A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  “If you can bring me tea without my grandson Jawad seeing…They keep me on strict lockdown. It is surely a sin to live if it is like this, no sugar, no rice, no—” and he began to list what he could not eat anymore, but Amar stood.

  “Two spoons of sugar, please,” the man said, and winked at him, “and listen—generous spoons.”

  Amar rushed—partly because now Amira would be waiting, and partly because he wanted to bring the tea soon, so the man could savor it before his grandson returned. The food line was moving slowly, Mumma was occupied with checking the dishes and determining which needed to be refilled. And though he hoped he was the kind of person whose intentions were pure, he caught himself looking for his father as he carried the teacup back to the old man, hoping that his father would see who he was bringing it for.

  * * *

  HUDA SET PLATES down on the small table that had been set up for Hadia and Tariq. Tariq began to eat immediately and Hadia moved rice into the tikka sauce and blew at the fork before taking a bite. It was delicious but she had no appetite. The sound of the hundred guests talking echoed.

  “I really like Amar,” Tariq said between bites.

  “Everyone likes Amar,” she said.

  Tariq stopped speaking, sensing sadness in her tone. She had kept Amar from him—both his full story and its effect on Hadia, and Tariq knew not to pry, to wait instead until she was ready to share. The sense of dread that had seized her as she watched her brother merge into the crowd was gone, but its aftertaste remained. She moved the food on her plate around with her fork. It was true. Everyone liked Amar. To know him longer was to complicate the adoration one felt for him, the desire to do something that would make life easier for him, and that ache of knowing that there was little that would. She pressed the white napkin against her lips and dabbed.

  “You have a brother?” Tariq had asked her, the first time she mentioned Amar to him years ago. “You only talk about Huda.”

  It stung. There was something false to Hadia about the way she spoke to others about Amar, and so the more years that passed, the less she ever spoke of him. She found herself wanting to omit any hint of herself in the stories, so the undercurrent of them would be about Amar’s untrustworthy nature, Amar’s unhealthy tendencies, Amar’s secrets. But omitting herself had the opposite effect of what she might have wanted: instead of her friends being able to comfort her, absolve her, tell her that everyone’s choices in life were their own and Amar had unfortunately made tragic ones, she would hear their sympathies and feel nothing. Their words failed to reach the guilt she carried that she had hidden from everyone, even Huda.

  Hadia could draw no straight lines to the past. Could not pinpoint which of the many times he had leaned in to whisper into her hair, Don’t tell Baba? and she had whispered back, I won’t, and say to herself: this was the moment I first failed him, this was my part in his pattern. She could not say she had kept his secrets when it would have been better for him if she had told them, or that she had given away the ones she should have guarded. She could not excuse her competitive nature nor could she fault it. She could not say it was that Baba had given her the watch and not him, because she had always wanted it, had done everything to become the child who would receive it. The only guilt she could carry without questioning it or pushing it aside, the only thing she could land on with any certainty, was the simple facts of their lives tonight: that it was she who sat beneath the chandelier light adorned in jewelry, and her brother who roamed the hall wishing he were elsewhere—or worse, wishing he could be back and feel as loved, as welcome, as at home.

  2.

  AS AMAR APPROACHED THE COURTYARD HE FELT THAT FAMILIAR rush from years ago, the fear of being caught quickening his step, the promise of seeing Amira that made his entire body a single heartbeat. Clouds passed rapidly, hardly any stars were out, and the moon was so bright it seemed to have been placed just to shine a spotlight on them. Had he, even once, in the years he had been gone and the months before when they no longer spoke, doubted that he still loved her? Amira was seated on the cement floor. The red of her outfit appeared burgundy, the green almost black, the bells chimed when she moved, her lips were purple from the dark or purple from the cold, her hair pulled up tight in a bun, just a few stray hairs lit silver, and when she stood to greet him, the movement of her body attracted his entire attention, and though she waved shyly her smile was generous.

  Impossible. Impossible that he had ever stopped loving her. Not since his love for her first announced itself at that party years ago, when she looked up from the soda she sipped through her striped straw, and then walked to where he had been leaning against the wall, minding his own business. She had asked the first question and he, who did not like speaking to almost anyone, answered and then asked his own. He was only seventeen then. He had carved their initials into his windowsill that very night.

  “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind,” she said.

  “I thought maybe I had too.”

  He did not know why he lied so totally but it made her laugh.

  “How much time do we have?” she asked.

  Not nearly enough. But he shrugged, and they took a seat on the cement, cross-legged and not quite facing each other. This was where the hotel staff likely came to smoke; it was tucked away from the hotel and any window.

  “Let’s make the most of our time then and speak honestly,” she said.

  She was still Amira: taking charge, forming her plans out loud, so deliberate that anyone around her would be convinced they had wanted it before she even suggested it.

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “Three years, maybe more.” She did not pause before the reply.

  The air between them was changed from what he remembered—there had always been tenderness, but now there was a charge too. He was aware of his body and hers alone. Of course he had felt this before, but something about the tone of her voice, the way she looked at him and then away, made him think it would not be impossible to reach out and touch her. They had been children together and were so young when they began to love each other, he knew that when he looked back. Some days, in the life he had now, it seemed unbelievable that they could have had so ardent a love without ever touching. But that is what it had been. Now her shirt was cut low and a shadow gestured to her breast. He looked down at his hands, holding on to his knees.

  By now they both must have become different people. But what he felt for Amira—it was as though she had been tucked in a compartment in his heart that hadn’t changed, and seeing her now he knew it never would: he could return to her at any age and feel for her the way he always had. He knew, with such certainty it shamed him, that it would not matter if he fell in love one day and married—Amira would continue to exist as a love entirely apart. If ever they could resume, even just for an afternoon, if ever she called—a sin was not a sin if it were for her. A risk was not a risk.

  “What did you end up studying?” he asked.

  Do you like waking up before the rest of the world?

  When you were little did you think the moon followed you?

  “Psychology—with an emphasis in child development.”

  “Done with school?”

  She shook her head. She was beginning graduate school in the fall, she said she wanted to do research. She asked him what he studied. When he didn’t answer right away, the peace of her face was disturbed. She was being careful like his mother, not knowing what questions to ask.

  “I had to work. But I’ve saved a little money now, and I’m going to try to go back to school.”

  All of that was true. What he wanted now was to be honest with her. He had already lost; being dishonest would not win anything back for him now.

  “Mumma and Baba once mentioned you were in India.”

  She moved the row of her bangles down her arm then up again. Their
curves twinkled in the dark.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said, and she smiled as though she was proud she had intuited it. Offering her the truth seemed to relax her. Her eyes were as big as a cat’s in the dark.

  “What else did you think?”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t imagine you being convinced to do something you didn’t want to do.”

  He was quiet. He had wanted to change for her.

  “So,” she said, tenderly now, asking the one question no one else had, “where have you been?”

  Leaves circled beside them and then dispersed. The little pearls that dangled from her earrings quivered.

  “I was in a bad place after us,” he said. “You know me.”

  She winced. He listened to the scrape of leaves and wondered if it could be effortless, confessing it all to Amira.

  “I couldn’t go to class and if I did I couldn’t focus. I fought with my father more than I spoke to anyone. I was drinking a lot and I wanted something stronger.”

  He paused, not knowing how to continue. For years he had hidden his habits from her but feared she had known. He had always thought that was why she had ended things: not the excuse she gave of her parents, having hardly thought of them throughout their relationship—but that she herself had grown tired of waiting for him.

  “It got worse. I got into worse fights with my father. I wasn’t myself. Or if I was, I wasn’t anyone I recognized.”

  The beeping of the safe. Mumma’s pale face in the hallway. Hadia asking if anyone had seen her watch. Amira looked at him with fear and care and it was thrilling to see a reaction in her. Even if it was just sympathy, the least personal of investments.

  “Before I left, I started taking pills to silence this voice in my head telling me: you’ve sinned, you’ll sin again, home for you is a place you stand outside of, looking in. Eventually it felt like I had no other choice, or I wanted that and nothing else. There was one fight with my father I couldn’t take back. I moved to L.A. I wasn’t sure I’d stay, but I’m still there now. It’s hard to remember that first year. I worked temporary jobs. I helped move furniture. I kept what Mumma would call bad company. But about two years ago I met someone who helped me get clean. I was lucky. That voice had finally quieted, and I started to feel like I could breathe. Not breathe easy, just breathe. And now, if I do find myself walking alone, or by the ocean, looking out, and if I do think of God—I can’t explain it, Amira, but it’s different. It’s not that I am at home where I live now. But at least there, I am not the only one standing outside.”

  He was surprised by what he had most wanted to share with her. He didn’t mention who had helped him get clean. Realized he didn’t want to say her name. Even thinking of her next to Amira made what he had felt for her in the past year shrink.

  “I don’t understand,” was all she said, her voice small, like a squeak. “Clean?”

  Maybe because he needed someone to know, or maybe to watch her face twist to prove her care for him, or to give her an image that would haunt her the way she haunted him, he rolled up his shirtsleeve and offered her his arm, and even in the darkness he could see the splatter of dots following his vein.

  A dark, small speck. A permanent stain. So heavy and black it cannot tell good from evil.

  “Oh, Amar,” she whispered.

  She touched his arm. He felt a current shoot from his arm through his entire body and he jerked back, unrolled his sleeve, and buttoned it again at the wrist. Her eyes shimmered.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” he said, and his voice was rougher now, “not where I live and not what I did.”

  “We may not speak anymore but I have never, and will never, break your trust.”

  He wanted to believe her.

  “Do you still?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “Some days it feels like that was another life entirely. Other days I am so certain I will again, it’s almost as if it’s my destiny, as if I am in a holding cell waiting for the sentence to be handed down to me. But I know if I did, I’d never stop.”

  She looked at him the way people sometimes looked at him, as though their love for him were useless, a love that pained them more than it gave them anything in return.

  “I don’t see the guys I met when I first moved anymore. I got a new job and I work other ones on the side. I cook at a restaurant in town that has a good reputation. I’m good at it. It’s hard work, but I’m valued there.”

  He was not sure what she was thinking, if she was happy for him or if she was thinking what he imagined his father would, but she nodded at least.

  “Promise me you never will again,” she said.

  “I think it’s more important that I promise myself,” he said, and she half smiled at that.

  Every day he lived without it felt like an extra day he was lucky for, and he feared using now the way he had once feared his dreams—not at all in the sunlight but then it would be a certain hour, a darkening of the sky, and he was terrified that at night they would come for him again. She reached out her pinky like a child and like a child he took it. Again that current that lit his body.

  “Khassam?” she asked, the Urdu word for swear it.

  “Khassam.”

  She kissed her thumb and then he kissed his. She tugged his pinky tight for a second. Then she let go. He thought she was about to say it was time to go back, but instead she asked, “Do you remember that party, the first time we really spoke?”

  He remembered every question. He remembered how many birds sat on the line and how many took flight.

  “My friends had dared me,” she said, and even though it happened so long ago, he felt crushed, that she had not walked up to him of her own accord. “All the mosque girls thought you were something strange, always so quiet and by yourself, but I knew you from when you came over and I’d liked you for years. How you were good in a way unseen to them, to yourself, even. They didn’t think I’d have the nerve but I knew they’d given me a gift—under the guise of a dare I could do what I wanted to: just talk to you.”

  “A lucky dare.”

  “Even knowing all of what we know now?”

  “Especially knowing.”

  She smiled at him sadly.

  “You know my Mumma saw us that day. In the car on the way home I was scolded in front of my brothers, my father, I was so mortified. Abbas Bhai spoke up for me then, and he told Mumma to calm down. He said to her: of course they can talk to each other. You all are the ones who make just talking such a sin—and what do you expect? We see each other all the time and can’t even act human? Leave her alone, he said. Amar’s a good kid. He didn’t mean anything by it. Let her talk to him if she wants. So Mumma relented—she always listened to Abbas. Abbas was her moral compass when she wasn’t sure what to do. But I was still so embarrassed. I thought I’d never speak to you in person again.”

  “Until I came to your door the night—”

  “Yes. And you were the only one who comforted me even a little. I thought of how Abbas Bhai had defended you, defended us. Hearing the knock and seeing you of all people, and realizing how reassured I felt at the sight of you, even at that horrible moment, I thought it was some kind of sign.”

  They fell silent. She was going to break his heart when she got up to return to the wedding. He already felt it coming his way.

  “You know, Amar, our sadness might have looked different, but I was affected too. They didn’t want me to come tonight, did you know that? Mumma has often mentioned you over the years. To try and explain why she had been so harsh with me, or to point out how well I was doing now and wasn’t I glad that things worked out the way they had? But even if she was right, I’d still dissolve into tears. I’d hate her again like I hated her the first time she said I had brought shame to our family, and how that shame was worse t
han grief because I had chosen to bring it upon them.”

  He could not reach out to comfort her, even as it pained him to watch her bite and release her lips in the way she would when she did not want to be upset. He could only keep his hands at his sides, clenched into fists.

  She continued, “Once, Mumma told me you were my ‘open vein.’ You were the wound that, no matter how many years passed by, how much healing had been done, if prodded would open and bleed fresh again. But I assured her tonight not to be silly, that I could come. And no one knew if you’d be here anyway.”

  She looked down at her bangles, spun one around. He was starting to feel at the edge of a desperate sadness. He had already lost her. Seeing her now was like losing her all over again.

  “After they found out about us, Mumma and Baba took away my phone and my computer. They told me every rumor they had heard about you and I wasn’t sure anymore if what they said was true or a lie. ‘Do you want a husband who drinks?’ they would yell at me. ‘Do you want a husband who lies to you? How can a man who does not respect his parents ever respect you?’ ”

  She paused and looked at him, as if to see if her words had hurt him. Then she smiled to herself and continued, “Once I had loved you in such a way that even if it were all true it still wouldn’t change anything. If they were right—that you were headed nowhere good—that’s where I wanted to be too. You say that there is an entire year of your life you don’t remember, and I feel the same. They took me on a long trip, Syria, Iraq, then India. I felt calm on ziyarat. I felt, for the first time, that all was working out like it was meant to, that we were meant to part. But every time I held the zari I’d think of you and pray for you. That you were happy and doing well. That you’d gone to school and that you’d stopped drinking. I had no idea that it was much worse. I already felt so terrible, I don’t know what I’d have done if I had known. I stayed in India for a month. There, my life in California felt so far. I watched my cousins as they married suitable men and I noticed how there was peace between them and their parents, peace and unity that came from their listening. I wanted that peace. And I thought that maybe they would never feel for their husbands the way I felt for you, but theirs wouldn’t be a false life either, just different, and easier in many ways, and that is what Mumma had wanted me to understand.”