A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  She released the hair from her bun: her nervous habit, any lull in a conversation and she would take her hair down or tie it up again.

  “What had we been thinking?” she said quietly, leaning her head back and speaking to the sky, her neck stretched in the moonlight. “Approaching one another so openly, just asking to be seen. We should have never spoken to each other, if a proper way is what we wanted, we should have just waited for each other in silence.”

  He followed the curve of her neck until it plunged into her shirt, then looked away.

  “No one saw us. I just needed more time.”

  “You still don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  Again she looked at him as though the sight of him pained her, and he was suddenly afraid to know the answer.

  “I didn’t know how Mumma found out either. How she knew details. How she could describe a moment between us at our park and then strike me across my face.” Her voice was shaking. “I didn’t know until a year ago and Mumma finally told me, thinking that the vein had closed, but again I just wept.”

  She glanced at the door that led back to the wedding and then down at her arms that cradled her knees, still deliberating telling him. The wind lifted her hair. Amar held his breath.

  “Your mother knew, Amar. She came to mine. She told her to end things between us, for both our sakes.”

  * * *

  WHERE WAS HE? Her entire experience of the wedding was being overshadowed by worry for Amar. Dinner was done and all the plates cleared, Hadia and Tariq had cut the cake and it was being served, and still he could not be located. She had not seen him since the nikkah and that was almost an hour ago. What was most important to her was that he be there for the family photograph so she could finally replace the framed one that hung above their fireplace.

  “I’m going to go look for him,” she told Huda.

  People had just begun to dip their forks into their cake slices.

  “Mumma,” Huda said, “it’s your daughter’s wedding. Can’t you focus on that?”

  But Layla was already walking out the hall and into the lobby, where the appetizers and drinks had long been cleared away and now children from the wedding were playing. Layla stepped out of the hotel into the parking lot. She shivered. Nothing about the parking lot told her to look there. It occurred to her to look in the hall to see if she could find the Ali girl. Layla stepped back into the lobby and just when she decided she would go to Rafiq, she saw Amar walking down a long hallway and she rushed forward to meet him. The look on his face unsettled her. Something was wrong. She slowed her step. When he was almost in front of her, Amar looked up from the ground and lifted his hand, as if to stop her from coming any closer.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “What happened? You were doing so well.”

  “Am I a child that needs to be monitored?” he barked at her.

  She recoiled from his tone. His eyes were slightly glossy. He seemed to sway just a little. Had he been drinking? The question pierced her as she searched his face. She stepped closer to sniff for the scent of alcohol, but could only pick up the heavy stench of cigarettes. She pressed her hand against his chest and tried to calm him. He stepped back, swatted her hand away, her bangles clinking against each other. She touched her wrist, shocked at the force of his impact more than any dull pain she felt.

  “Amar?”

  “Hadia chooses who she is with. Hadia chooses someone who is not even Shia—and how do you react? You throw her an extravagant wedding.”

  He laughed an unnerving laugh, just one false note. He gestured to everything around him. The waiters clearing the cake plates averted their eyes as they walked past.

  “People can hear you, Amar. You’re yelling.”

  “Let them hear. Maybe then you will listen to what I am saying—all you care about is what people will think. What people will say.”

  It wasn’t true. He was just like his father, letting his anger cloud his judgment. She looked helplessly around the hall. The few guests who were there looked once toward them and then at each other, then returned quickly to the main hall, whispering.

  “I did exactly what Hadia is being celebrated for. No, I did what I thought was so important to you—I chose someone from the community. And I loved her, Mumma. I loved her.”

  His voice broke into a whisper. An instant dip in her stomach and she was sick.

  “Oh, Ami.”

  She tried again to place her hand on his chest and again he swatted her away. Another guest looked in their direction. Layla pinched the bridge of her nose. She stood with her eyes closed. She had not prepared for this, had never thought he would find out, especially not after so much time had passed. Amar swayed on his feet.

  “How could you, Mumma? You out of everyone.” His voice was hoarse.

  She had done the right thing: that girl was bound to break his heart.

  “You were working so hard, Amar. You were so determined. I didn’t want you to have a single distraction.”

  “You went behind my back. You ruined what I had been working for.”

  The dull headache had become a migraine. She pinched her nose again to keep herself from shaking.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered, and it was true.

  Huda approached them then, holding up her sari so she could walk faster.

  “What is going on here? People have begun to notice.” Huda spat the words.

  “Admit it. Admit that if it had been Hadia or Huda you would have reacted differently.”

  “It is not true. It is not why.”

  Layla’s voice was shaking. But she found she couldn’t look him in the eye.

  “Look around you. Look at how true it is.”

  The guest book fell to the floor, the table holding it up collapsed, and with it came crashing a flower arrangement, the flowers spilling out and the water from the vase darkening the carpet. Children who had been playing in the lobby stared. One of them started to cry and an older one lifted him up. They were going to tell their parents. There is a scary man in the lobby yelling at Layla Aunty and kicking the table, they would say. Layla could not move. Huda knelt to the ground and lifted the table up and straightened the cloth on it. She picked the guest book up and unwrinkled the pages that had bent, lifted up the vase and tried to put the flowers back in, but they looked so messy Huda hid them under the table. Acting on his anger seemed to make Amar calmer. He was breathing very heavily.

  “Please, Amar. People are going to come and look. I thought you needed to concentrate on your studies. You were doing so well. I thought she would be a distraction.”

  “You never thought I’d do well.”

  “Sachi, Ami, I swear I did.”

  “You wouldn’t have gone to her mother if you thought I’d do well, if you really believed in me. You wouldn’t have gone behind my back. You would have trusted that that could be my life.”

  “Come with me, Amar.” Huda grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him. He pushed her off of him.

  “Let go of me. You are all liars, backbiters, and you make me feel like I am the liar? You tell me that to go behind the back of the stranger is to eat his flesh? What about me?” He jabbed his finger to his chest. “I am your son. I am your son and you went behind my back. And you lied to me. And you tell me again and again that I am the one who has lied to you? I am the one who has betrayed you?”

  Layla felt as if she had been struck across her face. She wanted to hold him until he stopped trembling and yelling or she wanted to run to the bathroom, lock the door behind her, spend the rest of the evening unseen by anyone.

  “Amar,” Huda hissed, “why did you come if you were going to make a scene?”

  Huda gripped his arm again, tighter this time, and she shook it.

  “You all betrayed me. Why did you e
ven call me back?”

  He was staring unfocusedly at the ground, as though he had begun talking to himself.

  “Because we want you here,” Huda said.

  “You’ve never acted like it.”

  “Because Hadia wants you here.”

  Layla did not know she had begun crying until she moved her hand from her mouth and saw her fingers were wet. Huda held on to both of Amar’s arms until he stopped trying to fight her.

  “Mumma, go back inside,” Huda instructed her.

  “It was a mistake, Amar,” Layla said, her voice very thin, and she tried to reach out to touch him. “Please. I made a mistake.”

  But it only made him angrier. He twisted to get out of Huda’s grip.

  “Maybe who I am hurts you, Mumma, but I have no choice over that. But you have intentionally hurt me.”

  “Go, Mumma. Go back inside.” Huda was yelling at her now too. Huda let go of Amar for just a moment and pointed to the main hall. “Now.”

  Layla looked from Huda to Amar. She had never seen her son look so defeated and still so angry. Not against her. She turned around and walked into the hall in a daze, her hand over her mouth so tight it was as if she were keeping something from spooling out of her. Then the too-bright lights of the chandeliers. The cacophony of voices. The emcee taking the stage to announce the mirror ritual. A crowd of guests had gathered by the stage, and others sat in their seats, just waiting for a show.

  * * *

  SHE HOPED IT meant nothing that her mother and sister were not by her side as she was led to the mirror. Hordes of people gathered around the stage. As a child, this had been her favorite wedding ritual. It seemed the most bizarre and therefore the most magical. Once she was one of the girls who watched wide-eyed from the bottom of the stage, wanting to catch a glimpse: how the bride and groom sat with a mirror between them, facing one another, under a beautiful, sheer red cloth that shimmered, their gazes lowered and only lifted to each other’s reflection. It was a ritual that had come about in the days when one never even saw the face of their spouse before they were wed. It had been how her grandparents on both sides had first seen one another. By the time her parents had gotten married, it was a formality; her father had visited her mother’s home twice. They had never spoken in private but had seen each other from across the room. Now that it was Hadia’s turn, it was no more than a performance—she had memorized Tariq’s freckle beneath his eyebrow, the spot on his beard that grew in a swirl. Each generation lost touch bit by bit. By the time it was her children’s turn, would there even be a point?

  “Look,” someone said, and she did.

  She caught sight of her own reflection first. From the angle it looked as though she were looking onto the surface of very still water. Red cloth instead of the sky. Little specks of light filtered through the fabric. Then she met Tariq’s eyes, his upside-down reflection. It was Tariq, clearly and definitely, but it did not look like him. He winked at her and grinned and she smiled. The mirror was taken away, the red net removed and the room lit golden again. It was time for the photographs—one with each family until it was finally her family’s turn—and then it would all be over.

  * * *

  “HAPPY?” HUDA SAID to him in Urdu. She let go of him. The guest book had been placed back but the tablecloth was uneven; Amar tugged at it to try and straighten it. Huda made a typical Urdu joke about how quick Amar was to feel concerned about the appearance of the wedding. He shot her a dark look.

  “Come outside and speak with me,” she said gently.

  “I don’t want to speak with you.”

  “Then who do you want to speak with?”

  He paused to think about it. He was unsteady on his feet.

  “Hadia.”

  “Never me, nay?” she said.

  He looked at her. He felt bad. It seemed as though an explanation was being asked of him but he had none to offer. He was depleted. He had made Mumma cry. He hadn’t seen her for years, missed her all the time, and then on the one day he did see her, he had made her cry. He had kicked the stupid guest book stand. Some kid had even yelled it out loud. He was ready to go home, and that thought came with its own ache: where, exactly, was home? Huda led him gently by the arm to the parking lot, as if he were a child that had thrown a tantrum and was now being escorted out. But this was not a tantrum. He was justified in his anger. They had meddled in his life.

  “You don’t have to babysit me for them,” he mumbled.

  “What happened just now?”

  “Whatever happened, happened long before that.”

  “Ah, our poet Amar,” she said in Urdu, and hit his arm lovingly.

  They took a seat on the sidewalk facing the parking lot. Once he would have been irritated by her teasing. Now he was grateful for the sign of intimacy.

  “Couldn’t you wait until after the wedding to fight, if you’ve already waited so long?” She was speaking very softly.

  Past the parking lot, across the street, store signs blinked neon colors. A gas station, a liquor store, a store that bought and sold gold. He wanted to go back inside and find Amira, talk to her one last time.

  He wanted to leave this place and never come back.

  He wanted to begin this night again, wanted it to never end.

  “When did you become so smart?” he asked Huda.

  “I’ve always been.”

  He smiled.

  “Just me that trailed behind, then?”

  She touched his arm and left her hand there.

  “Let’s go back inside?” she said after a pause.

  “Not yet.”

  He placed his hands in his pockets. He still had some cash, at touch it felt like forty. He pulled out his cigarettes.

  “Do you mind?” he asked her. To his surprise, she shook her head.

  “You deserve one, after what happened in there,” she said, gesturing behind them to the hotel.

  He laughed and lit his cigarette and said through the corner of his mouth, “You’ve loosened up. And you’re the one who’s earned it, the way you handled us.”

  “Haven’t loosened up that much.”

  He laughed again. She was also smiling. He watched the smoke leave him and rise into the dark sky. He was careful to turn his face away from her to blow. He and Huda seemed almost like friends. Almost like they could be.

  “Mumma wants to take a family photo. All of us, at the end of the wedding, just before the ruksati,” she said.

  “The part when everyone cries?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you cry?”

  “She is my sister.”

  He tapped the cigarette and crushed the ash with his shoe.

  “Our sister,” she said.

  She was being very kind to him. He felt worse for expressing his anger.

  “What’s happening now?”

  “The mirror part.”

  “Which one of you liked that?”

  “Hadia.”

  “And when will it be your turn?” He looked at her.

  “Probably not for a while.”

  “Will you call me back for it?”

  She looked down at her wrists. She had worn silver bangles that matched the stitching on her outfit. He dropped the cigarette butt and watched it burn and then dim.

  “Why don’t you stay. Then I won’t have to call you.”

  He buried his face in his hands. He was not crying. He had fucked up phenomenally. He had yelled at Mumma in front of everyone. He knew that he should never have gone out to talk to Amira, but even knowing how he felt now he couldn’t much regret it.

  “Amar, can I ask you a question?”

  He nodded.

  “Is it better for you in your life now? Hadia and I wonder.”

  “Not better. Easier, maybe.”

&nb
sp; They watched guests with young children leave the hall and head to their cars.

  “Are you ready to come back?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you will come?”

  He looked at her. He nodded. She stood up. Straightened the pleats of her sari. When she moved light reflected off of each of the gems sewn into her suit.

  “The picture. Don’t forget. Our family will be the last to be photographed. Then the ruksati.”

  “The hard part.”

  “Yes, the hard part.”

  Huda began to walk away. He called her name and she turned back.

  “It was good speaking to you.” He cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “As good as Hadia?” She smiled.

  “Pretty close.”

  He winked, but in the dark he was not sure if she saw it. Then he was alone. The stars twinkled and the neon light across the street glowed. If he had known there was a liquor store he would not have gone back to the hotel bar. The last time he went, after Amira walked away, the bartender had kindly hinted that Amar could have only one more drink before he would be cut off. It was a hotel, he explained, they had stricter rules, it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t care. He paid. He held up the clear glass and looked at it like it would be his last—the golden and generous pour. He calmed just at the sight of it, at its weight when not yet sipped. Then his throat burned as if the drink could grow flames that spread to lick his insides.

  “I have to tell you something,” Amira had said, when they both knew they had to get up soon.

  He knew what it was going to be. He felt dizzy looking at her as she swept her hair to one side. He had loved her when she was a girl hiding behind her mother’s legs. When they played hide-and-seek, and he spotted her feet poking from beneath the branches, and he continued searching on purpose, not knowing why his heart thumped when he made the decision to keep looking. When she won the Quran competition at eleven, and how, when he heard her voice on the speaker reciting, he looked up and listened for once. And he had loved her when he was seventeen watching the birds on the telephone wire take flight, and she stood and stepped toward him at last, and only after that had he named it love.