A Thousand Questions

by Saadia Faruqi

  I peer into the fridge as if it holds the answers to all my questions. “Do you need something?” the servant girl asks from behind me. Sakina, that’s her name.

  “Um, Coke?” I turn around and mutter, trying to keep my words to a minimum to avoid making a mistake in Urdu. Then I smile, hoping she’ll help me.

  Sakina sighs noisily and stands up, raking her chair on the tiled floor. She walks to the open fridge and points. “In the last shelf,” she tells me very slowly in Urdu, as if I’m some stupid kid who can’t see properly. I look at where she’s pointing. Oh. The Coke cans are right there in the front.

  I take one and go back to the kitchen table. “Can I sit here?” I ask hesitantly. I’m pretty sure I said that correctly, no grammatical mistakes or anything.

  She frowns. “Why are you asking me? I’m just a servant. This whole house belongs to your nani, so you can sit wherever you like.”

  I understand that loud and clear. Wow, she’s mad about something. I almost run back out of the kitchen, but I need some privacy, and this is the only place nobody will look for me. A few hours ago, Mom even barged into the bathroom while I was doing my business, demanding to know if I had diarrhea. I screamed.

  “Listen”—I try to smile—“where I come from, we don’t have servants. Or at least my family doesn’t. My friend Zoe has a . . . um . . . cleaning lady that comes in once a week, but that’s not me.”

  I’m so proud of having said all that in Urdu. I smile at her, but all I get in return is a stare. She doesn’t care. I sit on the chair farthest from her and take out my journal from under my arm. I ignore Sakina and begin to write.

  Dear Dad,

  Summer vacations are boring, if you know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t because you’re an adult. You must be super busy with work and everything. Do you ever take a break? Where do you go?

  Pakistan is continuing to get on my nerves. There are flies everywhere, and last night a bug crawled into my bed. I woke up with red, itchy spots on my arms and legs. DISGUSTING AND CREEPY!

  Mom is being super strange here. She and Nani (another word for grandmother, in case your Urdu is even worse than mine) hardly ever talk, but they have these tight little conversations about nothing that seem to have all this unspoken history behind them. Like that one time you visited us in our Houston apartment when I was six . . . remember that? It’s the only time I ever saw you after you left, and you and Mom sat on opposite ends of the couch and said all these little nothings. Isn’t the weather nice today? Did you watch the new Star Wars movie yet? And then Mom said, “How do you think I’d have time to watch movies when I’m taking care of a child single-handedly?”

  Anyway, Mom and Nani have the same weird little conversations. Funny how one reminded me of the other. Ha!

  Nana, aka Grandfather, is awesome, though. He tells the corniest jokes, and he’s got a huge collection of old books that I can’t wait to look through. Most of them seem to be about engineering, but he says there are a few coffee-table books with pictures and maps. Although I’m not sure why those books are stuffed in the back of a bookshelf. Shouldn’t they be on a coffee table? Ha, ha!

  Nana’s also teaching me to play chess. I know quite a bit already. Do you know how to play chess? Don’t worry if you don’t—I can teach you when we meet. If we meet. As they say in Pakistan, land of the flies, inshallah.

  Your loving daughter,

  Mimi xoxoxo

  A noise startles me. I look up to see Sakina staring at me intensely. She clears her throat. “What are you doing?” she asks, pointing her knife toward my journal.

  I put my hands over the page. “Nothing,” I reply. Then I reconsider. It’s not like she can read English or anything. “It’s a notebook my mom gave me. I’m supposed to write down all the places I visit and new things I experience.”

  “Like what?”

  “Um . . .” I look around. “Like, take those bananas. They are so different from the ones I eat in the US, so they’d be a new experience I could write about. How they’re . . . um . . . mushy and gooey on the inside and brownish on the outside.”

  She sits up straight and squares her shoulders. “Our bananas are the best. They come straight from the farms, no pesticides.” At least that’s what I think she says. I don’t really know the Urdu word for farms. Or pesticides.

  I find myself wanting to smile, but I don’t. There’s something about her that makes me want to rile her up, get a response. She’s so determined, with her mouth set in a straight line and her scowl ready to display itself at a moment’s notice. I say with complete seriousness, “No offense, but our fruits are so much better than yours. Everything I’ve eaten here so far tastes . . . unusual.” I turn my lips downward to show her what I mean. Strange, possibly yucky. Nothing to write home about.

  She looks at me with her mouth open. The scowl is gone, replaced by a smoothness that makes her seem almost at ease. There is a sudden, unexpected gleam in her eye. She puts down her knife and gets up deliberately. She goes to the fridge and comes back with a yellow oval fruit. “I have . . . challenge for you,” she says.

  And guess what? She says the sentence in clearly spoken English.

  8

  Sakina

  A Deal with the Devil

  The American girl watches as I slice the mango. Juice drips down my fingers, but I resist the urge to lick them. Mangoes are the king of all the fruit, the pride of Pakistan, but they’re so expensive Abba can hardly afford them. Begum Sahiba allows the servants to eat the older ones from the back of the fridge, those that are almost rotting. I don’t care; I’d eat a rotten mango over an American banana any day.

  This mango is definitely not rotten. It’s fat and juicy, just arrived from the market in a box filled with about twenty-five others. “Only for the guests,” Begum Sahiba had warned us with a glare. Of course. I wasn’t going to have Abba lose his job over a mango.

  But now, I have an idea. It didn’t occur to me until I saw Mimi write in her little gray book. Maybe these guests will be a blessing after all, just like Amma says. Guests always come with blessings from God, she says. I’ve never really agreed with her. Whenever we have guests at our house—cousins, aunts and uncles, long-lost friends come to Karachi from the villages to see the sights—they seem to bring with them empty stomachs, unwashed clothes, and unshakeable thirst. Amma has to cook more, Abba has to go the big market and bring home plastic bags filled with meat and vegetables, and I have to wash clothes all day long. Guests are nothing but work.

  But this American girl, with all her high-and-mighty ways, may just be worth all the work I do for her. She’s very interesting in some ways. Her clothes, for instance, always have words on them. I’ve never seen girls wear clothes with sentences written on them, only boys. Maybe this is how they do things in America. Today, her shirt is light blue. On one side is a tomato with stick legs and a mustache; on the other side is a ketchup bottle. On top of the tomato is a speech bubble with the words BRO, IS THAT YOU?

  I think they call ketchup bro in America. How strange.

  I set the mango in front of her, gleaming gold. I’ve cut it into strips the traditional way: two big sections down the lengths, and one big pit. She stares at it uncertainly. “I’ve only ever seen mango cut into cubes, and they’re usually orange.”

  I try not to shudder. She’s ignorant and slightly dumb. Still, the fact that she knows English is enough to increase her value in my eyes. I stretch my lips into what I hope is a smile. “Try. Promise you like.”

  She turns to me. “That’s another thing. How do you know English?”

  I have to be patient, I tell myself. “Do you think I’m . . . what do you say . . . uneducated?” I ask her, but gently. There’s a high chance she actually does think all Pakistanis are uneducated. Yesterday, she marveled at a McDonald’s ad on television. I wonder what she’ll say when she hears we also have Pizza Hut, Hardee’s, KFC, and all the other American restaurant chains. Not to mention the latest iPhones. H
er eyes will probably pop out of their sockets.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. You work here all day. When do you go to school?”

  I squelch my frustration. Her questions are too many, too fast. I’d rather she taste the mango. I gesture toward it. “First eat. Then I answer.”

  The kitchen door bangs open, and we both look up, startled. Tahira bustles in, holding a laundry basket full of wet clothes. “Salaam, Maryam Ji.” She grins, bobbing her head. “Eating delicious mangoes, I see?”

  Mimi looks at her uncertainly. “Is it any good, do you think?” She uses the wrong word for good, which makes me relax just a bit. This girl isn’t perfect either.

  Tahira stares at her with round eyes. “Any good? What sort of question is that? A mango is the best fruit, the sweetest, the juiciest! When I was a young girl, my friends and I would climb up the tree in our village and eat two or three at a time. Once my brother got a stomachache so bad—”

  This could go on forever. “Don’t you have to hang those clothes outside, Tahira?” I prompt, giving her a hard look.

  Grumbling under her breath, she departs out the back door to the clothesline.

  “Now, where were we?” I say, shutting the door firmly behind her.

  Mimi looks at the door, then back at her plate doubtfully. She picks up one slice gingerly and bites into it. I look at her face as it transforms from boredom to interest, and finally to utter delight. She gobbles down the slice, then another, then sucks on the pit. Juice dribbles down her chin, but she continues to eat.

  “Wow, wow, wow!” she whispers. “What on earth is this fruit? How is it so amazing?”

  “So you agree? Pakistan wins?”

  She licks her lips and reaches for another mango slice. “Oh yeah, definitely. Pakistan ten, America zero.”

  I’m pretty sure that’s a sports comparison. Americans are known to be very sporty. I sit down next to her and point to her journal. “So now you make deal with me?”

  She nods eagerly. “Anything. I’m dying to hear all about it.”

  I consider this. I know she’s not really dying, so her excited expression must mean she’s extremely eager. “Why?” I ask.

  “Are you kidding? You’re finally talking to me. Do you know how many times I’ve tried making friends with you, but you just scowl and walk away? I mean, you’re the only person my age in a thousand-mile radius. Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you and hear about how your English is so good but you work as a cook? It’s fascinating!”

  I can feel the scowl she’s talking about worry my forehead. Despite her lightning-fast speech, I’ve managed to get the gist of it. How easy her life is, how simple.

  I struggle to explain the facts of life to her. “I’m a servant. Your nani would . . . kill me? . . . if she see me sitting around, eh, chatting.”

  She immediately looks around the kitchen. “I think she’s sleeping,” she whispers. Interestingly, she seems as afraid of Begum Sahiba as everyone else.

  “Of course she is sleeping,” I say. “Everyone sleeps in the afternoon.”

  “The lunch your father made was very good. My mom says she needs a nap after such delicious food.”

  I nod. Anyone who praises my abba can’t be all bad. “Thank you. He work very hard.”

  “Works very hard.”

  I pause. “What?”

  “Works very hard, not work . . .” She stops and bites her lip. “Never mind. Where is your abba right now?”

  I wave to the back door. “There is a little covered . . . eh . . . outside where all the servants lie down to . . . eh . . . relax in afternoon. I don’t like to sit with them because, you know, the driver, he smoke, and it make my eyes water.”

  She nods. “I hate cigarette smoke too. It’s so yucky.”

  Yucky. I like this word. But I don’t tell her that. I have to ask her about the deal before it’s too late.

  “So,” I say, switching to Urdu, but speaking slowly so she can understand me. “You asked me how I know English. My abba used to work in a different house when I was little. My job was to play with the children of the family. The children had a tutor who came to teach them math and science and English. I was there the whole day, every day, and so I learned with them. Writing in English, just a little bit. But I can read a lot. The newspaper, storybooks, the signs on the street. They didn’t even realize it.”

  She is silent. “So you never actually went to school?” She speaks in Urdu too, broken and hesitant.

  I take a deep breath. There’s no use getting angry. It’s a reality I can’t escape. “Poor people have to work. We don’t have the luxury of school.”

  “I . . . I . . .” She switches to English. “I’m so sorry.”

  I blink away the fierceness from my eyes. This is good, I remind myself. She’s feeling sorry for me, which means she may help me. “I’ll be okay now you are here,” I tell her firmly. “You can teach me English.”

  9

  Mimi

  If Pigs Could Fly, Where Would They Fly To?

  Sakina’s words echo in my head all night. Teach me how to speak English so I can pass the admission test for school. Her English isn’t all bad. She knows words, but not grammar and tenses. Probably the same as my Urdu. I agreed without a single thought, of course, right there in the kitchen while the family and servants all took their afternoon nap. How could I not? A deal is a deal, and that mango she fed me was truly delicious.

  A cool breeze wafts in from my open window and makes the white cotton curtains billow in waves. My bed is on the other side of the room, a strong brown wooden thing with four huge posters and a leather headboard. It belonged to my uncle Faizan, who’s studying to be a doctor in England. He and Mom are Facebook friends, but he hardly ever calls on the phone because Mom says he’s something called a millennial. Two years ago, he visited us in Houston during spring break. Mom took him around to see all the sights, and in the evenings they sat in our little living room and ate Pakistani takeout food from Kabob Kitchen down the street, keeping me company as I watched Nickelodeon. All I remember about that trip is that every sentence Mom and Uncle Faizan spoke started with Do you remember . . . ?

  I lie back, staring at the sliver of moon, wondering if Sakina can see it from her bedroom too. What is her room like? Her house? Does she have brothers and sisters? A mom? I know nothing about her, except that she’s always working, even in the afternoon when the others are sleeping. She goes home on the back of her father’s motorcycle in the evening, her scarf fixed on her head, not even turning once to look at me.

  I feel like the new girl in school, wanting the popular girl to like me. Only this isn’t school, and the popular girl hasn’t even seen the inside of one. There’s a tightness in my chest at the thought of all the servants in Pakistan never going to school. All the poor children sitting on street corners and cleaning rich people’s houses.

  Nana’s driver, Malik, took me and Mom for a drive around the neighborhood on our first day in Karachi. We drove to a little park at the end of the street, and then to the Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner. At the traffic light was a little boy around six or seven. His face was dusty and his clothes were torn. He held out a filthy hand and muttered words I couldn’t catch because the window was rolled up and the music was blasting in our air-conditioned car.

  I didn’t sleep that night either.

  I slowly sit up and take out my journal from the bedside table drawer. I know it’s silly to write to a father who left me, who doesn’t ever call or visit me. There’s not even a small chance that he’ll ever read the journal, but maybe that’s why I like writing in it. I can say whatever is in my heart, ask a thousand questions, without any fear of being laughed at.

  Dear Dad,

  Today I tried a new fruit: mango. I know it’s not really new, but the taste of the Pakistani mango is so much better than anything I’ve ever eaten. I tried one, then another, and then a third, until my stomach was about to burst. My T-shirt has splotches of yellow on it,
which I’m not sure can be washed off, but my heart is happy.

  I think I’ve made a friend. Her name is Sakina, and her biggest talent is cooking. Even the chicken nuggets she cooks are so soft and delicious, even though they’re spicy. She’s always so serious and sad, as if her entire body hurts. I’m going to see if I can make her smile. I bet she’s got the prettiest smile.

  By the way, do you wonder why I like nuggets so much? I still remember that day you took me to Chesterton for lunch. I was only five, so I don’t really remember it, but I have the picture Mom took of us. Me in my white polka-dot dress and a bow in my hair, and you with that black T-shirt that said I DON’T LIKE MORNING PEOPLE. OR MORNINGS. OR PEOPLE.

  I’m not really a morning person either. Did you know that?

  Probably not.

  Miss you,

  Mimi

  There’s a little bit of a lie in what I’ve written. I do remember some things about that day. Snatches of fragrances. The tone of voices. Dad insisting that Mom take lots of pictures. Mom’s annoyed face. Dad’s aftershave lotion tickling my nose as he hugged me for the last time. I still remember that aftershave: musky fresh with a hint of lemon.

  When I was younger, I used to think that smell was the way all fathers smelled. Warm and lemony. I didn’t know it was aftershave until one day in first grade I went to the mall with Mom. We passed by a perfume counter at Macy’s and there, mingled with all the smells, was Dad’s. “He’s here!” I cried, jumping up and down right there in the Macy’s cosmetics department. It took Mom about two seconds to realize what I meant, and why I thought Dad was around somewhere. She crouched down to meet me at eye level, gripping my hand hard enough to make me stop jumping. She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, they were wet. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s not him,” she whispered, her cheek close to mine. “It’s the cologne he used to wear. Look.”