June 1988
Mama is in her room with the door closed when Reza returns that night. A week ago I would have said nothing to him. I would have pictured his cool mocking you-must-have-mistaken-me-for-someone-who-cares face. I would have heard his snort of derision and the low snarl of his laugh. But that was before You’re a fool, you’re a bloody idiot, but you’re not evil. Before the 2 a.m. encounter I could almost have dreamt. Except I did not dream it and so now I hoist myself up in bed to tell him, “Mama came back already. She came back this morning.”
He stops under the ceiling fan right in the middle of the room. He stands there and breathes in and out. His shoulders rise and fall, rise and fall. Then without a word he peels off his sweat-soaked Shakey’s T-shirt and his trousers and drops them into the washing pail. He picks up his towel and leaves the room. I lie awake listening to the sounds of his shower but when he returns he hangs up his towel and lies down and turns to face the wall.
In the morning there she is sitting opposite me at the breakfast table. She smiles amiably and asks me, “Where is your brother?”
“Gone out already.”
“Surely his job doesn’t start so early?”
“Don’t know.”
For three days this continues. On the fourth night she awaits his return downstairs.
It is as though he knows the moment he opens the gate that she is there waiting. He whistles and saunters. His light step nothing like the familiar nightly dragging of his soul from some twilight zone back into the unforgiving light of Latifah’s house. But he says nothing to the figure framed in the doorway. At the door he stands and waits for her to let him pass.
“Reza,” she says. “I’ve been back for three days already and I’ve not seen you.”
“And?”
He pauses to savour her discomfiture then adds, “Oh that’s right, I forgot, before you left we used to spend all our time having deep heart-to-heart talks.”
As though he has pushed her she sits down hard on the sofa. “Is that my fault?” she says. “You were never around, you were always off on your own adventures—”
“I had my adventures, you had your adventures. So what for pretend now?”
“Who is pretending? I’m your mother, Reza. I know you have been suffering. But just because you didn’t want to be up there in the beginning, you still blame me for everything? Have you simply forgotten how happy you were for so many years? You were happy, Reza! It’s not that I was too busy with anything, you were the one who didn’t need me. What you went through at the end, was that anything to do with me? Why is everything always my fault?”
“What’s the point of sitting around arguing about what was whose fault? No need to suddenly make like we are some perfect golden smiling advertisement family. You get on with your life, I’ll get on with mine.”
He does not wait for a response. He is already halfway up the stairs and the noise of her tears fills my ears before I slip back behind our bedroom door and into my bed. I close my eyes but still I hear her. A wet choked weeping. She will be shivering on the sofa now. That ugly shivering of shock not cold. The jaw seizing up. The hands clutching at each other. The billowy sleeves of her caftan wet with snot and tears. For me there was none of this. Just a breezy Come and sit next to Mama! She had saved up all her anguish for him. But why should I be surprised? That is how it has always been.