to her chest, and tucks her hand between her knees. Huda rests her hand on Hadia’s shoulder and its weight is comforting. Huda’s breathing somehow calms her. Hadia closes her eyes and listens to the sound of pages turning. It might be just the two of us from now on—the thought comes to her just like that, and the force of her grief at having thought it surprises her.

  “Is this what was always going to happen?” Hadia asks.

  Huda does not have to ask her to explain. She runs her hand through Hadia’s hair in the exact way she always wanted Mumma to, and what is clenched tight in Hadia breaks and somehow she is crying.

  Huda speaks at last. “I think at some point it could have been different, for him, for us, but now I don’t know.”

  “What point?”

  The sound of Mumma watering the lawn drifts in through the open window and Hadia pictures Mumma covering the green hose with four fingers so the spray fans out.

  “I always thought Amar stopped trying after the shoes. His attitude to Baba was different. He stopped calling him Baba. That was the year he was held back, remember? He stopped wanting to want anything at all.”

  It comes at once, and so vividly: the posters, the petition, the speech, the spelling test, Amar kicking his legs back and forth seated at her desk, biting the yellow pencil until the paint chipped off, the rest of the house fast asleep as Hadia held the banister, stepped into the dark downstairs and knocked against the door of Baba’s office.

  Huda continues, “After that I noticed his pattern: he begins to try, only to feel, at some point, helplessly unable to continue, like he deci
des for himself there is no point in trying.”

  The curtain moves back and forth. The fabric of Huda’s trousers are wet from her tears. Mumma turns off the hose.

  “You’re going to make a good teacher,” Hadia says to her, and Huda mouths a thank-you, and wipes Hadia’s cheeks.

  How were they to know the moments that would define them? It will affect his personality for his whole life, someone is saying to her, and whose fault will it be then?

  Mine, a voice replies, and the voice is hers.

  Now her brother was in danger of having nothing. And now she wanted nothing her brother could not have: not the exams her teachers handed back to her winking, not the accolades, not the watch that had been gifted to her—she was glad it had disappeared—not the career she was building or the space opening up between her and Baba that told her he finally respected her as an adult and would rely on her the way a father might a son. What had she done to her brother, so that she could survive, so that she could be the one who thrived?

  * * *

  SHE IS IN the living room when she hears the arguing: Amar and Baba, though she can’t make out their words. She sets her mug down. She had told Baba he could not get angry. She had made it absolutely clear. They needed to proceed carefully, thoughtfully. She looks back at Mumma, who has been preparing dinner in the kitchen, and Mumma has also heard. They meet each other’s gaze and it is clear neither knows if they should run upstairs and separate them. Mumma sets down the bowl, massages the back of her neck.

  Then there is the sound of a loud crash: the thud of a body hitting a wall, a human noise that chills her because it sounds so animal, then glass crunching, and another crash Hadia imagines is a frame falling to the floor. Hadia thinks she will be sick. Mumma rushes past Hadia and up the stairs, and Hadia stands absolutely still, not wanting to climb the steps and look her father in the eye, not now that he has revealed himself to be a man who cannot control his anger even in the face of so fragile a moment.

  When she finally does climb the stairs, Baba is standing in the hallway, a dazed look on his face. Amar’s chest is heaving, he stares unfocusedly at the carpet, all the scattered glass. She was right: it had been the sound of the large frame falling to the floor. Mumma kneels to pick up the shards of glass, drops them one by one into her cupped hand.

  Mumma is the only one who speaks, her voice so hoarse and unsteady it frightens Hadia. “Enough of this now. I’ve had enough.”

  * * *

  IT IS ALMOST dawn when she is woken by the sound of a closet door being opened and the creak of Amar’s floor.

  “What are you doing?” she whispers when she opens his door and sees him, though it is clear what he is doing: he grabs shirts and jeans, he discards some clothes on the floor and throws others into a black duffel bag. After he has finished rummaging through the drawers, from bottom to top, and left them open like a thief, he takes a step back, rests one hand on his neck, and scans his room as if checking what else to take.

  “You know I can’t stay here anymore.” He speaks with his back to her.

  She shuts the door gently behind her, intending to reach out and touch his shoulder, pick up the clothes from the floor, and return them to the drawers, but she stops herself. What surprises her is that this is a moment she recognizes. Not that she has seen this sight. But that maybe she has always feared that one day this is how he would react, that there would come a time when there were words exchanged and actions executed that neither he nor their father could recover from. And maybe there is a part of her, cruel and unforgiving, that has been waiting for Amar to realize what she has sensed all along: that there is no place for him in their home.

  Amar looks wildly around the room. He is trembling. Very soon it will be time for fajr. Just a day ago she had returned at this hour and thanked God for the sight of him sleeping. Now she wonders if she was called home not to intervene but to say good-bye. She takes a seat on Amar’s unmade bed, pulls a pillow toward her, and wraps her arms around it. Amar kneels on the floor and zips his duffel bag. He puts on the jacket with the ripped inside pocket. He grabs his backpack, steps up to his window and touches the surface of his windowsill.

  When he finally turns away he takes a seat beside her. They do not speak. He seems at this moment so much taller than she.

  “Tell them I went for a run if they ask.”

  Only Amar would think a lie like that would be believed. Her pride or fear keeps her from asking when he will return.

  “At night, if they ask where I am, tell them I am staying at a friend’s house for a few days. When they want to look for me tell them I’ve left. I’ve moved. I’m not coming back. I’m sorry, Hadia, but can you do this for me?”

  She will come up with what to tell them herself, but even so she repeats his steps. Gone for a run, gone to a friend’s house, gone to a new city. Moved, not coming back, leaving them, leaving her.

  “Hadia,” he says, and his hand grips the strap of his backpack so tightly it looks like he is forming a fist.

  She shakes her head. She does not want to hear his explanation, does not want to be convinced he is right to do this.

  “What are you waiting for? If you’re really going to go.”

  She speaks so sharply she surprises herself. And it has worked: she has hurt him. But there is something about the determined look in his eyes that hurts her more, something that tells her he is serious, that there will be no dissuading him. Once she glimpses her fear, she follows it to its worst conclusion, and now she wonders, What if this is the last time I see my brother?

  “We both know what it is you are doing,” she says, kindly this time. “Do you think leaving will help you? That if you leave you can have a healthier—”

  She stops. She had thought his face would harden. But he considers her words.

  “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But if I stay, I’ll only continue to hurt them.”

  He watches her profile. Soon the dark outside will begin to blue.

  “You should go before they wake for fajr,” she whispers.

  Amar nods. He has been waiting for her to give him permission. Her words are enough for him to know she will do what he has asked of her. He stands and lifts his duffel bag.

  “You have a plan?” she asks. “A place in mind?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  She has no more money to offer him.

  “You will call me? If you ever need anything.”

  He nods and twists his mouth. He looks like a boy afraid, having made a decision he does not know how to execute. He stands in the doorway with his backpack hanging over one shoulder.

  “If I could make myself change, Hadia, I would. If I could be like you, or Huda, if I had a choice, I would change in an instant.”

  “I know, Amar.”

  “I know it is hard for them. But it is hard for me too.”

  “Maybe it will be easier where you’re going. Or maybe it will get easier for all of us in a few months, or years.”

  He smiles a little. She does too. Then they are quiet again. She can tell he is stalling, that there is something he is trying to find the words for.

  “You’ll take care of them?” he finally asks.

  She knows what he is asking of her, to be there for their parents not only in the aftermath of his departure, but also in the distant future—and isn’t this exactly what she had wanted as a girl: to be the one they depended on, for there to be no difference between daughters and sons? Now she cannot even look at him as she nods. She blinks and blinks and refuses to let herself cry. She tells herself that when he leaves, she will not go to the window as she has before. Will not want to watch him get into whichever car has come for him, knowing he hasn’t asked her to leave his window open. She’ll fall asleep in his bed, and Amar will continue on with the friend she doesn’t know, on his way to the city he doesn’t
offer to name. There is no time for him to walk out beneath the Quran. And she does not know if he would even care to. But still, she steps forward, raises her finger a little and asks, “May I?”

  He nods. He ducks a little so she can reach and then closes his eyes. She traces it slowly, tries to get the Arabic exactly right, wishes she knew the prayer her mother would whisper to accompany the gesture. He does not flinch. He looks peaceful, even. Please God, she begins her own prayer.

  9.

  WEEKS AFTER THEIR MEETING IN THE TUNNEL, AMAR STEPS from a party into the basement for a moment alone. He has not heard from Amira in almost three weeks. Every day he had awoken hopeful that she would break the silence but by night he had known. In the basement he watches a man lift and lower a credit card so fast it is like he is mincing dust, then sweeping coke into a swift and delicate line, and Amar is alarmed by the sudden presence of a thought: I’ll try anything just to not feel this way anymore.

  He knows then that if he does not try to win Amira back, she will be lost to him, and he too will be terrifically lost. Upstairs, the music is so loud he can feel the beat in his stomach. People are dancing in the dark, smelling of sweat, and he walks past them all until he finds Kyle, their designated driver. Can you drive me somewhere? Amar asks him, and he even says please.

  “Tell me this is not about her,” Kyle says. All of his friends refer to Amira as “her.” They know not to say anything negative, but they have made their opinions clear too: that Amar and Amira would never work.

  “Who else?” Amar says.

  Kyle shakes his head. “I told you, she’s not good news. Just stay here.”

  The song changes. People from the other room cheer. The beat thrums in his body.

  “Fine,” Amar says, “I’ll ask Simon.”

  He starts to walk away. Kyle grabs his arm and holds him back.