We were in the meadow just next to the university buildings. Flocks of birds were gathering, about to make their long winter migration. We hugged our heavy coats around us and gripped our paper cups, full of hot coffee. “I don’t see what the problem is!” Christine exclaimed to Kuhl. “You love Imran, so marry him for real. Your parents love you, they’ll understand.” As she spoke, Christine was all but hopping from foot to foot. It was impossible to imagine her speech or her wiry figure unaccompanied by this constant, energetic movement. As impossible as imagining Kuhl without this look in her eyes—lost in love—and her dreamy smile.
Kuhl gripped Christine’s arm. “Christine. . . they won’t understand.”
Christine shook her head vigorously, riffling her blond hair, now cut short. “Maybe if you come clean with your mother first.”
Kuhl laughed drily. “My mother? When I decided, along with Suroor, to start wearing hijab, she refused to be seen with us. We couldn’t go to any theaters or restaurants with her, because her friends might see us.”
“You have to be perfect in your mother’s eyes.” My words were barely audible.
“Uuh. The contemporary mother!” said Kuhl. “Her child is the one who ends up with all the responsibility for keeping her happy, and not frustrating her hopes and plans. Because everything was all planned out for that child from the moment of birth or before.”
“And swerving off the path of the maternal plan is unforgiveable?” asked Christine.
“Yes.” Kuhl’s voice was firm. “Because what kept our grandmothers busy, all the time, totally, was just keeping their children alive, keeping them safe as best they could, given the conditions they lived in, the poor medical care and all. What keeps today’s mother busy is inserting her child into the agenda.”
So that’s why grandmothers didn’t have such a sense of guilt, I mused out loud. And why they were more accepting of children who were always ill or had some imperfection, as they saw it, or didn’t seem very intelligent.
Kuhl laughed again, her laugh thin and bitter. “But our mothers—ours—search for perfection in us, because we came into their world according to a carefully drawn plan where there were no uncertainties lurking. And we will be even harsher than they are in these matters.”
“Well, personally,” said Christine, “my dreams are limited to having one kid, no more than that.”
We answered in one voice. “Planning the kid already.”
“But really.” Christine was musing. “Do you really think I wouldn’t let my own child do something that went against my thinking?”
“Of course you wouldn’t!” said Kuhl. “Just like my mother, who won’t let me do anything that frustrates her dreams, which means marrying me into a family higher up on the social scale than my family is, or at least into one that’s as elite as ours.”
We occupied ourselves with staring at the birds, in silence. Had Sumayya frustrated my mother’s dreams when she stopped talking to anyone—to anyone at all—after her husband died by drowning?
The blessing of happiness, the peace of good conscience, were forever destroyed for Sumayya the Dynamo. The blessing of contentment and acceptance had been forever destroyed for my mother by the nervous attacks that followed each of her miscarriages. After Sumayya was widowed and went silent, my mother went back to wandering through the rooms of the house at night, unable to sleep, exactly as she had done after Sufyan’s birth.
She could not bear Sumayya’s silence. She could not bear that this young daughter of hers had become a widow in such tragic circumstances. And then! How was it possible, then—how dared she?—lose her voice, withdraw from the power of words? This was too much.
In that moment, observing Kuhl’s twisted smile, I thought about what it must be, to be a mother like mine. To give birth only to three children, none of whom ever came close to perfection.