Tahera came into my life barely a week ago, joining the two other women already awaiting my arrival in San Francisco: Seema, my mother, and Nafeesa, my grandmother, who came all the way from Chennai, India, to be by her daughter’s side, defying her husband Naeemullah’s wishes. Tahera flew in from Irvine, Texas, leaving behind her husband, Ismail, and her son and daughter, Arshad and Amina, to fend for themselves. The three women are gathering together for the first time in more than fifteen years.
Here is Tahera, last Thursday evening, waiting at the baggage carousel at San Francisco International Airport. She stands a little distance away from the grating steel plates, while passengers mill around the circling luggage. Her black hijab is pulled low over her forehead, pinned at the neck, framing her face. She has tucked away escaping strands of hair. Her jilbab is a muted indigo, its soft folds falling to her feet, the fraying hem trailing on the floor. Only the tips of her dull black shoes can be seen.
She’s told her mother she’ll take a cab to Seema’s apartment; they’re not to bother coming to the airport to pick her up. So the sight of Seema and Nafeesa walking toward the carousel startles her. Instinctively she shrinks back, pressing herself against a nearby pillar. Then, hoping they haven’t seen her yet, she attempts to lose herself in a clump of passengers by the conveyor belt, feigning preoccupation in identifying her luggage so she can buy herself a few extra minutes in which to ready a smile and a greeting. The tap on her shoulder comes quicker than she expected. Nafeesa stands behind her, smiling. A smile—saintly tired—plays on Seema’s lips too, her arm draped proprietorially across Nafeesa’s shoulders.
“I knew it,” Tahera says, throwing herself at her mother, forestalling thought with action. “Ammi, I knew you’d come even though I told you not to. You shouldn’t have.”
Her mother feels pencil thin in her embrace. She’s reminded of the stick figures in her daughter Amina’s drawings. Her arms can encircle Nafeesa, and still there is more arm to go round. She holds her mother in her embrace longer than she needs to.
She’s aware of Seema’s impatience. Seema shifts from one foot to another, waiting her turn, but Tahera ignores her. “Let me see how you look,” she says instead to her mother, holding Nafeesa away from her.
Nafeesa frees the edge of her saree from under her sweater and raises it to her face, dabbing at the corners of her eyes, now sparkling with unshed tears.
“Still my sweet, beautiful Ammi,” Tahera says.
Yes, beautiful still, but how shrunken her mother has become since the diagnosis, how skeletal—all skin and eyes and teeth, scalp showing white between thinning hair. The piteous smile her mother rewards her with spears her, and she turns away hurriedly, toward Seema finally, nuzzling her face blindly against Seema’s, arms tight around Seema’s shoulders.
Tahera squeezes hard. I feel the pressure, a compression of the amniotic fluid firmer than any I’ve experienced before.
Seema stiffens in Tahera’s arms. “Careful,” she says, pulling away and smoothing her top over her stomach.
Tahera lets go. A jolt shakes her as she’s returned abruptly to the glacial lighting of the baggage claim.
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” she says, trying to smile, working to keep the anger out of her voice.
Where does the anger come from?
Consider this: Tahera has not seen Nafeesa and Seema together for nearly sixteen years. Seema, after all, was cast out of their family by their father. The intimacy that Tahera observes between mother and sister—walking arm in arm down the aisle of the baggage claim, laughing at some private joke, leaning on each other for support—is unexpected, almost a betrayal.
And consider, too, Seema smoothing her maternity frock over her belly and pushing Tahera away during their embrace. The first sight of the ravages that time and disease have wrought on her mother had tricked Tahera into turning to Seema more warmly than she’d intended. She’d become her agitated twenty-year-old self, come to the Chennai airport to receive Seema, returning for the very first time after leaving for England for her master’s. The very same embrace, but—
Careful! What a cutting, rebuffing word.
As soon as they reach Seema’s apartment, Tahera insists her first priority is prayer, her maghrib namaz. It’s a refuge she can count on. The ritual of wadu begins to calm her down, the sensation of water on her wrists and elbows, her fingers skimming her hair and down the neck and under the ears. She feels a little more at ease each time she repeats the movements, each gesture small and precise and contained, and completely in her control. After wadu, she spreads her janamaz in one corner of Seema’s living room. Facing the sage walls, the maroon of the janamaz under her feet, she is cloistered in her own private sanctuary. She focuses on her rakaat, the raising of the arms, the clasping of the palms, the bending down to the knees, the prostration, the whispered verses, till everything falls away. Only when she’s kneeling in sajda, after her final rakaah, her forehead and nose to the floor, does she let the sounds of the apartment seep back into her consciousness. Seema and Nafeesa are laying the table for dinner. She sits back on her knees, and breathes out her apprehensions to the right and left, before she gets up to join them, some degree of equanimity restored. She folds the janamaz carefully, precisely, smoothing down the wrinkles, and places it squarely in the corner, claiming the territory as her own.
In the kitchen, Seema helps Nafeesa reheat the dishes for dinner. There’s the pulao, and the chicken, neither of which Seema made. Seema rarely cooks Indian food, or any other cuisine for that matter. The spices and provisions in her well-stocked cabinets are a concession to her mother’s visit, purchased at the Indian store the week of Nafeesa’s arrival. Everything she can remember from her mother’s kitchen: rice and dal; chili, coriander, cumin, turmeric; cardamom, clove, cinnamon; tamarind. Yet, over the week, she’s had to add to them daily under Nafeesa’s instructions. Her mother has been cooking every dish she can remember Seema liking.
“Ammi, you should not be spending so much time in the kitchen,” Seema has protested, but only half-heartedly. The mulish set of her mother’s jaw does not invite discussion. Then, too, Nafeesa’s eyes frequently tear up, and Seema knows what her mother leaves unsaid: This is to make up for fifteen years of not mothering you. This is the only chance I will have.
Also, Seema cannot deny herself a taste of everything she missed those motherless years, including the mothering.
But tonight’s chicken is from the supermarket. Nafeesa insisted on cooking Tahera’s favorite dish for dinner. Seema meant to find chicken from a halal store earlier that day, but it slipped her mind, and Nafeesa used the chicken in the fridge, waving aside Seema’s concerns. “Tahera won’t mind this one time, because I made it.”
Seema is uneasy. Tahera has, in fact, refused to eat non-halal meat before, during her visit to San Francisco earlier that year, in spring.
That was the first time Seema saw Tahera after a decade and a half, her only time meeting Tahera’s husband and two children. The day Seema spent showing her sister’s children around San Francisco was the happiest she’d been in some time. It awakened hopes she didn’t know she still harbored.
But there’s no misinterpreting what Tahera signaled by deliberately ignoring her at the airport: I’m here for Ammi, not for you.
In the kitchen, Seema is aware of the throaty whispers of Tahera’s prayers issuing forth from the living room. The whir of the microwave drowns her out, but when the microwave stops, Tahera’s voice in the kitchen sounds like the mutinous hum of a swarm of bees.
A clear warning: Keep away.
The pungent smell of fenugreek and roasted fennel from her favorite curry makes Tahera’s mouth water. Her mother has already served the food, and her plate is heaped with chicken curry and rice and raita. But what is the source of the chicken? In her new mood of conciliation post-namaz, Tahera decides she won’t make a fuss. She’ll leave the chicken alone, and hope Nafeesa won’t notice.
She takes her seat as Seema starts eating. Before taking a bite herself, Tahera murmurs self-consciously, head bowed, “Bismillah wa’ala barakatillah.”
Seema freezes, her hand halfway between plate and mouth. It’s clearly been ages since Seema uttered bismillah before eating.
“It just means in the name of Allah and with the blessings of Allah,” Tahera explains her addition to their childhood invocation. “We should be grateful to Allah whenever we receive anything. Especially a meal cooked by Ammi’s own hands after such a long time.”
“How did you know I didn’t cook?” Seema says.
Before Tahera can reply, Nafeesa steps in. “Yes, I cooked the chicken, specially for you. Eat.”
Tahera notes the quick look that passes between Nafeesa and Seema. Nafeesa shakes her head almost imperceptibly as if to warn Seema off.
“Smells delicious, Ammi,” Tahera says, conscious that something’s afoot. “I never can match that aroma, though I follow your recipe. You must cook it again while I’m here so I can figure out what I’m missing.” She tastes the gravy gingerly, and it is delicious.
But by now it’s too late to ask about the chicken. Nafeesa is watching her with anxious eyes. To distract her, Tahera starts talking about her children, how dutiful they are, and how well they’re doing at school. Nafeesa is diverted to inquiring about them. Amina likes writing and spends hours forming her letters with patience and concentration. Arshad likes science, but he’s as bad at mathematics as she once was, except he’s disciplined and works extra hard on it with his father.
Seema shows interest as well, and Tahera remembers how the children couldn’t stop speaking about their aunt after their visit to San Francisco. “Enough about me and my children—what have you been doing for a week? Seema, were you at work?”
“I took most of the week off,” Seema says. “I’m on maternity leave now. But I’m still doing some volunteering—for an election campaign. I took Ammi with me to some meetings.” She smiles at Nafeesa. “Hopefully Ammi wasn’t too bored.”
Nafeesa shakes her head. It was interesting, she says, especially since the candidate—What’s her name? Kamala something?—is Indian. She’d enjoyed seeing so many different people at the meeting, so many young people, Indians too. And she’d listened with pleasure to Seema addressing them from the podium.
“Half-Tamil, half-Black,” Seema corrects. “Her mother’s from Chennai and her father’s from Jamaica.” She explains to Tahera that she knows San Francisco’s district attorney through her friend Divya and has been advising her campaign for state attorney general on public relations issues. The race is very close. In fact, Obama is in San Francisco that very evening to drum up funds and support for the midterm elections. “How is it in Texas?”
Tahera shrugs. “I don’t have time to follow politics. I’ve enough to do at the clinic and at home. Wait till you have patients and children and a husband to take care of. It’s three full-time jobs.”
She knows she’s gone too far when Nafeesa shoots her a glance. They’re not to allude to Seema’s husband, Bill, or her divorce. Tahera subsides but is pleased when Seema bites her lip and pretends to search through the chicken for a choice piece.
Tahera’s triumph is short-lived. “Here’s the neck, Tahera, your favorite part. Do you want it?” Seema says, the spoon poised over Tahera’s plate.
“No, let me finish what I have first.” Her mother has noticed now that she hasn’t touched the chicken. She should have hidden a portion in the rice.
An awkward silence follows. With the silence, Nafeesa’s actions get slower and slower. Her bony fingers idly push the rice and chicken around. The few small mouthfuls she takes remain long in her gaunt cheeks. Her hand falls lifelessly back to the plate.
“Are you okay, Ammi?” Seema asks.
“Just a little tired. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Go rest, Ammi. Seema and I’ll clean up.” Tahera can’t bear to watch her mother wilt any more.
Nafeesa rises. “Yes, I think I’ll go to bed. You both should eat some more. There’s also kheer in the fridge.”
Seema follows Nafeesa out of the kitchen. “I’ll be back, just making sure Ammi has everything she needs.”
The momentary solitude soothes Tahera. There’s the cleaning up to do, and then she should plead exhaustion and retire for the night. Sleep, such a haven, like namaz. Before Seema returns, Tahera slides the chicken on her plate back into the serving dish. She hears low voices coming from the bedroom, and she strains to make out what’s being said.
Seema returns with an audible sigh. “She shouldn’t have exerted herself so much today. She gets tired very easily.” She hesitates, stirring the chicken dish with the spoon. “I told her you wouldn’t eat the chicken if it wasn’t halal. But she wanted to cook your favorite dish. She thought you wouldn’t mind this once.”
“Are you saying I upset her?” A mixture of remorse and anger surges through Tahera. If her mother had indeed made the chicken for her, why hadn’t she at least tried to persuade Tahera to eat some?
“You didn’t even touch it.”
“Am I to blame? You knew, and yet you tried to serve me more.”
“Tahera, Ammi just wanted to do something nice for you.”
“Did she say she wanted me to eat this? Do you want me to eat this?” Tahera heaps a spoonful of the chicken back onto her plate. “Will it make both of you happy? Tell me, I’ll do it.” Even to her own ears, she sounds strident.
Seema backs down. “Let’s not fight, Tahera. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let her use the chicken.”
It’s too easy a victory for satisfaction. Tahera stalks to the sink, scrapes the remains of her plate into the garbage can beneath it, and starts soaping the dirty dishes. “I’ll wash up, just bring the dishes over.” She doesn’t wait for an answer; she attacks the sink with vigor.
“Do you want some tea?” Seema says.
Chamomile for Seema, black for Tahera. Caffeine no longer affects Tahera—the many long nights in Irvine have taken care of that. Tahera’s night starts after her children go to bed—the dishes, the laundry, the tidying up, the next day’s meals, everything she can do so she’ll have more time with her family during the day. The previous week has been particularly exhausting. She cooked enough meals to last her family two weeks, labeling packets by day, week, and person; gave the house a thorough dusting and cleaning; typed up and stuck lists, reminders, and phone numbers to the fridge door. All this, apart from squeezing as many patients as she could into her calendar at her clinic.
Opposite her, Seema sits engorged, squat fingers clasped around the cup, her face still unlined, as if her forty years have left little mark on her. She appears lost to the world, sipping her tea and stroking her pregnant belly with a smile of contentment and accomplishment, which Tahera knows from their childhood days. So smug and untroubled, while their dying mother sleeps in the next room.
“How’s Ammi?” Tahera asks, despite her resolution not to discuss their mother.
Seema rouses herself. The chamomile has begun to relax her, and the sensation of tautness and solidity as she moves her hands over her stomach has its usual comforting and stabilizing effect. The kitchen, even with Tahera seated across the table from her, glows with a languorous warmth.
“She’s not been sleeping well. I found her awake the other night, sitting here in the dark. I’d gotten up to go to the bathroom, and she wasn’t in bed. I heard these weird sounds—like a mouse squeaking. I thought she was crying, but no. Just hiccups and jet lag.”
“Has she said anything at all?”
“She’s been telling me about her school days.” Seema and Nafeesa talked for almost three hours that night. “Did you know she used to recite poetry, like you? Urdu poetry. She wanted to be a poet. Used to write and sing ghazals. How come she never sang for us when we were growing up?”
Against the light Tahera looks surprisingly like Nafeesa, the same shape of the head poised birdlike over the same small frame. Seema notices other similarities: the thin, tight lips, the thin nose, the thinning eyebrows. Seema is also reminded of Amina, who she knows will grow up with a strong resemblance to her mother and grandmother. “You two look so alike. I hadn’t noticed before. I haven’t seen you together in so many years. It makes me happy and sad at the same time.”
“Why?” Tahera asks.
“What makes me sad?” Seema repeats. “Isn’t it obvious?”
She suspects in Tahera’s question a suggestion that she has renounced all rights to her family. Over the phone the last two months, the sisters have discussed mainly the logistics of Nafeesa’s visit: when, where, how. Tahera has consulted with their father and other doctors in Chennai, and is a doctor herself, but she has remained tight-lipped about her mother’s condition, answering Seema’s queries with curt, cryptic replies. Seema has since stopped asking. What she knows she’s gleaned from Nafeesa and by consulting her physician friends. “You know Ammi doesn’t have much time, right?”
“Of course I know,” Tahera says.
“We haven’t talked about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Did Ammi say how long she’s going to stay?”
“No. And I haven’t asked her. She can stay with me as long as she wants.” She’s aware of Tahera’s eyes boring into her, but she can’t resist the taunt, like with the chicken neck earlier.
The room feels charged again. My mother returns to what she knows will calm her—placing her palms on the shell of her body around me and taking deep breaths. She slides her palms slowly along the dome of her belly, naming parts of me she thinks she recognizes—elbows, knees, skull. There’s security in the promise of me. But Tahera’s anger is growing palpable. “What?” Seema says, without looking up.
“I’ve read her case reports,” Tahera says. “She shouldn’t have come.”
Seema puts a finger on her lips to remind Tahera of their mother sleeping in the next room, but the gesture infuriates Tahera further. She stands up, face clenched and lips quivering. “It was very selfish of you to ask her here. What happens if she suddenly becomes worse? Will you be able to take care of her?”
Seema struggles to rise. “Why are you upset with me? I didn’t ask Ammi here. I tried to convince her not to come. She wanted to.” She pushes herself off her chair with a jerk. “I didn’t ask you to come either.”
It happens in a flash—she stumbles, the chair totters. She’s falling backward, and for a moment it seems that the world is swiveling out of control. She throws her hands out, seeking purchase on the tabletop, but it’s smooth. In her panic, she’s sure there’s to be no reprieve for her. Ishraaq, she calls out to me in her mind, as though she can warn me to safety.
Who or what saves us that first night? It’s Tahera flinging herself across the table and grabbing Seema by the arms. The momentum brings their heads together with a crash that resounds in the kitchen. Seema sits down with a gasp. The world slowly rocks back into place.
“I’m sorry,” Tahera says. She hurries over to Seema’s side. A bruise is already beginning to show on Seema’s forehead, but she turns away as Tahera reaches for the spot. “Let me see,” Tahera persists.
She bends down, blowing on the bruise, much as she would on her daughter Amina’s.
For the second time that day, Seema pushes her away. “Let’s see about setting up the futon. Ammi is sharing the bed with me. I’ll get you pillows and a blanket.”
In the living room, Tahera insists on making up the futon herself. She wants—no, needs—the futon to be uncomfortable, the blanket inadequate: something of a penance. Something to erase from her memory the image of Seema’s paralyzed face as the chair teetered. Something to expunge from her mind the thought that accompanied it, however fleetingly. In the instant before she threw out her hands to grab her sister, she’d wanted the chair to tip over, she’d imagined Seema arcing back, her head striking the floor.
Even the isha namaz cannot quite eliminate the guilt and shame that burns her now.
Oh, Grandmother, you’re not asleep yet. The voices from the kitchen are no lullaby. Your daughters are fighting, and you blame yourself. There must have been something you could have done, before the rifts widened to such chasms.
It’s your elder daughter you’re agonizing over, it’s my not-yet-born self. Who’s there to care for us? You abandoned Seema when she needed you most, and you won’t be there when she needs you again. You have little time to make amends—a few months, perhaps a year—and there’s little you can do for Seema now other than persuade Tahera to take back her sister. But Tahera is stubborn, like her father. How unbending she has become over the years, sequestering herself behind her hijab and her five-times-a-day namaz. You’re afraid you no longer know how to reach her. You’re afraid you have failed them both.
You pretend to be sleeping when Seema returns to the bedroom, turning away when she climbs into bed, so that she can, as she’s been doing the last few days, snuggle into you, her belly pressing into your back, one arm resting on your waist. This connection is precious to you—three generations: mother, daughter, and grandson—and somehow its very existence gives you some hope, the sense of life persisting and persevering. There is tomorrow, even if there are not many more tomorrows for you.
Tahera’s alarm wakes her at five fifteen Friday morning, so she can speak with her children on the phone before they leave for school.
She calls from the kitchen with the door closed to avoid waking up her mother and sister. Ismail is getting the children ready. Amina is crying, he says, missing her mother and refusing to cooperate. Tahera croons into the phone, “Ammi’s little sweetheart. You have to be a good girl, you have to do what Abba tells you.”
Hearing her mother’s voice, Amina’s sobs become all the more anguished. She calms down only after Tahera promises to return soon. But how soon? Tahera wishes she could squeeze herself into the cell phone and magically appear on the other side to ease her daughter’s distress. To avoid having to lie, she distracts Amina by talking about everything they’ll do together when she gets back, like sewing new dresses for Asma doll, painting and coloring, baking cookies. She manages to coax Amina into letting Ismail dress her in her navy blue tunic and new sky-blue hijab.
After the half hour with Amina, there’s little time left to talk to Arshad, who is as usual self-sufficient: he’s done his homework, he’s studied for his test, his lunch is stowed in his backpack. She tells her son to take care of his younger sister, not to tease her.
“Why would I tease her?”
“Just saying you should be extra kind to her while I’m away. Look how she’s crying.”
“You don’t need to tell me to be kind. I always am.”
He sounds older than his eleven years, his voice slightly amused, which Tahera invariably finds a little disconcerting. As though he’s aware of her partiality to Amina but is inclined to overlook it. Tahera works hard at concealing it, but whenever she even thinks of Amina, a deep yearning stirs within her that Arshad doesn’t elicit. Toward him she has always maintained an affectionate rectitude but has never showered him with the outpouring of love that Amina receives. Arshad is his father’s child—Amina is hers. That’s how she’s always viewed them.
“Go, go to school,” she says. “And don’t forget to practice your tajwid. You have only one day left before the competition.”
Afterward, Tahera prepares for fajr namaz. The namaz at dawn is the one time of day she and Ismail always spend together. Praying alone now, she misses their comforting communion. Their two janamazes side by side. The rustle of their clothes, the combined rhythms of their inhalations and exhalations, the mingling of the verses muttered under their breath. And the synchrony of their movements, as though bound together in time and space by some invisible impulse that brings them dropping to their knees in unison, then sinking to their haunches, then rising to stand. She catches herself glancing at the spot to her left, where Ismail’s janamaz would be, flustered to encounter empty space instead.
She’s glad she can return to sleep, not having her usual morning chores. She’d like the extra minutes of seclusion before her mother and sister wake up.
Tara!—star!—is how you wake your younger daughter, Grandmother, a cup of coffee in your hand. Tara from Tahera—pure, chaste. The way Tahera’s three-year-old tongue struggled with her name. By calling her Tara, you’re invoking the girl of your memories, firm-limbed and pigtailed. And as if in answer, it’s that Tahera who props herself on her elbows and gazes back at you. Her face is soft, unlined, yet to assume its adult creases and severity.
Which mother is she seeing? You’ve showered, and made yourself up with care, sandalwood soap for your body, talcum powder for your face, kohl for your eyes. You’ve chosen a sweater to conceal your caved-in chest, and you’ve arranged your saree to minimize the bulk of the tucked-in folds against your shrunken waist. You’ve braided what’s left of your hair, together with an extension, and drawn it into a bun. All this to hide the sense of decay you’re afraid escapes from you. At least today you’re free of the pain you sometimes wake up with, too challenged to drag yourself out of bed.
Tahera pulls her nightgown over her knees and takes the coffee from you. You watch as she takes a sip and sighs appreciatively. It’s the brand you bid Seema to buy, knowing Tahera’s fondness for it. A memory: Tahera waking at four in the morning to study for her twelfth-standard public exams, and you bringing her coffee. Getting a seat in a medical college was highly competitive, especially the college she wanted, the one her father attended.
“Coffee with chicory,” Tahera says, smiling up at you. “I was afraid Seema would only have the American kind.”
She pats the place beside her on the futon. You perch on the edge, as though afraid to take up more space.
Tahera scoots over. “Sit comfortably, Ammi. Why are you sitting like a bird, ready to fly away?”
“I can look at you better from here.”
But she insists, and you settle in closer, as she drinks her coffee. Halfway through, she holds her cup out to you, a ritual of sharing from the past. You take a sip, and she lays her head in the hollow of your lap.
“I could lie like this all morning,” she says.
The last time you remember her lying in your lap was before your grandchildren were born, a decade or more. You stroke her hair with your free hand. Once luxuriant and lustrous, her hair was the envy of all her female relatives, but it’s much thinner now, and much streaked with gray already, and she’s not yet forty. You try to tease the tangles out, but she won’t let you—she holds on to your stroking hand tightly and closes her eyes.
You’re grateful: you’d been worried that she’d hold on to her anger from last night.
When she opens her eyes, you look at each other, both suddenly bashful, tongue-tied. “Do you want me to heat up the coffee?” you blurt out, and simultaneously she says, “What shall we do for breakfast?”
There’s so much you want to tell her, so much you mean to ask. But can you speak, knowing that Seema is in the next room? And will Tahera listen? You worry that the day will fritter itself away in inconsequences. Cups of coffee and tea will be brewed and drunk. Breakfast and lunch and dinner will be cooked and served and eaten. Another day will have passed ordinarily, as if you still have a lifetime’s supply of them.
“Seema’s still in bed,” you say. “She’s complaining of backache.”
“That’s not unusual in the ninth month,” Tahera says. “Her baby seems big.”
She has less concern for her sister than she’d have for a patient. You recall the argument you overheard last night. “Go to her, Tahera, ask her how she is,” you plead.
Tahera draws herself up with a jerk, knocking over the cup in your hand. The coffee spills onto the futon.
“Look what you made me do.” She brushes aside your apology, yanking from under you the sheet covering the futon. Some coffee has soaked through already. She runs to the kitchen to fetch a roll of paper towels and begins to scrub at the patch. The spreading stain on the futon stares back at you.
My mother’s backache is real, a result of carrying my substantial weight, but it’s also an excuse to stay longer in bed, for the rest of the apartment already feels like territory Tahera controls. Seema regrets having given in to her mother’s appeal: “I want to see both my daughters at the same time.” An implicit “one last time” had trailed Nafeesa’s request, and she couldn’t refuse. But Tahera’s fraught presence has now made Seema an exile in her own home. She decides to claim an unavoidable appointment and stay out for most of the day.
When Seema’s dressed and ready to step out, she finds the living room tidied up, Tahera’s bedding cleared away, the futon restored, the coffee stain caused by the altercation barely visible. Tahera’s bags are stashed away behind the futon, out of sight. There are only a few signs of Tahera’s presence: A Quran resting on a rehal in the bookshelf, a janamaz in one corner. Tahera’s hijab and jilbab benignly draped over the back of a chair.
In the kitchen, her mother and sister sit in companionable silence, like childhood friends. There’s a smell of cooked eggs and the whiff of brewing tea.
“Come, have breakfast,” Nafeesa says, and Tahera rises and pours out juice—freshly squeezed orange juice!—for her. “I asked Tahera to get me oranges from the corner store.”
“You two have been busy. What else have you planned for today?”
They are excited to cook lunch together. The fridge is well stocked, and they plan on making a sambar with eggplant, a curry with capsicum and potatoes, a stir-fry with beans. They can find a halal meat store later, Tahera says, if Seema doesn’t mind being vegetarian today.
“No, that’s great,” Seema says. Their plan absolves her of any guilt about abandoning them. “I need to go out for a while. I’ll try to be back by lunch, but don’t wait for me if you become hungry.”
She first takes a cab to the Kamala Harris campaign office, where there’ll be a buzz about Obama’s presence at the fundraising event the previous evening. She also hopes to run into Divya, who probably attended the fundraiser and whom she hasn’t seen in a few days. Divya can always be counted on to boost her spirits.
It’s around ten in the morning, the phone banks haven’t yet started, and there’s a chattering crowd at the doughnuts-and-coffee table, mostly volunteers, surrounding Divya and peppering her with questions about the fundraiser. Three years ago, Divya started South Asians for Obama, and she’s distinguished herself since as one of his top bundlers in San Francisco, adroit at hitting up Silicon Valley’s South Asian entrepreneurs and newly minted engineer millionaires for big donations. She catches sight of Seema. Excusing herself, she leads Seema to her office.
“Didn’t go well?” Seema asks, when Divya shuts the door behind her and leans against it, sighing. Divya is striking in her maroon scoop-necked dress and a frilly pigeon-gray sweater—Divya dresses as stylishly for work as she would for an evening out—and Seema would have felt frumpy by comparison if she hadn’t worn her favorite maternity top, sunflowers in a turquoise sky.
“The fundraiser was fine enough,” Divya says. “But things are not looking good.” Divya works on campaign finances but is well informed about most of the issues the campaign faces. An internal poll has just shown them slipping even further behind than the public polls indicate. With less than three weeks to the election, the team’s mood is quite somber.
It shouldn’t have been this difficult—any other year they’d be coasting to victory. But now it isn’t even clear if Obama’s visit helps or hurts. Divya describes the scene outside the fundraiser venue: not only Tea Partiers, waving placards of Wall Street Traitor, Obamanator, Kills jobs, kills hope, and No death panels, but also leftists, with their Repeal Don’t ask, Don’t tell and Stop the discharges. The fundraiser attendees, too, challenged Obama, quite aggressively, accusing him of broken promises—to be tough on Wall Street, to close Guantanamo. And even about his pledge to work with Republicans, to unite the nation. “As if he hasn’t been trying,” Divya fumes.
Seema lets Divya rant—it’s a distraction from her other worries. Seema personally thinks Obama is trying too hard at conciliation. She also suspects that some of Obama’s inaction is opportunistic, with an eye toward reelection. But Divya still has faith, still believes his election is proof that the country has turned a corner. An African American as president, then two years later an Indian American woman as California state attorney general—Divya will have worked on both their campaigns—the world is surely changing.
“How’s Kamala doing?” Seema asks when Divya finally runs out of steam.
“She’ll hang in there, she’s a fighter.” Kamala is campaigning in Los Angeles, appealing to her Black roots, making a round of the megachurches.
A knock on the door, and Divya reverts to her usual self, confident and in control. She taps on her computer, looks up information, gives directions, while Seema looks on, admiringly.
“I wish I could do more to help,” Seema says when they’re alone again, “but as you can see—” She pats the pronounced globe of her stomach.
“Oh my God, Seema, you must be due any day now,” Divya says. “I’m sorry, I haven’t even asked how you’re doing. And your family is here. What a bad friend I am, let me make it up to you.”
She cocks her head at Seema, her dimples popping a question. Then, ignoring Seema’s finger wag, she heads to the door to lock it and lets the blinds down. But Seema doesn’t protest when Divya, returning, enfolds her in an embrace from behind.
They sway like this for a minute, Divya’s hands supporting the weight of me. Seema says, “Is this what friends do?”
Divya murmurs, her lips by Seema’s ears, “Just say the word Seema, and I’ll swoop in and save you from anything that’s troubling you.”
“You won’t be able to save me from my mother and sister.” Seema tries to disentangle herself, but Divya wishes to hold on a little while longer, and Seema lets her.
“And the twenty-year-old? Is she still pestering you?”
“She’s not twenty!” Seema laughs, pulling herself free. “Though sometimes she does make me feel twice her age.”
“That’s what you get for dumping me for someone younger. Will you manage to see her while your family’s here?”
“Yes—she’s waiting for me.”
Seema first met Leigh at a product release party that she’d organized for a software company, a client of her consulting firm. I was all of four months old then, barely showing, a small bump in my mother’s body.
Leigh is a journalist, working for a nonprofit news organization serving the ethnic communities in the Bay Area. She sees Seema across the space of a ballroom and makes a beeline for her. Seema is dazzling that day: in her sapphire-and-silver dress, Seema outsparkles the glitter and glitz of the release party. At the first opportunity, Leigh asks to meet later, ostensibly to interview Seema about her client. At the end of that interview, Leigh asks her out on a date. Only later does Seema realize that she accepted because Leigh reminds her of Reshmi, her first teenage crush.
Leigh is half-Chinese, half-Irish. Leigh is lanky, lightly freckled, black-haired. Leigh is fifteen years younger than Seema and a head taller.
What Seema likes about Leigh: Her youthful nonchalance, her tousled hair, her spindly-muscled frame, the way her pale shoulder blades jut from her back like the hidden stubs of wings. The bowler hat that gives her face an impish insouciance. Eyes that are no color Seema has ever seen before—neither black, brown, blue, nor green but at various times all of them. A smile that welcomes everything, and her frank excitement every time they meet. The gentleness with which she cradles Seema’s growing stomach, the tender firmness with which she clasps Seema to her as they lie cuddling in bed.
It’s been agreed that while Nafeesa and Tahera are visiting, Leigh will take time off work if necessary to wait for Seema in her studio apartment in Oakland. Today Leigh is ready at the door to draw her in. First a kiss and an embrace before words are spoken, a rocking of bodies from side to side, forehead touching forehead, eyes melting eyes. Then Seema kicks her shoes off, and allows herself to be led to the bed, the only furniture in the room that can accommodate two people.
Ensconced between Leigh’s tented knees, Seema leans back.
“My poor babe,” Leigh says, “has it been very stressful?”
Seema nods and leans back even further, her entire weight now borne by Leigh. When Leigh presses her for details, she says, “Let’s not talk about my family.” Some degree of loyalty holds her back, toward Nafeesa mostly, but Tahera as well.
They lie in bed, body against body. At some point, as it usually happens, they are down to their undergarments, and then to skin.
There are no windows in the room. Leigh’s bedside lamp bathes the room with dappled blues and greens. They are deep in a forest, by a stream, and the outside world recedes to the edges of consciousness. Now there is a place only for lips and breasts, for scent and sweat, for voices that speak not in words but in a more primitive language—in croons and cries, in urgent whispers.
Afterward, Leigh suggests they get a bite to eat, and Seema says she can’t, she needs to return home.
Leigh grumbles that she’d been waiting for Seema for more than an hour. “Why were you late then?”
“I had to stop by the campaign office.”
“Did you see Divya there?”
“Yes, we spoke about the fundraiser.”
Leigh sits up, pushing the comforter off. “I’m your lowest priority,” she says, arms locked around her knees.
“Don’t be silly. I’d stay if I hadn’t promised my mother I’d be home for lunch.” But Seema knows that she’s still unprepared to answer the question Leigh will want to discuss: Is Leigh to be present at the delivery? Seema has managed to stall the discussion by pleading that they wait and see how things turn out when her family’s here.
“You’re avoiding me. You didn’t call me once last week—I called you each time.”
“I cannot neglect my mother.”
“What I don’t understand is why you worry so much about what your family will think. They’ve already disowned you.”
“Not my mother. And I have very little time left with her. I don’t want it to get complicated.”
Leigh turns Seema’s face toward her. “Do you want me at the delivery or not?”
“Yes, of course”—Seema pauses—“if it won’t rock the boat.” The issue is not only Leigh’s role during the delivery but her role afterward as well. Seema is relieved that Nafeesa and Tahera provide an excuse to hold Leigh from weaving herself inextricably into her life before she has figured out what Leigh really means to her.
Leigh swings out of bed and fishes her clothes off the floor. She wriggles into her briefs, facing away, her body pale and shimmering, vulnerable—narrow sinewed shoulders, jutting hip bones, high buttocks, hollowed-out butt cheeks. As always, Seema finds the curve of Leigh’s spine expressive. The groove along the backbone ripples now with barely contained emotion—heartache, despair. She wants to touch it, to console Leigh, who is standing just beyond reach.
“We’ll figure it out. I promise.” She knows she’s promising more than she ought to.
Without replying Leigh pulls on the rest of her clothes.
There are many aspects of Seema that remain mysterious to Leigh. They’ve never discussed Seema’s marriage to Bill, for example. Seema rarely speaks about her pre-Bill past either.
But Leigh knows more about Seema than she’s let on. She’s had a crush on Seema since her college days, when she was required to view an interview between Seema and Deepa Mehta, the maker of the movie Fire, for a paper in her gender and women’s studies minor at Berkeley. Her paper’s focus is the dialogue Seema engages in with the filmmaker—about Mehta’s decision to subordinate lesbian desire to themes of women’s equality and emancipation in India—but it’s Seema’s sparkling eyes and lips Leigh ends up paying more attention to. For days afterward she wastes the time set aside to research the paper by searching instead (obsessively) for trails of Seema on the internet, spurred by the proximity of the vision, just across the bay.
Seema’s name pops up, associated with various queer South Asian groups all over the country: Trikone in the Bay Area, SALGA in New York, Masala in Boston. There are photos of Seema with June Jordan, with Urvashi Vaid, with Pratibha Parmar, luminaries Leigh has only read about in class. Seema appears to have volunteered with queer organizations across the country and has even written articles for The Advocate and other queer publications.
Over the next few years, at random moments, Leigh scours the web for Seema, as she does for her celebrity crushes—Yang Li-Hua (thrilling in both her male and female roles in Taiwanese opera), Michelle Yeoh (Leigh has seen all her kung fu movies, and has watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at least half a dozen times), and Salma Hayek (since that amazing tango with Ashley Judd in Frida). When—many years later—she spots Seema at the party, she recognizes her instantly. Seema seems to have aged little. That evening, Leigh hunts for her again on the internet. To her surprise she finds little new, only tidbits about Seema’s recent professional activities, as if the queer Seema has ceased to exist. Leigh puts out feelers to her South Asian lesbian friends and her journalist friends, on the pretext of working on a piece. Various rumors filter back to her: Seema is a hasbian, Seema has married a man, Seema is divorced, Seema is pregnant. If she’s puzzled how someone so involved in the queer scene for a decade could have turned her back on her past so completely, she doesn’t let it discourage her. She goes to interview Seema giddy-eyed. She’s prepared for rejection when she asks Seema out; Seema’s bemused acceptance drives her ecstatic.
Every one of their initial dates—a stroll among roses in Golden Gate Park, an open-mic evening at a local Mission café, a Chihuly glass exhibit at the de Young Museum—is a roller coaster. For, surely, each would be the last one; what could possibly continue to interest Seema in her? Yet each is followed by another.
After their fourth date, a dinner at Leigh’s favorite Chinese haunt in the Inner Sunset, where she orders in Mandarin a meal that delights and impresses Seema, they take a cab to Dolores Park and end up on a bench at the very top. And there, with the lights of the city spread at their feet, they kiss for the first time. And later that night, while Seema lies in her arms blissfully spent, she summons every ounce of courage she possesses to whisper, “If you ever get tired of me, you should let me know. I promise I won’t make a fuss, you can send me away whenever.”
Had she uttered those words merely to allay Seema’s likely misgivings about her youth? For now that Seema is finally tiring of her—what else could explain her recent remoteness?—persistent anguish has eroded her resolve to back off from pressuring Seema, as she’d promised, as all her friends have advised. But every moment away from Seema is crushing; every moment with her is punishing.
Leigh is present when Nafeesa calls about the diagnosis.
It’s a Sunday, about a month ago, and they have spent the afternoon in Seema’s apartment poring over a list of names for me. A name is the first decision Seema is called to make on my behalf, and she finds the responsibility stressful.
Seema has never forgiven her parents for her name, which means face, expression, or likeness in Urdu. Not beautiful face or sweet expression or likeness to a flower, but those plain and ugly words, vague and ambiguous, as though her parents had been unsure what she’d turn out to be. The meaning in Hindi is worse—limit, boundary, frontier—restrictive and constraining. And though her father had finally placated her—she can be the expression of anything she wants to be, and as for the limit, she’s unsurpassable—in some corner of her mind she believes her name is linked to the trajectory of her life. So she has roped in Leigh to share in the burden of picking a name for me, even though she worries that Leigh may infer from this invitation a depth to their relationship that she’s not yet ready to grant.
Leigh goes over each name, ponders its meaning, labors over its pronunciation—they’re all Muslim names. She gets Seema to speak them aloud. She makes a game of it: Speak it softly, she says, speak it loudly. Now as though you’re waking him up. You just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar—scold him. He’s crying—comfort him.
They take turns calling out to me. Some names are easier to reject—too harsh, too many syllables, too much of a strain on the vocal cords. Some names Leigh rejects—she assures Seema that no American tongue can wrap itself around those specific combinations of consonants and vowels. She also nixes names with corruptions that would deliver my future American school life into the hands of bullies: “No, not Faqr.”
They come finally to the name they’ll pick. “Ishraaq, where are you?” Seema calls out from the futon where they’re sitting, and Leigh echoes it, producing a passable match for the q at the end. They pause, looking at each other—there are no obvious objections.
“What does Ishraaq mean?” Leigh asks.
“Radiance. Light of the rising sun.”
“A new beginning.” Leigh puts her lips to Seema’s belly and whispers the name, now a caress, now a low growl, running her kisses along the skin stretched taut as a roof over me.
My could-be mother Tahera would never have chosen that name for me. Consider the names of her children: Arshad—rightly guided; Amina—faithful.
Do I choose that moment to kick? My mother is sure she feels something.
The phone rings. Seema answers, cautioning Leigh that the call is from her mother, but Leigh pays no heed as she continues her kisses down the slope of the belly and toward the thighs. It’s only when Seema stiffens that Leigh looks up.
“What?” she mouths, but Seema doesn’t answer, jerking her T-shirt down and scrambling off the futon.
Leigh becomes fearful. The Seema who drifts around the room is not the Seema of a few minutes ago but rather the Seema who seals herself off. This Seema doesn’t see her even when looking in her direction, this Seema brushes past her as if she were not in the room at all. Whatever Seema hears over the phone is clearly distressing, but when Leigh tries to comfort her, she is shrugged off, recanting the intimacy of the previous hours.
Seema doesn’t notice Leigh leave the apartment. Seema’s world has contracted to her mother’s trembling voice, the delayed echo of her own, the words they both struggle to form, and the silences that are more threatening than the words themselves. She’d been aware of the tests her mother had undergone; she cannot believe that something this devastating could be established merely by ruling out more likely and more testable conditions. There must be a mistake somewhere, there must be questions she can ask that would expose the lie. But she’s ill equipped to find the right ones, and anyway her mother is not the right person to ask.
Only then does she notice Leigh’s absence. All at once the present and the future reveal themselves to her—she is to be left utterly and devastatingly alone, with only me as anchor.
Tahera and Nafeesa have spent the morning in chai and cozy gossip about relatives in Chennai and are now cooking lunch together. Tahera has ordered her mother to rest, so Nafeesa sits by the kitchen table, chopping some vegetables and directing her daughter, who keeps up a commentary of everything she’s doing on the stove. “I am adding the onions now, the mustard seeds have just spluttered.”
It reminds Tahera of the Saturday mornings in Chennai after Seema left for college, when she was allowed into the kitchen to help her mother. She falls back easily into her old role of assistant, deferring to her mother on the quantity of spices to add, how long to stir, when to cover the pot. Occasionally she mentions the changes she’s made to the recipes over the years: “It’s simpler to do the seasoning right in the beginning.”
Nafeesa sometimes accepts the changes, other times explains why her method is superior. Sometimes she insists Tahera do it her way, because that’s how Seema likes it.
Tahera doesn’t argue. She promised herself she would not let Seema spoil the time she has left with her mother.
She has forgotten, too, how enjoyable cooking is when not crammed between her practice at the clinic and domestic chores. Here she doesn’t need to optimize every step—preparing and refrigerating boiled dal, steamed vegetables, fried onions, spice mixtures, all in bulk quantities—and there’s nothing else she needs to keep an eye on in parallel.
But it’s impossible to ignore how slow and halting her mother has become with the progress of her symptoms. Nafeesa grasps the knife tightly as though it could slip from her hand at any moment, sometimes needing to steady one hand with the other. And she takes frequent breaks, though only behind Tahera’s back, the silent knife giving her away. But Tahera’s offers to take over the chopping are met with resistance, much like how her daughter, Amina, would resist if some conferred responsibility were retracted.
Amina has recently taken to pleading with Tahera to be given chores in the kitchen. Tahera was inclined to be strict at first, insisting the child finish her homework before getting distracted. But now she enjoys having Amina there, with her books and crayons, enjoys instructing Amina in the small tasks she gives her—shelling peas, picking mint leaves, counting out raisins and cashew pods. She loves the care with which her daughter applies herself to these, her small fingers busy, her face furrowed with concentration. Much in the same way her mother now chops the tomatoes, slices and cubes the eggplant.
A rush of affection overcomes Tahera. She bends down and kisses her mother on her forehead before sweeping up the chopped vegetables and adding them to the pot. They are good together, good mothers and good daughters.
Inevitably, whenever Tahera thinks about Amina, an image of Arshad presents itself in contrast. This bothers Tahera, because there’s nothing about her son to merit the anxiety he provokes in her.
In every way he’s an exemplar: solicitous toward his parents, caring toward his sister, studious in his schoolwork, proficient in sports, disciplined. And he’s responsible beyond his years—he can be trusted to look after the house or babysit Amina whenever Tahera is called away on an emergency with a patient.
And now that he’s old enough, he’s thrown himself with equal fervor into his Quran studies and his namaz. He wakes up before dawn for fajr with his own alarm, refusing her offers to rouse him, and performs his wadu and is ready to unfurl his janamaz beside his father’s without morning fuss, something that Ismail himself is sometimes guilty of. At these moments she can’t help feeling proud, but then she also regrets that her one daily intimacy with Ismail is diminished by the boy’s presence.
Perhaps it’s Arshad’s self-sufficiency that makes her feel superfluous, as if she has little to contribute to his well-being. “Masha’Allah,” Tahera says, every time she recounts Arshad’s many virtues to friends, but she wishes that her feelings for him were as uncomplicated as her love for Amina.
“How different daughters are from sons, don’t you think?” Tahera says.
Grandmother, you don’t answer immediately; your fingers continue to slowly feed the beans to the knife. There is a meditative aspect to the chopping, and it prevents the cramps that can shoot through your hands when you keep them idle too long. You reply only when Tahera repeats the question. “I wouldn’t know. I only have you two.”
“Do you ever regret not having a son?”
“Your Abba may have wanted a son at one point. I’m satisfied with my daughters.” You fumble on the satisfied and hope Tahera doesn’t notice.
“Poor Ammi—no sons or daughters to take care of her now.” Tahera says it laughing, but you catch the sharp edge of something else under her words.
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”
But that’s a lie. Already there have been days when your husband made chai, his bitter overboiled chai, because you couldn’t manage even that, and your sister bustled about your home, preparing meals, sorting out the laundry, tidying up. And soon—perhaps even in a matter of months—you’ll be too debilitated to move. But you know you can’t burden yourself on your daughters the same way in America, nor can you expect them to leave their lives and return to Chennai to look after you.
An augury: your fingers spasm, and you must put down the knife. Despite the pain, you automatically begin separating the cut pieces from the uncut, forming two piles.
Tahera sits down and pulls the knife and cutting board toward her. She says, “How is Abba taking—all this?”
You know from her gesture that Tahera is asking about her father’s reaction to your visit to San Francisco. You reach to take back the knife from her hands, but she refuses you and begins slicing the beans. “What am I supposed to be doing now?” you protest.
For the next few minutes the only sounds are the clacking of the knife against the cutting board, the pot bubbling on the stove, the hiss of the gas flame. It’s just the two of you. “Your Abba didn’t want me to come here. You know how he is when he doesn’t want you to do something. He stopped speaking to me for a few days.”
“How did you change his mind?” Tahera asks.
“We went back for a second consultation. The results were the same. I said I wanted to see my daughters while I still could. They should come here, he said. Even Seema? I asked. He didn’t say anything, but he let me call Seema from our phone. It still makes him angry if I speak to Seema from home.”
“Seema wanted you to come to San Francisco?” The knife flashes in her hands, the beans reduced to thin green rings.
You want to complain that she’s cutting too finely, but her expression warns you against it—she’s waiting for your reply. “I said I wanted to be with her for the delivery. She said she’d visit Chennai later with the baby. She can be quite stubborn—just like you, you’re both like your Abba, don’t deny it.” Tahera winces at that, and you rush on, before she derails what you need to finish saying. “That’s when I told her. She called home the next day, and your Abba answered. They didn’t speak, he just handed me the phone. Seema said she’d buy my ticket. He refused. He’d pay for my ticket or I couldn’t go.”
“You told her before you told me.” Tahera has gone rigid, knife paused midair.
“I had to tell her, Tahera. Otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed. I was planning to tell you both when I came here. I didn’t want to break it over the phone.”
“I’ve been a good daughter, haven’t I?” Her words are clipped, matching the rhythm of the knife as she resumes, hewing through the beans. “I would have come to Chennai. I didn’t because you said you were coming here. You didn’t give me a chance. Are you even planning to come to Irvine?”
Now you understand the earlier bitterness in Tahera’s voice. You do want to visit Irvine, perhaps after a few weeks of helping Seema with the baby—but who knows what your condition will be by then. “Seema’s alone,” you say. “How could I let her go through the delivery by herself?”
“You could have come to Irvine first.”
You’re on the brink of tears. Why hadn’t Tahera suggested that earlier? You knot and unknot the edge of your saree, biting into your lower lip to stop it from trembling. Tahera is a blurred outline.
But her voice is sharp, knife-edged. “Is it our fault she’s alone? Did we ask her to call herself a lesbian, then get married, then have a baby after deciding to get divorced? She’s always done what she wanted. Yet it’s Seema you come to spend your last days with, while I, who’ve always done what you wanted, am treated like an afterthought, like I don’t matter.”
Words fail you. They’ve always failed you. When you need them the most, Grandmother, they shrivel up somewhere deep within you and die.
Seema’s voice cuts through the moment; neither of you noticed her return. Peeking warily into the kitchen, she says, “Who doesn’t matter?”
“Nobody.” Tahera plunks down the knife and sweeps the beans onto a plate. “We’re just gossiping about Chennai.” Her eyes are downcast and hooded, but you can’t miss their angry glitter.
You soak up your half-formed tears with your saree before showing your face to your daughters.
How airless the apartment feels that afternoon, how strictly its space seems carved up among the three women.
After a meal that is almost as uncomfortable as the previous night’s, Nafeesa tosses restlessly in the bedroom, Seema shifts restively in her seat by the window in the living room, while Tahera, trapped in the kitchen, speaks to Khadija, her partner, in whose charge she’s left their family practice in Irvine.
It’s Nafeesa who suggests a walk, giving up on the elusive nap, not able to unhear Tahera’s accusations from the morning.
Seema and Tahera leap at the idea. But will the walk be too tiring for their mother? It’s obvious she will not be turned down. Tahera has to finish her asr namaz first, though.
The mid-October sun drips honey, doling out its warmth liberally, San Francisco’s vaunted fog still crouching behind the hills to the west. The two sisters flank their mother, each holding on to one of Nafeesa’s hands.
“Like when we were kids, no?” Seema says.
Tahera concurs warily, because she has contrived to take hold of Nafeesa’s right hand. As girls they’d squabble over who got to walk on their mother’s right, settling the matter by taking turns the way out and back. But Seema has forgotten this preoccupation from their childhood, and Tahera relaxes, gripping her mother’s hand, a hard-won, justifiable trophy.
What a picture they make! Tahera covered hair to foot, black gown billowing in the breeze; Seema rotund in a tight ochre top and flowing brown pants; and sandwiched between them, Nafeesa’s slight figure in a green saree and white sneakers, pink sweater and blue shawl, a combination completely deficient in color coordination. The sisters burst into laughter on catching sight of their reflection in a storefront window.
“What?” Nafeesa says, baffled by their sudden mirth, but they don’t stop laughing. And though Nafeesa knows she’s in some way involved in their merriment, perhaps even the target, she is secretly delighted.
Some tension is eased, some old intimacy begins to take hold as they stroll through the Mission’s sun-drenched streets, past multicolored murals and buildings painted orange and purple and cyan, past grocery stores and florists exhibiting brilliantly hued wares on sun-splattered pavements. An almost natural chitchat springs up among them, Seema sharing lively anecdotes about the landmarks they pass, and Nafeesa and Tahera listening and pointing and inquiring with an almost natural enthusiasm.
They’re walking slowly—Seema slower than her pregnancy dictates, keeping an eye on her mother for signs of exhaustion. Before long they find themselves crossing Market Street and are confronted with the rolling hills of Lower Haight.
“Shall we turn back?” Seema asks.
Nafeesa denies fatigue, wanting to prolong the truce the outing seems to have fostered. They continue, stopping at each intersection to pick the direction with the easiest incline. Even so, her breathing soon grows ragged, and she has to remind herself not to grip her daughters’ hands so tightly every time she feels the need to take an extra deep breath. When she finally agrees to take a break, her daughters exchange glances of relief.
They rest on a bench in a bus stop for a brief moment before a store selling baby apparel across the street catches Nafeesa’s eye. Inside, she flits from shelf to shelf, exclaiming over blankets and sweaters, socks and shoes, despite Seema’s protests that the baby has all the clothes he needs. Nafeesa’s taken in by a particularly soft blanket, sky blue and embroidered with a smiling moon and many winking stars. She has brought clothes for me from India but nothing she thinks will last me beyond the first few months. Alas, she has left her purse behind in Seema’s apartment. She strokes the blanket, reluctant to give it up.
“I have baby blankets already,” Seema says.
“I’ll get it,” Tahera says. “I didn’t get anything for the baby yet.” She takes the blanket from Nafeesa, glad to make up for her behavior that morning. She’s shocked at its price—she’d never have bought anything as expensive for Amina or Arshad. “What else would you like, Ammi?”
Over Seema’s objections, she leads Nafeesa through the store, and they rummage through baskets and racks, adding to their purchases—a nightcap and a pair of gloves and socks for me, the same blue as the blanket, bibs, and sleepwear.
Next door is a bookstore. Nafeesa, energized now and finding a ready ally in her younger daughter, begins browsing the children’s section.
Seema follows reluctantly, leery now that her mother and sister have joined forces. She’ll have to put her foot down, or she’ll be railroaded by them the rest of their stay. “My son is not going to read books any time soon,” she tells Tahera.
“Stop saying that,” Tahera whispers sharply. “It will remind Ammi and make her sad. Let her do what she wants. See how happy she is.”
Indeed, Nafeesa darts around with an armful of books—alphabets and numbers, farm animals and fairy tales—unable to stop herself, intent on showering me with an entire childhood’s worth of books.
The store has an international section too. There are no books from India, but Nafeesa finds a shelf with a smattering of books from England. “Look, they have the entire Faraway Tree series.” These are the books her daughters read repeatedly—about three siblings who find magical lands at the top of a tall tree reaching into the clouds—before they moved on to more mature fare. There are still shelves in their home in Chennai lined with books they’d devoured during their school years, even if the lending libraries they’d frequented had one by one disappeared.
Tahera exclaims over the series, pulls out her favorite, and sits down to read. Nafeesa searches for Seema to tell her of her discovery and finds her in the poetry section.
“They’ve changed the names,” Tahera complains when Nafeesa returns with Seema. “Bessie is now Beth, and Fanny is Frannie.”
The disappointment is fleeting. Soon both daughters are flipping through the books, reading snippets to each other, recalling other favorite passages that they must read immediately, and even—here Nafeesa chokes up, for it has been years since she’s witnessed anything like this—even peeking over each other’s shoulders to read a page. How often she saw her daughters reading this way as children. Her heart pounds with the pleasure of the sight.
Seema buries her nose in the pages and inhales, green apple and dried wood. There’s something so essentially bookish about that smell that she can convince herself it’s the same smell her own well-thumbed copies once possessed. Were they still there gathering dust on some shelf? Or did her father get rid of them as she’d been told he got rid of everything else that belonged to her?
She collects a copy of each book in the series. “Tahera, will Arshad and Amina like these?”
Tahera ponders the question. Amina is the right age for the series. But magic and pixies and goblins? She has not permitted Arshad the Harry Potter books, which have been hard to ignore, with posters everywhere of the movie series, dark images of grimy kids and wizards and witches brandishing knobbly wands. Ismail is not concerned they’d corrupt Arshad, but he leaves decisions about books and movies to her.
“No, they don’t read such books,” she tells Seema. There are probably better—more Islamic—books she could buy for Amina. She resolves to look for these when she’s back in Irvine, reshelving the book she holds in her hand.
“I’ll buy them for myself then,” Seema says.
They find the city transformed when they leave the bookstore. The sun has sunk behind the hills to the west, the blue of the sky replaced by pale pinks and violets. A faint mist, the beginnings of fog, has nosed its way into the neighborhood. Lights dot the streets, and farther east blink hazy lights across the bay. The flushed city of the afternoon is no more.
“This is beautiful,” Nafeesa says, but she shivers.
“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Tahera says, flustered. “I must get back for the maghrib namaz, then call Amina and Arshad before they go to bed.”
And Seema, who’d wished earlier that the day would pass quickly, is sorry that it’s ended. The past has been an oasis.
They hail a cab, and squeeze in, quiet now. Nafeesa has suddenly shrunk, as though with the light—the sky has turned a deep unrepentant purple—her strength has drained away. She sits huddled between her daughters, clutching to herself the blanket and the books and a fluffy yellow duck she persuaded Tahera to buy for me. Each sister looks out a window, lost in her own thoughts. Each sister lurches between vexation and hope that the cab will take all evening to arrive.
Tahera is folding the janamaz after the maghrib prayers when Seema holds out a book, smiling. “For you. I got it at the bookstore.”
“What is it?” Tahera continues folding without glancing at the book.
“Poetry,” Seema says. “I remembered how much you liked Keats. Your favorite poet, no?”
“I don’t read poetry anymore,” Tahera replies, which is true, if one didn’t count the Quran. She has neither the inclination nor the time to waste on frivolous, self-serving indulgences.
“It has that poem you loved—There was a naughty boy. Only you changed it to girl whenever you recited it.” Seema flips through the book trying to find the poem.
Tahera’s first impulse is to deny Seema, pretend she doesn’t recall. How dare Seema invoke their shared history after renouncing all rights to it. She already regrets her sentimentality from earlier, the false comfort of those books from their past, the delusion of continuing sisterhood. But the opening of the Keats poem comes back to her too vividly to ignore.
“There was a naughty girl, a naughty girl was she, she would not stop at home, she could not quiet be,” she recites involuntarily, taking the book from Seema.
“You used to recite it everywhere. You did that funny skip at the end, hopping from one foot to the other. How did it go?”
“She stood in her shoes and she wondered. She wondered. She stood in her shoes and she wondered.”
“You could teach Amina the poem. She’d look sweet doing it.”
Tahera thumbs through the book. The complete poems and selected letters of John Keats. Her father had many collections of Keats’s poems, but none that claimed to be complete. She recognizes many of the titles, some of her favorite poems. How foolish she’d been, so taken with poetry, convinced there was nothing more important in the world. And surely Seema is raking it up now to make some disparaging point, to attack and ridicule her. She’d seen the look on Seema’s face when she declined the Faraway Tree books on her children’s behalf, as if she pitied the children their close-minded mother.
She thrusts the book back at Seema. “All that is in the past. You should keep it for yourself. Or for your children.”
Seema’s thwarted expression is very satisfying.
Besides, she’d never been the naughty girl in the poem. The poem fit Seema better. It was Seema who initiated the scrapes they got into, who created a scene if she didn’t get what she wanted, who finally ran away from home.
“I have to call home,” Tahera says, turning away. “Amina will be waiting.”
Hearing her mother’s voice, Amina becomes teary-eyed again. But the busy evening, errands with their father topped by dinner at Hot Breads, where her brother let her have the bigger share of chicken nuggets, has mostly succeeded in distracting her from the approaching motherless weekend.
“I miss you,” Amina says to Tahera. “Do you miss me?”
“I miss you too, Ammu,” Tahera says, blowing a kiss into the phone.
“I love you,” Tahera says to Amina. “Do you love me?”
“I love you two, Ammi,” Amina says.
This is a game they play often. Amina giggles, playing along with her mother.
I love you ten, like a chocolate bar.
I love you hundred, like a pickle jar.
I love you thousand, like a room full of dolls.
I love you million, like a sky full of stars.
Lately, my could-be father Ismail has visited the mosque most nights after the children go to bed to participate in discussions of the Quran, led by Imam Zia. Tonight he cannot. Their mother isn’t home, and Amina insists he stay by her bedside. She has sniffled her way to sleep, but her hold on his hand hasn’t loosened enough to extricate himself.
Tonight, Ismail especially wishes to visit the mosque. There’s the fundraiser tomorrow, and perhaps a conversation with Imam Zia, and an extra namaz there, would dispel his anxiety.
Imam Zia is a recent addition to the mosque and Islamic center. He’s from Pakistan but brought up and educated in England, with a PhD in Islamic theology. He has won several international competitions, both in Quran recital and in Quranic exegesis. Since his arrival two years ago, he has instituted many activities: besides the Friday sermons, there are nightly discussion groups and regular lectures and study sessions. He even maintains a blog on living a life of Islam, answering anonymous questions from the congregation.
Another innovation: weekly soccer matches. Imam Zia is an avid soccer fan. Every Tuesday, after the isha namaz, carpools from the mosque drive to a rented indoor soccer field, where he leads a training session, followed by a match. Imam Zia is thirty-eight, but he runs faster and dribbles more wickedly than those half his age. The soccer matches have attracted many Muslim men from Irvine and the surrounding towns. Ismail, too, has become a regular at them.
Imam Zia is keen to develop the grounds around the Islamic center for sports—a soccer field and volleyball and basketball courts—and to extend the center to include a gym with locker rooms and showers, to make the center a place where the youth can congregate, find community and Allah, while having clean fun at the same time. Imam Zia believes such a space is essential to ensure the youth don’t stray from their faith, and that they—including the girls—grow up strong and confident. A plan has been drawn, and Ismail is on the fundraising committee, spearheading its efforts, to culminate in the event planned for tomorrow, in less than twenty-four hours.
Ismail now considers himself Imam Zia’s right-hand man. He has worked hard the last few months, calling on Muslim businesses and wealthy members of the community to ask for donations and pushing the organizing committee to implement as many fundraising ideas as possible—securing sponsors for the event in exchange for publicity, a magazine to sell advertising space, a silent auction, etc.
The target is finally within reach. Ismail is no longer anxious about the fundraising itself. The logistics of the event are also under control. What perturbs him now is the potential for trouble. They’ve heard no reports of specific protests planned for tomorrow, but recent incidents in Manhattan, Murfreesboro, and Yorba Linda have been very disquieting.
Ismail believes that hatred of Obama is being exploited to revive the fear of Muslims and Islam that had appeared to fade slowly in the decade following 9/11. How else to explain the widespread belief that Obama is a Muslim or that Islam is taking over America? Though he’d been excited by Obama winning the presidency, even tantalized by the possibility that Obama’s win was a sign of Allah’s intentions for America, Ismail has since come to the conclusion that Obama’s background is not just a distraction but a setback for Muslims everywhere. Obama, though born to a Muslim and stepson to another, is no Muslim, and despite Obama’s many speeches regarding tolerance and respect, Ismail does not expect him to pursue any policy that would put American interests second, especially regarding the Middle East. America will always want more oil and will always support Israel. But what Obama’s presidency has done is to rally half the country against him, and the American right wing—hardcore Christians and Jews—has seized this opportunity to further its crusade against Islam.
Sitting in the children’s bedroom—Arshad and Amina share a room, Amina still unwilling to sleep alone—Ismail can feel the dread weighing him down. If only he could do something—go for a drive, go to the mosque, talk to Imam Zia, pray. But he’s stuck here. Of course Tahera must go to her mother’s side, like any caring daughter, but did it have to include this weekend, knowing that anything could happen at the fundraiser tomorrow?
Across the room, Arshad isn’t yet asleep. He’s lying rigid in his bed, knees up, staring at the ceiling as though it holds mysteries. Which in a way it does, for glowing faintly green—faint because the light from the bedside lamp is overwhelming—are glow-in-the-dark stickers of constellations and galaxies that Arshad had Ismail fix to the ceiling above his bed years ago. Glimmering amid the ghostly universe are Arshad’s favorite verses from the Quran, a more recent addition, projected onto the ceiling. There’s the ayat Al-Kursi from the surah Al-Baqarah, and the last three surahs from the Quran—Al-Ikhlas, Al-Falaq, and An-Nas. His son’s lips move, as though he’s reciting.
“Recite a little louder,” Ismail tells Arshad, although it could wake Amina up.
Arshad starts out softly, with the surah he’s memorized for the Quran recitation competition in the fundraiser, his voice thin and high. As he grows more confident, he grows louder. Arshad has been learning Quran recitation in his Sunday school and plans to memorize the entire Quran. The class is run by Imam Zia, who’s complimented Arshad on his progress. Arshad’s tajwid has improved remarkably since he started practicing pronunciation accompanying the computer program his mother found for him, which displayed renderings of the correct shape of the mouth and placement of the tongue alongside the corresponding syllables. Arshad’s control of pitch and tune, though, is still diffident and unsteady. It will take years, of course, to master that, but even so, Ismail can already hear Imam Zia’s characteristic vocalizations in Arshad’s fledgling style.
Arshad stumbles a few times in recalling some ayats. But there’s an earnestness to his efforts, a natural piety to his recitation, that fills Ismail with pride. Subhan’Allah, this son of his is truly a blessing, an example of how to practice faith in this day and age. How much time Arshad is willing to expend on his desire to master the Quran, time that his friends squander on video games and the internet. That too of his own volition, with no compulsion from his parents.
Isn’t this the reason why the community center is important? Would Ismail have wasted his youth if he’d had access to such a community? All those years straying away from the true path of Islam, not knowing what he was missing, not even realizing how he was harming himself. Yes, there are challenges—and is not what’s happening in America now just such a challenge?—but challenges are meant to be faced, not run away from, and surely Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, would steer His believers to safety, as He had steered the Prophet, peace be upon him, through those dark initial days at Medina. There’s no reason to be beset by doubts—his son’s faith puts his to shame. He listens to Arshad, marveling at the quiet poetry, wishing the moment never to end.
But it does. Arshad finishes and falls silent. Ismail notices that Amina’s grasp has slackened. Her brother’s voice has succeeded where his had failed, although her forehead is puckered, as if she’s still concentrating on what she’s heard. He smoothes the creased skin and, rising, tucks her blanket around her.
He places a kiss on his son’s forehead. “Go to sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
When he turns off the bedside lamp, the stars and galaxies burn instantly brighter, as if the universe has come to life. And emblazoned across its skies are Allah’s verses.
Seema has asked her friend Fiaz to take them sightseeing around San Francisco. She’s counting on him to entertain her mother and sister and act as a buffer and deterrent. Surely the three women will have to behave themselves in the presence of an outsider.
Fiaz arrives at ten on Saturday morning, punctual as always. He’s sharply dressed, colorful: gray jacket, maroon shirt, teal jeans, brown shoes.
“What?” he says, catching Seema’s look as she lets him in. “I did tone it down.”
And he has, for he looks irreproachably harmonious. The gray in his jacket is streaked with just the right hint of the dark teal of the jeans, and his maroon shirt is echoed by the rich mulch brown of his shoes.
He gives her a peck on her cheek, before looking around and mouthing, “Where are they?” As though he’s inquiring about aliens from outer space.
Seema is forced to laugh. “Ammi, Tahera—Fiaz is here.” She’s eager to hurry everyone out of the confines of the apartment.
But Tahera is still getting ready, and Nafeesa will not allow Fiaz to leave the apartment without offering him something. “But Fiaz is being so good taking us around. It’s terrible if we don’t offer him even chai. It’ll only take a moment.”
“Don’t put yourself out, Aunty,” Fiaz says. “I like being a tour guide. That’s the only time I remember how beautiful San Francisco really is.”
Fiaz works with Seema. But he’s more than just a colleague—he’s also her oldest and best friend in the city. Nafeesa has already met him; he accompanied Seema to receive Nafeesa at the airport and drove them home.
What Seema has not told Nafeesa is that Fiaz is gay. He lives in the Castro with Pierre, his French boyfriend of many years. Seema met Fiaz when she’d moved to San Francisco the first time, at a potluck hosted by Trikone, the first South Asian gay and lesbian organization in the United States, or in the world, for that matter. It was Fiaz who’d alerted her to an opening in his firm when she was considering returning to San Francisco, after breaking up with Ann, the girlfriend she’d moved to Boston for. Fiaz is one of the few friends from Trikone who remained after she married Bill.
Nafeesa makes chai, while Tahera clears away her things in the living room. Fiaz and Seema sit across from each other at the dining table, like kids awaiting punishment.
“How’re you holding up?” Fiaz whispers.
“We’ll talk,” Seema signals. Conversation is difficult, given the two extra pairs of ears.
“How do you like San Francisco so far, Aunty?” Fiaz asks, taking the proffered cup.
“I’m happy to be here,” Nafeesa says.
She does look happy, for this simple act of making and offering chai. Nafeesa fusses over Fiaz, over the amount of sugar and milk in the chai, thrusting cookies at him. Fiaz submits gracefully to her ministrations. He compliments her: “This is the best chai I’ve had in San Francisco, Aunty!” He keeps up a lively spiel about the places they’re going to visit and is a fount of amusing anecdotes about the history of the city and the gold rush that propelled its growth. Seema relaxes. The day will go smoothly enough, she thinks. Her mother is clearly smitten: Fiaz can be very charming.
His charms don’t work on Tahera, though. Entering the kitchen in her jilbab and hijab, she replies to his greeting with a brusque salaam, ignoring the hand he holds out to her. She accepts Nafeesa’s offer of chai but drinks it in large gulps, as if swallowing a tonic. Fiaz attempts to engage her in a conversation, asking about her last trip to San Francisco, offering to alter the itinerary if she’s visited any of the spots he’s planned for them, but she declines: “Ammi hasn’t seen them. It’s kind of you.” She smiles perfunctorily at his jests—“What do Texans think of our Muslim president?”—and replies to other inquiries with monosyllables.
Soon Fiaz gives up. “Shall we leave?” he asks, putting his cup down. “The car is parked around the corner.”
Tahera and Nafeesa go down first. Fiaz helps Seema lock up and follows her.
“What have I got you into?” Seema tells Fiaz.
“Relax, just relax,” Fiaz says. “Everything will be okay.”
Grandmother, you watch Fiaz help Seema into the passenger seat as he holds the door open and waits till she buckles her seat belt before shutting it, and you think: What a sweet man! He’s handsome and obviously fit. His black hair is glossy and slicked back, his eyes sparkle. He sports a precisely fashioned beard. But he’s younger than Seema, you think, probably by five years.
You wonder how he got to the United States, to San Francisco. There is a confidence to him, a way of carrying himself that suggests he is native to the city and the country. Yet he speaks flawless Urdu, without an accent.
“Seema’s Urdu is poor,” he says. “She should be ashamed of herself.” He says this in Urdu.
Seema swats him but cannot deny the allegation. Neither can you, Grandmother, and you’re ashamed too: your daughters never learned to read or write Urdu when they were children. The Urdu they grew up with is colloquial and mongrel, with English and Hindi handily substituting for words they didn’t know and couldn’t be bothered to learn, despite all your attempts to instruct them.
They were never interested. They went to an English-medium convent school. They grew up on books from England—beginning with Enid Blyton’s adventures, before progressing into the world of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, then Thomas Hardy and George Eliot, Byron and Shelley and Keats. All their father’s influence.
You have a BA in Urdu literature and would have continued with an MPhil, or even a PhD, if you hadn’t married my grandfather. His love of everything English easily drowned your own love for a language that was “only good for love poetry,” as your husband put it after marrying you, though he didn’t deny it was your recitation of Urdu ghazals the evening he came bride-seeking that had so captivated him.
“That’s the only woman I want to marry,” he’d said, turning down many flattering offers from prospective fathers-in-law with account balances large enough to bankroll a hospital for him. And you, Grandmother, flattered by his lovesick adamance, allowed your whole world to be turned upside down. Giving up Urdu was only one of the sacrifices you made—and perhaps the most unnecessary, for couldn’t you have continued in your love for the language, even if you’d been forced to give up dreams of making a career studying and teaching it?
Sitting in the back seat with Tahera, you try to remember what you can of phrases and courtesies that had once slipped easily off your tongue but now feel so strange that you’re afraid you’ll trip over them, should you be called on to exhibit your past mastery. But your daughters seem to have forgotten all about your degree, just like you had until this moment.
The first destination is the Golden Gate Bridge. Fiaz points out various landmarks as he maneuvers the car through the light weekend traffic, but you’re not really paying attention. You’re lost in past drives with your daughters and their father—always this same way, father and elder daughter in the front, mother and younger daughter in the back, the father holding forth on some topic or the other. Fiaz’s voice rolls over you, and the city sinks into the earth with you barely noticing, to be replaced by trees and shrubs and rocks and water.
You’re at the Golden Gate Bridge, under its looming skeletal towers and massive cables. To the left and the right are the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay, two hundred feet below. You’re more excited by this glimpse of the Pacific than you’re impressed by the bridge. You can’t believe that the sliver of water you see between the two tongues of land is really the largest ocean on earth. That sliver extends all the way west, wrapping itself around the globe and merging into that other ocean by your homeland’s feet. You’re transported in an instant to Kanyakumari, to that tip of India’s peninsula where three bodies of water meet.
You’re standing on the stippled beach with your daughters and husband. Your daughters each hold on to one of their father’s hands as the trio edges toward the waves, churidars and pants rolled up to their knees. You’re guarding their footwear.
“There,” he says, pointing toward the east, lifting one of the girl’s hands along with his, “that’s the Bay of Bengal.” Now lifting the other daughter’s hand: “That’s the Arabian Sea.” Finally, lifting both their hands, and gesturing to the south: “And there’s the Indian Ocean.”
“Where, Abba?” asks Tahera.
“How can you tell?” says Seema.
“Can’t you see?” he says. “Look, the Arabian Sea is muddy. The Bay of Bengal is green. The Indian Ocean is blue.”
Seema claims she sees the difference, but Tahera can’t. Father and eldest daughter take turns waxing on how blue, how green, how muddy each is, until your youngest daughter is reduced to tears. She comes running back to you, asking whether you can tell the seas and ocean apart.
“No, I cannot.” You console her. “It’s just the sun.” The sun is in the west and the waters closest to the sun glint differently.
“It’s just the sun,” Tahera shouts to her father and sister, who have waded a little deeper into the water by now. “You’re both lying.”
She runs after them, skirting the edge of the waters, jumping back every time a wave advances. “Abba, Seema, I want to come too.”
They eventually return for her, and the trio stands for a long while in the churning seas, as the sun is slowly swallowed up by the hungry line of the horizon. Father and daughters are an outline silhouetted against it, distinguishable only by their height.
The ground beneath you shifts, as though the earth is being drained away, and in a flash you’re standing on the Golden Gate Bridge again.
Tahera holds your hand to steady you against its sway and steers you around a couple by the railing, kissing. “Careful, Ammi.”
A chill wind has begun blowing. You clutch Tahera’s hands for warmth but also as a precaution—as if the wind could carry you away, over the bridge and across the bay.
Seema and Fiaz stand in the shelter of a tower, leaning into each other as they share a laugh. They smile, beckoning you and Tahera to join them.
“How good they look together!” you’re moved to exclaim.
“Your sister is nothing like you,” Fiaz says. “But anyone can tell you’re sisters.”
“Really?” Seema grimaces. “How?”
“Your voices. Your eyes. You both have similar expressions.” He studies Tahera approaching them. “Does your sister ever smile?”
“I suppose she must.” Surely there were moments when Tahera should have smiled, not a mechanical curving of the lips, but a genuine transfiguration of her face—on birthdays, while receiving prizes after winning competitions, on vacations, at treats. “She was always serious.”
Had Tahera really been so solemn, or had Seema paid so little attention to her sister that she can’t recall even one joyful image of her? The thought is distressing.
Her sister and mother tread ponderously. Nafeesa’s shawl and Tahera’s jilbab are plastered to their bodies, the edges fluttering wildly. There’s the same concentration in their faces, the same determination as they struggle against the wind. How small and fragile they look, like birds stranded in a storm. She left them behind in order to speak with Fiaz alone. She’d only have memories of silent, serious faces if she kept fleeing from them this way.
“Isn’t this lovely?” she calls out, smiling a welcome at them, and gesturing toward the red towers and the cables, the blue skies and the water. “The last time I was here was with your children, Tahera.”
She’d ended up here with Amina and Arshad as the sun set, unexpectedly happy with their day together.
She’d been beyond surprised when she’d received a call from Tahera in March. Their last conversation was more than a decade earlier, when she called Tahera to wish her well on her marriage to Ismail, after Tahera moved to Dallas to join her husband. The letter Tahera wrote her after made it clear she wanted no more contact.
It turned out Tahera was in San Francisco attending a conference hosted by the American Academy of Family Practitioners, invited to give a talk on healthcare for Muslim women. Her husband had accompanied her, for a day of meetings at his company’s Silicon Valley headquarters in Santa Clara. They’d brought the children along.
Then: “I heard you’re getting divorced.”
So the call was clearly obligatory, imposed on Tahera by Nafeesa, their go-between, relating news of one sister to the other. Yet, hearing Tahera’s voice after such a long time, Seema immediately yielded to the lure of the past, craving that sympathy from her younger sister, so soothing and familiar from her childhood. She found herself narrating details of the breakup—brave and telling—calculated to arouse that past sister’s solicitude. She even considered disclosing something she’d learned barely a week earlier, and was still grappling with—that she was pregnant as well.
But Tahera displayed neither sympathy over the phone nor exulting vindication, only the sense of duty. Seema was to be denied any satisfaction—neither the knowledge that her sister was gloating at her misery, nor the catharsis of reconciliation.
After listening mostly in silence, Tahera asked, “Do you need any help?”
“No, I’m fine,” Seema replied, hearing the effort it took Tahera to frame the question. To prove to Tahera, and to herself that she was really fine, she’d agreed to meet the visiting family for dinner.
I had been all of an inch then, my presence made real only by the accompanying symptoms—morning sickness, heartburn, the ripening tug of my to-be mother’s breasts. She had no concept of me except as cells quickening in her body, cells she could still choose to expel if she wanted. I was a to-be child she hadn’t decided yet to keep.
What did she see in her sister’s children that trip that made up her mind?
At the Thai restaurant by their hotel, Tahera and her family are already seated when Seema arrives. Tahera stands up as though for a hug, but changes her mind and scoots over to make space for Seema. Ismail raises his hand to his forehead in a silent salaam.
Tahera introduces Seema to her children. “This is your Seema Aunty. Remember I said Ammi has a sister? Say salaam.”
“Assalamu Alaikum, Seema Aunty,” the children intone. They are seated opposite Seema, with their father between them. Amina is shy, and hides her face in her father’s kurta. Ismail smooths her hijab over her head and asks her not to behave so bashfully—what will her aunt think of her?
The more interesting question: What do they think of Seema?
Tahera hasn’t seen Seema for fifteen years. She first notes what Seema’s wearing: a long skirt and a demure full-sleeved top, brown and beige. She’s both relieved and irritated by Seema’s choice—she’d expected Seema in jeans or pants and in brighter colors. She wonders what Seema makes of her own attire, of Amina’s hijab.
In the quick appraising glance Ismail gives Seema, he sees that she is stylishly dressed, poised, sure of herself, matching Tahera’s various accounts. The prospect of a divorce seems to have had little effect on her—she is cheerful, unflinching, unabashed.
Arshad can’t stop staring. He notes the differences: his mother is in a hijab, his aunt isn’t; there are dark circles around his mother’s eyes, while his aunt’s face has makeup and lipstick. His mother is like a moth, his aunt like a sparrow, sharply etched. “This is your sister, Ammi?” he asks.
Seema replies, “Yes, I’m your Ammi’s sister.”
“Are you Ammi’s little sister?” Amina asks, chewing the tip of her hijab to allay the vague sense of trepidation Seema produces in her. Seema’s smile appears welcoming, but Amina holds back, uncertain. She associates warmth and motherly attention only with the flowing curves of a jilbab and hijab.
“No, I’m your Ammi’s big sister.” Seema laughs, tapping Tahera on the shoulder. “I’m two years older.”
Tahera smiles back, a quick piqued smile. It irks to acknowledge that Seema does appear younger. How fresh her sister looks, while she is already tired, wishing the visit to San Francisco were over. She reminds herself that she’s added the stress of this meeting to the stress about her talk the next day at the conference. She says, “Wait till you become a mother yourself.”
Seema winces, and Tahera assumes Seema is reminded about her divorce. Her sister is clearly not as happy as she looks, nor as invulnerable as she pretends to be.
They study the menus, a welcome diversion. Arshad and Amina already know what they want—fried rice! Thai fried rice is one of Arshad’s favorite dishes. Seema decides on a chicken dish with basil and green peppers. Arshad and Amina glance over to their father.
Ismail is familiar with that glance: Are they allowed to order chicken here? He shakes his head. Arshad is already forming words: “But Seema Aunty—!” Ismail tries to preempt Arshad but is too late. He sits back, letting Tahera deal with this misadventure. After all, this dinner is on her insistence. He’d given in with reluctance.
Seema looks up from her menu. “What?”
“You can’t eat chicken here,” Arshad says. “It’s not zabiha.”
“Your Seema Aunty can order what she wants,” Tahera says. “We won’t be sharing.”
“Oh, I can order tofu,” says Seema. “I don’t have to eat meat.”
Arshad is disappointed he can’t display his newly acquired knowledge, the relevant ayats from surahs Al-Ma’ida and Al-An’am regarding the rules of slaughter. Large questions foment in his mind. Why did his mother say Seema Aunty could eat nonpermitted meat? Won’t Allah punish Seema Aunty for this sin? And doesn’t his mother care what happens to her sister, as he cares for Amina?
When the children greet her with “Assalamu Alaikum, Seema Aunty,” Seema is taken aback by how easily the response, “Alaikum Assalam,” rolls off her tongue. She remembers using only the first half of the greeting as a child toward her elders, never the response. And here she is, responding to the children so naturally. She senses a collapse in time: for the moment, she’s both adult and child, both here in San Francisco and back in Chennai.
This sensation is heightened by seeing Tahera and her daughter side by side. Amina’s face is Tahera’s from years ago, while Tahera looks shockingly aged and drawn now.
Both mother and daughter are wearing hijabs, and Seema thinks: The girl is so young, give her a chance to decide for herself. Neither father nor brother is wearing a prayer cap, after all. Ismail is in a white kurta and a leather jacket, Arshad in a bright yellow T-shirt and black jeans. Ismail’s beard is trimmed.
Uncomfortable silences persist till the food arrives. The curries are spicy but delicious, and the fried rice is served in a hollowed-out pineapple, which draws cries of delight from the children. Arshad and Amina grow animated as they crunch happily on cashews and pineapple chunks that stud the rice. They compete with each other for their Seema Aunty’s attention, excitedly recounting the day’s adventures—the barking sea lions, the bungee trampoline, the carousel ride at Fisherman’s Wharf—interrupting each other, amplifying, disagreeing.
Arshad is wistful about the Ripley’s museum they were unable to visit. Amina wishes they’d gone to the aquarium. Their father had promised to take them the next day, but he now has a meeting in Santa Clara, and they have to accompany him, since their mother will be busy at the conference. How lucky Seema Aunty is to live in San Francisco! Does she live near the Wharf?
They’ve anointed her best friend already. She is asked to settle disputes, to explain mysteries, to exercise her authority as a local. Their high spirits infect her. She slips into the role of a much-loved aunt easily—much preferable to excommunicated sister—reveling in the ready intimacy that she’s rarely felt before with the children of her friends.
“How would it be,” she exclaims, surprising herself, “if I take tomorrow off and show the children around San Francisco?”
The table thumps to a halt. The children look at their parents, their parents look at each other.
After a moment’s hesitation, Tahera says, “Your father must decide.”
Ismail is clearly reluctant. The children immediately train their entreaties at him: they were promised the sights! They clutch at his arms. When he finally agrees, the children erupt in celebration. Seema realizes that, like Amina, she too has been holding her breath.
But the next morning, waiting in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel to pick up the children, Seema feels only anxiety. What caprice has she yielded to? Here’s Tahera stepping out of the elevator, clad head to toe in rigorous black—black hijab, black jilbab, black shoes. Clutching her mother’s hand, Amina is in a pink dress embroidered with white flowers, a pink sweater, pink-and-white shoes, and a matching pink hijab framing her face and flowing over her shoulders. Arshad trails after them, in blue jeans, a tan fleece pullover, and white Adidas shoes, but on his head today: a white prayer cap.
Ismail has already left for his meeting, Tahera says, and she’s late for her session. She hands Seema a booster seat for Amina, gives her a few instructions—Don’t spoil the kids!—warns her children not to pester their aunt, and hurries away.
“Shall we go?” Seema asks, but the children continue to stand there, the intimacy of the previous day forgotten. To break the ice again, Seema lists the treats she’s planned for them: the aquarium, the exploratorium, the Golden Gate Bridge, ice cream.
Seema has picked right: the exploratorium excites Arshad, and he’s ready to make that the first stop. But Amina is not won over yet. She hugs her booster seat to herself, eyes scanning the lobby for her mother, resisting Arshad’s efforts to steer her toward the doors. Arshad lures her with the promise of visiting the aquarium first and makes a big fuss over the car—how like a toy it is!
It’s Fiaz’s Mini Cooper actually, borrowed for the day, since Seema has sold her car, like she’s sold or given away almost everything that reminds her of her life with Bill. She’s thankful Arshad can install the booster seat, since she knows next to nothing about it.
All formality evaporates as soon as they climb into the car and head out to the aquarium, down one of the steepest slopes in San Francisco. Amina closes her eyes and squeals. Arshad begs they do it again. Seema obliges, going around the block to repeat the same vertiginous descent. The car is filled with shrieks and laughter as they roller-coaster their way down to the Wharf.
The children slip their hands into hers as they cross the road. This recalls to Seema walking to school with Tahera. They’d continued to hold hands even after they became too old to draw a sense of safety from the act, for there’d been a distinct pleasure to walking into school hand in hand. They were striking as a pair—the same heart-shaped faces, framed by hair tightly pulled back into twin plaits with white ribbons, the same cut to their starched blue pinafores, the same puff to the sleeves of their white blouses. They were everywhere recognized and admired—the Hussein sisters!—and even the headmistress would stop to greet them.
But the differences now, three decades later, leading her sister’s children through the Wharf! Seema is acutely aware of Amina’s hijab, and Arshad’s prayer cap, and the accosting glances of the other tourists. Are they confused by her attire of jeans and sweater and what she’s doing accompanying these children? Pretending she’s cold, Seema shivers self-consciously, and pulls out a shawl from her bag, which she drapes over a shoulder and loops around her head. She’s aware Arshad has noticed, though he says nothing.
At the aquarium, a yellowtail balances on the tip of its nose, and Amina’s laughter is infectious. Everybody experiences gooseflesh at a wolf eel’s glare. A sleek seven-gilled shark slices through the water. There are rows of suckers on an octopus’s arms, like coins thrown at a fountain—but a swish, and they’re all gone!
For lunch, they have fries and grilled cheese sandwiches, Cherry Coke. Later ice cream, a banana split for Arshad, a chocolate cone with sprinkles for Amina that she doesn’t finish and ends up with Seema.
In the afternoon, the exploratorium. Here Arshad flies suspended in a mirror like Superman, and Amina joins him, his Supergirl. Later, a movie about the origins of the universe—whirling masses of gas, galaxies like far-flung roses—and Arshad watches transfixed, while Amina wanders off. They find her at an exhibit on sound, with unusual musical instruments made of wires, disks, balloons, and rubber bands. With her quick little fingers she improvises a tune on one of them.
“She can sing too,” Arshad says. “She sings very well.”
He urges his sister to show Seema, and Amina complies, without a trace of embarrassment or shyness, in a light clear voice. An Urdu song, an old melody from Seema’s childhood!
“She sings like an angel,” compliments a listening woman. “What’s she singing?”
It’s a song Tahera and Seema used to love, about a rocking horse that springs to life and runs away. Amina’s eyes shine with a soft concentrated happiness. When she finishes, Seema can’t help but lift her up and smother her with kisses.
The day ends on the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge is a tongue of fire, lit by the sun’s dying rays. The children shiver in the stiff breeze blowing off the Pacific, but Arshad is adamant about walking the length of the bridge, and Amina is his willing follower. Seema gives in. Arshad wants to run ahead, but Seema insists the children hold her hand—the bridge is thronging with visitors, the curling waters of the bay are a steep drop below.
See them promenading down the bridge. Anyone would think them a family: a mother and her two children, walking hand in hand. Arshad’s cap glows in the golden sunset. Amina’s hijab flutters in the breeze, as does Seema’s shawl. Seema has wound it tighter around her shoulders and head now, no longer pretending to be chilled. She’s glad for the children’s hands, warmth shared between them. The warmth reaches the inch of me, burrowed deep in her body.
Soon she’ll have to return the children, like books borrowed from a library. They sense the end nearing too. Amina clings tighter. Arshad becomes urgent with questions about growing up in Chennai with their mother. Seema answers, hesitantly at first, then loosening up. She talks about two girls who slept in the same bed, who went to the same school, who read the same books, who played the same games, who sang the same songs—including the one about the rocking horse that escapes.
“Why haven’t we seen you before, Seema Aunty?” Amina asks. “Will you come to Irvine to visit us?”
Before Seema can think of a lie, Arshad replies, “No, silly. If she’d wanted to, she’d have come before.” He glances sidelong at Seema, but Seema senses no hostility in his remark and is baffled.
“Don’t you like us, Seema Aunty?” Amina says. “I like you.”
“Why did you say that?” Seema asks, directing her question at Arshad.
They come to a halt under one of the towers of the bridge. Arshad hops onto the lower railing and peers over at the water.
“Don’t,” Seema says sharply, and he jumps off the railing back onto the bridge.
“Why did you cover your head this morning?” he asks, looking directly at her.
“I was cold,” she replies. “San Francisco’s cold.” She shivers involuntarily.
“Ammi says you don’t practice deen.”
“She told you that?”
“I asked her why you eat nonhalal meat. Why don’t you practice deen, Seema Aunty? Why don’t you submit to Allah?”
“Well, why do you?” The question slips out of her even as she recognizes the absurdity in interrogating a ten-year-old.
The three of them are protected from the wind by the tower, and they don’t have to struggle now to be heard. The world seems to be holding its breath.
“Because,” he says. He looks around, then points to the tower spearing the sky. “Because this is awesome. We couldn’t have built it without His help.”
“Muslims didn’t build it.”
“We’re all people of the Book. We all pray to the same God.”
“Do we all have to pray the same way?” she asks. “Do we all have to live the same lives?” She is alarmed by the bitterness in her voice, its vehemence. Why pick a fight with a child? This would earn her Tahera’s ire if she learned of it.
He doesn’t answer her but doesn’t appear fazed by her questioning either. Instead he says, “I’ll tell you why you covered your head.”
“Why?”
“Because you saw people looking at us. You were afraid of what they’d think.”
“Why should I be afraid? Why should I care what people think of me?”
He looks at her with a sly grin. “No, you were afraid of what people would think of Amina and me. You don’t like us covering our heads.” He pulls his cap off his head and twirls it around on his fingers. “People are scared of us. They think we’ll become terrorists.”
Seema looks at them, Arshad fiddling with his cap, Amina adjusting her hijab. They are waiting for something from her: some acknowledgment perhaps, some reassurance?
She can’t trust herself to speak. She’s angry: at Tahera and Ismail, for their pigheaded choice of a lifestyle that made outcasts of their children. But also: at Amina and Arshad, as if she blames them for accepting unquestioningly the life their parents imposed on them. But aren’t they more to be pitied than blamed? Growing up, she hadn’t much choice either, not until she left home.
“People are just stupid,” she says. “It’s easier to control them if they’re scared. And it’s easier to make them scared of those who are different.”
“You shouldn’t call anyone stupid,” Amina says.
“What do you call a Muslim who prays five times a day and offers zakat to the poor?” Arshad asks.
Seema shakes her head. “What?”
“A problem. What do you call a Muslim who prays five times a day, offers zakat to the poor, and grows a beard and wears a cap?”
“I don’t know.”
“A big problem. What do you call a Muslim who uses swear words and drinks wine and eats pork and chases after women?”
She’s startled by how fluent he is, how self-possessed. She detects no rancor in him, only wry amusement. And he doesn’t seem to care that there are people milling around them.
“A problem solved!” Arshad chortles. “What, Seema Aunty! Surely believing in Allah is not the worst thing one can do.”
He throws his cap into the air. As it reaches the zenith and starts to fall, a gust of wind picks it up and carries it over the edge of the railings.
“Bhaiya, your cap!” Amina cries.
She runs to the railings but Arshad stops her. The cap billows as it is lifted, catches the sunlight as it leaves the shadow of the tower, and glows like a lightbulb.
“It doesn’t matter,” he scoffs. “It’s just a cap.”
“What will you tell Ammi?” Amina whispers.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter,” Arshad says, this time less surely. He gives Seema a quick smile. “Look how lovely it is. Everything is by Allah’s grace.”
They watch as the wind buffets the cap and carries it out toward the bay. It hovers for an instant and then plummets like a stricken dove, until another gust sweeps it farther away.
Seven months later, at pretty much the same spot on the Golden Gate Bridge, Seema stands with her sister, their backs to the tower.
“Arshad lost his cap here,” Seema says. “The wind blew it away.”
But Tahera is not paying attention to her, straining instead to listen to Fiaz. With the wind whistling through the bridge, they can hear only snatches of what he tells their mother by the railing, holding his jacket open to protect her from the wind.
“Your friend seems very knowledgeable about many things,” Tahera says.
Seema is amused by Tahera’s slight questioning emphasis. “Yes, he can talk your ear off on any topic.” She calls out to him, “Fiaz, come closer. We too want a share of your infinite supply of useless information.”
He puts his tongue out at her but submits dutifully, shepherding Nafeesa toward them. He’s talking about jumpers. The bridge, he says, is the most popular site in the world for committing suicide. More than a thousand have climbed over its railings to plunge down to its icy waters.
“Why would anyone choose this way to die?” Tahera steps onto the lower railing to peer over, as Arshad had done. “That must be at least two hundred feet down. Has anyone survived?”
“A few. But they usually end up with a broken body.”
Nafeesa shudders, as though the prospect of living with a broken body is more horrifying than the prospect of death.
“Why are we talking about this?” Seema complains. Fiaz should know better than to speak about death when their mother is so close to it, but he continues, describing a documentary dealing with the suicides from the bridge. The filmmaker had caught jumpers in the act, collecting video footage of two dozen leaps over the course of one year.
She grabs Fiaz’s arm to interrupt him. Fiaz yelps, and Nafeesa and Tahera turn to look at her, her mother concerned, her sister surprised. “It’s nothing. I thought I felt a contraction,” she says.
They head back to the car. She puts pressure on Fiaz’s arm to slow him down, ignoring Nafeesa’s anxious glances as they fall behind. Beneath them, a ship emerges from under the bridge, as though appearing out of nowhere.
“I’m sorry I got carried away,” Fiaz says.
She rubs his arm where she’d tweaked him hard. “All this talk about death and dying—I’m scared, Fiaz.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know how much longer my mother will be here. Tahera’s lucky, she has her family. I’m alone, and I’ll have to bring up my child alone.”
“You have me, you have Leigh.”
“You I’m sharing with Pierre. And Leigh—” She can’t bring herself to complete the thought. Completion implies a decision made. “What if I can’t do this by myself?”
She’s had this conversation with him before, knows what he’ll say—“You can,” he says, “you’re the strongest person I know”—and she’s always found his words reassuring, but today she feels strangely empty. A life is turning within her, and what has she to offer it?
She’s not strong the way Tahera is strong, the way she suspects Arshad is. All her childhood she’d been confounded by Tahera’s enthrallment with things she remained blind to: a perfectly purple jamun, a line of poetry, a rainbow. Arshad had stood on this bridge, his eyes focused on the cap being swept away by the breeze until it was no more than a glittering speck. They have something she doesn’t have, never had, may never have. Even Amina—she recalls the look on Amina’s face as she sang.
They are like this bridge—anchored, and held upright and strong by their unshakable faith in the rightness of their devotions and their ecstasies and in their capacity to bear the weight of them. Her strength, on the other hand, lies chiefly in her ability to raise anchor and sail away, and reestablish herself elsewhere, in more favorable waters. They’re the bridge, she’s the ship beneath, tramping from port to port.
Fiaz puts an arm around her, gives her shoulders a squeeze. “You know you can always count on me to play the doting uncle. As long as I don’t have to change dirty diapers.”
“What use are you then?” She swats him, masking her disappointment in playfulness.
Fiaz jokes, but this is his way of hinting at the limits of what he’s willing to do for her child. Pierre doesn’t want children, and Fiaz doesn’t regard himself as free to make a choice for himself. Would he agree to more if he weren’t with Pierre? That’s not a question she can ask him. Fiaz will continue to show her and her child many kindnesses, and she has to be satisfied with that.
She’s startled by the ship’s warning horn as it sails into the bay. The kitesurfers and sailboarders zipping back and forth by the bridge race to get out of its path.
She leans against Fiaz and lets him bear some of her weight as they walk up the incline from the bridge to the parking lot.
Nafeesa’s comment—how good Seema and Fiaz look together!—unsettles Tahera. It hadn’t occurred to her to suspect more than friendship between them. There’s something about Fiaz that is too reassuring—too nice, too normal—to imagine him as Seema’s lover. But perhaps her mother knows something that she does not.
Tahera now watches Seema’s every interaction with Fiaz with suspicion. Throughout the morning, at the Golden Gate Bridge, and later on the crooked Lombard Street and at Coit Tower, every time their bodies draw close, she takes note. She edges closer to eavesdrop; she insinuates herself into their conversations under cover of interest; she projects innocent curiosity even as she asks questions: How did they meet? How do they like working together? Do they see each other often outside work?
Their replies are wary, evasive, giving her little to go on. There’s no denying that some (deep) connection exists between them. This much is evident in the easy familiarity that marks their intercourse, the conspiring smiles Seema gives Fiaz, the readiness with which he cooperates. There’s a tenderness too in his concern for Seema; he helps her into the car and bends to whisper something into her ear, and Tahera burns. She needn’t have abandoned her family. Seema has already found herself a willing servant, if not a new suitor.
It’s close to 1:00 p.m., and Fiaz and Seema discuss lunch at one of the Pakistani places around Union Square. It’ll be halal, Seema tells Tahera.
“But it’s time for my zuhr namaz.”
Fiaz offers to drive her to a mosque.
“If we’re going to Union Square, I can pray there. I’ve prayed before in parking lots and lobbies. I just need a place to spread my janamaz.” She’s brought it with her, for just such an eventuality. The passersby in Union Square won’t faze her; in fact, today she’ll relish the challenge. She feels combative. She’s ready with an answer if anyone in the car chooses to question the advisability of praying in public: people pray on the roads in Mecca all the time, both men and women!
Nobody speaks until they pull to a stop in front of a building. “I bring my mother here,” Fiaz says. “The mosque’s on the second floor.”
The neighborhood looks sketchy. There’s litter on the pavements, and shabby loiterers lean against the garbage can. If it weren’t for the inscription across the building’s nondescript entrance, Tahera wouldn’t believe it housed a mosque. A small prayer space, likely, in this large commercial building, nothing like their mosque in Irvine, stand-alone and impressive, with its green dome and tall decorative arches.
She clambers out from her side, chagrined. “I told you not to bother. What will you all do now?”
“We’ll wait here for you, if you won’t be long,” Fiaz says. “Or I can drop your mother and Seema off at Union Square and return to pick you up.”
“Don’t wait for me. If they’re hungry, they should go ahead and eat.” She immediately turns around and heads for the entrance, not waiting to see what they do.
But the mosque is not what she’d expected. The prayer hall is spacious, occupying the entire second floor of the building. It is carpeted in red and aglow with light streaming in through large floor-to-ceiling windows. The light reflects off the carpet and suffuses the space with a ruby hue. Nothing she’s seen this morning matches this, not the Golden Gate Bridge, not the view of the city from the top of Coit Tower. Nothing she knows of San Francisco has prepared her for this.
“Subhan’Allah,” she exclaims involuntarily, before realizing that the congregation has already started the prayers. The zuhr is recited quietly, there’s only the buzz of the verses whispered, the takbir barely audible: Allahu Akbar. She’d interrupted the namaz.
She stands by the entrance to the prayer hall, watching. She is awed, dazzled by the light. The space seems to pulse, the walls receding and then closing in, for every time the worshippers bend forward or genuflect, the room flares instantly brighter, from the reflections off their backs. Like crystals in a chandelier. The ayat from surah An-Noor comes to her mind: Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth. His light is like that of a crystal lamp in a niche, burning brilliant like a star, even the oil glowing. Light on light!
Only then does she notice that there are women praying in the hall as well. Unlike in Irvine, where the women have their own room, here they’re all gathered to one side, while the men occupy the area in front of the mihrab. There’s no barrier separating them.
It’s the same surah An-Noor that enjoins modesty, chastity, fidelity.
“Yes, they’ll do that in San Francisco,” she can hear Ismail say, deriding this lack of separation as an unnecessary innovation, a false notion of equality trumping every other consideration. How familiarity breeds contempt—contempt for the purity of the body, contempt for the merit of Allah’s decrees. She wouldn’t be surprised if Seema and Fiaz are having an affair after all. The affair could even be the reason for Seema’s divorce, adultery just another transgression added to her already long list.
But instead of the punishment that the surah decrees, Seema is to be rewarded. A new baby and a new husband—Muslim, good-looking, smart, successful—and Seema is all set for a prodigal daughter’s welcome. No doubt their mother will now broker a reconciliation between estranged daughter and father. No doubt Seema’s many lapses will be forgiven, and Seema will soon be reseated on her pedestal.
Tahera won’t join this perverse San Francisco congregation but will pray after it finishes. Seema, Fiaz, and her mother must wait. She pictures them in the car driving away without her: it only needs her father now to join in their complicity.
There’s this consolation: Seema may have been her father’s favorite but is not one of Allah’s favored. For the surah also says: Only by Allah’s bounty and mercy could anyone attain purity. And Allah decides who will and who won’t. He guides His light to whom He wills.
Why then does it feel to her, watching the worshippers move through the light—aglow as if they were made of that very light, like angels—that she stands in the shadows while they are blessed, transformed, redeemed?
Grandmother, the morning has energized you. You see your daughters together, behaving cordially if not affectionately, and you’re greatly heartened. They’re finally talking to each other, not using you as their intermediary. Your scheme of forcing them to spend time together seems to be working.
San Francisco is so unlike Chennai, with its picture-postcard blue skies and emerald-green waters, a perfect miniature city secure in its glass globe, except for the occasional panhandler or loiterer. Yet, all morning you’ve been reliving the past, with many former selves of Seema and Tahera and your husband walking beside you, resurrected by the most ordinary of occurrences. Here—in Union Square—you see two sisters skipping up and down the stairs holding hands; on a cable car you see a teenage girl leaning out, waving at passersby; at a store, a father holds his child up so she can better see the mannequin’s painted face. The past seems not the past—untouchable, unchangeable—but something that floats just beyond your fingertips, something that you feel you can reach and perhaps reshape.
These visions fill you with hope. Already, Seema’s life feels more real, her future more promising. While waiting for Tahera, Seema has encountered more friends at a campaign booth in Union Square. Three women and a man—all Americans you think, by their accents, two Black, one White, one Indian—rush to surround Seema as soon as they catch sight of her. Clearly Seema is not living the isolated and cheerless life you sometimes imagined her to.
If her father could see her now, so engaged and animated, and surrounded by well-wishers! Perhaps it will be Seema running for election one day. You picture Seema’s face on the poster instead of the candidate’s, even though it was your husband who’d nursed these ambitions for your daughters. All you wanted for them were happy, fulfilled lives.
The Indian American friend introduces herself as Divya. She’s very pretty and dressed more fashionably than the rest. “I’m so glad to have a chance to meet you,” she gushes. She praises Seema to you and thanks you for flying all the way over to help Seema with the delivery. “If it weren’t for the election, I would be there to help anytime she wanted.”
“I’m so glad Seema has such a good friend,” you say.
She draws Seema aside to discuss some matter. They whisper to each other, and you note that Seema seems a little uneasy, glancing over as if to reassure you. You wonder what they’re discussing.
Fiaz returns with Tahera. She looks a little downcast but makes no objection to the restaurant chosen for lunch. Divya can’t join you—she apologizes profusely, taking leave of Seema with an embrace—but the other two women can.
The six of you walk to the place—you can’t call it a restaurant, since it’s so shabby. It’s smoke-filled and sharp with the smell of stale curries, with cheap tables and chairs strewn in disarray on not particularly clean flooring. Seema’s friends don’t seem to mind, though, continuing their chatter on politics. Tahera keeps mum. You let her choose dishes for you. The dishes arrive floating in oil, but, apart from Tahera, everyone finds them delicious. You eat a little to not call attention to yourself, but you decide that you’ll have to cook a proper meal for Seema’s friends—to treat them to a real feast, to thank them for supporting your daughter.
After lunch, Fiaz takes you all back to Seema’s apartment, none inclined for further sightseeing.
“Thank you so much, son,” you tell Fiaz when he’s leaving, in Urdu, in as perfect and chaste a diction as you can contrive. You’re brimming with gratitude, for the morning of course, but also for his reassuring presence in Seema’s life. “You must come to dinner. I must feed you something I’ve cooked with my own hands.”
“You shouldn’t put yourself to so much trouble, Aunty. All the pleasure was mine.” He replies in Urdu too.
You grasp his palms in your bony fingers, unwilling to let him go without securing his consent. It will be harder later, for you sense Seema shift uncomfortably, ready to intervene. “You must come. Otherwise I’ll be very disappointed.”
“Of course. Just say the word, and I’ll come wearing a pajama, with drawstrings to loosen.”
When he’s gone, you start planning the dinner you’ll cook. You’ll ask Seema to invite her other friends too. You’d like to feed them all, at least once. You know Seema will resist, but you’re determined to override her. You have little time to make amends for all the sorrow and pain that your silence and inaction have perpetuated.
It’s late afternoon. The ghosts of the morning still torment the two sisters.
Seema is seated by the bay window in the living room with the book of poetry she’d bought Tahera, while her mother naps in the next room. She reads what she remembers as her sister’s favorite poems, recalling the intensity and earnestness with which Tahera used to recite them. But the poems evade her—she remains unmoved by their lyrics or music. She has recited poetry herself in competitions at school, but they’d been mere performances, to be crafted and perfected. She stares outside the window, idly stroking her stomach, while she works on shoring up her will to talk to Tahera. Are there traces of the childhood sister still lurking in the stranger moving about the apartment?
Tahera is restless, too stirred up to remain idle. The asr namaz doesn’t take long, even with all the voluntary rakaat in addition to the obligatory ones. She calls Ismail, but he is busy at the mosque, overseeing the arrangements for the fundraiser that evening, and the children are having too much fun in the air castle set up in the parking lot to remain on the phone for long, even Amina. At least there’s no sign yet of any trouble. Tahera throws herself into tidying the apartment. She puts away her stuff and straightens the living room; she cleans the kitchen, and washes and shelves the dishes in the sink; she even mops the kitchen floor. When she’s done, she looks around for something else to do.
“Tahera, you’re making me tired just listening to you,” Seema says. “Come sit down. I want to speak with you.”
Tahera is thrown off balance by Seema’s request. “I don’t want to talk about Ammi right now.”
“No, not about Ammi.” Seema notes Tahera’s pinched face, which shows more anxiety than the hostility her voice suggests. “Please?” Almost unconsciously she employs the tone her younger self would use with Tahera to get her way.
It still seems to work. Tahera hesitates, then says, “I’ll make us some chai first.”
While Tahera brews chai, Seema counts fetal kicks. Her hands slide slowly over her stomach inch by inch, fingers spread wide. Both sisters are intent on their tasks as the minutes drag on, as though the future somehow depends on how conscientiously each carries them out.
Tahera returns and places one cup by her sister’s feet, then pulls another chair to the bay window and sits down, studying her. “How many so far?” she asks.
“Good boy,” Seema murmurs to me, reacting to a particularly vigorous kick. “Ten in fifteen minutes,” she tells Tahera. “He seems very active.”
They sip their chai deliberately, with exaggerated care, as if that were the sole reason for their sitting together.
The sun streams in through the window, the rays cutting into the living room, glancing off the hardwood floors, bathing them in a golden afterglow. The light softens them, making them appear less substantial, almost translucent.
To Tahera, Seema looks slight. The light has shaved off mass from the edges of her frame, stripping her of her pregnancy, rendering her small and oddly vulnerable. And in Seema’s eyes, the light masks the lines and wrinkles on Tahera’s face, smoothing out its textures—her sister could be any age now, twenty or eighteen, fifteen or thirteen. A window to the past has unexpectedly opened.
“Tara,” Seema says, and the word feels so awkward on her tongue that she falters. She has not used this nickname in more than two decades.
Tahera’s heart stills. Seema has only ever called her Tara when asking a favor or cajoling her into a shared exploit. She has never heard Seema utter it this way before, stuttering, unsure of herself.
A sudden hope flares within her, and it sets the very light in the room quivering. Tahera is reminded of the mosque that morning, of the worshippers shimmering in the light. The morning and the afternoon mingle and fuse in an incandescent moment: confession—supplication—absolution.
“What is it?” Tahera clutches at her cup to steady herself, gazing at her sister over its rim.
“Tahera”—Seema enunciates the word carefully so as not to slur it and have it sound like the diminutive again—“I know we haven’t exactly been close for some time now. But I’ll be very grateful if you’ll consider this carefully before you say no.”
“Say no to what?”
“I never thought anything would happen to Ammi, at least not this soon. She’s only sixty-two. But look at her—it happened so quickly, in less than three months.”
“We agreed, no talking about Ammi.” Tahera sets the cup down.
My mother plunges ahead. “I’d like you to bring up Ishraaq if something were to happen to me. I’d like to name you as his legal guardian in my will.”
And how does my could-be mother react? The enormity of the ask takes Tahera’s breath away. Whatever Tahera had expected, it hadn’t been this. Surely not even Seema has the audacity to make such a request, with so little acknowledgment of the hurt and pain she’d inflicted.
A stream of questions eddies in Tahera’s mind: Why her? Why now? What is being asked of her?
“How long have you been thinking about this?” she asks.
“A couple of months.”
“Since Ammi’s diagnosis?”
Seema nods.
“What about the father?”
Seema bites her lip. “I don’t want him involved.”
“I don’t know,” Tahera says.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says.
“I’ll have to talk to Ismail,” she says, finally.
What she notes: a hint of a teardrop clinging to her sister’s eyelash. It trembles there gathering mass before it embarks on its perilous way through the lit and glowing air.
At the fundraiser that evening, Arshad is Superkid in his royal-blue kurta pajama and his crocheted white prayer cap. He’s miraculously at hand whenever someone is needed—to carry messages between organizers, to track down particular members of the community, to guard the video camera during the videographer’s breaks. Now he directs attendees to the spaces for various events, now he hands out pens and ink and paper for the calligraphy competition, now he works the slides on the laptop during Imam Zia’s speech about the future of the center. He’s a whirlwind in blue, streaking through the swelling throng, the men in suits and salwars and jeans and caftans, the women churidared and jilbabed and abayaed and hijabed, the young boys and girls dressed to their parents’ tastes in bright and shiny traditional outfits of every gaudy hue.
He has time for little else the first half of the evening—no time to hang out with his friends, to be dejected about not winning a prize for his recitation, to keep an eye on his sister. Thankfully, Amina is under Najiba Aunty’s care, playing with her friend Taghrid.
After the isha namaz there’s only one event left: the Quran Jeopardy! Originally his father was supposed to conduct it. Arshad had helped him put the quiz together, and he’s excited. But Ismail has since assumed post outside to supervise the activities in the lot, and the role of quizmaster has fallen to Imam Zia. Three contestants have been selected: the father of Arshad’s friend Jemaal, a senior from his school, and his mother’s business partner, Khadija Aunty.
Imam Zia, elegant in his navy blue robe (blue like his!) begins with a disclaimer in his rueful British accent: “Pardon me if I botch this, I’m not too familiar with this American format of answering with a question. And as I didn’t prepare this quiz, I may not even know all the answers myself. But, ah, Brother Arshad, over there, definitely does. A round of applause for him, please, he helped create this quiz.”
The audience claps, turning to look at him, and he’s thrilled at being singled out for praise, and for being addressed as “Brother.” It almost makes up for his failure at the recitation competition and for missing all the fun earlier.
But what could be more fun than the contest that unfolds? His father could never have been as entertaining as Imam Zia, who is funny and can quote from the Quran and narrate incidents from the Hadith to support the answers. He teases the participants good-naturedly, especially the two males, when they get an easy question wrong.
Once he tsk-tsks when nobody gets the question right, and he points to Arshad and says, “Why, even a twelve-year-old knows this!”
Arshad is called to shout out the answer: “What is iqra?” He adds, “And I’m eleven.”
“Yes, iqra! To read, to recite—the very first word of the glorious Quran as revealed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, by Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala’s messenger, the angel Jibreel. That is the first command that Allah bade the Prophet, and all Muslims. But more than just to read—to understand the Quran, to follow the Quran.”
Every time after that, when the contestants are stumped, Imam Zia eggs the audience to chant, “Even an eleven-year-old knows this.” And Arshad gets to call out the answer.
He roots for Khadija Aunty, admiring the competitive spirit with which she responds to the clues, eyes flashing like the sequins in her hijab as she pounces on the buzzer. But unfortunately, she makes as many mistakes as she gets questions right, and the senior from his school ends up winning.
Afterward, his father compels him to return home with Amina, though he wants to stay to help with the cleanup. Amina is tired and falls asleep almost immediately once Najiba Aunty takes them home. Arshad is too keyed up for that. He practices his recitation in the living room, working on the ayats he’d stumbled over during the competition. He’d recited surah Al-Qiyamah, his all-time favorite.
The Sunday Quran class when he’d first heard Imam Zia recite the surah, he’d felt his limbs tingle the moment the opening word, la, resounded, in what seemed to him not Imam Zia’s usual voice but verging on a cry: No!
Thereafter, each ayat seemed to reach toward him, a solar flare that surged with each prolonged vowel, seeking him out as if to sear him, receding only when sounding the final rhyming syllable. It started up again with the next ayat. He’d felt himself grow feverish. Even the ayats with only short vowels were awful and awesome, the flare engorging itself with each percussive rhyme, as if pumping itself up in preparation. Finally, at the word raq that concluded one ayat, Imam Zia sustained the vowel so long that the flames succeeded in reaching Arshad. He’d felt burned, branded, effaced, and ecstatic.
Later, during the tafsir, listening to Imam Zia’s explanation of the surah, he’d marveled at how, even without knowing its meaning, he’d been so affected.
Do you think Allah cannot resurrect you from the dead? No, He can reassemble the very tips of your fingers. On that day, when every eye will be astounded, when the moon turns dark and plunges into the sun, every disbeliever will ask, “Where can I hide?” But there is no place of escape. Only with Allah will you find refuge the day of Qiyamah. Allah alone is the cure that day—raq!—Allah alone is the healer.
He’d vowed to master the surah. Its terrible beauty, and its power to call to Allah anyone who listens to its recitation, proof of Allah’s glory and compassion. But he’s only now comprehending the immensity of the task ahead. The competition has laid bare his shortcomings. He’s far from catching up with some of the other participants, some only slightly older than him, let alone matching Imam Zia.
It’s beyond midnight when his father’s car pulls into the garage. “You still up, buddy?” Ismail asks, coming in and hanging up his keys.
“I didn’t win anything for my recitation, Abba,” Arshad says, stopping the practice track he’d been listening to on his MP3 player.
“It’s okay, I’m sure you did very well. It’s not about winning.”
Just the consolation Arshad expected. Yes, it’s not all about winning, but surely there’s some value to becoming perfect. Isn’t it every Muslim’s responsibility to learn to recite the Quran correctly, and beautifully, and doesn’t such a recitation hold the power of swaying unbelievers’ minds, guaranteeing him a place in Jannat? Abba knows too few of the rules of tajwid to even be aware when he commits a basic mistake. Last night, Abba hadn’t stopped him a single time, though he’d obviously flubbed many phrases. Ammi would have made him repeat them and helped him practice better. If only she’d been in town. Abba hadn’t even come to watch his first public recitation, only Amina had.
Arshad follows his father upstairs to check on Amina, and then downstairs to the kitchen. Ismail pours a glass of milk for Arshad and orange juice for himself. Son and father stand in the dark in mostly companionable silence, sipping from their glasses. Through the window they can see the deserted street and the lit fronts of their neighbors’ houses, the purple glow of the skies beyond. Everything is peaceful, as though the calm and quiet in their neighborhood extended everywhere.
“Everything went well, Abba?” Arshad asks.
“Masha’Allah, everything went smoothly,” Ismail replies. “We raised more money than we expected. And Imam Zia told me what a big help you were all evening. Your Ammi will be very proud.”
“Nothing bad happened,” Arshad says. But it’s more of a question.
“What bad could happen?” Ismail says. “When there’s Allah to guide and protect us?”
Arshad knows why his father spent the evening outside, monitoring the parking lot. The world he’s seen on TV and on the internet is hostile. The nation is at war with them. Even their president, who claims to support them, thinks nothing of ordering drones to drop bombs and kill their people all over the world, under the excuse of fighting terrorism. Arshad has read on various internet sites—at his school library, since browsing is not permitted at home—that President Obama has sent more drones than any previous president, including George W. Bush, and has increased the size of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arshad imagines with a shudder a missile tearing through the air and their mosque exploding in a blast of light and fire.
“What would we have done if people had gathered outside the mosque?”
“What people?”
“Christians. White people.”
“Why should they gather outside our mosque?”
“They’ve been protesting outside other mosques. They don’t want us to build more mosques.”
“We’re not building another mosque. And even if they’d protested, we would have handled it.”
“How? What if they’d brought guns? Bombs?”
“Don’t be silly—nobody’s bringing guns or bombs.” Ismail gulps down the rest of his orange juice in one long swallow. “Finish your milk. You don’t need to be worrying about these things.”
Afterward, the two of them go upstairs, change into their pajamas, then end up in the bathroom brushing their teeth together. This doesn’t usually happen, except when Tahera is away. This fellowship is gratifying, yet Arshad feels a pang of discontent. Imam Zia’s praise has made the day, but the wish lingers that there had been a protest outside the mosque. Then he could have shown them how he would have handled it.
He falls asleep, gazing at the projected ayats and the glowing galaxies on his ceiling, willing himself to dream his favorite story about the Prophet. Riding a mare with wings of lightning, the Prophet follows the angel Jibreel from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he leads all the other prophets in namaz, and there in the seventh heaven, he confers with Allah in front of the radiant Sidra tree, which seethes and shimmers like a supernova.
Tahera is settled on the futon, wrapped in a comforter, ready to sleep. She has left the shades up so she can watch the fog descend upon the city. The lights smear, the contours of the city shift. Her thoughts pool and eddy in concert with the encroaching fog.
Her answer to Seema should have been simple. How could Tahera even think of not accepting her child? Isn’t it sunnah to raise her sister’s child—Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, was an orphan and has promised Jannat to anyone who raises one. Surely, Ismail would agree.
Except that the child wouldn’t really be an orphan. (How horrible that she can contemplate her sister’s death so objectively.) Wouldn’t the child’s father be the best person to take care of him? But then Tahera can’t abandon her nephew to be brought up by Bill, in ignorance of Islam.
More tortuous thoughts: the child might be out of place in Tahera’s household.
He may look more like his father than Seema, perhaps bigger and darker than her own children, and she knows it shouldn’t matter, but will she be able to ignore the differences? Also, he would complicate their lives, for he wouldn’t be mahram to Amina, forcing the girl to wear a hijab at home, unless Tahera were to breastfeed him before the age of two. And what if Bill were to seek custody? Is Tahera expected to fight a custody battle? She doesn’t need additional struggles in her life.
Tahera is roused from her thoughts by a prolonged bout of timorous coughs from Seema’s bedroom. All evening her mother has been trying to suppress her coughs to clear her irritated throat, to avoid bothering her daughters, and now in her sleep, she seems to have lost her struggle.
Glad for any interruption, Tahera checks on her mother. But by the time she peers into the bedroom, the coughing has ceased. She sees, in the vague half light, her mother motionless, her hands on her chest, her body straight, a blanket neatly smoothed over her legs, as though laid out. Nafeesa’s mouth is slightly open, her head tilted back over the pillow. She doesn’t appear to be breathing.
Tahera freezes, waiting for some sign of life from her mother.
On the other side of the bed, Seema’s face is within an inch of Nafeesa’s neck, a hand resting on Nafeesa’s hip. Seema twitches suddenly, her fingers clutching at their mother’s sweater, causing Nafeesa to stir and, with eyes still closed, take Seema’s hand in hers, as though it were the most natural thing to do. She straightens Seema’s fingers, massages them, then draws Seema’s hand into a clasp by her chest. Seema whimpers, snuggling closer.
But instead of relief, say it is heartache and jealousy Tahera feels at this exchange. She would have liked to rush to her mother’s side, to hold her, to take Nafeesa’s hands in hers, to kiss each finger as she’d kiss Amina’s. But Nafeesa is holding Seema, and it’s Seema’s forehead she turns to kiss in her sleep. Tahera is merely an observer in the doorway.
Words come to Tahera unbidden: So she stood in her shoes and she wondered, she wondered, she stood in her shoes and she wondered.
The words from the past swell in chorus and spin around her. She shuts the door. That a door was as wooden. She heads back to the futon. That the ground was as hard, that a yard was as long. But how far it seems, as though with every step the distance grows larger. Or is she growing smaller?
It’s a nine-year-old who returns to the futon.
Is it too much to ask to be held, to be consoled, to be loved? Is it too much to ask that she not end up where she started—on the outside looking in?
Consider Tahera when she’s nine years old: standing outside her father’s study, peering in, as her father coaches Seema for her first competition in poetry recitation.
Tahera isn’t familiar with the poem Seema has chosen: Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper.” But here is their father, declaiming the poem, filling the study with its lush hills and shimmering valleys. His voice echoes off the walls and the shelves of books. He recites the poem in its entirety, then line by line, and Seema scrambles after him, trying to match his intonation and his pauses. He works on her enunciation, demonstrating the shape of the mouth, the position of the tongue, the force with which to articulate the consonants, how to linger on vowels and glide over diphthongs. Like so, he says, his hands molding Seema’s lips and cheeks. He patiently corrects her, making her repeat phrases, over and over, then lines, then whole stanzas.
Next, he shows her how to present herself: neck elongated, shoulders pulled down and back, hands held at the diaphragm, fingers hooked. He bends his knees to better match her height. Standing this way, they recite the poem together, and Tahera is transfixed by two voices that sound as one, word for word, pause for pause. And the words themselves—melancholy, chaunt, nightingale, Hebrides—so much mystery, so much magic! She silently mouths the words along with them, her voice tiny in her throat, her eyes fixed on their moving lips.
I listened motionless and still—
Until Seema, catching sight of her outside the study, says, “Abba, tell Tahera to stop making funny faces at me.” She shuts the study door in Tahera’s face, ignoring Tahera’s pleas: “I wasn’t making fun, I was just watching.”
—The music in my heart I bore, long after it was heard no more.
The day of the competition, the auditorium floor is a pool of blue pinafores, fluffy white blouses, and glossy black plaits of hair. At the back, in a row of cream wicker chairs, sit the Sisters of the Convent, in gray wimples and white habits. And sitting beside the headmistress, Sister Josephine, in the seat of honor in the center, in a brown suit and a peacock-green tie, is my grandfather, Dr. Naeemullah Hussein, benefactor of the school and personal friend to the headmistress. He’s presiding over the event.
When Seema gets up on stage, it’s him Tahera watches, turning around and straining to catch the expressions on his face—encouragement, attention, exultation. When all the contestants are through, he takes the podium for his address while the judges finalize the winners.
“Why poetry?” he begins, then pauses. “We may as well ask, why life?”
Now his voice resounds in the auditorium, much as it had in his study while coaching Seema. This is Tahera’s first time listening to Naeemullah speak in public. There is a power to his voice, an authority that spellbinds her. But though she’s entirely focused on his words, her eyes fixed on him, much of what he says escapes her.
This is a father she doesn’t quite know, or recognize. A father who doesn’t seem to recognize her either, even when glancing in her direction, as if seeing through her, beyond her. She listens in feverish anxiety for elements she can identify, the parts of his life she’s familiar with: his family, his practice, their house and household. Instead, he speaks of Joy and Beauty and Truth, as though these were his family. He quotes many poets, but few she knows; nobody from her textbooks—no Walter de la Mare, no Christina Rossetti. Even his quotation from William Wordsworth is from a poem she hasn’t heard before: My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky . . .
This is the most accessible of the poems he recites. Tahera has seen rainbows before and thinks them lovely, but she can’t remember now whether her heart has ever leapt at their sight. She’d like to believe her heart capable of this. For there’s little doubt that her father isn’t merely reciting Wordsworth’s words but living them, reliving them.
“Or—let—me—die!” he proclaims, punctuating the line with pauses.
And Tahera shudders, ambushed by the dying tremor he imparts to that last word. A shiver of recognition runs through her body—the thrill and promise of dying—but until now she’s never found words to capture that feeling. Her heart executes a neat little leap, even as she despairs she’ll never be sufficiently moved that her heart would leap. Even now she’s unaware that her skipping heart is doing precisely that.
The winners have been decided, and Naeemullah brings his speech to a close. Old Sister Camilla, their English teacher, reads out the names. He shakes hands with each, before handing their prizes over—books he has selected himself—remarking on the titles and what delights await the winners. The school photographer’s flash freezes the smirking girls beside a benevolent Naeemullah.
Now Sister Camilla calls out the winners in Seema’s grade, third place to first. Seema is not named for the lesser two prizes. “And the first prize goes to—” Sister Camilla pauses, her leathery walnut face cracking in a wide grin.
Tahera closes her eyes and prays, the suspense unbearable.
What does she pray for? Of course, she wants Seema to win. No other thought occurs to her.
“—Seema Hussein, daughter of our own respected chief guest, Dr. Naeemullah Hussein!”
Tahera claps hard, as though single-handedly she must ensure the auditorium echoes with the sound. But tears prickle her eyes as Seema walks up to the stage and shakes hands with Naeemullah. He draws Seema to his side, and the two smile widely, posing for all the world to see, as the photographer clicks a second photo. If only it were she on the stage with their father.
Afterward, a proud Naeemullah leads both daughters by the hand, stopping many times along the way to accept congratulations. Sister Camilla detains them at the school entrance.
“Child, if you hadn’t been so much better than that second-place Anjali girl, we couldn’t have awarded you the first prize, lest people think we’re playing favorites!” Sister Camilla laughs, a rich bray that along with her protuberant eyes and permanently surprised eyebrows has earned her the nickname Sister Camel. Normally Tahera would join in Seema’s barely suppressed mirth, but today she looks away.
At the ice-cream parlor around the corner from their home—Naeemullah has promised Seema two scoops if she wins—Tahera holds back. She doesn’t want any ice cream today, she says. “I too will take part next year and win.”
“Yes, but we’re celebrating your sister’s performance,” Naeemullah replies, pulling gently at her plaited hair. “And you can have two scoops as well.”
Seema already has her heaped cone—two moons of peach tutti-frutti!—and makes slurping sounds to tempt her. Tahera succumbs. But she limits herself to one scoop. And, even as she frantically licks the cone to keep the melting ice cream off her pinafore, she repeats her vow: She will take part next year and win.
She pesters her father almost immediately for a poem to begin practicing. He’s delighted: He has just the right poem for her! He needs to change a few words, but he’s sure she’ll like it. He sets up his electronic Remington typewriter, and pounds away at it, consulting a book. He doesn’t allow her a peek until he’s done. The poem is skinny but long, covering two full sheets. A poem by John Keats written especially for her! There was a naughty girl, a naughty girl was she—
(“But I’m not naughty.” “Yes, you are, look how you pestered me all week.”)
She must learn it by heart first. In a week she can even recite it half-asleep. The evening she’s ready, the door of the study shut behind them, his eyes fixed on her as they’ve never been before, he says, “Show me what you’ve learned.”
What comes over her? It’s a slight poem—Seema derides it as childish, with silly rhymes and a sing-song rhythm. Seema’s mockery is still strong in her mind. But there are other impressions too: her father coaching Seema, patiently coaxing sounds out of her, their lips and mouths in articulated synchrony.
Or—let—me—die!
Tahera recites the poem as she never will again, no matter how hard she tries, no matter how many times her father makes her repeat it, each time with different instructions. That first time, the poem is both old and new, she is swamped with both fear and excitement, she feels the pull of both the ridiculous and the heartbreaking. Her voice contorts to include her sister’s derision, her father’s control, her own desperate yearning. By the end, she has briefly intuited the poem’s secret heart that her sister has been blind to: That the naughty girl in the poem runs away with her knapsack only to find little difference between her origin and destination, between where she started and where she ends up. That the ground is as hard, that a yard is as long, in both places.
She stood in her shoes and she wondered—
When Tahera finishes, she notices the surprised elation in her father’s eyes, which she’ll search for in every subsequent attempt, during every competition, no matter how many prizes she wins.
Nearly thirty years later, Tahera is propelled from Seema’s bedroom doorway by the very same lines ringing in her ears, threatening to remake her into the girl her nine-year-old self had been. She knows she should simply banish the poem from her mind, as she’d done the previous day when Seema brought it up, to keep the past safely locked away, as she’s so far managed to do. But some elusive lines nag like gaps created by fallen teeth.
The Keats book lies where Seema had discarded it, on the floor, under the chair. Tahera flips through and finds the poem, reads it standing, once through. Her father had chosen well—it’s exactly the poem to lure a nine-year-old deeper into his thicket of poetry.
And the book has so many poems she’d fallen in love with, the ones memorized and recited repeatedly, sometimes under her breath while walking to school and back, sometimes sitting on the veranda watching vendors push their carts by on holidays, or treading her bicycle around the compound outside their house. She skips from poem to poem, here a line, there a stanza, each triggering a memory of the circumstances surrounding its discovery. Racing to the lighthouse on the beach. Reading by candlelight during power cuts. Crushing on her neighbor with the curly hair and white teeth. Watching Ammi tie Seema’s first saree. Standing in Abba’s study.
“Land of milk and honey, halfway across the world. What an adventure! I’d have sacrificed anything for the chance when I was younger. They have your favorite season, too, only they call it ‘fall.’ Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness—” That’s how Abba put it, as she stood before him in his study, summoned there as though she were still nine years old.
But she’d neither asked for the chance nor wanted to marry someone halfway across the world. Abba must have known Seema had moved to California, from the cards and letters Seema kept sending—addressed to him only—all those years. He’d opened none—they still remained unopened, Tahera knew, for she’d found them the last time she visited Chennai, the envelopes faded and fraying, stashed in the overstuffed drawers of the walnut table in his study, under clippings of his letters to editors published over the years—and their postmarks surely told Seema’s story. Yes, he’d known where Seema had moved to, and in his continuing duel with her, best-loved daughter now fallen out of favor, he’d determined to send his secondary daughter there. Not as an ambassador but merely to proclaim his dominion, much like emperors established outposts. As though he’d no use for Tahera by his side.
She forces herself to take deep breaths, to curb the dizzying rush that is overpowering her. For a moment she’s not sure where she’s standing—neither Chennai nor Irvine, but in some foreign land, barren, shadowy, and chilly. There’s little in this apartment to secure Tahera to the woman she is now: beloved wife, loving mother, skilled doctor, respected member of her community. She senses the weight of her entire past pressing, the floodgates buckling.
She flings aside the book, the poems that have brought her to this brink of fracture, and seizes and unfurls the janamaz in the middle of the living room. This is what she should have done earlier. The past, the poetry—beauty and love, joy and despair, anger and sorrow—what place do they have in her life anymore?
In the bathroom, she affirms her intention to perform wadu. Merely washing her hands before touching the Quran seems insufficient today. The cold water stings as she splashes her face. She runs wet fingers over her hair, keeping her head down. It feels important to avoid looking at herself in the mirror, as though she’s a portal for everything unclean and needs to keep herself at a distance. Finished with the wadu, she places her wooden rehal on the janamaz. She unwraps the quilted maroon cover that protects her Quran and takes it out. The book opens at the marker, where she’d left off reading the previous time. She lowers it gently onto the rehal.
Seated on her knees, her covered head bent over the book, she reads without pausing to think, her marker tracing each line, skimming the surface of the text. She has read the Quran many times, has memorized many surahs and ayats, though she understands only a fraction of what she can recite. Through familiarity and practice she scurries through verse after verse, pausing only to turn a page before hurrying on. She purses her lips, so the words may be contained within her—outside, just a mumble, like the buzz of a bee, but inside the poetry resonating in her body, reverberating in her bones and organs and flesh. She has always found this sensation hypnotic and soothing.
But why is she slowing down? Why does she feel as though her lungs are about to burst, as if she’s been breathing in verses instead of air? Her body is trembling again. She presses on despite her confusion—what’s happening to her?—but the words lift off the page, the black print and white paper fusing to a foggy gray. Something strikes the open page and lies there perfect as a raindrop on a leaf, its surface quivering. Through it, the blurred outline of a letter shimmers, refracted beyond recognition.
It takes Tahera a few moments to understand she’s crying.
Forgive me, she prays, cupping her eyes to prevent the drops from further defiling the Quran. Her shaking hands struggle to wrap the Quran back in the cover. But she continues to sit, still on her knees, head bent before the wrapped Quran on the rehal, as her tears now strike the janamaz, in splotches growing darker.
This isn’t the release she’d hoarded her tears for—the tears she’s refused to shed since seeing the ones clinging to her sister’s eyelashes, the tears she’s been unable to shed since learning of her mother’s diagnosis. Every time she’s seen her mother’s eyes sparkling the last two days, she has willed her mother to let the tears flow. She would be redeemed if only Ammi would shed a few tears, showing Tahera she cared, showing she knew Tahera was a good daughter doing the best she can. Then Tahera too could join in. Their tears would reunite them in ways words and actions could not, washing away the guilt and resentment built up over the years.
She tries to stifle her sobs, so she won’t wake her sister and mother, sleeping heedless in the adjacent room, hands clasped in each other’s. But she also can’t stop wishing that they were roused to check on her, to find her distraught and destroyed, to join her in consolation, even Seema, so they could grieve together for everything they’ve lost, for everything they’re about to lose.
She rises, eventually, as if from under anesthesia. In the bathroom, she examines her face. It’s puffy, her nose runs, eyelids droop over reddened eyes. She massages her cheeks, then presses fingertips against her eyelids, pushing the offending eyeballs deep into their sockets—as she’s seen Arshad sometimes do—some physical sensation to prod her out of stupor. She has admonished Arshad many times against the practice of inflicting pain on himself, but she understands now why he persists—the pressure steadies her, and as she continues to press deeper, a universe explodes into existence, a kaleidoscope of glow and shadow that comforts, delights, mesmerizes. When she finally lets go, the bathroom rocks back into place in a brief disorienting burst of light, her face in the mirror staring back at her—grave, like the face Arshad shows her when she yanks his fingers off his eyes—the pain quickly fading.
How resilient the body is, she thinks. How much pain the body can handle, how well it repairs itself, by Allah’s design. Such must be Allah’s grace and mercy. Allah wouldn’t impose on His followers more than their bodies or minds can bear.
She washes her face, rinsing her mind of its haze. The living room is as she left it, the Quran on the rehal on the janamaz. She puts away the Quran and the rehal. The Keats book lies on the futon, benign now, spent. She flips through its pages for the second time, feeling stronger for the cleansing she’s just been through. The words have indeed lost their potency. These are merely words—even if beautiful—words and phrases concocted by mortal men aggrandizing themselves, seeking to lighten their own insignificance.
She shuts the blinds, and the city outside disappears. Rearranging the floor lamp, she settles herself to read, surrounded by the half gleam and shadows of the room.
She reads critically at first, dispassionately evaluating each line for accuracy and truth. Some of it now seems ridiculous—Keats’s obsession with ancient Greek mythology, for example, with its drunken, depraved gods and goddesses. And hyperbolic—that comparison to sighting a new planet or ocean on reading Homer! How could anything composed by a human compare to the glories of Allah’s creation? And Keats claims to be overcome by a mere translation. No translation of the Quran could affect her the way reading the original does. The mystery, the awe, is lost without the sonority of the Quran in Arabic, the way the words flutter in her throat—how could the flapping of the crow’s stubby wings compare to the blur of the hummingbird’s? She smiles to herself: now she’s imitating Keats, fabricating her own poetic conceits. She regrets she has little time to learn to recite the Quran like Arshad.
As she continues to read, she relaxes. These poems had supported her once, provided her with a metaphoric shoulder to lean on, and yes, to cry on as well—it surprises her now how dark her favorite poems really were, never joyous paeans, but the odes and elegies on loss and death and yearning. There could be no harm in these. Why had she felt the need to renounce them? Perhaps she’d simply been too busy, as mother, wife, and doctor. When had she performed this particular ode, which competition? She’ll have to ask Ammi or Seema tomorrow.
An hour passes, and her eyes glaze over. There’s no sound from the bedroom; Ammi and Seema must be in deep slumber. How excessive her reaction to the sight of them huddled together. But it had led to the rediscovery of these poems. For that she must be grateful. Allah knows best, and everything serves a purpose. Allah will help her survive the coming days. Allah will help her decide how to respond to Seema’s request. She will perform istikhara later to ask for His guidance.
She’s moved by a sudden urge to be outside, to feel the sky above her, the city around her, to feel small. She throws a shawl about her head and shoulders and, climbing through the window, lets herself out onto the fire escape. There is no sky though—clouds cover all of it, and a fine mist has descended on the city. She stands cocooned, disturbed only by the sirens and flashing lights of the sporadic ambulance or fire engine. A faint smell of rust and smoke envelops her. A chill wind grazes, and she laughs as she shivers, welcoming the tingling sensation of gooseflesh, as though the wind were scouring her skin of the layers the years have deposited. She lets herself enjoy the half-white darkness like her younger self would have. Her thoughts briefly wander toward Irvine. The fundraiser must be long over, her children must be sleeping. She should have called Ismail to find out how it went. Auzubillahi minashaitan irrajeem, nothing untoward should have happened. But she won’t think about it now, she’d like to savor a little longer this Tahera of old.
When she returns to the living room, she hides the book of poems away, out of sight, in the bookshelf, behind the Quran.
Sunday morning, Irvine: Ismail wakes up for fajr to the shrill cry of the alarm clock. But today he’s not as irritable, even without Tahera’s gentle hands to shake him awake. He lies in bed basking in the memory of the fundraiser—Masha’Allah, they had raised more than they thought they would.
A bleary-eyed Arshad joins him in the living room, and they pray fajr together. After the namaz, Ismail is too energized to go back to bed, and he busies himself with spreadsheets on his computer, tabulating donations and expenses, starting the report he’ll share with the committee.
It’s not yet seven when he receives a call from Imam Zia. He answers eagerly.
“I’m sorry to bother you so early, Brother Ismail,” Imam Zia interrupts. “Especially after all your great work. But can you come over? There’s some trouble at the mosque.”
“What trouble?” Ismail asks.
“Some stuff on the walls. Not very nice. We should do something about it.”
At the moment, Ismail is still floating high, and despite knowing Imam Zia’s tendency toward understatement, he assumes the matter is trivial, perhaps some child who’d splattered paint on the walls during the calligraphy competition. “Sure. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He gives the children another half hour of their Sunday sleep, then wakes them and tells them to get ready. They’ll be back soon enough from the mosque, so no breakfast for now, and the kids only get their morning milk, strawberry or chocolate.
The mosque is aglow in the golden morning light, the blazing green of the dome, the shimmering ivory of the stucco walls. A group of men stands on the steps of the main entrance, silhouetted against the lit walls, Imam Zia recognizable by his taller figure and turban. Ismail parks, and encourages the children to run toward the mosque. Striding toward the men, he feels elated and raises his hand in greeting. The sun is behind him, his long shadow ahead, waving in its turn. But the men don’t seem to notice him.
He’s still some distance away when Arshad shouts, “Abba, look!”
Arshad is pointing toward Imam Zia, who is rubbing at the wall of the mosque with the edge of his robe, and only as Ismail draws nearer does he notice the virulent red scrawl. From that detail his eyes pan to take in the entire red-stroked front wall of the mosque, which had until then been hidden by the red-blue-green striped canvas sides of the not-yet dismantled shamiana set up the previous day. It takes him many more seconds before he’s able to put the strokes together to form letters, then words.
“Arshad, Amina, come back,” he yells, breaking into a run toward them, not knowing why he’s running, only that he must stop them before they get closer to the walls. Does he imagine the paint is blood? He recalls reading about the blood of pigs used on mosques, recalls images of blood streaming down victims of bomb blasts. He pounds the gravel of the parking lot, as if he were trying to crush the pebbles into the ground. Amina freezes where she is, and he picks her up, then increases his stride until he catches up with Arshad and yanks him around.
“Abba,” Arshad whimpers, and Ismail is not sure whether it’s in reaction to the desecration of the mosque or if he’s hurting his son’s arm.
“Close your eyes.” He almost snarls, harsher than he’s ever been with his children. Amina squirms in his hold, and he presses her face against his chest. With the other hand, he drags Arshad up the steps of the mosque, ignoring the men calling out to him, until they’re in the foyer. “Stay here,” he orders. “I don’t want you coming out.”
When he joins the others, he cannot bring himself to look at them or at the wall. It’s his fault—his hubris caused this. He should have heeded their warnings to keep the fundraiser modest, discreet. How proud he’d been about the write-up in the Sentinel earlier that week, in which he and Imam Zia had been quoted extensively. How proud of cultivating a reputation as an unflinching advocate of the Prophet’s forthright ways, scoffing at suggestions to minimize the expansion plans. And what devilry had made him expose his children to this profanity, bringing them along so they’d be witness to the accolades he’d hungered for? Had he thought he’d face no punishment for his sinful pride, his self-glorifying desires?
He turns to the wall, ignoring Imam Zia’s hand on his shoulder, pretending to study the graffiti, tracing the surface of the paint—thankfully, not blood—still a little sticky, the red rubbing off lightly on his fingers. This close to the wall, he cannot make out the letters or the words or the images, only the violence of the crimson strokes, like bloody gashes in the skin of the mosque. He murmurs ayats from the Quran under his breath, in repentance for his sins.
On my mother’s mind as she wakes up Sunday morning: Leigh. Nafeesa’s side of the bed is empty but still retains her warmth, and Seema slips into reveries of other Sunday mornings waking up beside Leigh, to her sleepy-wide smile and languorous embrace. Then the leisurely entangling of lips and limbs, the pleasures and promise of the day unfolding in slow motion as though to ensure no moment is wasted without being intimately savored.
But the reveries are too soon marred by memories of the previous day: her abject appeal to Tahera, Tahera’s pitying deferral, her tears that had visibly burned through the air before she’d excused herself to the bathroom. Had she expected Tahera to throw herself at her in remorse or reconciliation? Why had she worked herself into such desperation, and hope? Now she has ceded power and is forced to wait on Tahera’s answer and to pretend not to care while her sister deliberates.
Nafeesa sits down beside her. “Are you all right? You tossed and turned all night.”
My mother blames me. “The baby was up all night, kicking.”
“I’ll ask Tahera to take a look at you. You don’t look well.”
Nafeesa is unexpectedly persistent, but Seema remains firm. She cannot give Tahera any more reason to patronize her. “Ammi, I have a checkup tomorrow. I’d rather wait for my own doctor.”
Leigh’s call is no relief either, with her plaintive “I miss you, why don’t you slip away and meet me at our spot?” Every Sunday since they’ve been together, after a lazy morning in bed, they amble on a pilgrimage to that spot in Dolores Park where they first kissed. They missed last Sunday because of Nafeesa. And Seema feels guilty because she has made plans with Divya today.
“You can say you want to get some exercise.” Leigh offers various excuses, and as Seema counters each one, Leigh’s voice turns forlorn. “I won’t force a discussion about you-know-what, I promise.”
Seema’s guilt is compounded: it’s mostly her fault that Leigh has come to place so much significance on being present at the delivery. The two of them have rarely spoken about their future together beyond that horizon; Seema has been careful not to. But she has never stopped Leigh from visualizing her involvement in the baby’s future. Leigh talks about diaper changes, about pushing the stroller down to Dolores Park and up the hill to “our spot” so baby Ishraaq can take in the panorama of the city and its skyline—and Seema has welcomed it, even encouraged it. As if she’s readier to accept a partner-caretaker, to make less frightening the responsibility of the baby than a partner for herself. She’s secretly glad that the question of marriage couldn’t arise in the near future, since same-sex marriages in California were overturned two years ago by Proposition 8.
Seema can picture Leigh’s lanky frame sagging at her refusal. “But I’ll see you tomorrow at the doctor’s, right?” Seema presents it as previously decided, though it’s an atonement.
But maybe it’s the right opportunity after all to introduce her lover to her family—as a friend, of course, so it isn’t an irrevocable step. Perhaps meeting her family will be sufficient to satisfy Leigh for some time, perhaps being able to assign a face and a name to the idea of a lover would soften their reaction if and when she tells them about Leigh.
Leigh gives an excited whoop—she can’t wait!—and placated, hangs up.
At least Leigh’s call has given Seema a plethora of excuses to get out of the house to meet Divya. But, unfortunately, the excuse she settles on—exercise—runs into trouble.
“Why more exercise, Seema? Didn’t you say you were exhausted from all that walking yesterday? And you have back pain. You must take some rest today.” Nafeesa holds on to Seema’s hand, even as she prepares to leave the apartment. “Tell her, Tahera, tell her to stay home and rest.”
Tahera looks up from the book she’s reading. “Ammi says you’re not feeling well?”
“I’m fine. Ammi is needlessly worried.”
“She shouldn’t go alone. Go with her, Tahera,” Nafeesa entreats.
“I can take care of myself,” Seema says, exasperated. “Why don’t you understand I just want some time by myself? It’s not easy having the two of you here all the time.”
She regrets the words as soon as she speaks them. Her mother lets go of her hand, her sister compresses her lips. Seema lets herself out of the apartment without looking back. The message in her mother’s stricken eyes pursues her through the darkened staircase. But I came all this distance for you. You’ll have all the time in the world for that—later! What is she doing, alienating the only person who has cared for her all these years? And for what reason—what could come of this meeting with Divya, other than complications, and a sense of betraying Leigh? Divya has been asking for a few months to get together to process what they once had—no doubt to also press again for getting back together.
Seema lumbers back up the stairs. As she fumbles with her keys, the dead bolt flicks back, and the door swings open to reveal Nafeesa, poised as if expecting her return, and behind her, Tahera. Seema throws up her hands. “All right.”
Nafeesa hurriedly gets out of the way, but it looks for a moment that Tahera will balk. But she merely shrugs, puts down the book in her hand—the Keats book she’d rejected two nights ago!—and puts on her jilbab and hijab.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” Seema says. To her shame, Nafeesa clasps her hand with an expression that feels like gratitude.
The buzzer blares in the apartment, and you, Grandmother, are alarmed by its sudden screech. You can’t imagine your children are back from their walk so soon, unless they’ve quarreled already and Tahera has returned alone. You’ve been congratulating yourself on throwing your daughters together again.
That impatient screech once more, held longer, and you nervously stab at the intercom panel, unsure which button to respond with. “Yes, who is it?” you say into the speaker. But instead of a reply, you hear an answering buzz from the entrance and the door clicking open, then footsteps up the stairs. You panic, casting about in your memory for anything Seema has told you regarding safety in this neighborhood.
There’s a knock on the door. “Tahera, is it you?” you ask. You’re too short to even look out the peephole.
“It’s me, Bill Miles.”
A muffled voice, but the pitter-patter of your heart slows down. You recognize it, though you’ve only heard it a few times, and only once in person, when Seema brought her husband to Chennai, at your sister Halima’s house. “Seema’s not home,” you say.
“I know. Can I speak to you, Mrs. Hussein? Please.”
You’re relieved that the anxiety of the past moments was unnecessary, and curious, too, about what he wants. Though Seema may disapprove, you open the door.
He appears a little older, more gray flecking the sides of his springy hair, even the goatee on his chin. He used to be clean-shaven. His goatee reminds you of your husband’s, except that my grandfather’s is completely white.
You’re unsure what to do next. Do you invite him in? Seema has said nothing against him, and you believe her assertion that the divorce was a mutual decision. Though that doesn’t absolve him of abandoning his son.
Bill is shy, even a little sheepish. “Can I come in?”
You stand aside. He enters, and you shut the door. He wheels around the living room once, as though searching for signs of Seema. There’s nothing—no photos, no wall hangings, no personal belongings—to indicate Seema’s presence here, only Tahera’s: suitcase, janamaz, Quran on the rehal. You were quite shocked at how bare Seema’s home is, but he doesn’t seem surprised.
“Thank you for being here for Seema,” he says.
You don’t respond but wait for him to continue.
He sits down on the futon, less of a giant now. “I was jogging past when I saw Seema and her sister leave.”
“They went for a walk. They should be back soon.”
“Actually—I wanted to speak to you. About Seema.” He hesitates. “She will not talk to me.” He looks up at you, eyes crinkling into a question, as though asking how much you know, how much Seema has told you.
The man in your daughter’s living room is a stranger. But he clearly wants something from you, and that gives you courage to ask him the questions you cannot ask your own daughter. “Why—?”
“Why she’ll not speak to me? Why I want to speak to you?”
You shake your head. “Why did you leave Seema alone when she’s carrying a baby?”
Bill is taken aback by your directness. “I didn’t,” he stammers. “At least, I did, but I wanted us to get back together. I still want us to get back together.”
This startles you. When Seema told you she was pregnant, that she meant to bring up the child by herself, she’d led you to believe there was no hope of reconciliation, that Bill didn’t want to be involved with the child. Had she lied? You can’t put it past her. Seema, you’ve always known, is quite capable of stretching the truth, especially when it concerns decisions she thinks you’ll not understand. But whose fault is that? You’ve never made an attempt to understand her, or Tahera, for that matter.
Bill mistakes your confusion for disbelief. He continues to stammer an explanation: There had been problems, he’d been too hasty, he hadn’t been sure what Seema wanted. Seema herself had doubts. He still loves Seema. He breaks off, then repeats himself, catches himself short, then starts again.
You only half listen. There are always problems between husbands and wives, and living with Seema must surely present challenges. You gaze instead at his face, seeking in his eyes expressions of sincerity.
But he’s never still enough for you to gauge that. He fiddles constantly with the zip of his jogging suit, he turns frequently to check the door. He can’t hold your gaze before glancing away. His eyes dart from floor to corner to ceiling until, as if tired from all this motion, he stops speaking, fixing his attention on the Quran in the bookshelf.
“Is that a Quran? I’ve never known Seema to have one.”
“That’s Tahera’s,” you say. “Seema’s sister.”
He walks over to the bookshelf, as if drawn to the Quran. He reaches to pick it up—
“No.” You move to intercept. “You’re not supposed to touch the Quran with unwashed hands.”
With those words, something shifts. Until a moment ago you’d been pondering whether Seema’s best interests lay in getting back together with him, but now—perhaps Seema already realized how distant, how different their worlds are. Fiaz’s pleasing Urdu echoes in your ears. You can’t help but compare the virtues of these two men as spouses, sons-in-law.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect.” Bill is clearly unsettled by the force of your curtness. He smiles awkwardly. “My father converted to Islam.”
The day seems full of surprises. Seema never mentioned this to you, and neither did he. You’d assumed Bill and his family were Christians, like most Blacks, though you know of Muhammad Ali, of course. Why would his father convert? You wait for Bill to clarify, but he has become quiet, standing with hands folded, and doesn’t seem to want to say more.
“When?” you ask, because you can’t ask why. “And you?” Perhaps, if Bill had converted to Islam, Seema’s father might have come around.
“No, not me. I didn’t see my father, growing up. I was brought up by my grandparents. That’s why, Mrs. Hussein—” He takes a deep breath and reaches a hand out to you. “I know from personal experience how difficult it is growing up without a father. I don’t want my child to go through that. Please, Mrs. Hussein, I just want Seema to hear me out. I’d like to remain a part of my child’s life. Will you speak to her? For your grandchild’s sake?”
This time, there’s no doubting the sincerity in his voice. Surely Seema wouldn’t want to deprive her child of his father? If there’s a chance you could unite them, you must act. Isn’t one of your aims in coming here to somehow reconcile a father and his child?
It’s beyond midnight in Chennai now. You imagine your husband in bed, sleeping the way he does, unstirring, as if no worldly worries could keep him awake. He hasn’t called you here. He said he wouldn’t, and he’s stuck to his word. You called him once to let him know you arrived safely. You’ve been hoping he’ll call, though you know how stubborn he is. Your daughter is stubborn too, but you’ll make her listen this time.
You agree to talk to Seema. Bill thanks you profusely, pressing your hands between his saucer-sized palms. He gives you his phone number, asks you to call him if you have any news, or need any help, anything at all.
Now that you’ve agreed, he’s in a hurry to leave, gone with a clatter of footsteps.
On the day, seven months ago, when my to-be father Bill is to learn of the possibility of me, he wakes to blue skies, the light lithe and lively. It is the first day of April. Each hue sparkles, scrubbed of its winter grime.
It’s a few weeks since he and Seema filed to have their marriage summarily dissolved, their issues amicably settled. Just the previous week, Obama had finally signed the Affordable Care Act into law, reassuring Bill that Obama’s tenure would have a legacy rivaling that of almost all other presidents, even if Obama achieved nothing else. The teabaggers hell-bent on thwarting Obama’s agenda have been outwitted and outplayed, as Bill had predicted.
It is spring in San Francisco, blithely expectant. The divorce would not take effect for a half year, but already Bill meets the day as though impatient after a long dormancy. Even hearing from Seema—she calls him at work, asking to meet for lunch—only checks his spirits a little: there are a few matters remaining to be discussed.
They meet at a restaurant close to his office. In the half gloom of the fluorescent interior, he can persuade himself she’s from a past life, already fading. He has prepared for much, but not for what she says: “Bill, I’m pregnant.”
At first, he doesn’t believe her—it’s April Fool’s Day, after all. Next, he’s puzzled: What game is she playing? Is she setting the stage to revoke the dissolution, to get back together, or seek some kind of spousal support? And how could she be pregnant?
“That night we decided to separate—” Seema says, “I’d had my IUD removed a few weeks earlier.”
The memory comes back to him—the morning fog, the ferocious coupling, its urgency heightened by the knowledge of the impending parting, the thrill of one final possession. Later, the relief and regret, at the ease of his reprieve the night before, her ready acceptance.
He’s confused: Had Seema come that night prepared to agree to a child? But by then his insistence on a child had become a face-saving way of letting her go. And having experienced the potential of a reawakened life, does he really desire to return to the depression of his previous existence? His chest compresses. He says, “This will invalidate the summary dissolution. When did you find out?”
“A week after we signed.”
“And you’re telling me now? After more than two weeks?”
“I had to decide what to do.”
“What were you deciding?”
“I want to keep the baby.”
“So I am to have no say.” In either decision—removing the IUD, keeping the baby. It’s just like Seema to make decisions for the two of them, as though his opinion doesn’t matter, as though she can always count on him to come around. He must make it clear he’s no longer willing to follow wherever she leads, no longer willing to let her govern his life. “I don’t want a baby now. I don’t want to get back together.”
“I don’t want to get back together either.”
He sees it clearly then, her stratagem. He leaps up, enraged. “This is what you planned, you and Divya? First you screw me, then you screw me over, so you and Divya can play mommies together? Don’t give me that face—I know about you two. Fuck you, Seema. You won’t get one cent out of me for this.”
They haven’t ordered yet. He flicks his menu toward her and, ignoring her cries, strides out of the restaurant. “Fucking lesbians.” The dazzle of the day outside blinds him.
Seema leaves messages, which he deletes without listening. She emails him insisting he’s wrong, she means to bring up the baby alone if he doesn’t want to be involved. She doesn’t mean to impose the baby on him, she doesn’t need his money. But meanwhile he has found out he has very little power in the matter: by California law, he will be held responsible for child support, no matter what. He is the sucker chosen to subsidize Seema and Divya playing house. Abort the baby, he replies, tersely.
When he finally agrees to meet again, he demands they draw up papers to absolve him of any commitment to me; the marriage dissolution can proceed then. This is really a symbolic gesture, since no court of law in California will recognize the document if it’s against the child’s best interests. But this is the best he can hope for. In return, Seema requires him to sign away his parental rights. That he can do: sign away his rights but not his responsibilities. He draws up an affidavit, and they both sign.
But later, he finds that a legal document has not obliterated those instincts of fathers-to-be that well up in the cracks in his mind and heart as the day of my birth approaches. The idea of me begins to tug at him.
He has no clear picture of me—my mother has let slip my gender, and he’d wanted a daughter earlier. His conception of me is fed by photos of his own infancy, by movies and television, advertisements. But for all the borrowed imagery with which he gives me skin and flesh, for all the similarly counterfeit visions he creates of our shared future—playing catch, fishing, watching football, grilling (counterfeit because he’s never experienced these with his own father)—there is a core that cannot be denied: he is moved by some instinct that does not owe its existence to his received ideas of fatherhood. A son with part of his genetic code is being brought into the world, and this knowledge is sufficient to trigger an inborn desire to protect me, to ensure my passage to manhood. He can’t be one of the fathers Obama decries—the ones MIA or AWOL, having abandoned their responsibilities.
He wants, then, to reassume the title of father he so cavalierly renounced and become the father he never had. But Seema’s number comes up disconnected, and his emails go unanswered. He calls her office, but she always manages to elude him. Her friends refuse to give away her address. He finds out, too, that Seema was right in one regard—she and Divya are not together. He considers revoking the summary dissolution himself, but he dithers too long—it’s September by then—and the divorce goes into effect.
Earlier this month, October, he unexpectedly catches sight of my very pregnant mother near Dolores Park, walking beside a tall youth in a hat. He runs after them, wondering who the youth is. He checks himself when he realizes that it’s a girl, and by the way she looks at Seema, she’s clearly in love with his now ex-wife. He watches through the glass from outside the café, taking in the softer, more rounded figure Seema now presents, full with his child, smiling at the girl—how many times had that same smile been bestowed on him. It’s inviting and enveloping, reveling in its own power, with just a hint of affectionate detachment. He’d forgotten how hard it was to resist it, how weak and worshipping it made him feel.
As he jogs away from my mother’s apartment this morning, after asking my grandmother to intercede on his behalf, he vows: he’ll fight to keep his family, the way his incarcerated father was unable to.
As Seema and Tahera set out, the late October sky is a washed-out blue. A bleary-eyed sun shines down on the empty streets of the Sunday morning. Seema has made this trip to the park many times before with Leigh, the two of them ambling through the Mission holding hands. Today she walks faster, knowing Divya will be waiting at the café at the base of the park. She’s decided to pretend to encounter Divya by accident. But Tahera, in a maddeningly expansive mood, is refusing to be rushed. She smiles at passersby, oblivious to the hem of her black jilbab sweeping the ground—crying to be stepped on!—or their curious glances in her direction, and stops to examine storefront displays and murals scattered throughout the Mission.
“Doesn’t that woman remind you of Halima Aunty?” Tahera says, in front of a psychedelic mural on one wall of an open parking lot, three stories tall. A plump large-breasted brown woman is seated, in a purple dress and green sash, her knees up, her legs apart. In her hands she holds a naked brown baby, who in turn holds a glowing globe, a bright yellow sun. The woman laughs at the baby, who smirks down at the passersby. Bees hover in the blue air above the overflowing platter of multihued fruits by her feet.
Seema has never noticed the resemblance to their Halima Aunty before, though the moment Tahera mentions it, the likeness leaps at her—the laugh lines around the eyes and the mouth, the double chins, the mole on the cheek, where a bee rests. How had she missed this until now? “I saw her last year,” she says. “She was as jolly as ever.”
Halima is their mother’s sister, so unlike their mother in every way. Where Nafeesa is small and compact, Halima bulges good-naturedly in all directions. Where Nafeesa’s voice is soft, Halima can be heard across a boisterous wedding hall, her generous laughter immediately recognizable. When your Halima Aunty laughs, their father would joke to her face, even Allah has to cover His ears.
“Wait, you saw her so recently?” Tahera asks.
What no one has shared with Tahera is that Seema and Bill were in Chennai a year and a half ago. Seema had joined Bill on a work trip to Singapore, and they flew to Chennai for the weekend. They met her mother at her aunt’s place one evening, Seema forbidden to enter her old home. Only after I’m dead, her father had said, a commandment neither daughter nor mother could bring herself to violate. Halima talked about compelling Naeemullah to receive the couple, but that didn’t happen. Halima has always been Seema’s most vocal supporter, least cowed by Naeemullah and most willing to stand up to him, but none of her entreaties over the years have had any effect. Tahera was kept in the dark about the trip in case word got back to Naeemullah.
“A laddoo for each cheek,” Seema says, deflecting Tahera’s query, pointing to the stippled oranges in the platter of fruits in the mural, which resemble sweet golden laddoos. Their aunt had a habit of thrusting sweets into their mouths whenever they visited her—besieged by her overflowing body, squished to her ample belly and breasts, soaked by the wet kisses she showered on their cheeks and foreheads, and always with the box of sweets she rushed toward them, forcing them to open their mouths, refusing to take no for an answer. Their mother is never as demonstrative. “It’s sad. She spoiled us as if—”
Seema breaks off, her eyes fixed on the baby’s smug face and the burning sun clasped in his hands. A memory from her visit: Halima Aunty greeting them both with laddoos, stuffing one into Bill’s mouth as well, ignoring his protests. Her mother had mostly been quiet that evening, smiling frequently, but not saying much, as if her tongue were even here controlled by the absent husband and master. What a difference it would have made to have had Halima Aunty as mother instead.
Another difference: their aunt is childless. She couldn’t conceive due to some hormonal imbalance, which accounted for her constantly expanding girth. Their aunt had undertaken many pilgrimages to various durgahs around India—Nagore, Haji Ali, Ajmer, Nizamuddin—as well as umrah to Medina a few times, with the sole purpose of praying for a child, prayers that had gone unheeded.
Looking at the laughing woman holding the baby, Seema recalls with remorse that she hadn’t informed her aunt about her pregnancy, or the divorce. Instead her aunt learned of them from her mother and called in support: “Don’t worry, Seema, you’ll be a good mother. I’m very proud of you, what a brave step you’ve taken.”
“Yes, it’s a pity she never had children,” Tahera says. “But everything is by Allah’s plan. Shall we turn back? Ammi’s alone at home.”
“Everything?” A swift anger seizes Seema. “Halima Aunty’s condition? Ammi’s illness? Everything?” What she wants to add but doesn’t: My entire life? Another memory of her aunt consoling her, years earlier, when she’d forsaken her father’s house: “I’m not sure I understand, Seema, but I know you wouldn’t do something simply to cause your family pain.”
Tahera purses her lips, and Seema turns away before she says something she cannot unsay. “Once around the park, and we’ll go home.”
They continue in silence, Tahera’s earlier affability torched, Seema wishing she’d held her tongue. Thankfully, Divya is waiting outside the café, and Seema doesn’t have to find a pretense to linger till Divya gets there. But just as she’d feared, Divya is dressed as if on a date: a ruffled midi in mauve and dull-gold peep-toe flats. “I see a friend, I’ll have to say hello.”
She’s already warned Divya that Tahera is accompanying her. “Oh my God, Divya, three days in a row! What are you doing here?”
“What can I say, it’s my good karma.” Divya’s eyes flick toward Tahera before she smiles, and Seema hopes Tahera didn’t notice the quick pout or the sulk in the voice.
“We were out for a walk around the park. You can join us if you’re free.”
“You won’t mind?” Divya trains her dazzling smile on Tahera.
To Seema’s surprise, Tahera is far more welcoming than she’d been with Fiaz. “I’m Tahera. Please join us. And”—she holds out a hand in greeting—“you can tell me all about Seema’s life in San Francisco.”
“And I’ve always wanted to know how Seema turned out the way she is.” Divya smirks at Seema. “Isn’t this your worst nightmare? Your best friend and your sister exchanging stories about you?”
Divya’s sly emphasis is unsettling. “Hey, no tattling!” Seema warns, as Divya falls in with them, but on Tahera’s side.
Divya directs the conversation, her first questions innocuous enough—about home and school—but Tahera’s replies grow involved in response to Divya’s show of interest. They pull ahead, heads bent toward each other, as though intimate confidants. Any other time Seema would have found the odd picture they present hilarious, the sexy and the dowdy, the worldly and the unworldly, poster children for acceptance and diversity in mauve and black. “You’re walking too fast,” she cries, annoyed.
But they don’t heed her, glancing back only occasionally as they make their way up the hill on the western side of the park. They’re punishing her, clearly. Divya must have assumed she invited Tahera along to act as a safeguard, to thwart the talk Divya wanted. Seema grits her teeth and strains after them, afraid now what Divya may choose to disclose.
They stop at the top of the hill to wait for her at the spot Leigh calls theirs. She struggles up the steep climb, maneuvering her way past strollers, and dogs on leashes, and couples carrying picnic hampers and blankets, all moving in the opposite direction. There’s some event happening: a stage has been set up in the natural amphitheater formed by the bowl of the park, the lawn in front of it already dotted with groups of people.
When she finally reaches them, Tahera exclaims, all innocence, “The view from here is beautiful, isn’t it? Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness—”
Seema strains to regain her breath. The city glimmers, unreal and unfocused, its colors and lines blurred by the thin scrim of mist still hovering over it. Or are tears—of frustration—clouding her eyes? She’d given up a tryst with Leigh for this.
“I’m sorry we left you behind,” Divya says. “We were so engrossed.”
“I hope you both learned what you wanted to know.” Seema swallows her anger. Serves her right for even agreeing to this assignation, knowing how volatile Divya could be. But Divya couldn’t have revealed anything disastrous: Tahera seems fine.
“I learned how sneaky you were, even as a child.” Divya smiles vaguely. “But what I want to know is—” She bends down to inspect the ground, and picking up a pebble, tosses it toward a group of unkempt young men reclining on the dewy grass some distance down the slope, passing around a joint. The pebble hits a man with shaggy blond hair. “Hey, what’s going on down there?” Divya calls out, when he turns.
“Dunno. I think candidates for something, the board of supervisors maybe. There’ll be lots of yapping.”
“But picnic baskets?” Divya turns to Seema and Tahera. “I need to find out what’s going on. Tahera, it was lovely talking to you, I hope to meet you again. Seema, we’ll catch up soon.”
She blows kisses at them, slips off her shoes, and skips lightly down the green slope, her mauve dress fluttering like an overblown flower.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun—Tahera finds the pleasure of Keats’s odes distinct and transporting, like biting into one of the crisp golden apples a Kashmiri patient used to gift her father every year. There is of course no autumn in Chennai, only the onset of the northeast monsoons; nevertheless, she always claimed it as her favorite season, based on the ode and postcards her father used to receive from his friends in England, of trees with leaves the red-gold of the gulmohar reflected in the drowsy waters of brooks. Autumn! Living all these years in Irvine, she’d even forgotten how the word sounded, like an incantation, having come to think of this time of the year as fall.
Earlier that morning she was tempted to see how much of the poem she recalled, and whether she could memorize the lines again. Surely there was no harm in this: after all, the ode is a celebration of Allah’s creation and His munificence. She found it surprisingly easy—as if it were meant to be. In less than half an hour, while her mother showered, she relearned the entire poem. On the walk to the park, its lines and phrases keep her company. How mellow San Francisco is this autumn Sunday morning! How sweet seem the stores of apples and peaches and pears, filled with ripeness to the core. The swollen pumpkins, lying plump by the door. The clumps of chrysanthemum, and sunflower, and marigold. And surely in the mural, it must be Autumn herself seated on the granary floor, her harvest spread carelessly at her feet, while bees buzz ceaselessly about!
Seema’s secrecy regarding meeting Halima Aunty pricks this Keats-induced bubble, and Seema’s question—everything is by Allah’s plan?—bursts Tahera out of it. Inclined now to resentment, Tahera recognizes Seema’s subterfuge: the walk is an excuse, Seema as usual camouflaging her true intentions. No doubt Seema planned to meet Divya at the park, which explains her initial reluctance to bring Tahera along, expecting to draw comfort from her friend, perhaps even complain about her sister and mother. The attention Divya pays Tahera must have been unwelcome to Seema, and this disposes Tahera to like Divya, despite her modern leanings and attire. Divya, it also turns out, is an excellent conversationalist, interesting, and interested, not only in their childhood in Chennai but also in Tahera’s life in Irvine.
The pleasure of Divya’s company soon overshadows the irritation at Seema’s deviousness. The day regains its benevolent autumn haze. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too—
Passing the mural on their way back home reminds Tahera of her aunt again. A regular occurrence at their kitchen table in Chennai: Ammi and Halima Aunty whispering to each other as they dip biscuits in chai, their private conversation stalling whenever the girls draw near. Tahera can picture them at the same table, their gray heads even now bent in confidences. And it will be Halima Aunty tending to Ammi during her last days. Growing up, Tahera had always thought she and Seema were each other’s best friends, just like that older pair of sisters, had thrilled whenever someone commented, seeing them walking hand in hand: See how close they are! They were the Hussein sisters. But that was before she’d discovered the extent of the secrets kept from her.
Tahera slows down. “Do you want to know what your friend Divya told me?”
But Seema doesn’t hear her and continues walking. A cloud moves over the sun. Seema turns to look back only after some length. “Why have you stopped? I thought you wanted to get back home quickly because Ammi’s alone.”
“Now you’re worried about Ammi.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It means nothing. We mean nothing to you, Seema.”
“What?” Seema finally stops to face Tahera, hands up in confused exasperation. “What did I do?”
Tahera cuffs herself on her forehead, a spontaneous revival of a girlhood gesture. “How stupid of me to think you’d remember the way you left. Why would you? You’ve not spent years trying to forget that time like I have.”
The sun masked, the street dimmed, Tahera is back in their home in Chennai, just returned from her daylong clinical rotation, and the house is dark. Her mother usually leaves a lamp on after dusk, even if she’s not at home. But it’s not a power cut or a blown fuse, for there’s a streak of light under the closed door to her father’s study. Tahera calls out to him. When he opens his door, the light from the study reveals an apparition—Ammi!—sitting statue-like at the other end of the living room.
Tahera recoils. “Why are you sitting in the dark, Ammi? You gave me such a scare. Where’s Seema?”
Her mother makes no reply, but Abba says, “She’s dead to us. I don’t want to hear her name spoken in this house ever again.” He turns back to his study, plunging the living room into darkness again.
The sun peeps out briefly, the sidewalks blaze, and Seema flickers in what seems a distance away. “You know what hurt me most? That I had no idea at all,” Tahera says. “Remember the evening before you left? You took me to our favorite chaat stall, the one in Fountain Plaza. Your treat, you said. You ordered everything—samosa chole, bhel puri, pav bhaji, Thums Up, Limca, masala chai—even though we couldn’t possibly finish it all. But you insisted we stay till we did. We sat there for two hours while we stuffed ourselves silly. You said you couldn’t eat enough, because you’d get nothing like this at Oxford. You must have known then what you were planning to do. But you didn’t say a word to me. I was the last to find out. I didn’t even learn the real reason until a year later.”
The days and months after Seema’s departure she’d obsessed over every detail of that last evening together, sifting for any hint that would explain Seema’s expulsion. She’d asked Seema: What’s up between you and Abba? Seema had replied, shrugging as she scraped the straggling chole off the plate: He wants me to get married now, and I refused, but he’ll come around. Tahera had overheard snatches of discussions between her parents, so Seema’s account hadn’t come as a surprise. And she’d accepted Seema’s easy dismissal of their father’s authority. After all, there was nothing his golden daughter could want that Abba would deny.
But, of course, she hadn’t understood then why he didn’t relent about Seema’s marriage after her disappearance, brooking no discussion, locking himself up in his office whenever Tahera persisted. Or why Ammi seemed so unwilling to challenge him, barely dragging herself through long days, haggard and woebegone. Tahera uncovered the real reason months later, when she recognized Seema’s handwriting on unopened envelopes while rummaging through her father’s desk for a sheet of paper. She’d snuck out the most recent one, tearing it open in her bedroom, her entire body trembling. That’s how she came to learn what Seema was, what Seema claimed to be.
“You didn’t reply to any of my letters. I’d cry on Ammi’s lap after checking the post every day, waiting for your reply. I fought tooth and nail with Abba, accusing him of hiding your letters to me. But you didn’t ever write to me, even though you continued to write to Abba, who wouldn’t even open any of your letters. You couldn’t be bothered with me, Seema. I wasn’t worth your time.” Tahera swallows an angry breath and steps off the pavement. A stream of cars prevents her from crossing the road.
“Tahera, stop.” Seema hurries toward her, grabbing Tahera’s arm as she waits for the last car to pass. “I was trying to figure out some things myself. I thought you wouldn’t understand. And wasn’t I right? Remember that letter you sent me from Irvine?”
But Tahera cannot stop. “Do you know what you put us through? Did you ever wonder what happened after you left?” She unclasps Seema’s hand from her elbow. “And you expect me to disrupt my family and take on additional burdens for your child simply because you asked. That too without apologizing, or even acknowledging what you did. It seems like you haven’t figured anything out after all. You’re still the same Seema you always were. Only concerned about yourself and what you want. Never caring how it will affect others.”
Tahera takes a step forward but is tugged back—Seema is standing on the hem of her jilbab trailing on the pavement. Tahera gives it a yank, whipping around to thrust Seema aside.
Had she jostled Seema too abruptly, too roughly? With a groan, Seema clutches at her belly and lurches. Tahera instinctively throws out a steadying hand, for the second time on that trip, but Seema is already sinking to the pavement, twisting at her knees, grasping at Tahera’s jilbab to lower herself. She drags Tahera down with her.
Tahera has barely caught her breath to murmur, “Ashukrulillah! Seema, are you okay?” when with another shudder and a piercing cry—“Allah!”—Seema pitches forward on her haunches, forehead dropping to the pavement, as though in sajda.
Tahera crouches by her sister, fear clenching her chest tight where moments ago there had been fury. Surely this can’t be more than a contraction? But it isn’t the time for panic or self-recrimination, and she lets experience take over, keeping her voice steady: “Seema, are you in pain? Can you sit up?”
Seema’s back moves in prolonged judders. Tahera places a soothing palm on it, urging: “Take slow, deep breaths. Relax, breathe in through your nose and out your mouth.” She calls out each breath—“in, out, in, out”—for what seems an eternity, practicing it herself for the calm it brings her too. Seema’s body gradually stops trembling.
A shadow falls on her. A straggle of pedestrians have gathered around. “Is she okay, do you need help?”
“She’s fine, I’m a doctor, please stand away, she needs air.” She ignores the crowd, bends over Seema, whispers into her ear—“I’m going to raise you up”—and helps Seema to sitting.
Seema’s eyes are tightly shut. With the fabric of her jilbab Tahera wipes Seema’s face, and Seema submits to it mutely, tilting her face up as Amina would, letting Tahera wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes. Only then does Seema open them.
There’s distracting chatter from the crowd. Questions and suggestions: 911, ambulance, ER. “No, can you get us a cab please?” Tahera has decided to take Seema home, where she can examine Seema immediately, rather than go to the ER. “Seema, don’t try to get up yet.”
Seema nods and sits still, head bowed, hands on her stomach, while Tahera occupies herself straightening Seema’s clothes and brushing away dust, glad for something to do, all the while maintaining a firm grip on Seema’s arm. “It’s okay, you’ll be fine, I’m here.”
Only after she’s assisted Seema into the cab does she allow herself the torment of the deferred guilt and apprehension. Ammi had charged her with protecting Seema and the baby. Instead, she may have endangered their lives. Is she making the right decision taking Seema back home instead of to a hospital? And how to explain to their mother the need for a checkup?
But there’s gratitude also. Toward Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, for not permitting some harm to befall Seema and for keeping away the monstrous wish of the first evening. Gratitude toward Seema too, for accepting her ministrations without recriminations. She’s grateful again when Seema whispers, just outside the apartment door, “Let’s not say anything to Ammi.”
Grandmother, when Seema struggles to kick off her shoes, and Tahera bends down to remove them, you’re immediately aware something has happened. Seema holds on to Tahera’s shoulders for support, even as she says they’ve had a good walk.
She heads to her bedroom, while Tahera removes her hijab and folds it unhurriedly, with her usual meticulousness. But you’re not taken in. Not for nothing are you their mother, even if you haven’t seen them much the last ten years. You’d been pondering how to get Seema alone so you could speak to her about Bill’s visit, but that thought flees your mind. “What happened?” you ask Tahera.
“Contractions.” Tahera pulls out a small black bag from her suitcase. “I don’t think it’s labor, but I need to examine her.” When you follow her to Seema’s bedroom, she stalls you: “Ammi, can you make us some chai, please?”
You nod through your anxiety. Why would Seema agree to have her sister look at her now, after refusing so forcefully that morning? You busy yourself at the stove, while straining your ears to what’s going on in the bedroom. But Tahera has shut the door, and you can’t make out much. So you concentrate on making your special chai instead, crushing a cardamom pod and slicing slivers of ginger and adding them along with a couple of cloves to the tea in the bubbling pot. You set out cups on a platter—not the regular mugs but three cups from a fluted porcelain set you’d found while rearranging Seema’s kitchen cabinets that morning—and when you’ve sweetened the chai with an extra spoonful of sugar, you carefully strain it and ladle it into the teacups and carry the platter to Seema’s bedroom. It seems ages before Tahera responds to your knock. She takes the platter from you, and you worry for a moment that you’re not to be admitted in yet.
Seema is sitting up in bed, her stomach exposed. She listens through a stethoscope, moving a hornlike attachment across her stomach. “Ammi, listen—you can hear Ishraaq’s heart.”
She holds out the stethoscope. But first you look to Tahera—for reassurance—and only after the slightest inclination of her head do you go to Seema’s side. Still, you fumble with the earpieces.
Tahera adjusts the placement of the horn. “Can you hear him?”
You can’t—your own heart is beating too rapidly, your relief is a daze of weakness—but you nod and smile, consoling yourself that all that matters is that the baby is fine.
Afterward, for the first—and only—time, all three women, my grandmother, my mother, and my could-be mother, speak to me directly.
Grandmother, you go first, your face inches from Seema’s stomach, cooing, “Ishraaq, darling grandson, I can’t wait to hold you in my arms, to call you my calfling, my sugar dumpling, to sing you a lullaby.” You apply your ear directly to Seema’s stomach and pretend you can hear me, amid all the other noises the body makes. “He says he can’t wait to meet his Nani either,” you announce. “Tahera, say something to your nephew.”
Tahera sits down beside Seema, and in a voice that is unexpectedly tender, she whispers, “Sweetest nephew, this is your Tara Aunty. Can you hear me?”
In answer, Seema’s body rumbles. The three of you laugh.
“What a majestic voice he has,” you say. “Like Akbar in Mughal-E-Azam.” The rumble reminds you of the deep baritone of the actor Prithviraj Kapoor, who plays the Mughal emperor Akbar in your family’s favorite movie. Your family never missed a chance to watch it, either on TV or in a local theater. You rub the tip of your nose on Seema’s stomach as though to nuzzle me. “You’ll grow up to have a voice just like that, and you’ll be brave, and strong, and wise, and famous, won’t you? You’ll make your Nani proud.”
This time your daughters’ laughter sounds strained, especially Seema’s. Your reference is a misstep. It’s their father’s enthusiasm for the movie that your daughters embraced, about the doomed love between the beautiful servant girl Anarkali and Prince Salim, which brings down the wrath of his emperor father on both of them. It’s impossible to recall the movie without also remembering the way their father would declaim, in his performing voice, the more poetic of Akbar’s dialogues. “Your voice should ring like that,” he’d exhort, whenever he coached them for their contests, brushing aside their objections that Prithviraj Kapoor, with his quivering jowls and flashing eyes, was given to overacting.
“Ammi, don’t put so much pressure on my son, he’s not even born yet,” Seema responds. “I’ll be happy if he grows up strong enough to follow his heart, as long as he doesn’t forget his mother.” She caresses her stomach. “Ishraaq, you’ll always love your mother, right?”
The three of you stare at Seema’s stomach, as if expecting it—me—to reply, and when I’m silent, you three burst into laughter again.
“He’s going to grow up stubborn, just like his mother and aunt, wait and see,” you say. You shuffle over to the chest of drawers where Tahera has placed the chai and carry the platter back. The three of you sip your chai from the dainty white cups.
“Mmm, your masala chai!” Tahera says. “And these cups are so pretty. Just like the cups at home, Ammi.”
“They are from Chennai,” Seema says.
Cups from Chennai—there’s so little in Seema’s apartment with any connection to her past. And you know that it’s Chennai Tahera’s referring to as home, not Irvine. Something happened on the walk, but you decide not to probe. This is the most relaxed you’ve seen your daughters together; Tahera has even casually placed her free hand on Seema’s. You’re reminded of all the times you’ve seen them like this, Tahera sitting by Seema’s sickbed and reading her a book or bending over her with a glass of water or milk to soothe her parched throat.
There’s only this to mar the illusion you’re back in Chennai, sitting in your own home, sipping chai from your own teacups with your daughters: the knowledge that their father is nowhere nearby, with no intention of joining you, of fixing back together your fractured family.
Grandmother, do you remember the night sixteen-year-old Seema played Anarkali in her class production, at her girls-only convent school?
It’s Annual Day, and the auditorium is packed with parents and hot with the dusty March heat. You’re squeezed in the middle of a long row of chairs, but close to the front, a special recognition accorded to you and your husband.
Your daughters have been called repeatedly to the stage to accept awards, for their proficiency in various subjects, for their leadership qualities and accomplishments. Seema comes to the stage already half made up as Anarkali, in the glittering apricot-orange ghagra-choli that you altered for her on your Singer sewing machine. Tahera is iron-sharp in her captain’s uniform, all white, the pleats of her tunic starch-pressed; she takes part in her class play too, but as narrator. Your husband is in a Prussian blue suit, white shirt, and checked green tie. Your saree is a bottle-green organza selected by your daughters to match his tie; your hair is in a low bun, adorned with a single strand of jasmine, your style for formal occasions.
The play to be performed by Seema’s eleventh grade is last on the program. This is the piece the audience always awaits eagerly—an Annual Day will stick or fade in the memory of the school based on this performance, and you and your husband are doubly keen, as it was adapted from the movie by Seema herself.
Hidden hands pull on cords to twitch the curtains aside, and the stage is revealed: The backdrop is a landscaped garden with fountains encircled by rose bushes, the lawns a bright chartreuse, the sky a fake cerulean blue. On a bench center stage sit two figures. In a cream-and-maroon sherwani is the prince, his status signaled by the gold plume pinned to his crimson turban—played by Seema’s best friend, Reshmi, in make-believe sideburns and a mustache—and beside him, Seema as Anarkali with her head bowed, veiled in a transparent pale-peach dupatta that you yourself trimmed with silver ribbon and decorated with clusters of sequins.
The prince reaches to lift her veil but is stopped by Seema’s hand.
“Anarkali, why do you hide your light from me?” he asks, his voice buckling with nervous compensation.
“I’m only the moon—” Anarkali replies, slowly raising the veil herself.
And you, Grandmother, for whom Seema’s beauty has become commonplace, clutch at your husband’s hand, surprised by this vision Seema has transformed into, with expert application of lipstick, eyeshadow, and kohl. For an instant you perceive the woman her sixteen-year-old self will become, gloriously beautiful and bold in her allure.
“Don’t look at me this way. You’re the sun, you’ll burn me with the sun’s burning rays.” Anarkali turns away from the prince, but there’s no doubt she’s aware of her effect on him. Seema’s voice, pitched lower than normal, burns your ears with its sultriness.
The prince’s hand shakes a little as he tilts Anarkali’s chin toward him. This time his voice is stronger, as though taking courage from her confidence. “Let Salim see in your eyes what your tongue cannot say.”
But really, there’s nothing this Anarkali’s tongue seems incapable of saying. As the play progresses, Anarkali sheds all pretense of timidity and the submissiveness of a servant girl. It’s the prince who is rendered mute in Seema’s adaptation and Anarkali who rebels against Akbar’s autocratic insistence on conformity to the worth he assigns his world. In fiery exchanges, a disdainful Anarkali declares herself willing to accept death to prove her love’s invincibility. As pink-brown cardboard bricks are stacked around her to form a tomb under Akbar’s unrelenting gaze, and a hapless Salim struggles in the restraining grasp of soldiers, she swears: “You cannot erase my love from the world’s face. Death will only cement it, this tomb will forever bear its tale.”
The standing ovation begins even before the curtains reopen for the actors’ bows. Everybody is up on their feet, including your husband. How he claps and cheers, his hands high up in the air over his head!
But though you join him, you don’t feel like celebrating. A new aspect of Seema has been revealed to you: a daughter older than her years, a daughter whose voice and words and poise are already signaling a departure from you, from everything you’ve imagined for her. You don’t know what to make of these misgivings. You’re ashamed of the small-minded suspicions sprouting in you—some disastrous attachment, some unsavory weakness—but you’ll be slipping up in your duties as a mother if you ignore them. Yet, despite your newly awakened fears—you go over in your mind all the boys and bachelors in Seema’s various circles—it doesn’t occur to you to look closely at Seema and Reshmi as the two girls take their bows.
Why should it? After all there’s little precedent to alert you to a connection of that sort. With Reshmi’s arm clasped around her waist, Seema inclines a graceful salaam toward the audience, then bestows a dazzling smile on her partner—and you have no inkling of the messages exchanged between them. After the show, an exultant Seema, leading an unresisting Reshmi by the hand, does the rounds, mingling with her adoring audience and accepting congratulations. The two of them, still in their costumes, the beautiful servant girl and her bearded and mustached paramour, pose variously—hand in hand, gazing into each other’s eyes, embracing—as cameras click.
You have a photo from that evening: You and your husband standing in the center, Seema and Reshmi on either side. You’re all smiling, but formally, as though posing for a wedding photo, like the one you’ll take with Tahera and Ismail on their wedding night.
Later, alone with your husband, you’ll take him to task. “Why are you encouraging your daughters with all this love business? Can’t you see how mature Seema has become?”
“What nonsense, it’s just a play,” he’ll reply. “My daughters are too brilliant to waste their time on such matters.”
Grandmother, years later when you learned of the gender of Seema’s first lover, did you think back to that evening and uncover the identity of Seema’s first love and decode the messages that passed between them?
No—you want to believe then that Seema is afflicted by no more than an assumed affectation, acquired along with her Oxford education, a rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Even when she chooses banishment over submitting to her father’s decree, you still cling to that hope, keeping it alive all those long years of her straying, heaving a sigh of relief when she finally returns to her senses and gets married.
And even today, on this afternoon in San Francisco, when you’ve just invoked Akbar’s name and have spent the morning grieving over a father who will not relent in the face of his child’s happiness, you choose not to dwell on that painful part of your daughter’s past. You will not speak to Seema today about Bill, or Fiaz, while she’s recovering from whatever scare she had, but you are biding your time.
Tahera has told herself she’ll call Irvine after the asr namaz. She wanted the morning to herself, to reflect on the events of the last twenty-four hours, unprepared and unwilling to discuss them yet with Ismail. She even felt little urge that morning, unusual for her, to speak to her children, especially Amina. Now, right on cue, just as she’s finished her asr namaz, as though she can’t be trusted to follow up on her word, Ismail is on the phone.
“Sorry, I couldn’t call earlier,” he says. “I’ve been busy all day at the mosque.”
It’s late afternoon in San Francisco, evening in Irvine.
“Was nobody else helping clean up after the fundraiser?” she asks. Ismail can go on for ages about the fundraiser. She’s glad for it today, preoccupied with deciding whether to relay Seema’s request to him.
She doesn’t like keeping secrets from Ismail. But she can’t broach certain matters unless she’s prepared. If she appears muddled, Ismail will be dismissive of her concerns or, worse, will make up his mind too quickly, and then it will take a confrontation to change his views.
She’d prayed the istikhara dua over Seema’s request after fajr this morning. Allah, who possesses the power and the knowledge that I do not, if accepting guardianship of Seema’s child is good for my faith and for my life here on this earth and in the hereafter, ordain it for me and make it easy for me to accept it. If not, keep it away from me and help me reject it. But she’s no closer to making sense of the conflicting emotions and thoughts Seema triggers in her. The dua’s effect, of course, may not be direct and immediate, and she may have to repeat the istikhara a few times and be patient.
Only half listening to Ismail, her thoughts are interrupted by the word police.
“Police?” she asks, immediately alert. “Forgive me, jaanu. My mind was elsewhere. Please tell me again, what happened?”
Ismail takes a deep breath. “Someone painted graffiti on the mosque walls last night. We spent the morning painting over it.”
“Who did it?”
“We don’t know yet. We filed a complaint with the police. The entire front wall was defiled.”
She can’t quite comprehend the extent of the violation, unable to picture the walls. But she knows when Ismail is keeping a tight rein on his emotions—by the swear words he bites off at the first syllables, before they sully his mouth, as he does now. She’s never heard him complete a single profanity, ever. “Whoever did it will surely burn in Jahannam,” she says.
“We’re holding a meeting this evening to decide how to respond. Imam Zia wants to keep it quiet for now.”
Tahera asks for more details, partly to stop herself from making any comments—hadn’t she privately feared something like this, that Ismail and Imam Zia were perhaps overreaching in their efforts to expand the mosque?—and partly to atone for her morning’s omissions, for having been so remiss as to ignore the circumstances surrounding her real life in Irvine. This is clearly not the time to bring up Seema’s affairs.
“I took photos, I’ll email them to you later,” Ismail says. “The children are eager to talk to you.”
Thankfully, Amina seems unaffected by the morning’s incident. She doesn’t even mention the mosque, excited at having spent the entire day with Taghrid Didi at her Najiba Aunty’s house. She and Taghrid Didi played with dolls, then helped Najiba Aunty in the kitchen. In the afternoon they baked cookies. “With cashews, and raisins, and pistachios, and rose essence.” Amina pronounces the list of ingredients carefully, proudly. “And I prayed namaz with Taghrid Didi and Najiba Aunty. I didn’t make any mistakes.”
“Good girl! Soon you’ll be praying perfectly.” Ever since her seventh birthday, Amina has wanted to learn to pray like her Taghrid Didi. The two girls are inseparable, though Taghrid is closer in age to Arshad. Taghrid is a good role model for Amina for the most part, though Tahera sometimes worries when Amina copies everything Taghrid does without questioning, like when Amina insisted on donning the hijab at such an innocent age. Amina’s stories contain everything Taghrid did and said today, and Tahera is almost driven to ask if she hadn’t missed her mother at all.
Arshad, on the other hand, is more tight-lipped than usual. “Did you have a good time with Najiba Aunty?” He’s ordinarily talkative when he returns from his Najiba Aunty’s house. Najiba is a substitute science teacher, and she has various science kits in her home that she lets Arshad tinker with during his visits. Today, however, he returns monosyllabic answers to every question. Tahera, confronted with his remoteness, says, almost petulantly, “Go then, don’t tell your Ammi anything.”
“I’d rather have been with Abba painting the mosque.” Arshad is aggrieved. “Why didn’t Abba let me stay and help?”
“Abba has his reasons,” Tahera says. “He probably thought you’re not big enough and would get too tired.”
“I could have done it. He didn’t want us to see what was painted on the walls. Like that stopped me from finding out—” He pauses, as though deciding whether to tell her what he’s seen.
She can’t remember when she’s heard her son be this upset or speak this openly. She’s both dismayed at his distress and gratified at her new role as his confidant, though this last is surely only motivated by discontent with his father. She urges him on: “What did you find out?”
“They called Prophet Muhammad a terrorist.” His voice trembles with anger, slurring the r’s. “They called him—” And here he hesitates, unsure of himself, pronouncing the word as carefully as Amina had pronounced pistachios. “They said Muslims are not welcome here. Why do they hate us so much, Ammi?”
It’s an anguished cry, one that she’s never heard from him before. It causes her heart to leap up with the kind of tremor she associates only with Amina.
But what should she say, what could she say? Later, she will rue that she didn’t know how to react to it, the years of reserved attention toward Arshad providing her no map.
“Only Allah knows,” she says, aware that she’s encouraged him to open up only to forsake him. “Remember to say all your kalimas tonight.”
She conscientiously narrates the exchange to Ismail, urging him to have a conversation with Arshad. She consoles herself with the thought that his father is the right person to talk to him—after all, she’s not even at hand.
Evening, Irvine: Arshad is alone in his parents’ bedroom, browsing search results on his father’s desktop. He’s engrossed in his task and becomes aware of his father’s presence only when Ismail coughs. Startled, Arshad attempts to kill the browser window—he’s only allowed to use the computer for homework, and only under supervision.
Ismail stalls him. “What were you doing?”
“Nothing. I was just searching for something for a class project.”
“Did you ask my permission?”
“You were busy talking with Ammi,” Arshad whines, mentally chiding himself for neglecting to keep an ear out for his father’s return. Usually Abba supervises him less strictly than Ammi as long as he believes Arshad is meaningfully occupied, but after this morning, Arshad shouldn’t have counted on it.
Ismail scrolls through the search results. They’re on lies about the Prophet. “I told you this morning”—Ismail wags his finger in Arshad’s face—“this is not a matter for children. You’re not old enough to understand.”
Ismail closes the browser window with a decisive click. But Arhsad’s not out of trouble yet. Ismail, eyes drilling into him, continues, “Your Ammi tells me you’ve been using words you’re not supposed to know.”
Arshad feels betrayed by Ammi. Why did she have to repeat what he told her? “She asked me, Abba,” he tries to explain. “I was just repeating what I saw on the wall.”
“What do you know of such words anyway?” Ismail asks.
“I looked it up in the dictionary.” He hangs his head in embarrassment hoping his father won’t ask him what it means. His understanding is still hazy, from the websites he visited today, sickeningly littered with insults and abuses, clearly written by enemies of the Prophet and Islam.
“I don’t want you to think about such things,” Ismail says, leading him out of the room, gripping Arshad’s shoulders. “And don’t go looking again on the internet. I want you to forget all about this. Do you understand?”
Ismail’s fingers dig into his shoulder blades so deeply that Arshad winces. His father’s tone is angrier than ever before.
“Why are you angry with me? Why aren’t you angry with whoever wrote those words?” Abba is behaving so unfairly toward him, like when he rebuffed his offer to help paint over the filth. “I did nothing wrong. They’re the ones who are abusing the Prophet, who are making up lies about him.”
He shakes his father’s hands off his shoulders. “They should be killed like pigs.” Arshad spits the last word out.
The smack, lightning quick, stuns the boy. But more than the impact, it’s the shock that hurts: Abba has never hit him before. He lifts a hand to his cheek, where his father’s palm struck, tears of shame searing his eyes. He shudders, his breath sticking in his nostrils and throat. The landing, and his father, tremble in a blurred haze.
Ismail says, “You will not speak like that in this house. Go to your room.”
Ismail gives Arshad a push, and he stumbles. Abba, he wants to scream, why did you hit me? Isn’t it every Muslim’s duty to protect the Prophet’s name, to fight those who abuse the Prophet? He kicks the door shut behind him, and the resounding thud that he can feel in his bones fills him with a fierce pleasure. He throws himself on his bed and lies there, sobbing.
Presently a timid fluttering knock on the door: Amina. He half wipes his tears and opens the door. “What is it?”
He sees her shrink at the sight of his tear-stained face, hugging her Asma doll tightly. “Bhaiya, Abba says come down,” she says in a loud voice designed to carry downstairs. “He has to go to the mosque for namaz and a meeting.” Then in a whisper, reaching a hand out to touch his face, “Why are you crying, Bhaiya?”
“Go away.” He swats her hand away. “I’ll come down when I want to.”
Amina lingers by the door, her eyes turning moist, and he thrusts her out and shuts the door. It’s because of her that he has to stay behind.
When he’s sure she’s gone, he creeps down the stairs—his father is in the bedroom getting ready—and picks up his shoes, then slips down to the garage. He gets into his father’s car and waits, seat belt fastened.
Upstairs, Ismail and Amina wander around the house, calling to him. Their voices reach him, thin and disembodied, first Ismail’s, irritated—“Arshad, where are you?”—and then, a moment later, Amina’s weak and anxious echo.
Minutes pass, and his father’s voice gets louder and louder, the annoyance more pronounced. “Arshad! I have to leave for isha namaz. Don’t make me late.”
He begins counting, calculating he’ll need to count to five thousand to remain there for an hour—if he can’t go, then neither can his father.
Five hundred later the basement door opens, and Ismail enters. He turns the lights on, then winches up the main garage door. He walks out into the driveway, and Arshad watches him through the rear window, silhouetted against the indigo evening sky, scanning the front lot and the sidewalks for him. At times his father freezes in attention, as if suddenly hopeful. But his shoulders sag as he continues to stand there, as though air were leaking out of him. Arshad has never seen his father look so defeated.
A few stars are visible in the sky, above the glow of the neighbor’s house opposite. Arshad is reminded of how they’d stood in the dark—was it only last night?—looking out the kitchen window, sipping their drinks in friendly silence, basking in the success of the fundraiser.
“Abba—” he croaks out, opening the car door. “I want to come too.”
Ismail catches sight of him and hurries to the car. “You’ve been here all along. I was worried.”
“I’m sorry, Abba. But I want to come to the meeting.”
Ismail looks at him with an expression Arshad can’t decipher. He braces himself for another reprimand. He clutches at the door handle to resist efforts to remove him from the car.
But Ismail says, “Go get your sister.”
Arshad doesn’t move. Has Abba really changed his mind, or is this some kind of ploy? His father repeats his command, and he climbs down from the car hesitantly and backs his way to the house. Once inside, he races to find Amina, keeping an ear out for the engine starting and the car pulling out of the driveway.
He finds Amina combing Asma doll’s hair at the dining table. “Hurry, get your shoes, we’re going out.”
He helps her into her shoes, tying the laces for her, then practically hauls her down to the garage. His father hasn’t left yet.
“Get in,” Ismail says. “But this is the last time you’ll behave this way.”
Arshad nods, buckles Amina into her booster seat in the back, then sits up in the front with his father. Ismail says nothing during the drive to the mosque, but Arshad exults: he’s finally been admitted into the adult circle. He rolls down the window to feel on his cheeks the slap of the evening air.
When they turn into the parking lot, all the lights are on, and the mosque glows from within with a purple-white light escaping through the frosted windowpanes. The newly applied paint has not fully dried yet but shimmers faintly, giving the mosque the air of a mirage. The mosque projects a serene but fragile grace, marred by the blotches of red on the ground, the only remaining witness to the previous night’s defacing.
They are late for isha namaz. “Did you do wadu?” Ismail asks, and Arshad shakes his head, embarrassed.
The entrance hallway is packed, as during Eid prayers: the mosque is overflowing today. Ismail leads Amina and Arshad along the walls to the washroom, skirting the praying men, who take half steps without breaking their namaz to let them through. When Amina and Arshad are done with wadu—Amina copies her brother’s actions, following whispered instructions from Ismail—they head back the way they came, and the men quietly make room for them, squeezing in slightly, so that Arshad joins one row and Ismail and Amina the row behind him.
Lo: as one, the congregation stands in qiyam, hands folded, and as one, bends in ruku, palms on knees, and as one, stands erect in qawma, hands by the sides, and as one, prostrates in sajda, head to floor, and then sits up in jalsa, hands on thighs.
There is a different energy in the mosque this evening from the other times Arshad has prayed here, as though the worshippers gathered today have altered gravity, so that the very air seems heavier, every action more deliberate to counteract it. Arshad and Amina, their eyes half open to make sure they are in sync with the congregation, murmur their prayers earnestly (with Amina whispering the little she knows, mumbling through the rest). They recite the takbir in unison with the congregation—Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.
Allah is great. Allah is greater. Allah is the greatest.
After the final thashahud and the salaams to the left and right, the congregation is on its feet, milling around, turning to neighbors and clasping hands, embracing, but with none of the gaiety of Eid or the other occasions Arshad has seen here. Instead there is the somber meeting of eyes, of hands, of necks and chests, as at a funeral.
All the seats in the conference room are taken. More men throng the back and sides, standing. Yet there’s little sound in the room except for Imam Zia reciting from the Quran.
He’s seated on the dais, a Quran open on the rehal before him. Though his eyes appear focused on the book, he doesn’t turn the pages, reciting instead from memory, as he always does. He glides over the words, swoops at them, hovers, drops. His entire body appears to recite. His chest lifts as he takes a breath before plunging into the cadence of the next ayat; the hull of his body rides each nasal ghunnah, vibrates with each quivering qalqala, with each ululating vowel. It freezes, motionless, at the crest of each soaring note.
Ismail recognizes the surah: Al-An’am. The Cattle. Say: Travel through the earth and see what was the end of those who rejected truth. He lifts Amina into his arms and beckons Arshad closer. This is Ismail’s favorite—everything essential to Islam, he feels, is captured in this one surah. Don’t conjoin anyone as equal with Allah. Establish regular prayers. Be good to your parents and take care of your children. Don’t be tempted by illegitimate intimacy and promiscuity. Don’t take life, except by way of justice and law. Measure and weigh your actions with fairness. Speak justly, even if a near relative is involved.
Also, doesn’t the surah say, Don’t revile those that call upon others besides Allah, lest they, out of spite, revile Allah in their ignorance? For Allah has made their actions seem fair to them, and when they return to Him, He will show them what they have done.
Allah knows best who strays from His path. He knows best who is open to His guidance.
How appropriate that Imam Zia has chosen this surah for this evening. Ismail’s anger, bottled within him since morning, dissipates, vaporized by Imam Zia’s cleansing voice. Even the burden of his guilt—at precipitating the vandalism—is lightened by the recognition that Allah has not set him as keeper over those who stray. Ismail is not responsible for their actions. And as for his supposed vanity—wasn’t it merely misguided exuberance? As the surah says, Allah is most merciful, and oft-forgiving.
The surah could easily take an hour to recite, and they’re twenty minutes in. Ismail worries that the congregation may lose patience. Thankfully, Imam Zia stops as soon as there are growing signs of restlessness.
Released, the entire congregation erupts in a cacophony of suppressed noises and deferred movements, men clearing throats, cracking necks and knuckles, shifting noisily in their seats. Amina stirs in Ismail’s arms—bored, she’d fallen asleep, turning her body sideways and resting her head on his shoulder. She now opens her eyes, wondering where she is that the lights are so bright and the noises so loud, but her father is here, his comforting smell—the cucumber soap he uses, tinged with something that is peculiarly him—engulfs her, and she smiles up at him through sleep-heavy eyelids, then settles back and shuts her eyes again.
Looking around the crowd, Imam Zia prepares to address the assembled. Arshad has waited eagerly for this moment. He’d managed to remain patient through the recitation—which he would have at other times enjoyed—afraid that were he to fidget or complain, his father would regret bringing him. There are few children here tonight.
Imam Zia first speaks about the vandalism. But emotionlessly, with very few details, without quoting anything scrawled on the walls. He then describes meeting with the police, who he declares have promised to investigate the matter and apprehend the vandals. Meanwhile, he will contact the pastors and ministers from the surrounding churches to release a joint statement condemning the act. The community must remain calm. Arshad is disappointed. Isn’t Imam Zia going to rebut the accusations and call down the wrath of Allah for the blasphemy against the Prophet?
The congregation appears dissatisfied too. At first the questions are hesitant, logistical. Should they deploy security cameras? And what about the expansion? Should the fundraising continue? Will they still be applying for approval from the city planning commission by the end of the month?
A contingent advocates restraint. Maybe they should wait until the furor around the country dies down, as it’s bound to once the midterm elections are over and the hostility subsides. But what starts with only a faint whiff of finger-pointing—perhaps this wasn’t the most well-advised time to initiate the expansion project?—soon becomes heated: Why court so much trouble simply over soccer practice? Hadn’t the mosque functioned so many years without any problems until these newfangled schemes were instituted? What else could lie behind the decision to publish interviews in the Sentinel, if not publicity-seeking and self-aggrandizing?
Arshad squirms, his fists clenched: Why are they squabbling among themselves when the enemies are outside? He senses his father tense up. He looks around the room for signs of support from his father’s friends. Won’t someone respond? Won’t Imam Zia say something? And why won’t Abba defend himself? He fantasizes leaping to his feet and shouting down the men attacking his father and Imam Zia. He’s puzzled by their passivity. His father continues stroking Amina’s hair as though it were the most important task in the world.
An anger mixed with pity illuminates Arshad. He’s always cherished that his father is named after the forefather of all Muslims, Prophet Ismail, who’d submitted without demur to being sacrificed on Allah’s behest, awaiting patiently his father’s knife until Allah intervened. But how powerless Abba must feel if the only person he’s willing to show any anger toward is his own son.
Fortunately, the tide begins to change. At first one voice protests: They’re doing nothing wrong, why should they be the ones to restrain themselves? Doesn’t the Constitution give them the right to practice their religion? Then another voice joins, and then a third. There are dissenting voices too, but in agreement: What has the Constitution got to do with it, when Allah has already granted them rights?
Someone makes an impassioned speech, in Arabic, and Arshad can’t fully understand it, and neither can half the assembled, yet the room responds with a standing ovation when the man finishes, along with chants of “Allahu Akbar.” These grow louder, despite Imam Zia’s admonitions to keep their enthusiasm in check. The chant soon moves to a call-and-response format: three calls of the takbir to which the congregation responds once, in one thundering voice.
Arshad joins in. At first softly, imitating his father, who murmurs the takbir while covering Amina’s ears. But the pent-up grievances of the day aren’t contained so easily. He feels the words outside him, their crash and ebb rocking everything in the room like a frenzied sea, and they stir up a storm inside. The takbir fills his lungs to overflowing. A feeling of elation courses through him, and the room and the congregation merge in a handful of joyously roared syllables.
During the relative lull of a call, a whimpering cry is heard. It’s Amina, rubbing her eyes, waking up from a nightmare. Ismail hurries out of the room, her face pressed against his chest to muffle her sobs.
The congregation returns to its call-and-response takbir, but the rhythm has been broken.
Arshad hesitates: Should he follow? He wriggles his way out through the crowd, sulking. This is why girls, especially seven-year-old girls, should not be allowed into the mosque.
He pauses at the door to listen one last time. Imam Zia is finally able to regain control over the congregation and the room slowly subsides into silence.
Grandmother, you are playing a role tonight. You and your daughters are gathered in the living room watching TV—an Indian reality show, a competition modeled on American Idol, but for kids, none of them over twelve. Like old times, Seema, beside you on the futon, claims space and center stage, commenting animatedly about the show, its judges, its competitors, while Tahera sits in a chair, reading Keats and only occasionally looking up to see what’s exciting your attention. But you, who like Tahera were usually a silent participant too, allowing your husband and eldest daughter to dominate family gatherings, feel compelled to assume the role of your husband tonight. The exuberance you assume now—joining Seema in remarking, exclaiming, laughing—as mild as it is, is alien to your nature.
The next competitor is a girl, no older than seven or eight, dressed in a frilly purple frock. “How beautifully she sings, just like Amina!” Seema exclaims. “She looks just like Amina, too.”
Tahera glances up from her book, and the three of you watch, and listen, entranced. The girl never takes her eyes off her mother the entire time she’s singing, the camera panning back and forth between them.
“Oh, it’s her, what’s her name?” you say, recognizing the mother as an aspiring playback singer from yesteryear, who’d disappeared from the music scene as suddenly as she’d entered it.
When the song is done, the audience roars in applause, the judges stand up and clap, and the host runs to the girl and lifts her up to his shoulders and invites the mother to join them on stage.
“She does look like our Amina. Does Amina sing too?” You haven’t heard your granddaughter sing, you didn’t even know she sings. Yet Seema seems to know.
“Amina sings wonderfully! She could take part in this competition with a little training.”
And like the mother on TV, a lovely smile transforms Tahera’s face. It’s like witnessing a full moon break out from behind clouds. Very rarely does she smile. Even as a child she refrained, as though smiles were some currency she needed to hoard. How pretty she looks when she’s smiling like this, how aged and careworn when she’s not. You wish you could smooth away the creases that will soon return to her face and shoulder some of her worries. But you don’t really know the extent of them. She withdrew from you after Seema left and, over the years, became estranged. She even adopted Seema’s habits of secrecy and defiance, as if with Seema absent she had chosen to take her sister’s place.
“Amina loves to sing,” Tahera affirms, still beaming. “Seema, how do you know?”
“The day I spent with them, she sang that song we used to like as children, the one about the runaway horse. Do you remember, Ammi?”
Of course, you do! The tape recorder blaring, the two girls rewinding and playing the song over and over again, singing along, clopping all over the house, or twirling in tight circles to it, their twin plaits and dupattas flying horizontally. You were afraid your daughters would hurt themselves by crashing into furniture as they collapsed from dizziness. When the tape caught in the spool, the house was quiet again until, giving in to their pestering, their father bought them another copy. You scolded him for spoiling his daughters, and he laughed at you, chucking your chin, saying, “Should I spoil you instead, my beautiful unsmiling wife?”
The phone rings and Seema answers it, and Grandmother, by her face you know this is him: your husband. You’ve been missing him all evening. Your husband has called, finally, and right when you were thinking about him. Perhaps the timing is a good omen, presaging a reconciliation.
My grandfather’s voice floats thinly into the room: “Nafeesa?”
Without saying a word, Seema holds out the phone, the liveliness from moments ago erased. You want to shake her: Say something to your father.
He’s querulous. “Why didn’t you call me? I was worried about you.”
He’s never called Seema’s number before; he’d vowed never to use it. What made him change his mind, when he could so easily have called Tahera on her cell phone? You want to scold him: Why call here if you’re not even going to address your daughter?
You’re not going to apologize for not calling, you’re not going to say anything unsolicited, even though fifteen minutes earlier you’d yearned to speak to him. Instead you answer to the point: you’re fine; you’re eating well, sleeping well; yes, you’re taking your tablets; yes, Tahera is here, she’s reading Keats.
Unsought, he volunteers information about himself: the monsoons have started, and he got drenched in a downpour; the street outside is flooded; the maidservant hasn’t come for the past two days, citing the rains as an excuse; your sister, Halima, has been bringing him food.
There’s a whiny quality to his voice. You’re aware of the others in the room listening to your conversation, and you keep your responses short and impassive.
Hesitantly, he asks when you are likely to return.
“I don’t know. Seema is due anytime.” You mention Seema’s name casually to him, something you wouldn’t have dared a week ago. His timidity bolsters your courage. “Do you want to speak to your daughter?”
Tahera rises to take the phone from you, and Seema has stiffened. You set a trap for him with that word—he has sworn many times he has only one daughter now—but he doesn’t fall for it. “Not now, I’m heading out. I’ll speak to Tahera later, it’s been years since we discussed Keats.”
He prepares to end the call, but Tahera takes the phone and disappears into the kitchen.
You strain to hear Tahera’s conversation, but her voice is too low. Now that you can breathe freely again, the extent of your transgression begins to sink in. You wouldn’t have dared speak this way in Chennai. Being away from him seems to have loosened his hold on you. You’re glad that you undertook this journey. But why did you wait until the final months of your life before taking this step?
Seema’s eyes are still glued to the TV, avoiding you, though she too seems to have relaxed. “Seema, when shall we ask Fiaz for dinner?” you say. “Can we do it this week?”
Your sudden switch of topic catching her by surprise, Seema is less resistant, as you hoped. She says, with only a slight frown, “It’s not necessary.”
“He’s so good to us. I promised him.”
“He’ll understand, Ammi. I’m having a baby after all.”
“It’s not a question of understanding. I want to. You should call your other friend too. What’s her name, Divya?”
“Why? You’re sick, you can’t stand in the kitchen without coughing. I can’t help you cook. Are you going to ask Tahera to cook for my friends?”
“What’s wrong with that? Can’t your sister do this for you?” You’ve tasted your first victory, against your husband no less, and you won’t let your daughter(s) defeat you. Tahera has finished her conversation, and you call out, “What do you say, Tahera? You’ll help me with the dinner for Fiaz?”
“I’ll be there in a minute, Ammi.”
Seema grows restive. When Tahera returns you notice her fraught face—what could father and this daughter have clashed over now? You regret your peremptory tone.
One glance at Tahera and Seema struggles up from the futon. “What did I tell you? There’s no need for all this.”
A subdued Tahera registers the scene unfolding. She eventually answers, “Of course, Ammi. If that’s what you want.”
“What about what I want?” Seema glares at the two of you, then before you can react, turns to retreat to her bedroom. “Fine. Let’s not make a big deal of this. I’ll ask Fiaz when he’s available.”
“Ask Divya too,” you say.
“No Divya.” She yanks the bedroom door shut behind her.
Tahera sits by your side. “Why do you force her, Ammi, when she doesn’t want to?”
But it’s to be a celebration: You want to cook for your daughter’s friends, to throw them a feast. It’s to be a thanksgiving, for all the years they were there for your daughter, and atonement, for the years you were not. You recall the chilha, the celebration on the fortieth day after the child is born. But you can’t leave it for so far into the future—who knows anymore what the future holds? And besides, you need Tahera’s help.
You can’t explain all this. You switch the TV off and take Tahera’s hand in yours, squeezing, in gratitude for her acquiescence to your plans. Despite the confidence you’ve shown, you fear that she might still be resentful of your decision to come to San Francisco, to Seema’s side, instead of Irvine, to hers.
Tahera takes the phone into the kitchen, determined to speak with her father. Refusing to speak to Seema is understandable, but declining to speak with her—how like Abba to cast out all of them when one displeases him, holding them all accountable for each other’s lapses.
Naeemullah gives in to Tahera’s insistence and desultorily inquires about Nafeesa. Their conversation, like it has the past months, takes on a professional tone—prognosis, progression, pathophysiology. As their discussion tapers off, he clears his throat, signaling he’s ready to hang up.
Desperately Tahera casts her mind for something further to interest him. “I’ve been reading Keats’s poems again, Abba,” she says, in a rush. “After so many years.”
“Wonderful!” His attention is temporarily held. “And what do you think now?”
It’s their old debate, one she’d lost to him many times. Naeemullah prefers Wordsworth, pooh-poohing Keats as immature and mawkish, idolized only by young girls with romance on their brains. He would accept grudgingly that Keats’s later odes had some merit but was scathing regarding the narrative poems, especially the long Endymion: “All sighs and pretty words.”
But Endymion had been her best-loved. She’d wandered through her youth likening herself to Endymion roving doggedly through earth and heavens seeking his love, the moon. She’d spent countless evenings alone on their rooftop terrace after dinner, pacing back and forth, with only the clouds and the moon for company, futilely trying to memorize the almost thousand lines of the poem. Eventually she’d settled for learning only her most treasured sections.
“I haven’t gotten to Endymion yet,” she lies, slipping once again into her childhood habit of protecting Keats (and herself) from her father (and sister). She’d started on Endymion earlier that evening, the poem appearing as strange and otherworldly now as it had years ago, with its descriptions of miraculous natural beauties and its mysterious and mystifying allusions—Phoebus, Dryope, Hyacinthus, Zephyr—names once again unfamiliar and intriguing.
“Ah, your rambling lovesick shepherd—” Naeemullah chuckles. “We’ll talk when you’ve reread it. You’re definitely older, but are you any wiser?”
“No one can hope to be as wise as you, Abba.” Her bitterness overflows. “Seriously, why do you still treat me like a child?”
An exaggerated surprise, his usual tactic. “Haven’t we been discussing your mother like two equals?”
“Like doctors, not father and adult daughter.”
“What else do you want me to say?” His voice turns harsh. “That I’m unhappy your mother is there, when her place is here?”
“I would have come to Chennai to look after her.”
“I’m fully capable of taking care of her. My only request to you is that you see that she returns soon.”
“She’s not only your wife, Abba—she’s my mother, too. Why do you insist on keeping me at a distance?” From holding her tongue for months—years—she’s gone to confronting everyone in a few days: first Ammi, then Seema, now Abba. But the words don’t produce relief, they merely serve to reinforce a feeling of wretchedness.
After Seema had left, after he started cutting her off for even mentioning Seema’s name, she’d hoped—despicably, for didn’t she still miss Seema then?—that her presence would make up for his beloved’s absence, that she would in time come to replace her sister. But he’d distanced himself from her as well. Did he expect her too to fail him, or was she just too poor a substitute?
“But, Tahera, you’re in America.” The jocular edge to his voice is back. “The last time I checked it’s still thirteen thousand kilometers away.”
And before she can respond—It was you who sent me here, Abba!—he attacks: “And why have you started reading poetry again, anyway? I thought you had no use for anything other than the Quran.”
“I can read whatever I want. But how are you doing, Abba?” She lowers her voice to a careful whisper. “Are you scared that Ammi will choose to remain here with her daughters—even Seema—rather than return to you?” She can feel her spiteful laugh sting, trilling its way across oceans and continents.
If it’s revenge, its sweetness is short-lived: a click, and he’s hung up. Tahera stands trembling, the phone clenched in her hand.
Heart! Thou and I are here sad and alone. Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain! O Darkness! Darkness! The childhood balm of murmured lines from her favorite anguished Keats sonnet. How ironic it is that Abba had used Keats to persuade her to give up her initial college plans of following in Seema’s footsteps in literature, to choose instead a career in medicine, trailing him. Keats had apprenticed to a surgeon, believing it a fit trade for a to-be poet; Keats had nursed his dying mother and brother before himself succumbing to their tuberculosis. She’d allowed herself to be manipulated, believing Abba wanted her by his side. Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, but Death intenser—Death is Life’s high meed.
A sudden swift urge: Let—me—die!
Back in the living room, after Seema’s exit, Nafeesa takes hold of Tahera’s hand. “What did Abba say? You looked upset.”
“Just Abba being Abba.” The squeeze of her hand shows that her mother understands. Some sense of their old communion still exists. They’d been a family within a family, depending on each other to withstand the force of Abba’s and Seema’s personalities.
She feels an urge to lay the weight of her world in her mother’s lap again, to seek comfort if not counsel, as she’d done all her childhood, to have Ammi stroke her hair—like when she’d laid her head in Ammi’s lap three mornings ago. After Seema’s exile, she’d begun to reject Ammi’s efforts on her behalf, as if she could no longer risk relying on her. She wants to reach over and touch Ammi’s face, to smooth out the lines etched by disease that has added to the distance between them.
What has bothered her since learning Ammi’s condition: her easy acceptance of Ammi’s impending death. She’s tried to tell herself that as a doctor she’s become accustomed, if not inured, to death. But this can’t be totally true, for she could never, not for a moment, imagine Amina dying without dying a thousand deaths herself.
Over the many years of her medical practice, she has encountered death many times. Patients die—parents, brothers, and sisters, even children. And she’s always been perplexed and ashamed at wanting—no, needing—to be present when the relatives gathered around the body, envious of both the dead and the surviving.
She understands that envy now. She’s always been moved by the portrait of Keats on his deathbed in Rome, ever since she found it in a biography in her father’s library years ago. It was painted by Keats’s friend and caregiver. Eyes closed, head sunk in a pillow, eyelashes resting on his gaunt cheeks, Keats looks peaceful, a tender curve to the line of his lips. The portrait radiates love. Only someone who loved him could have painted such a portrait; only someone who was loved could be its subject. So would she like to be watching, so would she like to be watched over.
For how can one know the extent of one’s love until confronted with its loss? How can one know the extent to which one is loved without witnessing the grief of those who profess it?
This must be why she almost welcomes her mother’s death; this is why she’s vexed by her mother’s stoicism, her steadfast refusal to shed tears. A wordless, nameless sorrow seizes Tahera. Not for anything in the world would she want her relationship with her children, especially Amina, to end up this way.
Her mother still holds her hand, though she’s returned to her previous concern. “So you’ll help me cook for Seema’s friends?”
“Yes, Ammu, of course I’ll help.” Ammu—as she calls Amina at times, as she used to call Ammi at times, something only she did, never Seema. Tahera pats her mother’s hand.
Her mother still seems unconvinced, her smile brittle and uncertain. “Tara, it’s not what you think. I had to come here, to San Francisco—to make amends, before—” Nafeesa’s lips move as though rehearsing what to say next.
Tahera touches her fingers to Nafeesa’s lips, silencing her. “Poor Ammu. Why are we always so hard on ourselves?”
Ammi needs her: surely that’s enough. Why does she need any other sign of her mother’s love?
Monday morning, it’s raining in San Francisco, a rain that gives the impression that it has not descended from the sky—one can’t see the sky for the fog—but that the city itself, its buildings, its trees, its very air, is made out of water. Every surface, budded with tiny droplets, catches whatever gleams of light there are—headlights and brake lights, traffic lights, lights in storefronts and offices and apartments—and reflects them back in a ghostly glimmer. San Francisco is a dream city in this rain. The three women in the car, on their way to what could be Seema’s last appointment with her obstetrician before her delivery, are drawn into its lulling embrace.
Fiaz offered to drive when Seema called to ask if he was free for dinner—Wednesday, it was decided. Seema gladly accepted, for though she’s only introducing Leigh to her family as a friend, she’s still beset with fears about the meeting, and Fiaz would be a welcome buffer. She can count on him to avert any awkward or unpleasant incidents. Besides, it was Fiaz who accompanied her on her earlier visits, until Leigh took over, and there’s satisfaction in his attending the last, a reassuring presence in her life. Cocooned in a car whose small windows have misted from the warm breath of the four people inside, Seema sits heavy in a cloud of regret and fantasy, deploring the choice forced on her between family and lover, dreaming about breaking free by greeting Leigh with a kiss on the lips—but only if it wouldn’t send Leigh the wrong signal.
Nafeesa, peering out from the back seat, cannot help comparing the rain to the downpours in Chennai during the monsoon. Here it is muted, apologetic, even refined, like everything else, and leaves no trace, drained instantaneously by some hidden system of sewers. In Chennai, it pellets the city, aggressive and unrelenting, intent on scarring; it puddles the surface within minutes and swamps the streets, churned to a muddy froth by pedestrians and charging scooters and automobiles. The rain here is soothing—even the numbing pain Nafeesa woke up to this morning eased a little as she waited for the car. She did not mention the pain to her daughters, fearing they might insist she stay home and rest. Now in the car, the world securely blurred into a restful loveliness by the scrim of water, the pain seems almost bearable, something she could learn to live with.
Tahera, too, finds the drive comforting. The city with its half-visible hills and vistas is so different from Irvine, and even from the San Francisco she’s seen so far, that she feels transported to some other world, different from the one she went to bed in yesterday. The photos Ismail sent her last night, documenting the desecration of the mosque, seem too ugly to belong to the place revealing itself to her now through the speckled window and the wavering mist: the gorse-strewn crest of a hill, studded with crags and capped by a clump of trees, their leaves turning gold, silhouetted against the pearl-gray sky. It’s an elusive and elegiac landscape, one she can picture Keats wandering in. It reminds her of the painting of Keats seated in the heath, listening to a nightingale, before he’d been forced to leave for Rome in a desperate pursuit of recovery from his tuberculosis. She’d clandestinely cut the two pictures out—that painting and the portrait of Keats on his deathbed—from her father’s book and pasted them in a diary she carried with her. She wonders if the diary still lies somewhere safe in her old room in Chennai.
Leigh waits at the doctor’s office, unsure what to expect. For Seema, she’s brought three long-stemmed calla lilies, the classic creamy white spiked with golden yellow, their flower. For Seema’s family, she has dressed carefully, her trimmed jacket instead of her usual geometric waistcoats, her Wellingtons instead of her combat boots, and no hat, her hair brushed rather than tousled.
Fiaz peeps into the reception. “Look at you, all suited and booted!” he announces loudly, as if alerting someone.
“I didn’t expect you, Fiaz.” She’s a little aggrieved at his inclusion. Did Seema ask him along to counterbalance her? She’s miffed, too, at his description of her outfit, after all the trouble she’d taken to appear less androgynous.
He holds the door open for the women following. Her first sight of the sister shocks Leigh. She has Muslim friends, some who wear the hijab, but she’s never met a Muslim this severely attired. A gray hijab wound tight around the face barely exposes the cheeks and chin and forehead, and loose lines of a black full-sleeved gown conceal the rest, only hands visible. A nun, in cloak and habit, would appear fashion-conscious next to her. And Seema’s mother, so different—small and unthreatening, like a kohl-eyed doll in the pink sweater and blue shawl that envelop her. Then Leigh notices the grave lines of her face, and its features, very like the sister’s. No one would mistake them for anything but mother and daughter.
“Ammi, Tahera—my friend Leigh,” Seema says. “She’s been coming with me to all my checkups. Leigh, this is my mother, Nafeesa, and my sister, Tahera.” She accepts the lilies Leigh holds out at arm’s length. “Are these for me?”
Leigh places a friend-like kiss on Seema’s proffered cheek and exchanges awkward handshakes with Nafeesa and Tahera. They look at her with unguarded curiosity, while she tries hard not to stare at them resentfully. Leigh has never had to worry about her family’s acceptance. Her Irish father is a very lapsed Catholic and her Chinese mother an indifferent Presbyterian, both professors at Berkeley and both supportive of her decision to come out in high school. Seema has always maintained she’s not bothered by Islam’s strictures against their relationship: Those crazy mullahs, they’ve nothing better to do. But these two women still seem to control Seema after all these years out.
“Oh my!” The plump gray-haired receptionist exclaims, opening her eyes wide at the odd foursome accompanying Seema. “So many new faces today. Isn’t that nice, having so many people to take care of you?”
Fiaz says, “I’m just here for the candy. They’ll do all the work.” He banters with the receptionist, making an elaborate act out of choosing from the bowl she offers—Nafeesa must have strawberry, while Tahera gets mango—and Leigh uses the diversion to sidle over to Seema.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Seema whispers. She strokes Leigh’s arm with the lilies, keeping one eye on her mother and sister.
“What shall I say when they ask how I know you?” Leigh whispers back. “Do I look okay?”
“You still look like a schoolboy. They’ll wonder what I’m doing hanging out with you.”
“But you love me.”
“Shh—go chat with my mother and sister.”
“Your sister frightens me.” Tahera seems so closed off. Her reaction to Tahera suggests some deep-rooted ambivalence she’s never acknowledged to herself before. She feels unsafe, threatened.
The receptionist hands Seema a urine container, and Seema leaves for the bathroom, handing the lilies back to Leigh. Nafeesa has sat down with Fiaz, and they’re both engaged in a conversation—in Urdu, Leigh assumes, envying the intimacy that seems to have developed between them. She wishes she hadn’t looked in Tahera’s direction, because now Tahera makes her way toward her.
“You’re Seema’s friend.” Tahera flashes a smile that surprises Leigh with its welcome. “I met another of Seema’s friends yesterday. Divya—do you know her?”
“I do.” Leigh is chagrined: even Divya has met Seema’s family before her. “Where did you meet?”
“Near the park, with that panoramic view. When Seema and I went walking. Divya is very nice.”
“She can be.” Leigh struggles to keep her voice even. “I’m sorry, but—when? I mean, what time?”
“Around noon. Why do you ask?”
Leigh shouldn’t have asked, but she did, and now the day loses it bright edge, flattens to match the gray outside. Not only did Seema turn her down yesterday, but she took her sister and Divya to their spot. And as the park is not Divya’s scene, her presence couldn’t merely be a coincidence.
The lilies in Leigh’s arms become a mocking reminder of the day she first whispered her love. Seema hadn’t responded but had arrived the next time with these lilies and an apology that she wasn’t ready yet to make such a declaration. And Leigh, who’d been expecting it to be their last time together, was relieved. Calla lilies would be their flower, she’d declared, the first flowers either had given the other. But if Divya is back in the picture, she wishes she hadn’t brought them today.
She would be foolish to confront Seema here, so she opts to engage with Tahera, discussing her journalism and Tahera’s practice in a pleasant exchange. Her initial response to Tahera now seems absurd: it’s not Tahera who’s the threat. When Seema returns, she’s immediately called in. Seema’s obstetrician, Dr. Jennifer Connelly, doesn’t object to having a partner or a friend present while examining her pregnant patients, and having accompanied Seema on previous visits, Leigh has been looking forward to this—until now.
She straightens to go with Seema. But so does Tahera. They both stop short, confused, looking to Seema for direction.
“Would you rather have your sister with you today, Seema?” Leigh asks, her voice small, both wanting to be the one chosen and fearing the moment when they’re alone together in the examining room, waiting for the doctor.
“You two decide,” Seema says, as she follows the nurse out. “Or maybe you could both come.”
Tahera shrugs, and leads, and Leigh trails behind, stopping to hand over the lilies to Nafeesa.
“Come get us when you’re doing the scan,” Fiaz says, “so we can get a peek at little Ishraaq.”
In the examining room, Seema turns to Tahera to help her undress, while Leigh looks on, her role usurped. She knows why, of course, but she has to fight a rebellious urge to take Seema in her arms, to kiss the engorged curves of Seema’s body, to stroke her thickened aureoles and massage the swell of her labia until Seema cries for mercy, for forgiveness. She averts her gaze and has to be content with their fingers brushing when Seema hands Leigh her undergarments, as Tahera knots the back of her gown.
Seema arranges herself on the table, exposing her belly, while Dr. Connelly and Tahera discuss Tahera’s background. If Tahera’s hijab and jilbab make Dr. Connelly uneasy, she doesn’t show it. Besides, speaking about her practice, Tahera is transformed into a professional, her manner assuming authority.
Dr. Connelly begins by palpating Seema’s belly, her pressure firm and insistent. My mother feels me kick as the prodding fingers awaken me. Usually Dr. Connelly conducts her examination in silence. But today she repeats aloud to Tahera the notes she’s jotting down, and Tahera explains to Seema the more technical observations. Her explanations are lucid, and her professional voice is reassuring. Dr. Connelly remarks that Tahera’s patients in Irvine are very lucky, and Seema is absurdly gratified, proud of the doctor her sister has become. Even Leigh, initially resentful, seems mollified, her questions answered comprehensively between the two doctors.
Though declaring everything normal, today Dr. Connelly wishes to also conduct a pelvic exam, wanting to take no risks this close to term, given Seema’s advanced age and risk profile, which includes a history of irregular and heavy menstrual bleeding. Seema dreads these. With her legs thrust open, and fingers and speculum intruding into her body, she feels defenseless and exposed. But Tahera concurs with Dr. Connelly, so she reluctantly agrees.
She steels herself, biting her lips and holding her breath against the waves of discomfort, even pain, as Dr. Connelly probes inside her. The reminder that what she’ll actually have to go through will be a thousand times more harrowing sets her heart palpitating, and I react to her panic, twisting and squirming as I never have before. Sensing my distress, my mother forces herself to relax, glad for Leigh’s hand to grip, grateful for the security Leigh’s hand returns. And with Tahera here, she doesn’t need to try to make sense of the terms, even those new and unfamiliar—consistency, effacement, softness, station—that Dr. Connelly calls out in her crisp clinical way along with measurements.
Seema closes her eyes and lets Leigh’s clasp and Tahera’s voice—still continuing her reassuring commentary—carry her away from the room, beyond the rain pattering against the windowpanes.
Unexpectedly, she is recalled to the room by another voice that once had a similar calming effect on her. He’d spoken just one word to her last night, after more than fifteen years of silence, and yet he sounds so clearly in her mind. Momentarily, it’s her father’s voice in the room lulling her with explanations and assurances, his grasp carrying her to safety.
Finally, here I am, a glow on the monitor. The sonologist is using the latest imaging technology to peer into the darkness of my mother’s womb. Various parts of me flicker on the screen as he moves the probe, sepia-toned close-ups that you, Grandmother, never thought possible.
Here is the umbilical cord snaking across the screen. And those are my fingers, and the curve of my bottom, and my distended belly. The protuberance there is my penis and the empty bag of my scrotum—Dr. Connelly clarifies that my testicles could take up to a year after birth to descend. And here’s my foot with my tiny flexed toes.
Even though you cannot see my face—my head has already descended into my mother’s cervix—you’re enchanted, your visions already excited by these odds and ends of me. You clutch Fiaz’s hand, for he’s closest to you, and lean against him, for the moment portals to some future that is haloed and more lovely, your faith in the persistent regeneration of life reinforced.
But at the very moment when you’re gazing with tenderness at me, you become aware of everyone gathered around, and rue: there are two people missing, two fathers. Your husband and Bill should have been here. What kind of world would deprive two children of their fathers while they are still alive?
It seems a cruel travesty that the only man here is Fiaz—and who is he to Seema, anyway? The gratitude that you felt toward him just a little while ago turns into resentment, as though he has usurped a place in your daughter’s life that rightfully belongs to someone else.
Meanwhile, the sonologist moves the probe around to locate my heart, and the image of my chest on the screen pulses with my heartbeat. He announces that my heart rate is exactly what it should be, twice my mother’s. More readings from various points on the globe of my mother’s belly help him estimate my weight, my volume, and the volume of the liquid I’m enclosed in.
“He’s a big baby, bigger than your average South Asian baby. But everything looks fine,” Dr. Connelly says. “The amniotic fluid seems adequate. The baby is in position and shows no signs of distress. All we can do now is wait.”
Seema struggles off the table awkwardly, triggering your natural instinct to go to her aid, but you’re paralyzed by spasms of censure cramping through you: This is surely Seema’s fault. It’s her fault that there’s only this motley group to depend on—a couple of friends, inexperienced and uncommitted, a distant sister, a dying mother—and no husband, no father. It’s her fault that your grandson is to be robbed of a father, a grandfather, and a full and fulfilling childhood. It’s her fault that you too were robbed of your full family and a fulfilled past.
And, as though your heart and mind—revolting against being asked to withstand the extremes you’ve swung through the last few minutes, from boundless affection toward Seema to censure—have released some check on your body, the pain from earlier this morning comes surging back. You begin to shake uncontrollably.
Seema has left the room with her friend and the doctor before your distress is noticeable. Tahera and Fiaz surround you.
Ammi? Aunty? What’s happening? Are you okay?
You clench your jaw and breathe out—I’m fine, I’m fine. You don’t want to make a scene. Already the sonologist is gaping at you, unease on his face. You grasp Tahera’s hand to steady yourself and ask her to lead you out of the room. Fiaz and Tahera assist you back to reception, the pain pulsing every step of the way. Fiaz eases you onto a seat, and Tahera sits beside you, stroking your still-shuddering shoulders and chest.
Fiaz hovers about with questions: Shall I get her some water? Should we call someone?
The receptionist makes as if to hurry toward you, and you wave her back. “Where’s Seema?” you pant. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“Don’t worry about Seema,” Tahera says. She rubs your palms and blows into them, as you’d done to her many times when she was a child, in a futile attempt to ease the pain.
You’d been caught off guard by the suddenness with which it returned. You know its course, its peak and gradual ebb—you’d like to be alone with it. “I want to leave. Everybody is staring at me.”
You try to push yourself off your seat. Fiaz lends you his arm.
“Ammi, stay here till you feel better. It’s raining,” Tahera says.
Yes, outside everything is a blur, only smudged shapes visible through the raindrops that break against the glass and speckle the window.
“We can wait in the car,” Fiaz says, responding to your tightening grip on his arm. “Leigh is with Seema. She’ll take care of her.”
You hobble past the receptionist, holding tightly on to Fiaz’s arm. Downstairs, you wait on the steps under the glass canopy for Fiaz to drive his car up to the entrance of the hospital. You ignore Tahera’s pleas to take a seat in the lobby inside or to at least take her arm for support.
She is distraught. “Ammi, why won’t you listen to me?”
Because: this pain is an appropriate punishment for your unforgivable anger toward Seema. How could you start blaming her, like her father and sister? Instead of making amends, your visit to San Francisco is now tainted. Clutching the ends of your shawl to your chest, you huddle in your misery and your suffering. “Leave me be, Tahera. Nothing can be done.”
The spasms in your legs make it painful to stand, and you know you should take the arm Tahera has offered, but you can’t ask for it now. “You can’t help me, Tahera. If you want to help me, there’s only one thing you can do. Help your sister.”
You lean back on the front glass wall of the lobby. Tahera begins pacing the length of the shelter, her jilbab swirling. But you have nothing to offer her, you know only what you need from her.
“Ammi, why do you say such things? Is my presence here no help to you? And am I not helping Seema already?”
“Promise me you’ll continue to help her after I’m gone.”
“Why do you only think about Seema, Ammi? You never think about me.”
One side of Tahera’s hijab and jilbab is wet from the sudden downpour curtaining the canopy, but she’s oblivious to it, merely dashing away the drops of water dripping down her face. The rain has become as vehement as in Chennai during the monsoons. You remember how Tahera would run up to the rooftop to catch the first shower every year, despite your admonitions, returning drenched and shivering but elated. You would wait with a towel and, if you’d made some that day, a hot glass of the peppery rasam she liked.
“Tahera, you know that’s not true. I think about you all the time. I worry about Seema—” If there is a question, it’s only which daughter you have failed more.
Fiaz’s car pulls up and he jumps out. “You’re getting wet, Aunty. Please get in.” He looks at you both, perplexed. Tahera’s standing at the other end of the steps, her face papery pale in the dark silhouette of her attire. “Tahera, you’re shivering. Why didn’t you wait inside?”
Fiaz texts that her mother and sister are with him in the car. Seema assumes this is to give her time alone with Leigh, who reports that she finally understands Seema’s reluctance to introduce her to her family.
“They’re both so intense. Like they have tempests bottled up inside them. Your mother was literally shaking after seeing the baby pictures. But I’m glad to have met them. And I’m so happy to see baby Ishraaq curled up inside you.”
Leigh’s previous resentment seems to have evaporated, and Seema is relieved. “Thank you, for being here today. The pelvic exam would have been an ordeal.”
Should she say it now? I can’t imagine going through the delivery without you! She wants them both there, Leigh and Tahera.
She pivots instead to the dinner party, thankful that her mother had insisted on it. “Just you and Fiaz. I thought, you know, a good opportunity—”
“No Divya?”
“Divya? No! Why?”
Leigh shrugs, and although they continue to hold hands as they leave the clinic, and even manage to steal a few kisses in the elevator, some of Leigh’s earlier restraint has returned.
There’s a light drizzle outside, and Fiaz offers to drop Leigh off at her office, so Leigh squeezes into the back of the car with Nafeesa and Tahera. Both mother and sister appear withdrawn, Tahera especially, staring out at the rain through the window, barely acknowledging the others, while their mother sits rigid, as if to not impose on Leigh either in space or in spirit. Even Fiaz is curiously quiet.
Seema feels the need to fill the silence with chatter, launching into a description of her first view of me three months earlier, with the same 3D ultrasound technology, my face visible then. “I wish you could have seen his face today, Ammi.”
“I can wait,” Nafeesa replies, still stiffly. “It’s only a few more days.”
“Leigh was there, too,” Seema makes it a point to mention. “You thought he looked adorable, didn’t you, Leigh?”
Leigh merely nods, and Seema has to shift around to read her response. She notes the three women sitting remote like Easter Island statues, something vital missing. “Hey, where are my lilies?”
“I gave them to your mother to hold.” Leigh looks for them in the back seat.
Finally shaken out of her inertness, Nafeesa rushes to apologize. “Oh, I forgot them when we left. I’m so sorry. It was my fault. They were so lovely.”
Her mother is visibly upset, her face almost crumpling in remorse—much more than the lapse warrants. Leigh’s disappointment is palpable too, even as she turns down Fiaz’s offer to drive back to the hospital to pick them up.
But Fiaz does anyway, making a swift U-turn. When he pulls again under the canopied entrance, Leigh dashes out and returns a few minutes later with the lilies, panting. She hadn’t waited for the elevators.
“What good friends you are to Seema,” Nafeesa exclaims. “You both take such good care of her. I hope you’ll always do that.”
Her mother’s gratitude toward her friends is encouraging. Her mother has accepted Leigh as important to Seema’s well-being, even if not yet as a girlfriend, and Seema is touched. She’s touched, too, by the solemnity with which Leigh presents her the lilies the second time, as if responding to her mother’s stated hope with a promise—of forgiveness, of faithfulness.
Back at home, Seema places the flowers by her bed, adjusting the stems so the cupped openings would curve toward her sleeping self, the three lilies arcing gracefully over the vase’s tear-shaped rim.
It is afternoon in San Francisco, and the two sisters are confined to the living room. Their mother rests in the bedroom after the morning’s exertion. A soft mantle of rain cloaks the city, insulating them from everything outside. Not only has their sense of place been blotted out but also their sense of time, for the drizzly day appears at a standstill. Seema complains of aching feet—swollen these last weeks of pregnancy—and Tahera offers to massage them.
A surprised Seema accepts, and Tahera starts self-consciously, seated on the floor with Seema’s feet in her lap, the massage at first perfunctory. But as she presses her knuckles into Seema’s feet, Tahera adopts the fervor of her seven-year-old daughter, kneading her sister’s skin and flesh to the very bones inside.
Then, time doubling back on itself, she slips into an old ritual from their childhood: cracking toes, tugging on them with a quick jerk and snapping them up or down, to the satisfying accompaniment of a pop.
“I can’t remember the last time we did that.” Seema winces in enjoyment. “It must have been a day like this.” A holiday spent indoors, sitting on a damp windowsill with Tahera, cracking each other’s toes to pass time, watching the rain and praying it would stop or at least lessen by the evening so she could persuade their father to take them out, perhaps to the bakery or a movie. She detested the monsoon season, for the claustrophobic powerlessness it stirred up in her, with its cloaked skies and smothering rain. “But, Tahera, you liked rainy days.”
“I still do. I miss the monsoons. It never rains like that in Irvine.” Tahera recalls with a pang what she liked most about them: the long weekends forced to stay indoors, she and Seema lying side by side in bed, heads on the same clammy pillow, reading aloud to each other, and nights spent huddling under blankets against the nippy tentacles of the monsoon chill. “But I hated that moldy smell in our clothes from drying inside. And our shoes and socks would be caked with mud.”
“Remember how Ammi would scold you for getting wet? You kept losing your raincoat at school until she—”
“Let’s not talk about Ammi.” The morning’s wretchedness is too fresh. There’s clearly not much time left for their mother, and much of what’s left is to be consumed by pain. The worst of the morning is the memory of her trying to force her mother to apologize for wanting to ease her heart’s worries about her other child. Why fault Ammi, when she herself cares for Arshad and Amina so differently? And as for Ammi’s behest: If you want to help me, help Seema . . .
Seema senses Tahera’s ache. Unlike the previous times when Tahera rebuffed conversation involving their mother, her current tone doesn’t signal a rebuke. Soon, when only reminiscences will have the power to bring their mother back to some semblance of life, who can they talk to about their mother but each other? And how are they to do that, without reopening old wounds, reliving old griefs?
As if not knowing what to do next, Tahera starts massaging her feet all over again. “Stop, Tahera. My feet have had enough, thank you.”
How to comfort a sister she hasn’t comforted in so many years, or perhaps never? She’d like to touch Tahera’s bent head, to stroke her hair, but though she has accepted Tahera’s attentions of the past twenty-four hours, she’s unsure how Tahera might react to her overtures. You couldn’t be bothered with me, Seema, Tahera said only yesterday. Reclaiming her feet from Tahera’s lap, Seema manages to find her voice. “Tahera, can I ask you something?”
Tahera stirs, but she doesn’t look up. “Is it about the guardianship? I haven’t spoken to Ismail yet.”
“No. Can I ask—what happened? After I left?”
“What happened?” Tahera rises abruptly. “You really want to know?”
Seema nods, unsure if Tahera’s question is merely rhetorical. Her sister is a hazy vision standing by her side, her face a blur Seema is glad she cannot read.
“Here, let me give your shoulders a massage too,” Tahera responds gruffly. “Ammi says you were complaining about a backache.”
Seema doesn’t demur. Standing behind Seema, Tahera sinks her fingers into muscles tense from holding extra weight, growing pliable in her hands as she digs into them. Her posture, the pressure, the concentration, is familiar to Tahera from childhood massages practiced on her parents and occasionally even her sister. From there, it’s a small step to another more frequent childhood ritual. “Your hair’s all tangled, let me fetch a comb. Single or double?”
A single plait, like when they’d do their hair in college, twin plaits like they remade for each other every morning before school.
“You choose.”
Tahera passes the comb repeatedly through Seema’s hair, her sister pliant, not protesting even when her head is yanked back at a particularly difficult tangle. It’s only then that Tahera is able to speak. The act of disentangling Seema’s hair has freed something knotted inside her as well, the act of gathering tresses and weaving them together has brought some order and calm to the snarl of memory.
“I missed you, Seema. I would lie in bed and wonder what you were doing. How you were spending your days, who you spent them with. It was very lonely after you left. Ammi became quieter, speaking only when she had to—a shadow of herself, slinking through the house. Abba remained Abba, of course. Only now he bullied us more often. He became very upset if we so much as mentioned your name. He’d stop speaking to us for days at a time.”
Tahera’s fingers are nimble. Their rhythm lends a cadence to her speaking, easing her hesitation when seeking words or phrases, their assurance lending her self-control. It helps that Seema can’t look at her, that Seema remains silent, that Tahera can pause as long as she wants to, pretending she needs to run the comb through Seema’s hair again.
“We went out less, afraid of having to face questions about you. If someone inquired, Abba would say you’re doing fine. But he’d lock himself in his study after. We stopped visiting relatives. Our world shrunk around us. Only Halima Aunty called. She never cared what Abba did.”
What Tahera remembers, but cannot speak about: How it was then, when she’d been searching for some escape from a life that seemed to be closing in upon her, when even the poetry she turned to for solace seemed tainted, bearing the imprint of a father who’d promised the world to his daughters yet sought to impose his will on them, she’d discovered the comforts of prayer, Halima Aunty’s quiet faith and rituals providing a refuge she could lose herself in. And the more her father mocked her transformation, the tighter she pulled its protection around her.
Seema focuses on the steady tug as Tahera pulls her hair tight, even welcoming the sudden jerks and the attendant snap of pain. These allow her to momentarily forget the hurt in Tahera’s voice, to believe that she’s experiencing Tahera’s pain herself. Her mother has never mentioned any of this, and she has not thought to ask. Never caring how it will affect others—Tahera’s charge from yesterday stings, for there’s truth in it.
Tahera finishes with the braiding and, with that, her account. Seema examines Tahera’s handiwork: two plaits, expertly braided, exactly the way Tahera used to do them years ago. Daily gestures of sisterly affection that Seema had taken for granted, then completely forgot. She can’t trust herself to say anything.
Thankfully, Tahera too seems anxious to forestall a response. “Do you have any hair bands?” she asks, already halfway to Seema’s bedroom.
“In the dresser. Top drawer.”
Tahera must flee the living room immediately, for she sees not Seema of the last week, nor the sister who abandoned her years ago, but the sister who held her hand as they walked to school, taught her to climb trees and ride a bicycle, whose capers charmed the most dreary days into promise and delight.
She fumbles in the drawer for the bands. The bedroom is dark, and she needs light, but her mother is sleeping. She pulls out a handful of elastics to select a pair by the window. Her mother is curled up on her side, legs drawn in, face calm in the soft curtained light, no traces showing of the morning’s suffering. Some afternoons, finding their mother napping like this, Tahera and Seema would unbraid her single plait and rebraid her hair into twin plaits, like the ones they sported. Ammi would scold them when she woke up, though she wouldn’t undo their work. How young the twin plaits made Ammi look then, just like how young Seema looks now and how Amina will look in a few years.
A mother for whom time will soon cease, a sister recovered from the mists of time, a daughter whom time is changing too rapidly.
Yet, do not grieve. She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss, for ever wilt thou love and she be fair—
“Did you find one?” Seema asks as Tahera hurries back to the living room with the clutch of bands.
“I just remembered,” Tahera’s voice is unsteady, “how we used to do Ammi’s hair. If only—” But she can’t continue, instead holding out the muddle of bands to Seema in a trembling palm.
Seema takes the bands and gestures to the chair in front of her. “Sit.”
Tahera sinks instead to the floor. She looks at Seema for an instant, then buries her face in Seema’s lap, even though there’s little space there, the swell of Seema’s belly obstructing most of it. Her entire body shakes, her shoulders shuddering.
This is unexpected. Seema has seldom seen Tahera cry. She’s always envied her sister’s strength, her capacity to contain her pain, her refusal to seek solace from anyone, her stubborn rejection of any offered.
“Tahera, don’t cry.” Tahera’s head lies in her lap. Is she even allowed to comfort Tahera, in light of having abandoned her, the anguish she’d caused her?
“Tara, don’t cry,” she repeats helplessly, as Tahera struggles to regain composure, smothering her sobs in Seema’s pants.
Seema begins, hesitantly, to stroke Tahera’s head. Her sister’s hair is in a loose, untidy bun. As girls, her sister had the longer hair, thick and luxurious like their mother’s. But now her hair is much diminished, much streaked with premature gray. Feeling like a trespasser, Seema undoes the knot of the bun. Then, since Tahera still doesn’t stir, she shakes out the tresses, running her fingers through them to straighten and untangle.
Tahera’s face lies against Seema’s belly. Seema’s fingers passing through her hair, and the warmth of Seema’s body, are too comforting for Tahera to let go of. She reaches her arms around us both.
She tightens her grasp. I feel the pressure, and Tahera can feel me shift as I respond to it, my slightest movements magnified by the proximity. The heat of me dries the wet from her tears, and the moving life of me calms and soothes.
She says, voice muffled by her mouth against the sky of my world, “Seema, you can name me as Ishraaq’s guardian.”
Seema cups Tahera’s face to study it. “Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
Tahera’s face is blotched with tears, the loosened hair disheveled and straggly. “Turn around,” Seema says. “Let me fix your hair.”
As Tahera sits cross-legged on the floor, like all those years ago in Chennai, my to-be mother combs my could-be mother’s hair and gathers her tresses into the twin plaits of their girlhood, both silent now—for what more can be said?—while rain patters against the windowpanes.