Now both my daughters work, and it is not so much that I have relented and accepted this, but that these are the very things that have become a great source of pride for me. They have shown me what to value that I did not know before them to value. When Huda calls me and says she might not be able to come visit because she is working, I am proud that she is doing something with her life that gives to others. That she teaches children, and from the stories we hear, is very good at it. Or that Hadia is regarded no differently at what she does than Tariq, and what does she do but care for human lives? She holds an intimate knowledge of what is unseen to the rest of us—what it might mean when I struggle to find balance, what it might mean if I get sharp headaches—and after asking a few questions and running tests, she can eliminate what it is not and like a hawk swoop down to claim what it is. Had they married the men we wanted for them years ago, we would have been happy, but if, God forbid, their husbands had been unable to provide, or if destiny had dealt a difficult card and their marriages had fallen apart, I would have sat here today, days before my surgery, and I would not be at peace. If I do go, I know that my daughters will be fine, as they are not only cared for but also completely capable of caring for themselves, providing for themselves, and also for Layla, and also for my grandchildren.
2.
THERE IS AN OFFICIAL KNOCK AND I LOOK UP, THINKING IT might be Dr. Edwards coming to check in the night before the surgery, but it is Huda, my Huda, smiling at me gently and sort of sadly. I did not know I wanted so badly to see her until she was there, unflinching at the sight of me in a hospital gown, wires taped to my arm, in a way that even Layla does not muster for my sake, and even Hadia breaks from, despite this being her profession. These are the moments when Huda’s presence is most appreciated. I tell her she did not have to come, that everyone has made this into a bigger fuss than it need be. Dr. Edwards himself said that the surgery will be fairly simple. It is only Hadia who insists there are other factors complicating my health and only Hadia anyone listens to anymore. You were never one for the “proper way,” and so when Hadia says I must stay here, must change my diet, and Layla agrees, and even my grandson says please, Nana, eat what they tell you to, I think of you, and how you might have had it in you to side with me, if only because it meant disagreeing with the rest of them.
“Of course I came,” she says as she takes a seat on the chair beside me.
Soon, Hadia appears and Layla too. Tahira rushes forward and climbs into Huda’s lap. All the women of my life. Tariq is at soccer practice with Abbas, Hadia explains, and Huda tells me that Jawad had to stay in Arizona but sends his regards. I hated the clamoring of people before. Now it is silence that unsettles me. Hadia holds on to Huda’s shoulders and leans into her and says to me, “Happy with your surprise?”
“I am happy,” I say.
I am not afraid. For four days I have known the surgery was approaching and I have prepared for it. Tahira leans back against Huda’s chest. Huda runs her hand through her hair. I am amazed at the trust between them: Tahira sees Huda only a few days each year and yet she knows somehow that this is her mother’s sister, and she gives love to her that she keeps from others we see regularly. Huda is a wonderful aunt. Perhaps extraordinary—the limitless space she gives them in her heart because she has no children of her own, though we’ve prayed every time we pray for anything at all.
“How long is your stay?” I ask.
“Just until Sunday.”
“Class is okay without you?”
She nods. Tahira lights up, remembering their game, and looks up at Huda. “Amijaan, can you give me assignment?” she asks.
This is how they play. Huda does anything Tahira asks. The same could be said for any of us. We become teachers for her or puppy dogs or patients, Tahira the doctor, asking on a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt? Behind them, I catch a look in Layla’s eyes, and I know she is wishing for more moments like this one, all of us together. I have not voiced to her, or even fully to myself, my recent and recurring wish, that all of us together again includes you.
* * *
WHEN YOU WERE almost four your mother became pregnant. Despite how much you begged for a younger brother, your mother and I had not intended on having any more children. The night you were born returned often in my nightmares. If the dream had been particularly vivid, or if we had fought badly the day before, I would not be able to help myself from stepping into your bedroom, taking a seat on the floor, placing a finger in front of your open mouth until your warm breath touched my skin. Having feared the worst, I would naturally fear for Hadia and Huda too, and check on each of them sleeping, breathing.
I was nervous when we first learned Layla was pregnant. Her pregnancy with you had been difficult. My job required me to be away for days at a time, I would come home not knowing how sick she had been. Every time she lifted the Quran above my head for me to walk out beneath, I would look back at her, fresh-faced and chubby when carrying you in a way that she hadn’t been with the girls, and I would wonder if I was shirking my duties, prioritizing work over caring for her. I feared that though she never said as much, she resented how I left week after week. But I worked for her, I told myself, I worked for Hadia and Huda, I worked for you even before I knew you.
This is good news, Layla said the night we found out, why do you look pareshan? I listened to her. We were lucky. Soon, we could not imagine anything else. You three were too young to inform right away, and we decided to guard the news in our hearts for a while. When my forehead touched the cool surface of the sajdagah, I had a new prayer on my list: for the child’s birth to come and pass without complication, and for it to be a healthy boy.
Layla wore loose-fitted shalwar kameez around the house so the girls would not notice, and it became a pleasant secret between us as we waited for the right moment to tell them. Only you had become more tender toward her. You stopped fussing with her at dinnertime, you would climb into her lap and rest your head against her.
“He knows,” Layla whispered one night, when you insisted on falling asleep in our bed. She moved your hair around your forehead the way she loved to.
“How can he?” I had said, though I believed her and was unnerved by my belief, this strange feeling I had sometimes that you had access to a kind of perception or intuition that we did not.
“I hope it’s a boy,” Layla confessed later when we were in the waiting room just before one of her appointments. For our first three children we had decided to let the gender be a surprise. But for our fourth we were eager to find out.
“That is also my hope,” I replied.
I wanted to have a second chance at being a father to a son. It was a terrible thought; I knew it as I allowed it to enter my mind and dwell there. I grabbed a magazine from the table and flipped through the glossy pages.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Amar to have a brother?” she said.
When I did not reply, she continued, “He would make a great older brother. It would be good for him. Hadia and Huda have each other. He is always so lonely, na? Now he will have someone to grow up playing with as well.”
I told her I was going to the restroom. Instead, I walked back and forth across the bridge of the hospital that connected two wings, constructed like a tunnel of glass over the parking lot. I wondered how your mother could think the way she did, how everything in her naturally considered you. Wanting to bear a child for your sake. Even in this, having you in mind. She sat there in the waiting room and wished for a boy to give you a brother. I paced the tunnel, knowing I had wished for a boy to give me a son.
And it was going to be a boy. The doctor confirmed our hopes. Your mother took hold of my hand and leaned into me as we walked out. That day, beneath the pale blue sky, I let myself hold tightly on to her hand and marveled at how delicate and small it felt in mine. Eid was approaching and we decided we would tell you all then. We wou
ld give you the gift of art sets and new outfits and then make it an exciting reveal.
Knowing I had a son coming made it easier to deal with my disappointments about us. Layla was never one to discipline you, so anytime you misbehaved it fell on me to drag you by the arm to your room for your time-out. I told myself I was going to have another chance. I even hoped that another son would ease the pressure between us. I began to imagine him. He would not be prone to outbursts. He would not be angry with me when I was angry with him. He would look up to me and respect me. He would be eager to learn. He would stand next to me in prayer, even if he was too young to understand, he would sense the respect required. He would be mine, as you were your mother’s.
It was a Wednesday. Hadia and Huda were at school, your mother was at home with you. Movement toward the awareness of a loss is a strange thing. I do not understand how time seems to slow just before and days after it has become a reality. How fragments imprint themselves into memory, sharp and vivid. It was as though the phone rang on my desk and I knew it was going to be Layla as I reached for it, and before she had even begun speaking I knew why she had called, and as she spoke something solid lodged in the center of my throat that did not dissolve until hours afterward.
“Something’s happened,” she said in Urdu, “I need you.”
She sounded disoriented.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said, “I am coming.”
I hung up the office phone. I thanked God I was in town. Stand up, I told myself. Grab keys, coat, container of leftover lunch. Tell my boss. Call someone to pick up the girls from school. But instead I leaned back into the soft cushion of the office chair and folded my hands in my lap. It was one thirty in the afternoon. On my desk was an old desktop computer that hummed. A clear, square container held paper clips. A tape dispenser. A small calendar I had forgotten to change to the correct month. On the gray walls that formed my cubicle, I had tacked a letter from Hadia, a poem from Huda composed of the first letters of my name (Right, Awesome, Father, Interesting, Quiet), and a watercolor you painted that your mother, and not you, had given me. It was of a red boat on a blue river. I was impressed by how you knew to use different shades of blue to indicate waves, evoke movement. And there was a photograph of the three of you. You a baby in Huda’s arms, Hadia with her hand resting formally on Huda’s shoulder. This is it, I thought. Then, focusing on the small face that was yours, half-obscured by the blanket you were wrapped in, you are it. There would be no second son.
I did not know what to say or do to comfort your mother. I waited for her to address me or ask something of me. Ask me for water, I thought. Ask me to bring you takeout from the restaurant we like. But she said nothing. I drove you three to the Ali family’s house where you would stay until I brought you back on the weekend, when I would be home to help Layla. I could not take my hands off the steering wheel, not even for a second, and my thoughts tugged me to terrible places as I drove. Now that we had suffered one loss, I wondered when the next would come for us.
“Are you all comfortable?” I asked Hadia, when I visited the three of you as soon as I was off of work.
“They’re very nice to us,” Hadia said. Then, looking down at her shirt and playing with the edge of her sleeve, “Is it because they know what’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.”
She looked at me. She was too smart for me. I was, as my coworkers liked to say, in over my head. I touched her forehead and told her to go play.
“But remember—” I pointed a finger at her.
She looked back at the Ali sons playing in the garden, all three of them children, the eldest no more than seven.
“Just acquaintances.” She giggled.
Back then she had a funny way of pronouncing it, the syllables jamming together at the end. “Good girl,” I said, and I smiled at her.
Sister Seema told me that you either clung to Hadia or, if she was busy, chose to stay inside with her and Amira. I walked into the living room and there you were, seated on top of a sofa facing a window. You turned to acknowledge my presence before looking back outside. The look in your eyes frightened me. You were so little, but I wondered if you blamed me for your mother’s absence.
“Where’s Mumma?” you asked.
I sat down on the couch. I waited for you to turn to me.
“She’s not here,” I said.
“Can you take me to where Mumma is?”
I wanted to give you everything you wanted.
“Tomorrow,” I said softly.
You nodded. You had nothing else to ask me. Once again I felt like I did not know how to interact with you. I wonder now what we could have been had I had the courage to lift you into my arms as I wanted to then, tell you that tomorrow you would see your mother but that today I was here for you, that you had lost a brother and I a son, but I had you, and you would never lose me. But instead I stood up from the couch, I thanked Sister Seema for her kindness and drove the dark roads back to our house, where your mother had still not turned on the lights. I parked in the driveway and sat there until the car cooled, until I composed myself, before stepping inside and being brave enough for your mother, and here we are.
* * *
I AM STARTLED awake. A dim light comes from the hall beneath the curtain that wraps around my bed. The medicine they give me here makes my mind fuzzy. My memories come to me sharply or not at all. I have woken uneasy. Am I afraid? The room is silent in answer. The TVs turned off all throughout the hall. The rectangular window a sheet of black. The flowers blue in their vases. WE LOVE YOU NANA faces me in gray text. My life has taken on a look I do not recognize as immediately mine.
I am not dizzy, and so, I step from my bed. My legs are chilly, I slip my feet into socks, then slippers, grab my sweater. What a decision you made over a decade ago when you first ran away. Even now, during the last stretch of my life, I cannot fathom walking willfully away. The nurses on duty are in the center of the floor. They sit behind desks and computer screens and I can hear them chatting. If I walk along the wall to the staircase to my right, I can be out unseen, and soon the door echoes shut behind me. My head does not hurt tonight. My legs move without telling me they are tired. I will step down the flight of stairs until it takes me to floor one, where I will exit out into the parking lot.
If I do not count the events of the past week, I would say I am in fairly good health. I have outlived both of my parents by decades. I thought I was just prone to headaches. I thought the weakness of my arms and legs was a symptom of aging. The railing is cold as I step down toward the bottom of the stairwell. I stop in my tracks as a nurse turns the corner and her eyes widen from surprise at the sight of me.
“What are you doing?” she asks. Her voice echoes. She glances at my gown peeking from my sweater and my silver bracelet on my wrist. “It’s five A.M.”
“My surgery is tomorrow.” I do not know why I say it.
She does not work on my floor. I have never seen her before. I can see her trying to figure out if I am dangerous or if I am delusional, a danger to myself.
“Sir, you can’t leave your room. Can you tell me what your room number is?”
“Every day of my life I’ve taken a walk outside. I have been in here for a week. I haven’t seen the sky in days. I wanted to see it, before.”
It is clear that the woman does not know what to do. I feel bad for startling her. For asking her to break code.
“I am on the fourth floor,” I tell her. “Room four-oh-five.”
I turn around and begin climbing the stairs. She steps next to me at my pace. She is quiet. One floor up she whispers, “Will a balcony do?”
She holds a finger to her lips and shushes. I follow her. I feel a dizziness I take for excitement. She unlocks a door and tells me it is a break room where no one will be at this hour. A couch, a coffee table, a kitchenette, and a sliding glass door
. I thank her. I ask her name. Ida, she says, opening the sliding door. I step out into the cold.
“We can’t stay long,” she says. She looks around nervously.
She stands a little behind me. No clouds but some wisps. A clear night. A few stars. The best we can do when we are so close to the city. I think, God, if this is my last time looking at the night sky, I thank You, for having given me so many nights like this one. I cannot help it. I blink rapidly, not wanting to make her any more uncomfortable.
“When my children were very little, if I did not know how to make them stop crying or make them happy, I would take them outside, show them this.”
“Oh,” she says softly, “that is very nice. I am sure they will remember that.”
I shrug. I hoped so.
“My daughters were quick to feel better, they would begin talking to me instead. Or would ask to walk around. But my son, he would look for a long time. Until we had to go back, no need for talking.”
The wisps of clouds are making their way across the far sky. Ida waits until it is appropriate to take me back. Hadia said there were no guarantees. I am not ready. There are things I need you to know. I stare at the white glow of the moon until something in me calms.
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