PRODUCE A CHILD,
AND GOD SMILES

Shahzad and Sabeena, 1983 to 1998

“The Prophet was asked: ‘Which type of woman is the best?’

He replied: ‘When you look at her, you feel happiness.’”

—Sunan an-Nasa’i, a collection of reports about the Prophet Muhammad

Shahzad and Sabeena met in a drafty room on a bitter-cold day in December. It was a good year for India, the year the country won the Cricket World Cup. It was the year the so-called bandit queen, a Robin Hood–like figure, surrendered on her terms from a life of crime, laying down her rifle before a portrait of the goddess Durga. It was just after the Golden Age of Indian cinema had ended, and Bollywood had become fixated on new stories, big money, and assured commercial success. Coolie, starring the dark and brooding Amitabh Bachchan, was the year’s runaway hit. When Bachchan punctured his intestines filming a fight scene, the entire country prayed for his recovery. The high drama and romance of the silver screen regularly spilled into daily life.

By the time Shahzad and Sabeena met, Bachchan had recovered. Sabeena wore a deep purple dress, the color of a blooming iris flower, and a cloud-colored dupatta wrapped around her face. When Shahzad looked at her, she did not look back; shyness was expected from a prospective bride. Several women pulled down Sabeena’s scarf, so that he could see her better. He could tell how beautiful she was—like a movie star—just as his family had told him. Both families stood, watching and waiting for his answer. Still, he worried and wondered what to do. He did not feel ready to get married, though everything in his life, and in Sabeena’s, had led up to this moment.

Shahzad had been born the year Mughal-e-Azam came out, a film so popular it ran in theaters for seventy-five weeks—what everyone called a “diamond jubilee”—and then it ran for seventy-five weeks more. His father named him after the main character, who was a shahzad, or prince, and whom Shahzad would not grow up to resemble. Instead, he was born a frail baby and grew into a scrawny boy with a nervous demeanor, bright eyes, big teeth, and a prominent nose; the wrong features stood out from his face.

In the film, the prince falls in love with a magnetic court dancer against the wishes of his father, an all-powerful Muslim Mughal king. Their forbidden love affair sets off an epic battle between father and son. As Shahzad got older, people would joke: “Is your life story the same as the movie?” Shahzad always answered them seriously. “Yes, my father and I are divided,” he’d say. “But not like this.”

They were not divided over a woman, and they were not royalty. They certainly were not Mughals, the Muslim emperors who’d once ruled India, before the British routed them and the Hindu kings. Today, Muslims like them were in the minority, just 12 percent or so of the country, and they held little power. Shahzad and his father’s war was not an epic one, complete with thousands of troops, horses, and camels. Still, Shahzad felt that his father had waged some kind of battle against him since birth, one he did not quite understand.

During childhood, Shahzad often fell sick. When his mother asked his father for money for a doctor, his father would shout, eyes flaring, until she did not ask him anymore. Instead, Shahzad’s mother found resourceful ways to care for her young son. When Shahzad was four and came down with a heavy fever, his mother took him, crying, to the dargah across the street, placed him on the cool white marble, and demanded of the saint buried there: “You are going to cure him. You pray to Allah that he’s cured very soon.” Before long, Shahzad stopped crying and his fever subsided.

But Shahzad did not remember much of that. The first time he remembered realizing that his father did not care for him was when he contracted mumps at age sixteen. First his throat began to hurt. Then, his Adam’s apple, bulging, seemed to grow larger and larger. Next his testes, still an unknown body part, also swelled. The viral infection grew more serious, and it had everyone concerned except Shahzad’s father.

It was Shahzad’s uncle who ultimately took Shahzad to the doctor. People whispered that Shahzad must have caught mumps somewhere, but the real reason he contracted the infection was because he wasn’t being looked after properly. Even the neighbours knew Shahzad’s father, with his hard face, unkempt hair, and sad, distant eyes, was friendly enough outside the house but cruel to his family. They knew he was especially punishing to Shahzad, who was born frail and weak, the opposite of his namesake warrior prince.

The apartment Shahzad grew up in—and lived in still—was dingy and overcrowded. But the building was sturdy and British-built, with giant archways filled with flowering plants. Their downtown neighbourhood was also populated mostly by other Muslims, which Shahzad’s family preferred, and was not far from Victoria Terminus, the old, cathedral-like train station named after an old British queen. Most important, they were just a cricket pitch’s distance from Crawford Market, where Shahzad’s mother could buy anything she needed to make their meals that day. If only she could get the money. Shahzad’s father would always shout before handing a few rupees over.

Crawford Market, one of the most famous bazaars in the city, and Shahzad’s favorite place, was a holdover from colonial times. It was housed inside a grand Norman and Flemish-style structure, with pointy roofs, vaulted entryways, and a big clock tower. Since the British had left, its skylights had grown dusty, and many of its windows had popped out of their frames. But inside the wonders of the sprawling wholesale fruit and vegetable market remained unchanged. The moment Shahzad’s mother entered the market, she was barraged by vendors loudly hawking their fruits and vegetables, as well as poultry, mutton, beef, candy, and cakes. Though this was before the economic liberalization of the early 1990s—when the Indian government opened up the country to foreign goods and markets—even then Crawford Market had green peas, leafy spinach, ridged okra, and Alphonsos, the juiciest type of mango.

In the back alleys of the market, there were illicit wares for sale, including exotic songbirds, trafficked illegally from across the continent. It was said that the birds traveled hundreds of miles stuffed inside water bottles, their beautiful feathers crushed, with tiny holes poked through for air. After their long journey, they were released, wings spreading, into a wire-frame cage. Shahzad was a sensitive boy and hated knowing that was how they came to the market. But he loved walking past the birds on his way home from school, and would often stop to listen to their calls. He also loved to watch the monkeys that hung off the arriving mango trucks.

It wasn’t that Shahzad’s father didn’t have the money to give his wife for Crawford Market. He came from great wealth; he simply didn’t want to share it. At least not with his family, who lived as though they were barely middle class, though he would give a few rupees to any beggar, street boy, or madman he saw on the road. His wealth was the reason Shahzad’s mother had married him. She was a poor girl from a village who had won this moneyed man with her beauty.

But it was not long into marriage before Shahzad’s mother understood her mistake. She understood when her husband began getting nosebleeds and then fell over, shaking, and went unconscious. They would wake him by putting leather near his face—an old belief held that “shoe smell” revived epileptics. It was then that Shahzad’s mother began to see her husband for what he was: brain-damaged.

Later, when Shahzad’s father became obsessed with foreign cars (buying a boxy Hillman and Austin and a sleek Opel) and started talking to them, when he took to wearing pyjama pants with a winter coat to go to work, and when he viciously mocked his youngest son, Shahzad—in these moments she knew there was something very wrong with her husband. Maybe his unkindness was not born out of cruelty but of a failure of the synapses in his brain to fire as they should.

Life improved for the family when Shahzad’s father was asked to run part of a sprawling local market. His domain, a three-thousand-square-foot plot of land, was crowded with vendors, and his job was to collect rent and keep it clean. Every day, he collected a single rupee from every cross-legged fisherwoman, blood-spattered butcher, tomato-wallah, and hawker of chiles and channa. Next, he swept the entire area, a Sisyphean but necessary task—the rough dirt of the market mixing with rotten food, fish bones, urine, and spit. He also cleaned up after the market’s many animals: fat cats on the hunt for unattended fish, goats grazing freely before slaughter, rats nosing for scraps, a chicken running headless through the passageways. This market wasn’t as big as Crawford Market, but still it was daunting to clean, and sometimes just as noisy. The market was loudest when the butchers brought in the chickens for slaughter, holding them five at a time, heads toward the earth. The birds would squawk, bodies writhing, as they were carried to their death. Blood would run through the dirt, crows would circle, and Shahzad’s father would furiously sweep.

“Chee,” Shahzad’s mother would say when his father came home just before midnight. “So much smell is there. And dirt. Keep your clothes outside.”

“Nobody is there to do this but me,” Shahzad’s father would tell her mournfully, because at night he did not have the energy to shout. “I am alone.”

Most nights, he did not even speak to his wife and children. He just disappeared to talk to his cars.

Shahzad didn’t enjoy being at home as a child, nor did his brother or sister. He didn’t enjoy school much either, where he was often singled out as the only Muslim in class. The other students would beat him, taunting him in the singsong way of bratty schoolchildren: “You’re a Muslim, you’re a Pakistani.” Shahzad could have been Pakistani, if his family had chosen to immigrate to Pakistan after Partition. When the British, bowing to demands for freedom, had hastily divided India into two countries in 1947, they had created in Pakistan a new Muslim nation-state. They had also, in abruptly withdrawing from India after two hundred years of rule, left terrifying sectarian violence in their wake. Even now, schoolchildren learned that Partition had been a kind of apocalypse. Babies were carved out of bellies. Neighbours stabbed one another in the night. Hundreds of thousands died, and countless women were raped. Millions of uprooted people also fled the rioting: Muslims moving one way to start new lives in Pakistan, while Hindus walked another—the biggest mass migration in history. The violence made it seem impossible that any Muslims would choose to stay. But Shahzad’s family had stayed, because his grandfather had businesses and property in Mumbai, which was then called Bombay. And so, instead of dealing with the problems facing the brand-new nation of Pakistan, Shahzad and his family had to face living as Muslims in Hindu-majority India. After Shahzad complained to the teacher, the beatings had stopped, but he did not make many friends.

Instead, as he grew up, he spent time with his birds, pigeons he bought from Crawford Market. He kept the birds on his verandah and grew to love them as if they were family. He tossed them so much seed that they soon became fat, until he got in trouble for making the verandah dirty, and wasn’t allowed to keep pigeons anymore.

Shahzad made one friend in those years: an Arab girl, the youngest of four sisters, who had the sweetest face he’d ever seen. After school and his tuitions in the Quran, they would play carrom together, using their strikers to push their carrom men toward the pockets, and giggling whenever one of them succeeded.

But over time the games grew less frequent and the Arab girl became distant. Shahzad realized she had fallen for his bigger, stronger cousin instead. She had a direct view of his cousin’s room from her apartment, across a courtyard, and Shahzad was certain this was how they fell in love. He had seen it happen in the movies. He thought he’d like to court a woman this way someday. But he also worried that girls might always prefer bigger, stronger men than him—a boy given the name of a prince but who had grown up to be gangly and uncertain.

***

Not far away, in Bhendi Bazaar, Sabeena, the second child of four sisters, and the liveliest and most beautiful among them, was given a nickname. Her father christened her Madhubala, after the actress who played the court dancer in Mughal-e-Azam—the woman whose dancing sent father and son to war. Like Madhubala, Sabeena had apple cheeks, strong, straight nose, and Cupid’s bow lips. She had the same eyes that danced below dramatic brows. She even had the same raspy voice and effervescent personality, in a house that desperately needed it. Sabeena lived with her grandfather, who was a tyrant, her mother and other sisters, whom she found dull, her brother, who had anger issues, and her father, whom she loved but who was strict with her. Outside of the movies, the actress Madhubala was barely seen out on the town. She never went to the big Bollywood parties or award shows, because her father did not allow it. It was the same for Sabeena, whose father rarely let her and her sisters out of their small apartment.

But Sabeena knew her father loved her and wanted to protect her. She knew that many Muslim girls were kept inside. He told her as much, warning that if fathers gave their daughters freedom, they could take a wrong step. And if they didn’t take a wrong step, a boy would for them. Sabeena mostly didn’t mind. She and her father would make masti at home, telling their own private jokes that the rest of the family members—who Sabeena and her father agreed were all “half-nut” or brainless as cows—would never get.

Still, sometimes Sabeena longed to go outside. Her grandfather, who could not walk, would go to the bathroom in his bed without warning and shout: “You all are not looking after me.” She did not find much joy in talking to her mother or sisters either. And her father was often away at work, especially in the evenings. Without him their cramped apartment seemed a sad and shabby place.

But through the windows of the apartment, which was in the heart of Bhendi Bazaar downtown, Sabeena could see all the activity and life of the outdoors. She could see the rows of shops selling gold jewelry, dusty old antiques, and colorful rows of cotton kurtas and fancier salwar kameez. Bhendi Bazaar sprawled over sixteen acres and was populated mostly by other Muslims. She could hear the call to prayer from the local masjid, the honk of cars, buses, and scooters, and the persistent call of the chai-wallah. It was only after she began going to school that she understood that more worlds existed beyond the bazaar. In geography class she learned about faraway countries, including Sudan, which she dreamed of visiting to see how African Muslims lived. When her father also began taking his daughters to the movies once a year, Sabeena began dreaming of Kashmir. Kashmir, though marred by violence since Partition, remained a majestic region of craggy mountain ranges and tranquil lakes. It appeared in almost every Bollywood film. When Sabeena asked her father about Kashmir, he told her, “Madhubala, anywhere you want to go, you can go in a marriage.”

All through her primary and secondary education, before she reached a marriageable age, Sabeena went directly home after school. She obediently completed her homework and Quran tuitions, wore her head covering, and did her five-times-a-day namaaz. And she spoke to few people outside of family. Her father, who was a doctor of skin diseases, often entertained his daughter by sharing his medical knowledge, telling her about the body and heart and brain. He was an intelligent man with bright eyes and big, owlish glasses, and he spoke with the confidence of a professor. Sabeena did not know then that he was a sexologist, or that when he came home late it was because he worked in the nearby red-light area, which was called Kamathipura. In Kamathipura, he gave injections and tablets to protect the men who had sex with prostitutes from getting gupt rog, which meant the “secret illness”—STDs. Sabeena’s father could not tell these things to a young girl.

About sex, he told his daughter that childbirth was painful. He warned her that when a woman got married, she freed herself of her family, but when she had a child, she became like a slave again. “Because through you he has had a child,” he said. He had seen this happen with couples in his practice. Sabeena knew her father wanted to prepare her for marriage, but she could not help feeling anxious. She knew she’d be married off eventually, matched with someone from her community. She found most of her immediate community bakwaas, rubbish: full of Muslim butchers who spent the whole day in the shop, leaving work with blood on their hands, and fighting with their wives in the night. But she told herself that her father would find her a better man.

Sabeena’s beauty was known throughout Bhendi Bazaar, and in the surrounding Sunni Muslim communities, and so she received dozens of marriage proposals. The first came when she was just ten, from a man in Pune, and later from all over Mumbai, for the girl who looked like the actress Madhubala. Child marriage had been outlawed in the country some forty years ago, but Islamic personal law—which had its basis in the Quran, decisions of the Prophet, and prior legal precedent—sometimes allowed for child marriage with the consent of a parent. Still, Sabeena’s father would wait until she was older. Whenever he told her about a proposal, Sabeena would laugh her long, throaty laugh, and her eyes would crinkle at the edges. With marriage a prospect for the faraway future, the proposals only delighted her.

But when at age twenty her father sat her down in their apartment to show her a photo of Shahzad, she knew this time it was different. Though she had not been sent to college, her education was now considered complete. This boy, Shahzad, was a Sunni Muslim like they were, and from another Muslim market area downtown, just a kilometer or so south. His family also went to dargahs and followed the same practices in prayers and fasting. They took seriously the edicts issued from Saudi Arabia but weren’t hard-liners either. And, like her family, his family followed the Hanafi school of law, meaning, among other things, they read the hadith to know how to live a good life. Though Sunnis and Shias mostly lived in harmony in the city, the same branch of Islam was preferred in marriage.

But there was one major difference: Shahzad came from a wealthy family. Sabeena looked at the photo again. She noticed Shahzad’s fat mustache, which he had worked hard to grow, but otherwise found little to remark on. Not that it mattered. Her father had trained her to like what she saw. After she looked at the photo and realized this man could become her husband, she began to cry. She wasn’t ready to leave her father or childhood home behind.

After this Sabeena’s father went to visit Shahzad at his shop, which was a cold storage business for chicken. Shahzad had set up the shop inside the local market while still in college. He had not wanted to be so close to his father, who passed through his shop three or four times an hour, asking anxiously, “How are things going on?” But the market was close to a church and a mosque, and with both Catholic and Muslim customers, who shared some of the same meat-eating habits, Shahzad’s business soon began thriving.

Sabeena’s father asked Shahzad what he had studied at university (English-language college, BComm), and ensured Shahzad wasn’t a butcher or involved in the mutton business (No, no). Did he chew paan and roam around? (Nothing like that.) What marks, then, did Shahzad get in his secondary education? (Good enough.) Sabeena’s father nodded. All satisfactory answers. Most important, he was the son of a landlord of a bustling market.

***

Weeks later, Shahzad stood in Sabeena’s lane beside his mother, sister, and, begrudgingly, his father, to meet the girl his mother had chosen. His mother had first noticed Sabeena’s movie-star looks at a wedding, learned she was the daughter of a doctor, and set up a meeting.

Shahzad saw Bhendi Bazaar with different eyes than Sabeena. To him, it seemed filled with cheap jewelry sellers, broken antiques, and cut-rate women’s clothing shops. His shoes were getting dirty. The walls of her building were stained with paan. Inside, laundry was hung at random. These people are not poor, but they do not have much money either, thought Shahzad. To him, it did not seem a suitable place to meet a bride.

When they reached Sabeena’s apartment, Shahzad was ushered into a small side room, so he would not see the rest of the flat. A window was open, and Shahzad felt cold. Why would they leave the window open in December? he thought, and wished he were at home. For more than an hour, Sabeena’s father peppered Shahzad with many of the same questions he had already asked at the shop. “What are you doing now?” “Where have you studied?” “Which college did you go to?” “How is cold storage?” As he spoke, Shahzad felt the room grow colder. He tried not to shiver.

And then the door opened and Sabeena walked in, eyes cast down, in a deep purple dress, and on her head a cloud-colored dupatta. She was accompanied by several women from her family. She did not look at Shahzad, but he could see her well enough. He observed with pleasure her resemblance to Madhubala: her look-at-me nose, inviting mouth, and round cheeks. The women accompanying Sabeena pulled back her head covering. Still, she did not look up. I have no choice, Sabeena thought to herself, so why should I look? But Shahzad saw what he thought was the trace of a smile. So she’s got energy, he thought. He is from a rich family, Sabeena told herself, as she tried to hide her expression. So even if I have to leave my family, my future is secure. If she kept thinking this, maybe she would not cry.

Shahzad wanted to say yes. He thought of the Arab girl who had chosen a stronger man over him. He thought of the boys who teased him at school, holding him down until he couldn’t breathe. And he thought of his father, who made him think he didn’t know anything, and that he’d never find a woman. Now, he faced a lovely woman who was willing to be his. He knew he should give her an answer. But he needed time to think.

At home, Shahzad’s mother and sister worked on Shahzad. “What are you thinking?” they asked. “Tell us.”

“Stop,” Shahzad said. “I’ll let you know.”

But they wouldn’t let up. “Other girls are not so educated.” “Look at how badly other girls live.” “Other girls have a habit of chewing tobacco.” “She is better looking than them.” “Her father is an important doctor.” “She is the best you’ll find.”

Two days later, Sabeena’s family called for an answer.

“Yes,” he said. “Okay.”

“Pukka?” Sabeena’s father asked him. “You’re sure?”

Shahzad nodded into the phone. He was twenty-three, and Sabeena just a little younger, twenty-one. When his mother put sweets in his mouth to celebrate, he dutifully swallowed them all.

There were also sweets at the engagement ceremony, along with gold bangles, dresses, and saris for Sabeena, and dress slacks, shirts, and wristwatches for Shahzad. After gifts, the couple exchanged rings. Throughout the ceremony, they did not speak to or look at each other. Sabeena wore a shy, almost sad expression. Shyness is the ornament of a girl, a common expression went. A garland was placed around Shahzad’s neck, and rose petals were scattered over Sabeena’s hair. Sharbat, a cold drink made with flower petals and fruits, was served. People neither Shahzad nor Sabeena knew signed the engagement book, wishing them health and happiness. To Sabeena, the day felt like a dream.

It was very cool in the city. Later that year, the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, would be assassinated by her own bodyguards. She flexed her power in too many ways: cracking down on civil liberties, imprisoning opponents, even allowing her son to carry out a programme of forced sterilizations to help control overpopulation. And so people would say that she had gotten her due.

After her assassination, there would be riots and mass killings up north. But that was months off, and the unrest would take place primarily in a state far away, against a community not their own. The political machinations of the country were of little importance compared to finding the right match for a son or daughter. Or so many parents in the country believed. In this engagement hall, with the right boy and girl brought together, all was right with the world.

All is right, Shahzad thought, as the ceremony wound down. I made the right choice. He was sure everyone in his community would tell him, “Oh, how beautiful your wife is.” He looked over at her now, sitting shyly in an ornate wooden chair, and felt happy. She wore a thickly embroidered pink and white sari and garlands of pink roses and white carnations around her neck. She was weighed down by gold: an ornate jhumar ornament on her forehead, a heavy necklace and earrings, and a thick stud in her nose. Her hands were darkly hennaed.

During the ceremony Sabeena, who had stolen a glance at her husband, decided she had also made the right choice. To her, he resembled Amitabh Bachchan, the handsome, brooding actor from Coolie. He looked like a man with a lot of emotion locked inside him, a man with whom Sabeena would not be bored.

But after the ceremony Sabeena’s best friend pulled her aside. “I saw Shahzad’s mother scolding someone,” she whispered. “She was hyper and shouting. Your mother-in-law is very tough. You’re gone.”

“What?” Sabeena whispered back. She had heard stories of dangerous mothers-in-law, the kind who threw plates against the wall if the food wasn’t made right. These were the mothers-in-law of the saas-bahu TV soaps, which girls across India watched in terror. Suddenly, her life ahead with Shahzad seemed uncertain. Her friend disappeared into the crowd, but her words echoed in Sabeena’s ears: You’re gone.

***

They married in January, on a day that happened to be the diamond jubilee of a local religious leader, and so the whole road to the wedding hall was lit up with lights. “What kind of wedding is this?” the guests asked in wonder.

Again, Sabeena felt lost in a dream. As was tradition, she had not seen Shahzad for three years. Her family brought her into the wedding hall with her face covered by a veil of the finest fabric. She wore a thick red Benares sari and flower petals strewn over her hair. The photographer asked her to sit on a pink throne to pose for photos. Sabeena had been to many weddings but still had not anticipated this level of pageantry.

In their community, the father of the groom had to give his son permission to marry before the ceremony, but Shahzad’s father was nowhere to be found. Shahzad knew where his father must be: at home, with his cars, having forgotten all about the wedding. And so he rushed home on his scooter, cursing his father as he navigated through the crush of traffic. He was going to be late to his own wedding. When Shahzad made it home and found his father in the garage as expected, his phone was already ringing. “Come soon, Shahzad. The priest is waiting for you for the ceremony to begin.”

Shahzad arrived just in time, with his father in tow, and his permission. The hall was filled with a throng of guests—some three thousand people from the community. Sabeena’s father began delivering the gifts: a bed, cupboard, fridge, TV, and gold. Every item was carried through the hall for the guests to see. The dowry was not so extensive as at a Hindu wedding but still enough to impress. Shahzad stood smiling in an expensive dark blue suit brought from Dubai by his brother, who had moved there for work. As the gifts paraded by, Shahzad felt he was living up to his princely name at last.

And as the ceremony began, Shahzad felt another swell of confidence, because his best friend, Atif, sat beside him. Like Shahzad, Atif was built thin like a reed, and had an equally long mustache. But he was taller and more muscular, and ahead of Shahzad’s wedding day, Atif had worked to make his friend strong. He’d taught him weight lifting and karate and taken Shahzad to the gym, where with each punch he made him repeat in Japanese: “Ichi. Ni. San. Shi!” They’d done knuckle push-ups until Shahzad worried the skin on his middle finger would fall off. Now, as Shahzad sat on his own throne-like chair, with Atif beside him, he thought it didn’t matter that his father had forgotten the day.

“Do you accept Sabeena as your wife?” the priest asked, breaking through Shahzad’s thoughts. “Yes,” Shahzad said, three times, as was required. Afterward, Shahzad’s family gave Sabeena’s side five thousand rupees, a generous amount, and she and Shahzad were both asked to sign the marriage contract. They recited the Quran, which guided the Muslim wedding ceremony.

As the wedding ended, a very sad song by Mohammed Rafi was played, and Sabeena began to cry. For the first time that day, she thought again about leaving home and her father, about her difficult mother-in-law and the great unknown that lay ahead. As her sister came over to comfort her, Sabeena wiped her tears with the edge of her dupatta, and her father enveloped her in a hug.

As Sabeena cried, Shahzad began to have second thoughts of his own. Perhaps the diamond jubilee lights were not a beautiful addition to the wedding. What if they were a bad omen instead? He worried that there could be a nazar, or curse, on their marriage. Superstition guided Shahzad’s perception of the world, as it did for many of his community’s religious leaders. Before the wedding, a local priest had advised Shahzad’s mother that Sabeena change her name in order for the marriage to succeed, saying the two S sounds were not a good combination. The priest said that with a different name, the connection between them would be stronger. But that felt wrong to Sabeena, who told Shahzad’s mother in a rare show of obstinacy: “My father gave me this name. You call me this.” Shahzad agreed, and her name had not been changed.

As the clock ticked past midnight after the wedding, Shahzad nervously looked for other signs of bad luck. When Sabeena went to her apartment and said good-bye to her mother, everything went smoothly. There was no trouble when Shahzad took her to his family home, showed her the elaborate British-built exterior, and brought her upstairs to their small but private room. But when his family set up a wedding game—a bucket of water with a ring dropped inside for the new couple to find—it was Sabeena who located it. Shahzad searched and searched, but his hands grasped at water.

Shahzad’s anxiety continued to rise as the end of the festivities approached, because Atif had not taught him one thing. His best friend had not taught him about sex, because Atif was also unmarried, and sex before marriage was haram. Shahzad knew he had to perform on the first night, but he had no idea what that entailed.

Shahzad pulled aside a family friend. “How do you fuck a woman?” he whispered, hoping the desperation wouldn’t come through in his voice. “Back side or front side?”

“Are you feeling sleepy and all? Wake up!” his friend told him, laughing, and sprayed soda in his face. “Of course the front side, pagal.”

Later, Shahzad would learn that anal sex was also haram in his community, along with oral sex, sex during menstruation, and sex during fasting times. Now, he only worried about doing it wrong, Sabeena laughing at him, and other people overhearing his struggle. In his community, women often came and pressed their ears to the door on a couple’s wedding night. It was almost 3 a.m., and Shahzad prayed the women would be too tired to listen in.

But it was Shahzad who was exhausted as he climbed into bed beside Sabeena. His eyes had never felt so heavy as they said their nightly prayer. Sabeena was also tired, glad to be able to take off her thick sari and heavy jewelry.

Front side, front side, Shahzad told himself.

Within minutes, they were both asleep.

***

Sabeena knew that Shahzad would try to initiate sex soon, and that she would have to comply, despite her fear. She would have to continue complying for years and years, any time he wished. It was what a good Indian wife did. Even the Indian Penal Code said sex between a man and his wife was never rape. But maybe Shahzad would not be a demanding husband that way. For the last day or so, they had simply relaxed in the apartment, which, like most middle-class apartments in the city, was modest and utilitarian. Still, it was far nicer than hers. From morning until night, they had listened to Mohammed Rafi songs on the record player, surrounded by all their new things. They had lain in the double bed for hours in their tiny room that faced out onto the street. Outside, Sabeena could hear the rumble of train tracks and the call of a pair of pigeons that liked to land on their windowsill. Nearby was a bright green dargah devoted to a saint who could levitate. And there was new construction for a Haj House nearby, a place where pilgrims could stay en route to Mecca. Sabeena hoped she and Shahzad would one day take the trip, which had long been government subsidized. Beyond the Haj House and the dargah was Crawford Market, where she knew Shahzad liked to go. It was all very romantic to Sabeena, and not the worst place to make love. Still, Shahzad did not make a move.

On the third day after the wedding, Shahzad worked up his nerve. Front side, front side, he told himself again. It was not as complicated as he thought. As he moved, Sabeena told Shahzad he was hurting her a little. But she also said it felt good. Afterward, they had to go wash. Their community was very strict on the requirement of ablutions after sex. As Sabeena got up, she was alarmed to find that there was no adjoining bathroom. She would have to walk outside to take a shower, and everyone in the family would know. But Shahzad’s family was discreet and did not comment.

After that, they continued to spend their days relaxing, talking, and listening to records, because Shahzad had taken a month off from work. Over and over again they played Mohammed Rafi’s song “Janam Janam Ka Saath Hai,” which was about living many lifetimes together. People said his voice was magic, and that no one sang a love song the way he did.

As Mohammed Rafi’s music played, Shahzad told Sabeena about his childhood and his father’s mistreatment. Sabeena told him his father sounded like a small man, who only wanted others to feel small. She also told Shahzad about her own father, how he was strict but good to her, and how her grandfather had been even stricter and not so kind.

Shahzad understood that Sabeena’s father meant well. But he thought that keeping her indoors was akin to putting his daughter in a kundu, in a faraway village, isolated from the world. In a kundu, people didn’t go out and gain knowledge, and the knowledge didn’t come in. More people were moving to cities, but Shahzad knew the majority of the country still lived in rural areas, where TV had not yet arrived. In Mumbai, Shahzad had watched television and gone to movies all the time as a child, favoring the English-language spy pictures that starred Sean Connery and Roger Moore. His mom would give him the single rupee for admission, and they’d get mawa cake afterward. He couldn’t imagine a life without movies. For him—for most children and adults he knew—movies were everything. He thought that people who grew up walled in, away from films and news and the world, didn’t know how to think for themselves. He promised himself he would try to change that in Sabeena. Sabeena told herself she’d try to free Shahzad from the hurt of his father.

In the big Hindi movies, which were often set in Kashmir, the heroes and heroines stood atop mountains as snowflakes fell onto their tongues. Or they floated across gentle lakes in boats made just for two. In the movies it was as if the fighting in Kashmir did not exist. Sabeena remembered what her father said about Kashmir: Madhubala, anywhere you want to go, you can go in a marriage. Those words echoed now in her mind. Sabeena imagined the trips Shahzad took her on would be as idyllic.

But after Ramadan ended and their honeymoon approached, Shahzad’s mother interrupted that dream. She told them she was coming with them on their trip. Sabeena cried at the thought of it. How could she think she should come on our honeymoon? Shahzad reassured his new wife. His mother was confused because she was from a small village and had a backward mindset. “Just don’t answer her when she asks,” he said. In the end Shahzad’s mother stayed home.

They set off first for Matheran, a tiny hill station in the Western Ghats mountain range, whose name meant “a forest on the forehead.” The train took four hours or so, and when they arrived Shahzad woke to find Sabeena asleep on his shoulder, a sea foam–colored scarf wrapped around her hair. A voice boomed over the loudspeaker, and he heard the sound of a dog’s bark. As they roamed around Matheran, they took photos of each other beside a river, under a gazebo, and atop a mountain, though it was not snowing that time of year.

After Matheran they visited two more hill stations: Panchgani, where Shahzad rode like a hero astride a white horse, and Mahabaleshwar, where they went boating like the couples in the movies. In Mahabaleshwar, they stayed in a hotel called Anarkali, which meant “pomegranate blossom,” and was the name of the court dancer in Mughal-e-Azam. In the hotel, as they made love, their life felt just like a film.

But on the train ride back to Mumbai, Sabeena asked Shahzad an uncomfortable question. Perhaps she had started to notice small details that suggested Shahzad wasn’t a serious man, such as how his smile was goofy or how he kept his shirt unbuttoned too low. Or she was just curious. “My father told me that if a woman sits next to a man, a man should get a current, should get excited,” she said. “Why isn’t that happening to you?”

Shahzad didn’t understand. He couldn’t be excited all the time. They didn’t talk on the ride much after that. And as their train pulled into Bombay Central, a tooth in Shahzad’s mouth began to ache. When they got on the bus from the station, the pain continued to increase. By the time he got home, Shahzad had a toothache that made it hard to speak or think.

The next day, he went to the doctor, who removed the tooth, but Shahzad couldn’t shake the bad feeling. It was like the nazar had followed them silently on the honeymoon and reappeared when they got close to home.

***

The photos of their first anniversary celebration, which Sabeena placed neatly inside their wedding album, show a blissful day at home. Shahzad chose a casual red-checked shirt for the party, which he buttoned to his chest, and American-style blue jeans. Sabeena wore an iridescent pink and white sari, her red wedding bangles, and white flowers tied in her hair. Both have the glow of youth. They look thin—so thin it seems that they could live on fatty laddoos and still remain this beautiful. In one photo, Shahzad’s father even lets them feed him a slice of cake. In another, Shahzad and Sabeena are laughing at something, and Sabeena’s veil is falling off, and tiny wisps of hair frame her face. In the last photo in the album, they pose side by side, and Shahzad’s arm is wrapped around his wife. There is a mirror behind them, and the camera catches it, so that the space between them is obscured by a flash of light.

They both knew what came next, after a year of marriage. For almost any Indian couple, a year meant it was time for children. Shahzad dreamed of having four, five, even six children, whom he imagined waiting for him at the door every night when he came home. They would all be smiling and plump and healthy. They would be mostly boys, and they would clutch at Sabeena’s long salwar kameez. Despite her father’s warnings that giving birth was difficult, Sabeena also wanted children.

As they tried for a child, Shahzad took Sabeena out of the house as often as he could. He wanted to get her out of the kundu mind-set before a child tied her down. He took Sabeena out on his scooter. They drove past the old art deco movie theaters to the Oberoi, a luxury hotel so high it seemed to tower over the city. They sat at the seaside talking for hours, looking down at the concrete tetrapods that broke the ocean’s force. As Shahzad drove her home, he felt proud of his new scooter and the freedom it gave him. But he was not a good driver, and Sabeena swore she’d never go out on it again.

After that, when Sabeena went home to her parents’ house for visits, Shahzad always picked her up in a taxi. As the taxi idled outside, Shahzad would shout her brother’s name up to her apartment window, because it wasn’t proper to call out for a lady. Shahzad’s voice always rose uncertainly through the hubbub of butchers, jewelry sellers, and street vendors. Sabeena’s brother would yell back, and after a little while Sabeena would come down, her head covered. And then they’d take a cab somewhere, usually to the sea.

Shahzad also liked to take out Sabeena’s sisters, most of whom were younger and impressionable. Whenever the sisters learned Shahzad was coming, they got ready by four p.m., though he wasn’t arriving until five, and shouted with excitement: “Bhaijan is coming! Bhaijan is coming!” They rushed to do their hair and makeup. After Shahzad picked them up in a taxi, they would drive to Apollo Bunder. There, they’d gaze up at the Gateway of India and, behind it, the Taj Mahal Hotel. Or he took them to Chowpatty Beach, where they sat and watched the waves for hours, ate bhelpuri and pav bhaji, and felt the ocean’s breeze.

Shahzad had first learned about Chowpatty from Atif. As teenagers, he and Atif and two other friends, one a millionaire’s son with a flashy car, drove to Chowpatty every Sunday. They’d park and make masti and talk until the sun went down. Or, if it was during the Hindu festival of Navratri, they’d drive from Chowpatty to the grounds of Walkeshwar, where they would watch Hindu women—women they could never marry—do the garba, twirling in their colorful flared skirts.

Since he had gotten married, Shahzad had seen less of Atif. He had attended Atif’s engagement to a good Muslim girl from the community. But after that Atif had been elusive. He had become a well-known karate instructor and had little time for anyone, even his oldest friend.

But one day Atif reappeared to tell Shahzad about a problem. He had fallen in love with one of his karate students, a Gujarati girl. More problematically: a Jain, a religion that seemed to Shahzad far removed from Islam, because of how it emphasized renunciation. Atif wasn’t married yet and said he was going to break his engagement and marry the Jain girl instead. “But how can it be?” Shahzad asked him nervously. “She is a Hindu. Even worse, a Jain.” Atif just looked back at him. Atif always did what he wanted.

After that, Shahzad did not hear from Atif until months later, when he saw him in a restaurant with ladies’ surma rimmed around his eyes. The Prophet had said wearing surma could be auspicious, but on Atif it looked like a disguise. “Oye,” said Shahzad, laughing. “You are looking very different.” Atif grabbed Shahzad by the shirt and brought him into a corner. “I ran away with that Gujarati girl and got married,” Atif said. “And the girl’s father is now looking for me.” He told Shahzad that the girl’s father had even given a local inspector ten thousand rupees to arrest Atif on a false case, to maybe even “encounter” him, which meant when you shot a person dead and made it look like an accident. Police in Mumbai used encounters to pick off members of the city’s underworld, but Shahzad knew parents sometimes resorted to desperate methods when their children married across religions. He was terrified for his friend. Atif said he was going to hide out at his aunt’s place for as long as he had to and, before Shahzad could say more, disappeared. After this, Shahzad did not hear from Atif for a long time.

Shahzad wished Atif was around, because after that day, life went very differently at home. Or he could have used his brother, but his brother was many kilometers away. And so none of the men Shahzad trusted were nearby when life for Sabeena and him began to unravel.

It started with Shahzad’s mother. After their first year of marriage, she began pestering Sabeena daily. The laundry was done too late in the day. Or Sabeena hadn’t spent enough time tending to her needs. Mostly, she was on her daughter-in-law about her cooking: the food had been oversalted, it was too well-done, or Sabeena had bought the wrong meat or vegetables. “You don’t know how to cook,” Shahzad’s mother would shout, or, “You need to learn everything.” If Sabeena dropped a utensil, Shahzad’s mother would demand, “Why did you throw that away?” Or, the more stinging insult, “Your mother and father have not taught you how to behave.”

Sabeena, always the most outspoken among her friends and sisters, forced herself not to talk back. It had been a peaceful first year, but now her best friend’s warning had come true. Sabeena told herself that most mothers-in-law were like this. It was a kind of national tradition. She was an outsider coming into their family—a threat—and over time Shahzad’s mother had become jealous. She has grown afraid that her son will go into his wife’s hand, Sabeena thought. If that happened, Shahzad would only listen to Sabeena, not his mother.

Sabeena tried not to let his mother’s cruelty get to her. It helped that she could tell Shahzad about it. The incidents mostly occurred while he was at work. When he got home from the shop, he’d listen patiently as Sabeena recounted what his mother had done that day. It made Shahzad tense to listen to these stories, but he forced himself to tell her calmly, “Chod de. Let it go.” And Sabeena would, knowing there was no other choice.

As Shahzad’s mother grew stricter, Sabeena felt something shift within her. Nothing had prepared her for this level of criticism. The freedom she felt on her honeymoon already seemed far away. Even Shahzad realized that she was becoming a prisoner again—just inside a different jail. They both felt grateful that Shahzad’s father was not also cruel to her. He had become so enamored with his cars and the market that he hardly spoke to anyone in the family.

As time went on, Sabeena decided she needed to accept that what had lived in her as a girl had died, and that marriage was all a matter of adjustment. She had to adjust for her husband and his parents. And she had to adjust for herself—to accept that maybe she would not get to be happy. Shahzad also had to adjust for her, taking time after a long workday to listen to her complaints. She saw this as similar to when a person clapped. You clap with both hands, not one, she thought. Both have to clap together to make a sound. If not, there will be only silence.

Sabeena was also distracted by the effort of trying, unsuccessfully, for a baby. More than a year passed, and no baby came. Shahzad felt strong and virile; he had no problem getting erections. He could not understand why a baby did not arrive. Soon, people in his community began to talk. Shahzad watched many of his extended family members become pregnant. Some had three children, then four, five.

Sabeena began to worry. There was a common story of a man who went to the Prophet and asked about marrying a woman of good lineage, high honor, and immense beauty. The only problem was that the woman could not reproduce. No, came the answer. Do not marry her. Because to have more children was to increase the size of the ummah, and the size of the Islamic nation was what mattered most. It was not so different from Hindu ideas about reproduction. Both religions stressed how essential it was to continue the family line.

Shahzad had seen movies where people couldn’t have children. It was always the girl’s fault. Even if it wasn’t, the girl was blamed for it. But Shahzad began to worry that if Sabeena wasn’t the problem, then something must be wrong with him. Men who were sterile in his community were viewed as weak—not real men. “No, no,” said Shahzad’s mother, when he told her this. “Always check the girl first.”

And so he and Sabeena went to the doctor, a kindly man who took Sabeena inside a small room and ran a battery of tests. As part of her pelvic exam, he put a finger inside her. When Sabeena came out of the room, she looked like she was about to cry. “Why did he put his finger inside me like this?” she asked Shahzad. It seemed a clear violation of the Quran’s rule that no man touch a woman except her husband. “No, no, he’s a doctor, it’s okay,” Shahzad assured her. “We have to see if you can become pregnant.”

When the doctor came out, he said, “She’s perfect.” He looked at Shahzad. “Now I have to see you.”

Shahzad went to the clinic later, in secret, to drop off his semen sample. He hoped no one had seen him go. He waited anxiously for the results. After what felt like hours, the lab technician reappeared.

“Kuch bhi nahi,” the technician said. “Nothing is there.”

Shahzad rejoiced. Nothing is wrong with me after all. It was just taking Sabeena time to conceive. There was no problem. No reason for worry or shame. A son or a daughter would eventually arrive.

Later, a doctor clarified the results. The technician had meant no sperm was there. There was nothing in the semen. Shunya. Zero. The doctor told Shahzad he suffered from azoospermia, a medical condition in which a man has a low or even zero sperm count.

He took down Shahzad’s entire medical history. The list of ailments was long: prolonged periods of unexplained weakness in childhood, an ear infection that had permanently thrown off his balance, and a more recent keloid scar from an aluminum locket he wore around his neck that contained verses of the Quran. And, at age sixteen, the mumps. When Shahzad mentioned mumps, the doctor paused.

The mumps were worrying, the doctor said. The viral illness could stop sperm production temporarily, or in rare cases, forever.

“The mumps likely affected your testes,” the doctor told Shahzad. “But there are many people like this. Your erections will be all right. It’s just that you can’t produce.” He told Shahzad he was almost sterile.

Shahzad turned what the doctor said over and over again in his mind. He felt like he was cursed. He thought back to his wedding day, to the lights that had lit up the road.

Finally, he worked up the courage to tell Sabeena. His voice was unsteady and he hung his head. Sabeena listened, her bright eyes focused on his face. “O,” she said gently, when he was finished, using the term of endearment she had taken to calling him. “It’s God’s will. It’s okay.”

“But our generation should go ahead,” Shahzad said.

“If God doesn’t want to give children to us, then he doesn’t.”

Sabeena remembered what her father had told her—that childbirth was painful, and that afterward men gained control of their wives.
But he had also said something else: “With children, Madhubala, your life will be happy always.” She wondered what their life would be like now, without them.

She also thought of her cousins, the ones with housework piling up and children to attend to. It seemed like a lot of work with a mother-in-law also on your back. And it seemed impossible to both run a house well and take care of children the way you should. She told herself it was better this way.

“It’s God’s will,” she told Shahzad again, and Shahzad couldn’t decide if this made him feel better or worse.

A saying came into his mind then, about how a man and a horse never get old, not if they are virile and strong. He was determined not to feel old yet. He was only twenty-nine, and Sabeena not yet twenty-seven. He wanted to hold on to the man who had stood like a prince in a fancy suit from Dubai, receiving expensive gifts beside his lovely wife.

Shahzad was stuck on a single word the doctor had said: “almost.” He had not said “sterile” but “almost sterile.” That meant there were options. Pills. Powders. Tests. The doctor had even mentioned an operation.

Without taking time to consider, Shahzad told the doctor he wanted them all.

***

When Shahzad went in for the operation, it was a private affair. It had been a quiet year for his family, and for the city, except for the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Though the fatwa was issued in Iran, Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses had also angered Muslims in Mumbai with its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. It had angered people in Shahzad’s own community, who marched past his house shouting slogans and starting fights in the street with police. The same people who would talk if they knew the real reason for Shahzad’s operation. And so he went to a private hospital, where he wouldn’t risk running into anyone he knew. His brother flew in from Dubai over the holidays to keep him company, but Sabeena stayed at home, so as not to arouse suspicion. When it was over, neighbours were told Shahzad was treated for a bump near his groin.

Before he left for the operation, Shahzad sat Sabeena down and told her, “If I get the operation, everything will be good. We will have a child.”

“That’s okay, O,” she said. “Let’s just see.”

Shahzad was nervous, but the doctor, a well-known physician at a hospital downtown, laid out the problem and procedure plainly. He explained that the mumps may have caused a varicocele, a network of swollen veins that caused blood to pool, which could affect sperm production. He told Shahzad the surgery would manipulate the veins to allow blood to flow more freely. But he could make no promises of a miracle cure. Shahzad nodded, though he hardly heard the last part. He was certain he’d be healed after the operation.

It was all over in half an hour, but Shahzad stayed in the hospital for several days. He was in intense pain, for which he was given painkillers. The doctor told him that the veins had been put right.

After Shahzad’s pain waned, the doctor reminded him that repairing a varicocele could mean better sperm production—or it could do nothing at all. Shahzad’s family grew upset. Rumors swirled that the hospital had not given them a report they asked for. Someone suggested the lost report was to save Shahzad the embarrassment of learning the operation hadn’t worked. Shahzad only wanted to go home.

The doctor released him with tablets to help increase sperm production. In the months that followed, Shahzad took them, though they made him feel sleepy, giddy, and a little nauseous. Arey, this is to make me strong, but it’s making me feel weak, he thought. But then he had sex with Sabeena and saw that he could last a long time.

When Shahzad went in for a checkup, the doctor clapped and crowed at his patient’s erection. But while Shahzad’s sex life was better than ever, he had taken the pills for many months now and still Sabeena wasn’t pregnant.

“It’s okay, O,” she told him again, but he didn’t agree.

One night, as Shahzad walked through an area of town he didn’t usually venture, he was startled to see Sabeena’s father sitting on the side of the road. They were in the red-light district. He had known Sabeena’s father was a doctor who treated skin diseases; now he understood what that meant. Shahzad greeted him, and they exchanged pleasantries. He wanted to ask the man’s advice. Perhaps he could help me, he thought. Now is my chance. But he didn’t want word getting back to Sabeena, and after a short conversation, he continued walking.

After this encounter, Shahzad decided to go to a sexologist, one with no connection to his family. He knew sexologists treated all kinds of problems: gupt rog, impotence, even homosexuality, which was then considered a disease. But Shahzad had no trouble having sex, and the sexologist turned him away. “If you don’t have a problem, I can’t do anything for you,” he said. “But Doctor,” Shahzad persisted, “why is my sperm count not coming?” “Mumps,” the sexologist said, like the other doctors had. “Your testes were very damaged.” Shahzad grew angry and could not help but think of his father, who had not taken him to the doctor when he should.

For the next five years, Shahzad spent money going to every doctor, trying every pill, and asking about each new technology that hit the market. He did this especially when a neighbour would prod him about why he did not have children and help spread the religion. “Every time you produce a child, God smiles,” they’d say, piously. Or they’d goad him to take a second wife, because his first wife was assumed to be barren. Shahzad could not tell them that Sabeena was not the problem. Once, Shahzad’s mother needled him that “Even a gay got a child,” because the wife of a gay man in their neighbourhood had gotten pregnant. In Shahzad’s community, being gay was haram; in the Quran, it was said that men who preferred men were “transgressing beyond bounds.” Legally, it was a crime punishable by a life sentence. If even a gay man got his wife pregnant, Shahzad knew there was something very wrong with him.

After reading about a new medical advance in the paper, Shahzad went to see a famous fertility specialist, who yanked so hard on a nerve Shahzad thought he’d pass out. She told him that he needed another operation. Before the surgery, they had to conduct more tests, for which Shahzad spent an extravagant twenty thousand rupees.

It was then that Sabeena decided Shahzad’s obsession had gone far enough. He was spending so much time and money, and only growing more anxious. But when she confronted him about it, he would not listen. So she took him to visit their family doctor, whom Shahzad had seen for years, to ask whether all these specialty appointments, pills, and operations made sense. The doctor, a thoughtful man, peered at them gravely over his glasses when Shahzad mentioned another operation.

“It’s a waste of time,” he said, his voice stern. “Don’t do it. And stop what you’re doing now.” Shahzad hung his head. “I’m sorry, but there is nothing that can be done for you.”

***

Water was scarce that year in Mumbai, as it often was after a season of low rainfall. And it was especially scarce for Shahzad’s large joint family, where he, Sabeena, his parents, uncle, aunt, and a handful of other family members shared a single water tank. Before long, Sabeena began arguing with Shahzad’s aunt over the lack of water, saying the woman had used it all up, or closed the knob so Sabeena couldn’t access it to cook or wash or clean. Sabeena told Shahzad she barely had enough water to use each day. After several tense weeks, Shahzad decided to speak to his uncle.

This uncle had always been Shahzad’s favorite. Throughout childhood, whenever Shahzad’s uncle saw Shahzad’s father mistreating him, he would ask his brother, “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” This was the uncle who took Shahzad to the doctor when he had the mumps. He had always been friendly and had a casual manner, and Shahzad thought he would know how to solve the women’s problem. But Shahzad also knew his uncle had been stressed recently—smoking more than a pack of cigarettes a day. He would have to approach the matter with care.

“Uncle,” said Shahzad, speaking with a little more force than he’d meant to. “Why is your wife making the knob slow? We are not getting enough water.”

His uncle did not respond as Shahzad had hoped. Instead, he shouted a gaali at his nephew, a word Shahzad had never heard in the house. Before Shahzad could stop himself, he shouted a gaali back. His uncle grew angry in a way Shahzad had never seen. He took out a stick they kept at home to kill mice and shouted, “I’ll beat you.”

Shahzad retreated in surprise. It was Ramadan, a time of fasting and reflection, and that night there would be prayers. It was no time to fight. He vowed to talk to his uncle again more calmly tomorrow.

But the next day, an ambulance came and took his uncle away. After that, he did not return.

The family was told that he died of a heart attack, perhaps due to stress, and immediately they turned on Shahzad.

“It’s because of you he died,” Shahzad’s mother told him. “It’s because you shouted at him that way.” The rest of the joint family agreed. Most of them would not speak to Shahzad or made snide comments as he passed them in the house. The only elder who did not criticize Shahzad was his father, who seemed not to notice his brother was gone.

Shahzad was frantic. He had killed his favorite uncle and his protector, all over some drops of water.

“It’s not your fault, O,” Sabeena told him, gently. “They are wrong.” She wanted to stand up for Shahzad against his family. She had often wanted to in the years she lived with his parents. But she knew from watching the other women in the family that this would make the problem worse.

At the funeral, the first Shahzad had ever attended, he watched as they covered his uncle’s face—which was turned to face the qibla, in the direction of Mecca—and lowered his body into the grave. Dried mud was collected in an earthen pot to scatter on top of the coffin. Flowers were placed beside the body. Everyone recited prayers from the Quran. As Shahzad collected his share of dirt to throw into the grave, he felt ill. It’s all because of me, he thought.

Later, the family learned that Shahzad’s uncle had been under other pressures. For weeks, there had been troubles with his property. The day before his death—and the day Shahzad approached him—his uncle’s friend and business partner had stolen his land out from under him by putting a license in his name. If anything had killed his uncle, it was this.

Despite this new knowledge, and no matter how many times Sabeena assured him otherwise, Shahzad still heard his mother’s words: It’s because of you he died.

In the days after the funeral, Shahzad felt as if there was still dirt underneath his fingernails. No matter how often or forcefully he washed his hands, they never seemed to come clean.

Sabeena did her best to comfort Shahzad, but she was soon distracted by trouble of her own. For weeks, her father had been acting anxious and jittery. He said he was worried about the marriage prospects of his other daughters. Not long after he began acting strangely, he went to the hospital for a hernia operation.

It was a complicated surgery, but Sabeena’s father told his family it would be simple. He had problems with his heart, and so the operation was a risk, but he did not tell them this either. He had also arranged to have it done at a cheap hospital, which they did not know. Such hospitals were terrifying places, with instruments unsterilized, malpractice common, and reports of a thriving black-market organ trade.

Sabeena was sleeping when a woman from the hospital came to their house late at night and told them that the operation had gone wrong. “He’s very serious, come soon,” she said, and Shahzad and Sabeena hurried to get dressed in the dark.

By the time they reached the hospital, Sabeena’s father was dead. His heart had given out in the surgery.

Sabeena knew immediately that her life would be divided into two parts: the time before and the time after her father’s death. She was twenty-seven, and perhaps she had already been an adult for years. But she saw she had not experienced true suffering until now.

She did not understand why her father had not confided in her. She thought that perhaps it was because of lack of money. But when she got to her family home, crying as she climbed up the stairs past the paan spit and the hanging laundry, through the drafty room and into their messy front hall, she opened her father’s cupboard and found seventy-five thousand rupees—a large sum—inside.

Not long after Sabeena’s father died, Shahzad went away to Dubai. He said he needed to be with his brother because of the continued shaming of his family over his uncle’s death, which Sabeena understood. But with Shahzad gone, she felt she could not talk to anyone—not her mother or sisters, who acted like sheep, or her brother, who was angrier than ever. The only person she wanted to talk to was her father. If he were here, though, she knew what he’d say. He would tell her to pray hard to Allah.

***

After Shahzad returned from Dubai, the 1992 riots took place, as if death begot more death, and on a larger scale.

It started when he was in his shop at the market, listening to the radio, and heard news of a faraway mosque being burned to the ground. Right-wing Hindu groups had organized a rally, which devolved into a riot, which gave way to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, one of the largest mosques in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The Hindu groups had been rallying to reclaim the birthplace of the god Ram, and the place where a Hindu temple supposedly once stood, before a Mughal emperor built a mosque in its place. The rally was organized, in large part, by the RSS, a volunteer Hindu nationalist group whose agenda was to push for a Hindu nation. A group that said India experienced a “golden age” until it was ruined by the Muslim Mughal kings. Men the RSS had sent to rally at the mosque shouted “Death to the Muslims!” as they destroyed it with pickaxes and hammers. Now, the Babri Masjid was rubble.

As Shahzad listened to the radio, he thought the demolition didn’t sound like a rally that spontaneously transformed into a riot. To him, the destruction sounded preplanned. He wanted to keep listening to the news, but all the Muslims in the market were closing early. There was talk of violence in Mumbai, though they were many miles from the Babri Masjid. Maybe it had started already. Shahzad closed his shop and went to find his father, uncle, and cousin. They were all ready to leave. The buses and taxis seemed to have stopped running, and so they rushed home on foot instead. In the streets, they saw tires burning.

As the men approached their mostly Muslim neighbourhood, Shahzad heard what they all feared—that Muslims were coming out to kill Hindus in retaliation. And the Hindus would retaliate after that. This was how trouble often started in the country: all was calm among ordinary men until more powerful people lit a match. And then the violence spread like a market fire. But as Shahzad and his family passed their local tailor, who was Hindu, the man called out to them, his voice kind: “Come inside and sit until things are safe.” He had been their tailor for a long time, starting with Shahzad’s grandfather, followed by Shahzad’s father, and now Shahzad, always making the men special kurta pyjamas at Eid and Ramadan time. They were a block from home, but they hurried inside the tailor’s shop, which was attached to his home.

Huddled in the tailor’s apartment, they heard that angry Muslims were burning more tires now and not letting any remaining public transport move. The police had come out, but it was rumored that they were protecting only Hindus.

When they finally ran the last block home, Shahzad used the landline to call Sabeena, who was out visiting her mother and sisters. At least she is in a Muslim locality, Shahzad thought. So maybe she is safe. But Shahzad was also in a Muslim locality, and now there was a Hindu man outside throwing rocks at his window, trying to break the glass.

There was a Hindu inspector who lived in the next building who Shahzad knew liked Muslims and Muslim culture. He played qawwalis—Sufi devotional music—almost every day. And so Shahzad called the inspector, who confronted the man slinging rocks. In Shahzad’s memory, the inspector held up his gun and said, “If you do that in my area, I will shoot you dead.”

The man left, but the violence continued to rage. Muslims, furious over the demolition of the mosque, set public buses on fire, and Hindus damaged more mosques in the city. In the central neighbourhood of Bandra, some people simply vanished, taken from their beds in the night. Men were torched alive, while women were stripped and gang-raped. Shops and homes were burned. On the trains Hindu men caught Muslim men whose beards gave them away and threw them onto the tracks. Muslim men stoned Hindus, shouting “Allah-hu-Akbar!” as they hit their targets. Police were also killed. When whole Muslim areas were set on fire, the police radioed, “Let it burn.”

After four days, the violence waned, and Sabeena called Shahzad to beg him to bring them some milk. Her family had not eaten in days. Shahzad, who was growing more anxious the longer he stayed inside, and the longer he was away from Sabeena, was grateful to have a job to do.

Outside, the streets were eerily quiet, as empty as he’d ever seen them. His destination was the Regal Theater downtown, which was three and a half kilometers away. Here, a store might be open. As he walked, he saw small fires in the road, but no one gave him any trouble. As he approached the theater, a bearded man called out, “Chali jao, they are killing Muslims still.” Shahzad nodded curtly and walked on. “Wapis jao, chalo,” the man shouted, his voice persistent. “It’s started again, they are killing Muslims. They are even putting poison in the milk and giving it.”

Shahzad stopped, startled. He stared at the open shop by the theater, turned around, and went back home.

As Shahzad told his family what he’d heard, they whispered that it was all a big plan, this killing of Muslims. They said that it didn’t make sense that Sharad Pawar, the defense minister, hadn’t immediately sent the army to help the police, and that many more Muslims were being killed because of the delay. Rumors began circulating that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had been part of the planning of the mosque’s demolition, and that the RSS had gotten permission to stage their attack. The fact that the police had done nothing to stop the violence was only more evidence.

For eight days, Shahzad did not see Sabeena. Curfew had been imposed on the city, and Shahzad’s family had very little to eat, just a stock of dry chapatis. Finally, the army came from New Delhi and declared that whoever continued to riot would be shot. Bit by bit, after the last fits of rage were expended, peace was restored to the city.

The violence stopped, but Shahzad did not know how he or anyone else in Mumbai could forget what had taken place. Not all neighbours were like the tailor. Stories circulated about a neighbour who had murdered another, a shop owner who stoned a family he once fed, and a policeman who shot a man he’d been charged to protect.

In the end, some nine hundred people were dead: the majority of them Muslims, but also many Hindus, and fifty who were not declared either way. Thousands more were injured. One of Shahzad’s doctors watched a man die by sword and went mad afterward. Shahzad’s brother-in-law witnessed a murder he would not talk about. In January, Shahzad realized that the Catholics had not celebrated Christmas.

When Sabeena returned, she seemed different, as if she were holding a secret inside her. Finally, she told Shahzad what happened in Bhendi Bazaar. She said that police had broken soda bottles and told Muslims to kneel and walk on their knees on the broken glass until they bled.

In the days to come, though, the city achieved a kind of equilibrium. The newspapers reported that the police were encouraging Muslims and Hindus to sit together in public spaces. But Shahzad and Sabeena could not so easily forget. They would be polite to the Hindus they knew, as they always had, but the riots had given them cause to be more cautious, and more pious. They had always been good Muslims, reading the Quran and performing their daily namaaz. Now, they both attached a deeper feeling to their faith.

Shahzad thought back to his childhood, when he had learned from the local Catholic kids in plaid uniforms that they went to church just once a week. Once a week only. He’d marveled at the thought. Now, he felt that his five-times-a-day prayers weren’t enough.

Sabeena read the Quran every night. During Friday prayers, while Shahzad was at the mosque, she fingered her tazbih necklace, like the Catholics did with their rosaries, repeating “Subhan Allah, Subhan Allah,” “Glory be to God,” thirty-three times, once for each bead. As Sabeena prayed, she remembered that her father had told her that the goal of any Muslim was to pray twenty-four hours a day, but that since she had other duties, she should just pray as much as she was able. After the attacks, she decided to move as close to that ideal as she could.

***

Not long after, there were bomb blasts in Mumbai, thirteen in a row. It was said to be retaliation for the demolition of the Babri Mosque and for all the Muslims who had been killed and raped and burned in the riots. And for all the pain and injustice Muslims had suffered over the years. India blamed Pakistan for the blasts, which Pakistan denied. This time, some 250 people were killed, and many more injured, most of whom were Hindus. The TV images were horrifying: severed limbs, contorted bodies, blood running in the road like a stream. While they didn’t condone the bombings, Shahzad and Sabeena were not surprised. This was a wound that had been deepening since Partition, maybe even from before. And like many Muslims, they felt that if Muslims did not retaliate, they would all be killed. Just one in ten people were Muslim, while eight in ten were Hindu; they could not stop the Hindus if they tried. First, their jobs would be taken away, then their rights, and finally their bodies, by Hindus who felt they could do what they wanted to the minorities of the country, as they had been emboldened to do since Partition.

Once the blasts were over and life resumed normalcy, Shahzad fixated again on the lack of a baby. He continued to frequent priests and quacks and to hemorrhage money, attempting to change the unchangeable outcome with tests, powders, and pills. As he spent and spent, Sabeena recalled something else that the family doctor had told them: “You will spend lakhs”—hundreds of thousands of rupees—“and nothing at all will happen.”

And yet Shahzad showed no signs of stopping. In fact, Sabeena thought it was as if her husband had become bimar, as if he was not well, suffering from some disease without a cure. The word bimari meant a physical illness, but Sabeena used it to describe Shahzad’s mental unrest, which had begun to seem almost physical. Her husband had always had a nervous demeanor, but now he seemed anxious all the time—as if he was anticipating a disaster she could not see. People in the community spoke of him in a certain way, always with the same subtext: There’s Shahzad, the mad one, the silly one, the one whose pants are too big and who sweats through his clothes. It was as if they were speaking of his father.

Sabeena did not care what other people said. But she was growing more worried about her husband. Once, just being with her had made him happy. Now it seemed like nothing she did could calm him down. He had also become obsessive about washing his hands, often staying in the bathroom so long people had to bang on the door to get in.

And he had started seeing an alternative doctor, a hakim, who practiced extreme methods. Once, he told Shahzad to go buy sweet paan from a corner shop, tie the tobacco’s betel leaf around his penis, and start a fire on the leaf to produce heat there. After this, the hakim promised him, “You’ll get a child very soon. In two, three months.” Shahzad followed his instruction, though it stung and burned. Months passed after the betel leaf experiment and still a child did not come. Shahzad stopped seeing the hakim, and moved on to an Unani healer for his homemade powders and oils. Sabeena feared what expensive, harebrained scheme was next.

And then it came: adoption.

Shahzad got the idea after tracking down his childhood friend Atif, who had come out of hiding and gone back to karate after his wife’s father had given up and accepted the marriage. When Shahzad told his friend of his sterility problem, Atif’s answer was simple: “Just adopt.” Shahzad did not think adoption would go over well with his father. But Atif had a bold, persuasive way of speaking, and Shahzad convinced himself it would be easy.

He asked his other friends about adoption. He had a Christian friend whose wife couldn’t get pregnant and chose to adopt. His friend told him it cost an exorbitant three lakhs but that the child’s parents never came back to bother them, which Shahzad worried would happen. “Is it pukka that no one will bother you?” Shahzad asked. “Pukka,” his friend said.

Shahzad broached the subject of adoption with his mother, who seemed open to the idea, at least at first. But then his father, who rarely spoke to the rest of the family, let alone involved himself in their lives, reemerged with a firm opinion.

No, came the answer, through Shahzad’s mother. Not in my home. No outsiders allowed. The one time Shahzad had brought a friend home for lunch, his father demanded the friend leave and sulked for days afterward at the imposition.

But Shahzad thought a child might be different. A child could never be an outsider, at least in his mind. When Shahzad brought up the subject with Sabeena, he was surprised to find his wife agreed with his father. “An adopted child is an outsider,” she said.

“But how can this be?” Shahzad asked.

“You can adopt as a Muslim, but you cannot give him your name,” said Sabeena. She was sure on this point, which she had learned from her father. It was an old rule, interpreted from the Quran, which said that an adopted child was not equivalent to a biological one and should not take an adopted father’s name. “In the eyes of God it’s not your child,” Sabeena said.

Over the coming decade, fewer priests in their community would enforce this rule on naming and adoption. And fewer people in their community would follow it. But in 1998, even in cities, priests were still being taught the most conservative interpretation of the Quran.

And Sabeena showed Shahzad the passage, incontrovertible evidence, there in verses 4 and 5, sura 33. “Nor has He made your adopted sons your sons. Such is [only] your [manner of] speech by your mouths,” the passage read. “Call them by [the names of] their fathers: that is juster in the sight of Allah.”

Shahzad wanted to be a good Muslim. But he couldn’t believe what he read. He couldn’t believe that God would prevent a couple from adopting a child in need. Even the Prophet Muhammad had adopted a son. And Atif, the Muslim he respected most, had been the one to suggest it. Shahzad wondered, in some back part of his brain, if Sabeena was wrong. If that were the case, he knew, he’d do whatever it took to get a child.