I shook my head.
“You will,” she insisted, making it sound like a command, an injunction. “Remember that time I took you to a shop and you wouldn’t stop crying? Maybe you don’t, you were just a baby.”
“No,” I lied, “I remember it perfectly.”
“We were waiting for Appa to come, right? Well, I got so frustrated with your crying that I left the shop and stood outside. I could still hear you sniffling; then suddenly I couldn’t hear you anymore. I came back and peeked inside the shop, and there you were, happy as anything, playing with a packet of biscuits and laughing. And the people in the shop, all these strangers, were watching you and smiling. And that’s when I thought, She’ll be fine.”
She touched her hand to my cheek, then turned and left the kitchen, leaving me standing there with the bedecked gods in their alcove.
I stared at their smug brass faces. Then, on some chaotic impulse, I reached out and, one by one, I ripped the fat marigolds from their brass chests, shredding each flower, smashing them in my fists before letting them fall to the ground.
When I was finished, the floor was covered in tiny yellow petals and green stalks, the air was filled with the vegetal smell of night and soil, and my hands were sticky and hot. My mind felt hollow, empty but for a single thought. It was a thudding, shrieking certainty, and it echoed so loudly within the confines of my head, I could not believe that I was the only one hearing it.
She meant to leave with him.
22
THE DAY AFTER THE soldiers passed through, the house seemed especially quiet, as in the aftermath of a storm. As Amina and I walked down to the barn, a thin fog clung to our hands and faces, and I was grateful when it was dispelled by the warmth that steamed from the hay and from the broad, damp flanks of the cow. While I was crouched next to her, Riyaz ducked under the opening of the barn. He was evidently late, for he began untying the mules in a hurry, glancing neither at me nor at Amina, who had started to chew on her lip. Just as he was about to leave, she began, “Try to be careful. With those soldiers around the place—”
“I know,” he said irritably, cutting her off. “Don’t you think I already know?”
“Okay, okay,” Amina said, her tone soothing. Perhaps to change the subject, she drew his attention to me. “See how much she’s learned in a few days?” she said, and pride was evident in her voice. “She’ll be an expert in a few more days.”
I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck, which grew immediately hot. I waited for him to speak, but all he said was, “Hm,” and despite myself, I was disappointed. I heard him leave, the mules clanging mournfully after him. When he was gone, Amina sighed and squatted next to me.
“Murgi,” she said with a wry shake of her head, “don’t get married.”
I smiled slightly, not taking my eyes off my hands.
“Sometimes I think,” she said, “that the only way to make him even see that I’m there is to put my nose in the air and bray like one of his mules. Otherwise? Forget it.” Then she sighed again and tapped me on the shoulder. “All right, that’s enough for today. I’ll finish up here.”
I handed the pot to her and stood, stretching my legs, while she worked deftly. I felt an elusive uneasiness that lasted all through breakfast. Afterward, instead of going to fetch a broom, as she usually did, or starting to wash a load of clothes, Amina spoke a few words in Kashmiri to Riyaz’s mother, who was sweeping the morning’s ashes into the smoldering fireplace, and turned to me. “Put on your shoes,” she said.
“Why?”
“Uff, not your questions again,” she said. “Just do it, Murgi.”
By now, I knew better than to argue with her. I laced up my sneakers and soon we were walking away from the house. At first I thought we were going back to Mohammad Din’s, but halfway there, Amina chose a different path, a switchbacking trail that swung uphill and seemed to lose itself high in the pines. I tried again to ask where we were going, but Amina turned around and put a stern finger to her lips, so I shut up and gave myself over to the pleasure of the walk.
The path veered back and forth, glittering with dust and stones, and at some point, I realized I could no longer hear the crunch of our footsteps; the stones had given way to pine needles, the air was tinged with the medicinal sharpness of pine sap, and we were passing under the long, thick shadows of the trees themselves. They grew at impossible angles from the slope, their trunks bursting horizontally from the ground before changing direction and curving straight up, rising a hundred feet or more above us. Whatever sunlight reached us was soft, velvet; and in some places, partially covered by beds of dry, brown needles, were enormous, moss-spattered rocks. I could hear nothing apart from the wind and the soft rustle of our progress.
Then, without warning, the trees ended, like curtains being drawn away, and we scrambled up a steep stretch of path that dipped and terminated in a wide, rocky bowl, around which the boulders formed a sort of natural amphitheater. In the very middle of it, a thin white waterfall speared down. Amina and I slithered down to the base, and I could not contain a cry of surprise.
Under a jutting lip of rock was a pool. The water fell into it from an opening in the rock above, churned to a filigreed white froth that spread and calmed over the moss-green rocks, a perfect and private cascade in the sun. Amina was grinning at my obvious delight.
“Isn’t is beautiful?” she asked. “It comes from high, high up the mountain.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“Go,” she said.
“Where?”
She motioned toward the falling water.
“You’re joking! I’m wearing jeans!”
“Go, Murgi! The sun will dry you off in ten minutes.” She pushed me, laughing, and I felt the spray from the waterfall graze my face, cold enough to make me gasp.
“Wait, wait, let me at least take my shoes off!” I peeled off my socks and tucked them into the toes of my sneakers. I looked at her. “What about you? I’m not doing it if you don’t.”
“After you finish,” she said, giving me another playful push.
“Fine.” I stared at the waterfall then took two steps forward. It was like being picked up and flung into a wall. The water drove into me with incredible force. I gasped at the cold, at the same instant feeling my blood, startled awake, surging hot through my body. When I stepped out, I was laughing uncontrollably. “Now you!” I cried.
Calmly, Amina removed her headscarf and placed it next to my shoes, then walked forward. For an instant, I couldn’t see her as she went behind the veil of water; then she was there, smiling as it poured down her face. When she stepped out, the kohl had run from her eyes, and she was laughing too.
She led me to a wide, flat rock in the sun, and we sat there squeezing the water from our soaked clothes. Amina lay back and closed her eyes, and I followed suit, feeling a lovely, tingling warmth spread slowly across my skin.
Amina let out a long sigh. “I haven’t come here since Aaqib was born. I’d forgotten how nice this feels. Lying in one place, doing nothing.” She raised her arms over her head and stretched like a cat, toes and fingers curling slowly.
The sun burned hot and orange against my closed eyelids, its warmth broken only when a cloud passed above us. I could hear the whirring and clicking of insects.
“Can I tell you something, Murgi?” Amina said. Her voice seemed to come from far away. I opened my eyes to find her on her side, head propped on her elbow, watching me. “I’m very happy that you came here to the village.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she put up a hand.
“I wasn’t sure in the beginning how it would be,” she went on, “but it has been so nice, having you stay with us. For me, especially, to have someone to talk to. So thank you.”
An echo rang in the back of my head. Zoya saying, For me, it is nice. Zoya, to whom I had given no more than a passing thought since my arrival here. Guilt made my tone more curt than I intended when I said, “There’s no r
eason to thank me, Amina. I’ve done nothing.”
“But you have,” she insisted. “You don’t understand what I’m saying. Listen, Murgi, I have no reason to complain. Allah has given me a lot in my life, but sometimes it is so quiet in the house I think I might go mad. Aaqib is just a small boy, and you know Ma doesn’t like to talk more than she has to. And Riyaz.” She shrugged. “Well, you’ve seen what he can be like, no?”
She was smiling, but I could sense the loneliness that lay behind her smile, and I could hear, too, the entreaty in her voice, for a woman’s understanding, a woman’s sympathy. And to my lasting shame, I denied her both. I recalled, with an admixture of guilt and pleasure, how I’d stood with Riyaz at the edge of the porch just the previous night, gazing out at the darkening valley, the thrilling, wordless accord that had existed between us, which contained both comfort and its opposite, and which I’d felt with nobody else in my life, and I could not bring myself to agree.
I didn’t know whether or not my silence disappointed Amina, but she said nothing further. Instead, we continued to lie on the rock, our clothes drying slowly.
Finally, Amina rolled onto her other side and sat up, reaching at the same time for her headscarf. “We should go back, Murgi,” she said. “Ma will be waiting.”
I nodded and pulled myself upright, feeling the blood rushing from my head. A thin bank of clouds had come from nowhere and covered the sun, and I shivered.
“Amina?” I said. She was shaking out her headscarf, pine needles falling to the rock below our feet, and she looked up. “Why don’t you want me to see Bashir Ahmed?” I asked.
She stood gazing down at the colorful ends of her scarf drooping from her hands. “It’s not that I don’t want you to see him, Murgi,” she said finally. “It’s just that after what happened, Abbaji hasn’t been the same. Small things upset him. Like if I bring his dinner five minutes late, or if he cannot find his jai namaz. He falls sick, and it takes a long time for him to recover. So if you tried to talk to him, I don’t know what might happen.”
Perhaps she sensed I was about to object, because she added, in a firmer voice, “I’m sorry, Murgi. I have to think of Abbaji’s health first. In a few days, if he’s feeling better, I’ll ask him. But not before then.” She glanced at me. “And, anyway, what’s the hurry? Stay a few more days. We can go for walks, or come back here to the waterfall, whatever you like.”
She trailed off, chewing a corner of her lip. It was a habit with her, I’d noticed, whenever she was expecting resistance or argument. But I did not argue. She sounded so pleading, and what harm would a few more days do?
“Then at least let me pay you,” I said. “For letting me stay with you, I mean. You’ve been so kind and I don’t want to—”
But this time, she wouldn’t even let me finish. “Murgi,” she said in a colder, loftier tone than she’d used with me so far. “Didn’t I just tell you how I was happy that you are here? Didn’t I just say that I liked talking to you? You’re my friend, and I don’t take money from friends, understand?” Her tone was light, but there was a trembling edge to it that warned me to drop the subject, and I did.
“I understand,” I mumbled. “Thank you, Amina. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, still in that lofty tone. “Now we should get ready to go back home.”
Amina wrapped her scarf over her head, tossing each corner over the opposite shoulder. I pulled my socks on and quickly laced up my shoes. When I stood, I noticed that she was looking at me.
“Murgi,” she said, “can I ask you something?”
I nodded.
“What happened to your mother? How did she die?”
A moment passed in which I wanted to reveal everything to her, this woman whom I had known barely four days, but who had showed me such impossible kindness, and I still don’t understand why I was unable to speak the truth. Perhaps there is no explanation other than that I had been weaned too long on secrecy, taught by my mother from earliest childhood the strange and unquantifiable power of keeping one’s counsel. But that is probably too generous an assessment. I suspect the truth was that, like so many who cloak themselves in mistrust and call it independence, I was merely a coward.
“It was an accident,” I said softly, hoping it would be enough.
It was; all at once her brow relaxed. Putting her arm around my shoulders, she squeezed. “Come on, Murgi,” she said gently. “Let’s go back home.”
That evening, I sat in my room beside the window, with the lights off. Earlier in the evening I’d had a lesson with Sania, during which I was thrilled to see that she’d retained everything I’d taught her the day before. Mohammad Din had come in toward the end for a cup of tea, giving us an amusing account of the panchayat meeting. The stocky man with the complaint about the robbers had apparently gotten his story so garbled that by the end he was claiming a horde of fifty men had been hiding behind a single tree. It felt good to laugh with the two of them, and as I walked back, looking down the cornfields, golden in the evening sun, my mood was hopeful. It stayed with me through dinner, during which Aaqib insisted on serving me, which Amina, with an amused smile, allowed him to do. With his lips pursed in concentration, he carried my plate to me, collapsing in high-pitched laughter when I accepted with a stately bow.
I did not go out to stand on the porch after dinner, instead returning straight to my room. Now I sat by the window in the semidarkness. Soon enough, as I knew he would, Riyaz appeared on the porch. He walked to the edge, just beyond the line of light, to where we’d stood the night before. I saw his head swivel, looking left and right for me. Then, slowly, with every appearance of casualness, he turned so that he was facing my window.
Part of me longed to stand up and join him, to resurrect the thrilling ease of yesterday, but I thought again of Amina, her sweet declaration of friendship, and I did not move. I knew that he could see my shape in the window, even if he could not see my features. I felt his eyes, expectant, waiting, boring into mine.
A second went by, then ten. Then a long, excruciating minute.
Riyaz shifted. His right hand dropped into the pocket of his kurta, and he turned back to stare out at the dark valley. I saw anger and humiliation in the stiff set of his shoulders, and my heart sank. He walked down along the side of the barn and was quickly lost to my sight.
23
THE PEOPLE MY PARENTS invited to dinner were not their friends. The men were not men my father met for golf or beer or a game of cards, nor were the women those whom my mother would dream of inviting over for a cup of tea. At best, my parents saw them twice or thrice a year, whenever they took it into their heads to host one of these dinners, and their relationship with them rarely, if ever, cracked the shell of lighthearted banter. I never considered it, but looking back now, I realize that my parents, despite their drastically different personalities, were both essentially guarded and solitary people, who found it difficult to form true friendships, which would have required risk and revelation beyond what they were prepared to provide.
When I woke up on the morning of the party, my mother was already on the move. I found her on her hands and knees, swabbing under the sofa. After that she proceeded to carry in from the garden heavy stone planters, each containing a tall, luxuriant ficus, and arrange them around the house. All the while, the smell of frying onions and spices haunted the kitchen. On any other day, she might have enlisted my help, handing me a lapful of peas to shell or a dusting rag, but today she worked alone, and it made me afraid. My father had gone to the factory for half a day’s work, and, more unusually, Bashir Ahmed, too, had gone out. My mother and I were alone for the first time in what felt like months, and as our house was transformed, under her hands, from an ordinary, worn place to a dazzling, glowing stage, I found myself more and more agitated. But I said nothing. I did not accuse her, or burst into tears, or threaten to tell my father. I did none of these things. It was as if I believed that speaking would hasten the disaster, make it re
al. So, paralyzed, I did what I had always done: I kept her close in my sights, watched her as though my life depended on it.
By 3:00 p.m. Bashir Ahmed had still not returned, and my mother, glancing at the clock and taking a last look around at her work, went upstairs to nap. Shut out of her bedroom, I moped around, half hoping Bashir Ahmed would not come back at all, but I heard him shortly afterward, the front door softly opening and closing, followed by the still-softer click of the guest bedroom door. My father returned at 6:00 p.m., carrying a black plastic bag full of brown Kingfisher beer bottles, which he arranged in the fridge. Coming up to me, he put an arm around my shoulder. “Look,” he said softly, with a gesture intended to take in our whole house, which glowed under the various lamps my mother had switched on before she went upstairs, the ficuses fluttering in an invisible draft, the table covered in a snowy white cloth, the Kashmiri carpet a pool of dark velvet in the low-lit entryway. There was pride and more than a little pain in his voice.
He went over to the bar, where he dumped ice into two glasses, pouring me a Coke and himself a rum. “Cheers,” he said solemnly, and we clinked glasses. Then we went into the living room, where I sat on the sofa, while he ran his finger along his LPs, settling on Joni Mitchell’s Blue. When her plaintive, nasal voice began, soaring above the vulnerable, open chords of her guitar, I held on to my glass even tighter. Something would happen tonight. I was sure of it.
A door opened, and my father and I turned. Bashir Ahmed had emerged from his bedroom. Tonight, he wore his black kurta, his hair combed back, the lower lids of his eyes darkened by kohl. With his gaunt face shaded in his trimmed beard, he looked especially handsome. He came to stand before my father, and, for some odd reason, they shook hands.
“Mr. Ahmed,” my father said with formality.
“Janaab,” replied Bashir Ahmed.
Another movement at the top of stairs caught our attention. We raised our eyes to see my mother walking down. My mouth fell open. She wore a red-and-gold sari I’d never seen before, its folds shimmering and shifting color with each step she took. Her hair, which she normally tied in a careless bun, was tonight loose around her shoulders. Her diamond earrings were twin points of light, and she wore a single gold bangle on each wrist. Her eyes, like Bashir Ahmed’s, were lined with kohl, and her lips, slightly parted, were dark with a touch of lipstick.
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