A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  I am wheeled into the bright, quiet room. I am given earplugs. Every wall here is too white. The dome and the bed in the center, which must be the machine, and the technician telling me to lie on my back. Telling me not to move.

  Then I am alone. The technician is on the other side of the wall. Somewhere in this building is Hadia, comforting a patient, or looking over her notes before walking in to see another one. I realize how lucky I am, that if there is any hint of an issue she can make sense of the tests, easily ask to order others, think of what to do. The bed begins to move slowly back into the tunnel. I close my eyes. The noises are loud and erratic, even with the earplugs. I am very still. When I open my eyes again, a light is moving across the curvature of the tunnel, and I think of how unnatural it is to keep ourselves alive in this way. I want to live, I realize, but the thought that surprises me is the darker one that comes after: that I also want for there to be something wrong, and for it to be serious, and immediately I wonder if God will punish me for the thought. Then the beeping is done and I wait for a cue to move.

  * * *

  BEFORE YOU WERE born, I thought I knew how to be a father. Hadia was four when we brought you home. Huda only three. Making them smile was easy. Keeping them smiling, simple. Layla would tell me that they would watch for the darkening of the sky, listen for the turning of the key and creak of the door, ready to abandon their coloring books or unfinished bowls of dinner to rush to me, each one holding on to a leg that I had to drag to move, and when I managed to, they laughed and tightened their grip.

  If they misbehaved I only had to glare at them. In some instances, a voice raised, a flick to their lip, the twisting of their ear. So little it took to make them obey. Once they were done crying after a punishment, they would not become cold but would wonder how to make it better. Hadia would tilt her head and speak in a voice both mature and innocent, waiting for a sign of my approval, of forgiveness. Huda would rub her head against my arm like a cat until I hugged her. And here was another thing I took for granted in those years: their ability to continue on as though nothing had happened.

  You were something else. You did not let your mother sleep, did you know that? Hadia and Huda had also cried, had also woken at odd hours. But your screams came from somewhere else—not motivated by hunger or discomfort, I would think when I tried to comfort you, and that thought unsettled me. I was worn out by your screaming, or maybe it was my inability to console you, and so I would hand you to Layla. She would take you from our bedroom so I could sleep, speak to you in Urdu using a name she had begun calling you: “What is it, Ami, what’s happened?”

  Motherhood had been becoming on Layla. She was so young when Hadia was born. She devoted her time and attention to her daughters as if it were her choice—keeping something of herself for herself, inhabiting the role with strength and sweetness, ease and command. Hadia and Huda came to her when they needed her, busied themselves alone or with each other when they did not. But with you, motherhood became a more consuming endeavor. As you grew she became prone to anxiety and stress. While you slept she examined your bruises.

  “Look,” she would say, pointing to a purple mark on your thigh. “How do you think he managed to hurt himself here?”

  I wonder now if she had intuited what I could not, or what I refused to: that it would not be easy for us when it came to you. Though you did not know it, you had divided the attention of our home. If Hadia and Huda were on one side, you were on the other, and Layla was turned to you. Your sisters were resilient; little denials and little losses and lectures did not alter the course of their day. You were stubborn with your sadness. You would enter it and not leave. And instead of softening, I hardened in my approach.

  * * *

  MOST MORNINGS, I was in charge of dropping Hadia and Huda off at school. Before I left I would look back at you, kicking your legs as you lay on your stomach to color, and wonder what you and your mother did all day with the rest of us gone. My daughters always wanted more from me. One more story, Baba. Two more minutes, Baba. They tiptoed and turned their cheeks toward me so I could kiss them. At the park they asked me to push them on swings or climbed on me like monkeys. You did not ask for any of these things. I did not know if it was indifference or a desire for independence that kept you from me.

  But every few months, before you turned five, you and I had a day alone together. I would come home to find your mother had taken it upon herself to cut your hair again. The sight of you with a jagged and uneven haircut never failed to irritate me. Maybe it felt like a game to you both. Your mother lifting you up to the bathroom countertop, wrapping a towel around your neck to catch dark tufts of your hair. Layla, I would tell her, trying to control my annoyance, why do you always do this, make him look silly like this?

  The following Sunday we would go together to get a haircut. When I watch Hadia and Tariq interact with their kids now, it seems strange to me that those were some of the only times we were alone. Hadia and Tariq are such different parents. In some instances they upset me greatly, letting Abbas go off into the neighborhood alone, without knowing exactly who he will be playing with. But in other ways they are getting right what we did not even think to consider. They take their children on “dates”: sometimes Hadia takes Abbas and Tariq takes Tahira, and sometimes the other way around.

  “We are the way we are as a family. It’s special for them and nice for us to see what we can be, one-on-one,” Hadia explained once, when I asked her why.

  You always went with your mother everywhere. When she stood up to go to the grocery store, you rose to accompany her. If she was not present, you were Hadia’s shadow. If I stood to leave for an errand, if Hadia or Huda did not offer to come, I went alone. I worried about you growing up in a house full of women, looking only to them for an example. I feared you would not know how to be, how to behave, that I was doing nothing to teach you.

  “Come,” I’d say, “let’s go fix your hair.”

  The glance you gave your mother was not lost on me. The only thing worse was how she would nod to you in return, as if giving you permission to go, to trust me. I would lift you into my arms, which I never really got used to. Yes, I held my children when they were babies, but often when Layla’s arms were occupied, or if she needed a break, and I would try to entertain you all the simplest way I knew how, I would take you outside and point to the sky. Look, stars. Look, moon. But when I held you and we made our way to the car, I remember you would put your head on my shoulder as if you were tired, I remember you would scratch the thread of my top button until we reached the car. And I remember wondering if my own father had ever held me, and now, when I think back, I do not think he ever did.

  I risked buckling you into the front seat. I wanted you to think something special was happening. I wanted you to look out the window and feel yourself at the edge of the world as you approached it. I drove slowly. I looked out for cop cars. I looked over at you from time to time, your back straight, your hand gripping the tan seat belt, your face turned to look out the window. I tried to make conversation. Talking to anyone has always been a bit strange for me, talking to a child no less unnerving. I spoke to you as though you were already an adult. How was your week? I would ask. We would glide down the street that was my favorite in our city, one long line that curved up and down with the hills, thick trees lining both sides—the only street that ever made me feel like it was fall in California, because driving by rows and rows of trees made it apparent that the leaves were changing color. You were short with your replies. Shy, as though I were a stranger. Were we lost, even then at that early age, you three and a half years old and so quiet? I tried to not feel disappointed. I searched for things to speak of. That is a post office, I said, when we passed one, do you know what happens at a post office? You shrugged a single shoulder, as though I bored you.

  At the barbershop, I would unlock the car door and you would hop out. Our barber
’s name was Jim. He was a nice man who recognized us, his loyal customers, and he would take one look at your mess of a haircut and say, again? He and I would laugh about it. It was like a joke between us. I would lift you into the raised seat, smaller than the rest, and Jim would wrap a black cloth around your neck that swallowed your whole body. When he approached you with scissors you would look back at me in the mirror. I never stepped away. I wondered if Jim thought that you and I were close, that I did things with you often, or if he could sense how wary we were of one another.

  We would walk out holding a strawberry or watermelon lollipop. In the entire bowl, those were the flavors you gravitated to, and I took one and tucked it in my pocket to give to you later. I wanted our day to last longer and so I would ask if you wanted a scoop when we passed the ice cream shop, and your eyes would light up like Hadia’s and Huda’s did when I agreed to read a story to them. The door made a “moo” sound when we entered, and I lifted you up to the counter and you pressed your face against the glass to look at all the flavors, your breath leaving circles of fog. I stopped myself from reminding you that the glass had germs. Not today, I told myself. Once when I was a boy my father had taken me to the ice cream parlor in Hyderabad. No one there offered samples like they did here, when you pointed to flavor after flavor and the girl behind the counter passed you little purple spoons with a bit of the ice cream. She told me how cute you were, smiling widely, which often happened when we went anywhere with you. Sometimes, even now, I wonder if you realized that the world loved you, softened at your presence.

  While I waited for you, I asked the girl for a scoop of pistachio and almond, the flavor that most reminded me of the ice cream from home. Then you would ask for the same. This happened every time. You sampled at least four flavors and then got mine, though you had not tried it. Is it silly that I felt proud that you copied me in that way? She gave you your cone and I got my cup and I tipped her generously, partly because of how kind she was to you. Shall we eat here? I asked, and you would have relaxed with me by then. When you were excited your legs swung because they did not reach the floor, and you were talkative, and moved about in your seat making wild gestures with your hands. You asked me questions, and I did my best to answer them.

  “Why does forever rhyme with never?” you asked me once.

  Another time you asked, “What’s a tsunami?” When I answered, you asked, “Why don’t we ever go to the beach?” and then, without missing a beat, as though it were the logical next question, “Why do squirrels run when I go near them?”

  And I knew when you stopped asking me questions and turned to look out the window that our time had reached its final movement, and you wanted to go home to your mother. I gathered our trash and threw it away. I wet a napkin and wiped your mouth, your fingers, and rubbed roughly the stain on your shirt, so Hadia and Huda wouldn’t see it and be hurt.

  * * *

  WHEN HADIA APPEARS again she is not alone. The doctor with her is very tall, especially when standing next to Hadia, his skin dark and eyes very bright, made brighter when he smiles, and even before he has extended his hand to shake mine, I trust him. My hand, when I lift it, feels weak, something that has been happening with alarming frequency and something I’ve kept from Hadia. His name is Dr. Edwards, he says, he is a neurosurgeon, and a good friend of Hadia’s. When Hadia was very young, I would remind her seriously that she had no male friends, just colleagues and acquaintances, but as she grew older my reminder became a joke at first for her, and then, after much teasing from her, for both of us. When I glance at her seated at the edge of my bed, she is smiling mischievously, as if she has read my mind.

  Nothing about Dr. Edwards’s demeanor suggests that something is wrong, and so I sit back against the raised bed, fold my hands in my lap.

  “Everything is okay, Baba, do not begin to worry,” she says in Urdu, and she nods at Dr. Edwards.

  Dr. Edwards explains what they found in the MRI. In my brain? I ask, when I hear him say tumor. Most likely benign, he responds, a meningioma, in the tissue between the skull and the brain, but it has grown enough to begin to impact the brain, mine. My mouth is dry. I look at the bracelet on my wrist and the tiny numbers that mark me as a patient and my name that marks me as a person and the blue veins beneath my skin saying I am alive. He tells me that judging by its location and size it could be removed with little effort and then taken for a biopsy. Hadia touches my leg and says that means it’s no problem, Baba, saying it in Urdu as if I do not speak English, as if I do not know what benign or little effort means. I search my daughter’s face. She is eerily calm. I am a lucky man, and maybe when I had opened my eyes to the light moving across the dome it was misfortune I had wished for, something grave enough to give you a reason to return.

  “We will have to have a surgery to remove it, Baba, it’s beginning to affect you in a way we cannot ignore. Hence the headaches. Dr. Edwards has been very kind—he scheduled you in for the end of the week.”

  Dr. Edwards asks me if I have any questions. I say I do not. I say thank you. I say I am glad Hadia has a good friend. And at this, I glance at my daughter, who has been calm, who has been using her doctor voice, who now looks quickly away from me and out the hospital window.

  * * *

  ON THE BEDSIDE table beside me, two flower arrangements: one extravagant, store-bought bouquet sent by my old coworkers, and one made for me by Layla. Her bouquet has her touch; I can spot any bouquet Layla arranges in an instant. The flowers were plucked from Hadia’s garden. A giant plant leaf is fanned out in the back, framing them. Layla could have been an artist, I think now, as she lifts the page of her prayer book and continues moving her finger across the next page. It has been a recent pursuit of hers, growing and arranging flowers, and now every room in our home is adorned, and if there is a celebratory event for a family friend, we go with a bouquet.

  When you were very young, maybe four, she came home with a packet of tomatoes and said she would try to plant them. Soon it became tomatoes and garlic. Then she read books that said do not plant the same vegetable in the same soil twice, and it might have been the challenging and particular methods that interested her, so she got a notebook where she drew our backyard and drew in squares to plan what would go where and in what season. On wooden Popsicle sticks she wrote what she planted and then pushed them into the dirt, and this was her favorite part, I think, when I came home to find her meticulously writing: mint, green pepper, eggplant, cauliflower, basil.

  The year after Hadia’s wedding, she did not walk into the garden to tend to anything at all. Hadia had moved to Chicago with Tariq. She was so busy with her work and getting accustomed to her new life and soon, her pregnancy, that she hardly visited us. Huda worked as a fourth-grade teacher at a school hours away. Her evenings were often spent preparing for the next day. They called us with their stories: Hadia’s first time assisting with delivering a baby, Huda winning over a particularly difficult student. We were so proud of them both. But once the phone clicked to end their call we were so very alone. Each of you had left us in your own way. I predicted Layla would turn even more to gardening to pass the time. But instead she made tea and sat at the kitchen table with the mug before her looking out at the backyard, her hands wrapped around the mug for warmth, the steam rising. I would walk away and not long after would hear the splash of the entire mug in the sink.

  Then one day, about three years ago, I came home to see little white packets I recognized to be seeds on the kitchen table in rows. I was relieved. I always feared she had been punishing herself. But this time it was just flowers. And a small stack of books in the corner: Flowers of California. Plants of the West. She did not explain and I did not ask. She spent months studying which flower to plant when. The first spring they bloomed was incredible, our garden so vibrant and alive. At first her bouquets were messy, the stems drooping against the glass, but soon something clicked: she deliberately chose
colors that completed each other, stuck a feather in if she found a feather. I was amazed that even a jagged twig could be placed beautifully, if Layla was the one to place it.

  * * *

  WHEN HADIA FIRST applied to college I could not imagine allowing her to move away. We wanted her to get engaged. We wanted her to be settled and safe—with someone who would prioritize caring for her and providing for her, as I had for my family. But when she rushed inside to tell us about the program she had been accepted into, I felt all my discomfort and fear rise up. It was not the path for her I had anticipated and not the path I preferred. But how could I be the one to stand in her way? My daughter intended on navigating the world respectably, accomplishing something good, with her intelligence, her will. The night that we found out, Layla had to be convinced. She was not worried for Hadia’s safety, as I was, but rather that Hadia had disregarded our wishes for her life, and from what we could see, was doing well despite it.

  “If she stays home, if she accepts any of these perfectly good proposals, I will know how to guide her,” Layla said to me as we lay wide awake in bed, unable to fall asleep. “If she begins her own way…I won’t know how.”

  And I did not know how to answer her. I searched for a way to deal with my own discomfort quietly. The day I dropped her off at her dorm, she slept the entire car ride and I drove in the dark watching the sky slowly lighten. I stopped for coffee, something I never drink, and each hour I drove I thought, this is one hour I will have to drive back without her. This is one more hour that will separate me from my daughter. I kept looking over at her. She was wearing my father’s watch and a blue button-up. I want to be professional, she had explained to me the night before, excited when deciding what to wear. As I drove my fears multiplied: Whether she could handle her studies. Whether she would take on too many classes at once. Whether she would have friends—oddly, I worried equally that she would not, and that she would. Whether she would know what to do when she encountered someone who pressured her to sin. But it was not until my own fears were echoed in comments from my friends that I found myself facing them and finding comfort. People would question me, how did you let your daughter move so far? Too much independence is not good for a woman. To protect her from their judgment, I would defend her, and only after I defended her aloud again and again did I realize that I believed what I told them. “Hadia will be fine. My daughter is brave and capable. She will know what to do. I trust her.”