A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  “Why, Baba?” Hadia asks from behind me, her tone concerned. “His birthday was a few weeks ago. Eid is not for months.”

  I ignore her. I watch Abbas open the box and lift up the red shoe, and it is astonishing, how he really does look just like you, with that same kind of sensitivity and consideration about him, because I can tell he does not know why I have gotten them and does not particularly want them, but as soon as he erases the initial perplexed look, he thanks me earnestly, ties the laces tight, and runs up and down the hall. I hear the sound of his feet hitting the tile and watch the shoes light up, alternating blue and red lights spilling onto the white tile, flashing, just as you had advertised in one of your posters. Hadia is quiet, even as Abbas breaks the rules of her home. When I look at her, her face is pale. She turns from me and gathers the tissue papers and returns them gently to the box, closes the lid.

  “Mumma’s worried. Go home,” she says, running her hand across the cardboard surface of the box, her back to me.

  “Do you like them, Mumma?” Abbas asks her when he runs back into the room.

  Hadia nods at him, her lips pressed into a straight line in a look that awes me: how like Layla she has become. Abbas looks from me to Hadia, searching for an explanation as to why his mother seems upset.

  Later, Hadia walks me to my car, her hands in her back pockets. I can tell she is restraining herself on purpose, not wanting to hurt me, or offend me.

  “He will like them,” I tell her. I want her to speak. I want her to say anything, it doesn’t matter what.

  “What good does it do now, Baba?” she says softly.

  I drive home, thinking of Hadia, and wondering, for the first time, if it was not just you who had been affected by my refusals, but she too. One thing I never told your mother was how secretly impressed I was by the way you had organized the campaign for the shoes. I remember the little facts and drawings you included on the posters. With such determination you decided to go against my initial refusal, with such creative effort. Of course, I could not allow you to see that. But Hadia is right. It doesn’t do any good now. Amar, I had thought that denying you would build character. I thought the not-having would teach you something valuable. You were always so sensitive. And your mother, out of love for you or seeking to protect you, would give you anything you wanted. I was afraid you would grow up spoiled. I especially didn’t want it to be material goods that we spoiled you with. But when you stood before dinner and pulled a sheet of folded binder paper from your pocket and asked permission to deliver a speech, I allowed it. And you had done such a wonderful job constructing your argument. It was well-thought-out and persuasive, even though I knew that you had failed horribly on your persuasive essay assignment.

  When we struck our deal, when you met my eyes as we shook hands to make our agreement official, I saw the focus, the dedication, what you were capable of. That night, I told myself that I would allow you the shoes even if you got ninety percent, eighty percent. I thought of how I would explain it to you: you got the shoes because you tried, because you worked harder than you had been working. Your mother was kinder to me that week. Though she never said as much, I could tell she felt more tenderness. Sometimes, I have wondered if she only gave me love when I gave you three love. That without the three of you to care for and raise, she and I would have had little between us. And that when you left, the part of her that loved me began to dwell in our loss of you instead. But I know it is unfair of me to say this. To even think it.

  I wanted you to have the shoes, Amar. I want you to know that. You were so proud when you presented your test to me, and we decided we would go to the mall that weekend. You may have hugged me, I don’t know. And I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I did know how to be a father to you. That you had shown me how capable you were of working hard, of keeping your word. That maybe what worked for Hadia and Huda would not work for you, that I could meet you where you insisted on standing, without appearing to compromise. We could find some solution, the two of us. But that night, while you slept, I heard a knock at my office door. It was Hadia. I lifted my face from my papers and invited her inside. She was hesitating with me in a way that I had not noticed before, and I pressured her, perhaps too sternly, when I should have let her keep her secret a secret.

  “Amar cheated,” she said. “It’s on the bottom of his shoe.”

  To my surprise, I felt a deep disappointment, not with you, but with her. I had found comfort in knowing my children had obvious ties to one another. Even in the way you and your sisters fought, there was love. And though I did not like misbehaving or lying, I did feel an odd kind of pride in how quick you were to take the blame on behalf of your sisters. After having put your loyalty to each other to the test and finding your love for one another exceeded any punishment I might exact, I would watch you three relax, become chattier and begin joking with one another, thinking you had fooled me. But of course, I could not tell Hadia how disappointed I was. She had done what was right. What we had tried our best to teach her—to be honest, to respect the laws of the home, the classroom, and eventually, the greater world. And once she knew that I knew, I could not pretend that all was well. You had betrayed me and our agreement, you had made a fool out of me. And the more I thought about it, the angrier I became.

  * * *

  BEFORE GOING TO hajj, a momin must repay the debts owed, draft a will, and ask for forgiveness from friends and loved ones. Practically, I imagine, because the hajj is taxing and possibly dangerous, and partially because one then comes back a sinless man, and meeting those conditions might be prerequisites for cleansing one’s life. The older I get, the easier it is for me to imagine that God can forgive a man for his sins when they only affect him, but maybe He wants people to mend any hurt and harm they cause their fellow brothers and sisters while in this life, while living in this realm.

  Layla and I went to hajj the first year we were married. I wanted to show her that though she had left her whole life behind, I would care for her spiritual needs as well as any other. In those first months we were together, we were very careful and kind with one another and I wondered if an environment as unfamiliar and challenging as hajj would bring us together in a new and unpredictable way. I was still young. I had very little debt. I paid for my coworker’s lunch as he had once paid for mine. I returned my library books. I paid rent for our small apartment in advance, so the debt would not be incurred while we were away. I called my uncle who had cared for me after my parents’ passing—my mother’s brother, who I had not known very well during their life, but who after their death I thought of as an older brother. I asked him if there was anything I owed him.

  “You know there is nothing. Anything I did for you, you have repaid me in full.”

  “Is there anything I should ask forgiveness for?”

  “There is nothing.”

  Layla and I went. The Kaaba was a cube of bricks covered by a black cloth, a simple design, and yet when I looked upon it for the first time, it was bigger than I ever imagined it, and the sea of bodies dressed in white moved around it in a thousand tiny and synchronized motions, and my breath, as they say, was taken from me. We were one with the wave of people that circled and circled the Kaaba. I touched the crack in the corner where they say the Kaaba split open for Imam Ali’s mother to enter, so she could give birth to him inside. I touched the black stone surrounded by people also desperate to touch it. Standing still in that rush was manageable one moment and the next my body was caught in a current of bodies, a dozen crushing in on all sides, all of us moving the inexplicable way a body of water moves, so that when I was spat from it, I emerged gasping. If separated, Layla and I would meet at our designated spot and try again to enter. For the first time, I experienced the power of spotting the face one loves in a crowd, how of all the faces that passed me, hers was the one that was capable of shocking my senses the moment I first found her. I led her to
the stone, I held steady my arms around her and stood there like a dam, so she could touch the stone as well. Exhausted and in a dreamlike state, we slept and we woke, wore white, ate bread and a kind of crumbly and sharp cheese we had not tasted in either India or America, almonds and cashews. I shaved my head and we were born again—sinless as when we had begun our lives on Earth.

  In the evenings now I take my daily walk, often accompanied by Layla. We are quiet together, she walks with her hands in front of her, and I with mine clasped behind me. She pays attention to the shrubbery and the flowers in people’s gardens. I think of what I could do to best prepare for the next realm. I think of the debts I owe. My will. Who I have wronged. My debts, my will, my need for forgiveness.

  * * *

  I WAS THERE both nights my grandchildren were born. Layla and Tariq were in the room with Hadia, and I was relieved to pace the hall, never going far, ready to be called in at any moment and do what Hadia had asked me to: deliver the adhaan to my grandchild. I was honored. The first time I practiced the adhaan nervous that I had forgotten it—an absurd fear, as I had recited it multiple times a day for years. Then the nurse came. She is ready for you, she said. That was my first child in the hospital room cradling her first child. It was a miracle if I ever witnessed one. She held the baby and I did not know if the baby was a boy or a girl and nothing mattered but that everyone was alive and here together. Hadia passed her child to me as soon as I approached her. The baby was smaller than I remembered my children being, and so light it took me a moment to realize I was the only one holding on to the child.

  “His name is Abbas, Baba,” she said, and I could not even see his face because my eyesight had blurred, the lights of the room caught in big gorgeous circles that shifted as I blinked. I lifted Abbas to my face, his ear was so delicate and red it reminded me of a tiny shell, and I whispered the adhaan, essentially saying: welcome to the world, my little one. Here, we believe in one God. Mohammed is His messenger, Ali is His friend. And I will do my best to tell you all about it.

  * * *

  IN SEVENTH GRADE you played soccer for your middle school and I often came home to your duffel bag of cleats and crumpled shorts and jersey in the foyer. I would open the door and yell until you came downstairs, yell while you rolled your eyes at me and picked the bag up, yell after you to not slam the doors and you would open the door and slam it again and again and again, your face blank each time you opened it, and I’d have to turn around and walk straight into the street, just to keep from acting in a way I would surely regret.

  Did you know that for years, your mother never uttered a word against me unless it was in defense of you? I would return to our bedroom shaking, still angry from having dealt with you, either your batamizi or your usage of bad language or getting suspended after another fight at your school. I would take a seat at the edge of my bed and rest my head in my hands and try to calm myself. I let my anger get too carried away, I told myself, I should have stopped before I did what I did. Anger was my worst attribute. It was as if I left myself when it shot up in me, and by the time I was rid of it I had already done the damage. And even though I could justify why I had reacted the way I had, I always regretted my particular reaction. And Layla would be absolutely silent around me. She would not even be aware that she too had withdrawn from me.

  The year that you tried playing soccer, the year that your duffel bag was always in the foyer and you listened to music that sounded as angry as you were, your grandfather had a heart attack. We did not know then that he would only have a few more months to live, and your mother left to visit him in India. That very week, I came home to the sound of the TV blasting through the halls and your duffel bag right where I predicted it would be. I remember I did not even yell. I swung it over my shoulder and walked into the street and shook the bag until its contents tumbled out: your water bottle, your jersey, your cleats, which I kicked until they landed feet away in different directions, your books and notebooks, their pages fluttering in the street, and I stormed back inside, yelling your name. I grabbed you by the ear and dragged you out the front door, and shoved you until you stumbled onto the driveway, and I pointed at your papers torn and flying away and your clothes and contents strewn about, and we watched the passing cars do little to avoid them.

  You did not speak to me after that. I couldn’t really blame you. Every time I closed my eyes I saw your belongings scattered on the road, I saw the redness of your ear when I finally released it. Would you believe me if I told you I hated myself more in those moments than I imagined you hated me? My pride bothered me. It was my own self I had to overcome: I could not even go to you, say to you that I was sorry, that I had overreacted. The twin towers fell the next morning. You still did not speak to me. I did not think of how you might be affected. You were a boy. I did not have to worry about you the way I worried about the safety of my daughters, both of them then wearing hijabs. Layla was so far away. I was so alone. I was not sure what the world outside was like, when it would regain a shape I knew, if my family would be safe inside it.

  When my phone rang at work that week, I feared the worst. Maybe my father-in-law had passed away. Maybe Layla had been told she could not book her ticket home for even longer. But it was your school nurse, telling me that you had been in a fight, that you were hurt as well as suspended. My desk was decorated the same as always. Your little red boat on the blue waves still there, just the edges of it curled a bit. Each wave was distinguished from the others. I sighed into the phone. You had been in fights before. You had been suspended before. But they had never told me that you were hurt.

  “Is he all right?” I asked her.

  “He will be,” she said, “but he might need stitches.”

  I was quiet for a while. The nurse, bless her, did not hang up. She told me that the scuffle had taken place in the locker room, after PE class, that a few other boys had been involved, and all of them were suspended, and while she talked I wondered how I would ever explain this to your mother, who called me every night worried after watching the news, the same footage looping and the smoke billowing in the air, asking me to reassure her that everything at home was calm. I decided I would just not tell her. I calculated the days that remained until her return and hoped it would be enough for any evidence to heal.

  “Sir,” the nurse asked me, dropping her tone into a serious whisper, “may I offer my honest opinion?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Between you and me, it wasn’t your son’s fault. I think the other boys were being awful and cruel, I think they instigated it.”

  She did not know you as I knew you. How it likely had been your fault. You might be in her office giving her the look you give your mother, your eyes very big and dramatically sad and inspiring compassion.

  Still I asked, “They were being cruel?”

  “Racist, sir.”

  Something in me snapped, or sank, I’m not sure what it was. I told my boss I was leaving to pick you up. He’s hurt, I said, stitches. Anger had always been my response to your antics. And here was another suspension, another fight. But as I drove to your school I was surprised to find that I swelled with a panicked kind of love for you. Your mother was not there beside me, ready to be the one who pulled you into her arms, ready to tell you of course it was not your fault, of course she was not mad. Layla’s love and affection for you expanded so palpably, so without complexity and doubt, that what I felt for you felt small in comparison, as though there were no room for me to have my own love, my own affection, and my need to respond to you another way, to give you balance, became all the more necessary.

  I went to the office and said who I was, whose father I was, I signed my shaky signature on a clipboard, and I was not ashamed, I was restless as I touched my eyebrow, looked about the office and noticed your old friend, the boy Mark, sitting there, an ice pack held to his nose, his eyes wide and afraid when they met
mine. At first, I was so surprised to recognize him that I lifted my hand to wave. Mark was frozen and expressionless in response except for the ice pack that crunched as he pressed it against his face, and then I knew. The nurse said she would go back to the sick room to call you, and I told her I would wait in the car. For some reason I did not want you to know that I had seen Mark. I did not know if I should say good-bye to Mark and send my regards to his parents, whom I had gotten to know, or if I should ask him what had happened, and so I did nothing, I said nothing. I sat in my car, I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. I turned on the car and switched on the radio, moving slowly between stations, so that the car filled with static, and then words, and then static, and then music, and then static again. At last you appeared. I may have imagined a slight limp as you approached me. You walked staring at your feet. I watched from the open window, taking inventory: a swollen left eye, a tear in your lip, blood dried on your shirt.

  And I don’t think I ever loved you more than when you opened the car door and I confirmed your injuries up close. You did not meet my eyes. You quickly buckled your seat belt and sank into your seat and turned to look out the window the way you would when you were a toddler and I was driving you to the barber’s. I began to drive. I thought of your silence, trying to understand it. To know when and how it would be appropriate to break it. Were you embarrassed? Were you ashamed? Were you afraid I would raise my voice? After the last suspension and the school fight we had made it very clear it could never happen again. Your mother had begged you to be better. I wanted to reassure you that I was not thinking of those times, or if I was, I was not mad about the fight. I have never enjoyed meeting another’s eyes, I have always preferred to look elsewhere when engaged in conversation, but on that drive I tried to look and I waited for you to look back but you did not.