The Heart Is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai

by Elizabeth Flock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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