2024
He brings them—not just one but a good half-dozen—in an album. Not like Mama’s prehistoric one but the cheap cardboard-covered kind with plastic pages. Mama grabs it like a monkey. Turns to the first page and howls—yes purses her lips and howls to the heavens—in victory and vindication. For there propped up on a teddy-bear pillow in his Anakku pyjamas is a replica of six-month-old Reza. And not even a mother in sight to function as a reminder that this one does not belong to Mama. Here he is again sitting up with a dummy in his mouth and here he is in a sailor suit on his first birthday. On a red plastic tricycle. In his blindingly spotless uniform on his first day of Standard One. Accepting a trophy from the Chief Education Officer on school prizegiving day.
An entire childhood suspended in a glass bubble and dangled by a string before Mama’s nose. Her eyes light up like a small child’s upon seeing its first Christmas tree. She holds her breath. She reaches out for it.
“Could be Reza in these pictures!” she says. “Even I would have trouble telling you apart if I didn’t know which pictures were my son and which ones you. Just ask your teacher and see.”
Not for Mama the polite pretence that I am not listening. She calls out to me now: “Come, come, come and see!”
Come Amar’s teacher come and see how much Amar looks like my son. And when I don’t come fast enough she holds up the open album so that I can see the first two pictures from across the room.
“Yes or not?” she says. “Wasn’t I right?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there when Reza was a baby.”
She doesn’t bat an eyelid at my betrayal. “Ish, you another one. From the pictures, I mean. From the pictures you’ve seen many times.”
I shrug. “Many babies look alike.”
“Come on! You mean to say Chinese babies, Indian babies, all look exactly the same as each other? Exactly the same as these two? And I’m not just talking about the baby pictures! Look, look at his school pictures and all, see for yourself!”
I should just say, You win Mama. You can pocket this purloined boy for your own. You can insert yourself into every picture just out of the frame just out of sight. In fact his own parents won’t even mind because they no longer know what to do with this childhood. They cannot reconcile it with the young man who has come beanstalking out of it in his beard and jubah.
But of course—by now you know me—I do not say any of that. I shrug again.
“I can see,” I say casually. “Sure, there is a resemblance.” Why am I doing this? Why must I pretend not to see what is before my eyes? “They could certainly be related.”
(To myself: they could be brothers. Whereas me and Reza, me with my mata sepet and him with his Michelangelo’s David head … I really should have known better than to aspire to such heights as being Reza’s brother. What was I thinking? Where in this lopsided family was there space for an equal love?)
“Related!” Mama cries. “They could be the same boy!”
She flips indignantly through the pages like as though if she just finds the right one I will accept her claim wholesale. I glance at Amar. He appears unperturbed by our hairsplitting. The faint sardonic smile on his face unsettles me.
“What to do?” I say to him. “Nenek is lonely. When you sit with her it’s like my brother is sitting with her. Simple as that.”
“I understand,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
I’m about to give him permission to extricate himself and leave when he opens his mouth to speak.
“I wish … I wish Nenek could explain to my parents that I’m not that bad,” he says. “It’s for their own good that I tell people what I tell them. We can’t just ape the West, ape the Chinese, ape the Indians even, and then call ourselves Muslims. We have to keep ourselves separate. We have to protect ourselves. My parents don’t understand. They are angry for nothing all the time. There’s no need to be angry. They could find such peace, such wonderful peace could be theirs, if they would just … just submit to God.”
What to do with this speech, how to respond—my god never more than a monosyllable out of him and now this! Will Nenek explain to his parents? But trust Mama to have a handle on it already.
“Ah! The problem is they won’t listen to Nenek either. You see they are frightened. People are always frightened of what they do not know and what they do not understand. And when their hearts are full of fear like that, it is not the right time to show them the truth. They will not accept it. But—listen to me carefully—it does not matter what other people think of you when you choose to submit to God. People can make fun of you, they can decide to drop you because you are too strange, you are no longer the person they were used to. So what? It doesn’t matter. When you know you are following the correct path none of that should matter. It is a lesson I learned long ago. Long before you were born. People will say it’s a phase lah, it’s an act lah, it’s all fake and soon enough the real Amar will come back. All you can do is close your ears and live the life God wants you to live. Do not be afraid.”
When I see Amar’s eyes uncloud themselves and his brows lift I suddenly understand he must have unearthed our story somewhere. And now Mama has delivered the avowal he was waiting for. Now there is no need to approach her with the was-was recommended for unknown substances and dubious situations. She has spoken, she has repudiated her past. She is a true Muslim.
“Yes! Yes, you are right, Nenek,” he says. “You are right. What you say is very true. Very very true.”
He jumps up with his books and notes and hurries away like a man with a mission. The photo album sits in Mama’s lap open to the picture of Amar receiving his trophy.