A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  “Do you remember the story of Imam Hussain as a child, and how he climbed onto the Prophet’s back during prayer?” Amar asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Why do you think we were told that?”

  Baba looked up, and then down at his feet. He shrugged.

  “To show us how much he loved his grandson,” Baba said.

  “But what if it was meant to show us more? What if we were meant to look closer?”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t know, Amar. I never think about things the way you do.”

  “I do think about things.”

  He meant it as a statement but it sounded like a question.

  “I know you do.”

  “Is it enough?”

  “I pray it will be.”

  Baba cupped his arms in his lap then lay them open.

  “I just wanted you to know that I remember that.”

  His father nodded. Was Amar crying? Is that why his shoulders were shaking? Is that why Baba’s hand was moving up and down his back, and he was pulling Amar close to his body? And Amar knew that scent. They are driving down a long street lined with lots of trees and it is exciting to be so close to the wide window, and Baba leans across him to turn the knob of the window until the wind slaps his face and that is the scent. Now his father was saying something to him, and Amar focused on his words until he heard that he was saying it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. He was repeating it like a prayer.

  How long had he wanted this without knowing it was what he wanted. It’s okay, his father said, his heavy hand moving up and down his back, and Amar knew that he was crying. He nodded into Baba’s arm and tried to close his eyes, but that made the spinning worse. Then he remembered there was a wedding, and the wedding was Hadia’s, and that it was why he had come. I have to go back, he thought. But he must have spoken it aloud because his father shook his head.

  “I have to go back, but you can’t come back inside, Amar,” Baba said.

  He had fucked up. It was apparent to anyone who looked at him. He nodded.

  “Will you go back now?” Amar asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  Baba did not answer him.

  “Why do you do that?” Amar asked.

  “Do what?”

  Amar touched his hand to his eyebrow and ran his fingers along the length of it, then back up again.

  “I didn’t realize I did it.”

  “You always have.”

  “I suppose I’m just thinking.”

  “I always thought it meant you were so angry you wouldn’t speak.”

  Baba shook his head. He looked up at the sky again, as if he were searching for something there.

  “It’s okay,” Amar said, repeating what had just been said to him, and he touched his hand against his father’s shoulder, because even in the blue-dark it looked like Baba was the one who was now about to cry.

  “Was your father a good father?” Amar asked.

  He did not know why he asked it.

  Baba was quiet. Then he said, “He was very strict. I was very afraid of him. He died when I was a boy, so I never knew if it would be different between us when I grew older. If he would be another way with me.”

  “I look like him,” Amar said.

  “You do.”

  Baba smiled a little.

  “Will you leave soon?”

  “In a minute.”

  Both of them looked at the moon in the sky. And the tiny stars. Amar shivered.

  “I don’t think I will make it,” Amar said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Of course you can’t come back inside, Amar—you can hardly sit up.”

  “No, I mean to the other place. The next place. I don’t think I’ll make it. I don’t think you’ll find me there.”

  He had left the path. His parents had given him a map, and directions, and he had abandoned it all. Now his heart was so ink-dark he could be lost and not know it, and not care, and never know how to find his way back.

  “Listen to me.” Baba held on to his arm. “You could never be more wrong, Amar. We taught you one way, but there could be others. We don’t even know, even we can only hope. How many names are there for God?”

  “Ninety-nine.”

  He knew all of this by heart. Didn’t that count for something?

  “And are they all the same kind of name?”

  “No.”

  “Some contradict each other, remember? Didn’t you just say to me—what if this is meant to show us more? What if we are meant to look closer?”

  Amar nodded. Wind rustled the leaves. He sniffled and wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve.

  “We will wait until you are allowed in,” Baba said, as if to himself. “I will wait.”

  Baba pointed at the sky, and Amar looked, past the stars and past the lighter patch of the Milky Way, past the moon, and maybe God was there and maybe God wasn’t, but when Baba said to him, “I don’t think He created us just to leave some of us behind,” Amar believed him. Amar wanted to.

  Baba opened his wallet.

  “Take this,” he said, and he folded a bunch of notes into his hand. He did not count them. The bills were layered and layered.

  “Will you have a place to sleep tonight? Is where you were near where we are now? Can you go back with ease?”

  Amar wasn’t sure but he nodded.

  “You have enough for a taxi?” Baba asked.

  He nodded again. Baba added another note and pressed it into his palm, closed Amar’s fingers around it, and said, “A little more, in case it is farther. This should be enough.”

  Amar leaned his head against Baba’s arm. Baba stopped speaking. It felt as if neither of them were breathing. Then he patted Amar’s hair down, like Mumma would do for him when he was younger.

  “It will be all right, Inshallah. But I have to go back inside now.”

  Amar felt as he did as a boy, when Baba dropped him off at school and before he closed the door Baba reminded him, you have to stay here the whole day. You cannot call Mumma and you cannot call your sisters. I have to go but you have to stay.

  “You will be all right? You feel all right.”

  Amar nodded.

  “It’s just—it’s just the drink?” Baba whispered it.

  Amar nodded.

  “Khassam?” Baba asked him.

  “Khassam.”

  They sat together. Then he blinked and Baba was gone. One night, when he was very little, before Huda began to wear her scarf, Mumma told them what it would be like in heaven: Everyone will be born again with the faces they had in their youth—mothers and daughters will look like sisters, fathers and sons will look like brothers. In heaven no one will be old. No one will be tired. There will be nothing to want. There will be rivers of water, and rivers of milk and honey. There will be homes made entirely of jewels. Emeralds and rubies and sapphires.

  But just before we make it to heaven, she said, there will come the Judgment Day. Amar’s heart was thumping in his chest. Mumma said, there is an angel whose entire existence is spent waiting for that moment to blow into the shell and wake every soul that has ever lived. That day, everyone will rise to fend for themselves. Everyone will forget that in life, they had a mother, a daughter, a friend, they will only worry for their own souls, if their soul will make it to the other side. We will wait so long to be called forward, it will feel like lifetimes pass before it is our turn. And then, when the long line has dwindled, and we stand to be judged, each body part will speak against us to say what we did in our life—if we had gone toward evil or stayed away from it—and the angels that sat on our shoulders will unroll their scrolls and read out our actions for God to decide our fate.

  Amar had been frightened.
He pictured a stampede of people. He pictured his hands speaking against him to say that he had shoved Huda, he pictured his tongue speaking against him to say he had told lies. But the thought of looking the same age as his parents frightened him the most. How would he recognize them? What would it be like if they all rose and no one cared for each other? Mumma continued speaking about the bridge that would be as thin as a hair and sharp as a blade, and it was Baba who noticed the look on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” Baba asked him.

  “We won’t care about each other?” he asked.

  “Ami, no one will be caring about anybody,” Mumma said, “not until everyone has made it to the other side, to heaven.”

  “How will we know what our faces in heaven will be, how will we reunite if everyone who has ever existed is there?”

  He had begun to cry. He did not want this life to end. He did not care for houses made of rubies or rivers of honey, not if the sound of the shell separated him from them.

  “We will find you,” Baba had said, “don’t worry about that. Just worry about your deeds. I could find you anywhere.”

  Soon the spinning would steady. He would find his way to a place where he could rest until morning. Maybe there was no God. But maybe the God of his parents was there, watching him tonight as on all nights. And if He was there, He had revealed ninety-nine names for them to understand him. There was the Avenger, the Firm, but there was also the Forgiving, the Patient. To read any surah in the Quran, one first had to read of God’s mercy and compassion; almost every single chapter began with that line. The Prophet was the leader of the entire ummah, his every action an example, but when his grandson climbed his back, he had bent the rules, and what if it had been because it was more important to protect a child from pain than to be unwavering in principle? Maybe it was the exceptions we made for one another that brought God more pride than when we stood firm, maybe His heart opened when His creations opened their hearts to one another, and maybe that is why the boy was switched with the ram: so a father would not have to choose between his boy and his belief. There was another way. Amar was sure of it. He wanted them to find it together.

  * * *

  THE PHOTOGRAPHER WAS scheduled to leave but Layla asked him to wait just a moment longer. Her husband and son were about to come back.

  “Our family photo,” she said to him. “It’s more important than the others.”

  The photographer looked at Layla as if he could not decide if he was irritated by her or felt sorry for her, but he agreed, and Layla thanked him with her hand on her heart.

  Her headache had worsened. She held her hand over her mouth each time she thought she was about to cry. Rafiq had disappeared at least half an hour earlier. A tightness coiled in her chest had not loosened, and she looked forward to the end of the night, when she could sit on her bed, take off her heels and jewelry and heavy sari, and just close her eyes. Rafiq approached. Amar was not with him. Still, she felt a wave of relief, stepped quickly toward him, and when they were face-to-face she reached out to touch her hand against his cheek.

  “You’re cold,” she said. “Did you find him?”

  “No.”

  “You looked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everywhere?” She looked behind him, down the corridor Rafiq had come from.

  “Layla.”

  She began to walk past him but before she could go far he reached out and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. She glanced around. Guests passed, not noticing. He looked at her tenderly until she stilled, and then he let go. The rims of his eyes were red. There were times in their marriage when he had horrified her by the way he could yell at their children, but Layla had never felt afraid of him. What he sometimes unleashed on them he always held back from her. When he spoke now, he did so softly. “We have to go back to Hadia. It’s time to give her away.”

  They turned to look back at the main hall. A young child was asleep on her father’s shoulder, her little feet bare, her mother following with her shoes hooked on curled fingers. They had their whole lives ahead of them: they moved through a world where anything was possible and did not even know it to be grateful for it. One day the possibilities of their life would narrow until there was only one outcome to a night like this. Layla stared at the family until they were on the other side of the glass door. Rafiq touched her back. She knew what he was asking of her. To give up hope of finding Amar.

  “I can’t do this,” she said.

  “You can,” he said, and she looked up at him. “You have been so strong and patient for years.”

  He guided her back as if she had forgotten the way. Before they stepped into the main hall she spoke. “I made a terrible mistake.”

  It was a relief just to say it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were right—all those years ago. I should never have gone to Seema.”

  “Why are you thinking of this now?”

  “He knows.”

  Rafiq stopped walking.

  “If he left tonight, if he is leaving, it is because of me. They spoke—she told him. Let me go look for him. Let me apologize.”

  Her husband had aged in a night. He did not say anything but he looked from where Hadia stood on the stage waiting, to Layla, then back down the corridor. Amar was back there. He had found him.

  “Layla, we did then what we thought was right. And now we have to do what is required of us.”

  He gestured to Hadia, who lifted her hand up to get their attention. The photographer was looking at them too. Rafiq was right. Layla looked over at her husband’s profile as they walked. She could not read the look on his face—he hid what he felt from everyone and it had the opposite effect he intended: it only made her care more. Rafiq extended his hand to help her up the stairs. Her children would all leave. But Rafiq would remain a blessing in her life, the center, the constant, the only one who truly bore the weight of this moment the way she did.

  She thanked the photographer and he stood with his camera to position them. He did not ask any questions. The weakness she had felt after Rafiq returned without Amar left her when she saw a panicked look on Hadia’s face.

  “No,” Hadia said, “absolutely not. We wait for him.”

  “There is no time,” Layla said.

  Tariq did not know what to do. He looked from Layla to Hadia, then at his lap.

  “We will wait for him,” Hadia said, shaking her head. Her teekah shifted from the center of her forehead. Huda stepped forward to fix it. Hadia moved her hand away.

  “He’s not coming, Hadia,” Layla told her, her voice stern.

  Comforting Hadia distracted Layla from her own grief. She would mourn tomorrow, alone, with no one there to witness, but tonight she would be strong for her daughter. Hadia’s eyes filled at once, that sheen before crying.

  “You knew about this and didn’t tell me?” she asked Huda.

  “He told me he was going to come back the last time we spoke,” Huda said.

  “Baba, will you go look for him?” Hadia asked.

  “He’s gone, jaan. Your mother is right. We have to continue.”

  Tariq reached for Hadia’s hand and he kissed her knuckle then held it. In that instant, Layla saw Hadia give up: a vacant look came over her face. The photographer instructed Huda to stand by Rafiq. Layla took her place at the other side of Huda. She heard the photographer say smile.

  “Hadia, look at me,” the photographer said. “That’s better.”

  “Perfect,” the photographer said, “I got the one.”

  Layla knew she would never replace the photograph above the mantel.

  Years ago, when she had opened Amar’s box and seen photographs of him that Amira Ali must have taken, she had been surprised not only by their existence but also by how unguarded he was, how happy he looked in a way she’d n
ever seen. Back then, Layla remembered thinking that humiliation was a deeper wound than heartache. She had wanted to protect them all from it. Now, as they stood beneath the spotlight on the stage, before the remaining guests who surely must be whispering to one another—where is their son, does he not care for them enough to stay for the family photograph?—she knew better. Knew that it did not matter what anyone thought if her own heart were not at peace. Only after her worst fears were confirmed did she realize there had been no use in letting her fears determine her decisions. She was finally free of them. She finally knew: she wanted Amar there in any state, under any circumstance, regardless of what anyone had to say about it.

  Now her son was gone again. He would be the test of her life. She would have to remain graceful and patient and without despair when thinking of him. It would not be easy but it was not impossible. What was impossible was the wish, the prayer that rose in her again: Just one more moment. Just give us one more. But maybe her heart would never be satisfied; maybe it was ever-enlarging in its want for more. Because she knew that if she were granted one more moment, then another one was what she would ask for. She could live around her son for a hundred years and even then, when it was time for them to part, she would think—but it has been too brief, as brief as stepping from the shade out into the sun, and she would wish to hear again his knock at the door, look up from the duas she was reading to that simple sight of him leaning against the door frame, and he would ask if he could come and lie in her lap, and she would not even have to say yes, he would already know.

  * * *

  IN HER PURSE was the small package from Amar. She needed to open it alone. It could not wait. It could contain a clue. Huda walked with her to the restroom, holding the trail of her heavy dress.