Silk Tether

by Minal Khan

  I stopped sipping my coffee. I had recently taken my SAT test and had completely forgotten about Tanzeela over the past week. “That’s great,” I said. “Tomorrow it is. Thank you, Mama,” I added as she exited the kitchen.

  She popped back in. “Papa asked me to ask you which colleges you have begun applying to.”

  I took a big gulp of my coffee. The answer was: none. Let me explain, though. I had fully prepared to apply to many colleges. I had written out applications. Completed short answer essays and questions. Looked at shiny pictures of many college campuses that boasted horticulture, acapella groups, and star-rated dining hall food.

  But something was stopping me. A nagging fear. Left over from when I was eleven years old, when I first visited America. Summer of 2001. July, to be exact. My father had declared that he had had enough of the Berlin Wall and the Colosseum and wanted a “real” vacation for the family. Our previous summer holidays had all been spent visiting historical, architectural sites: the London Bridge, the Taj Mahal the year before that, and then the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Our albums were filled with pictures of each of us poised against a pillar or wall, the Eiffel Tower or the Hanging Gardens looming in the background. Only dry, postcard photos. Ones that when you looked back at them, were only reminders of how frustrated you were with the cold wind that day, and how tourists kept ruining the picture by walking right across when you clicked.

  So that year we all decided to go to Disney World in Orlando. The first thing that hit me when I arrived in Orlando was how different America was from Europe. All, “Hey there, how are you?” instead of nodded, “Good mornings.” Everyone always smiled. Even when they had no reason to. At the bus stops, on the subway, in the hotels. And no one stared. Girls walked around in shorts and flip flops and men didn’t bother to give a second look.

  I knew even before we left the country that this is where I wanted to be. Roads were smooth. Conversation between people flowed. Americans had museums where people stared at art all day long. I could be there, too! We had left the country the same month, in July. I was only eleven but I had resolved that I would do whatever I needed to study abroad.

  I read up on everything I could about America. The Civil War. Christopher Columbus. Native Americans and the sad history of accession and defeat. I learnt that the country didn’t like government mixed with religion. Something called separatism. People could drink legally, unlike in our country. Women had jobs, parity with men in many fields. They walked around with bare, shaved legs. In fact, girls outdid boys quite substantially in American schools.

  I was hooked. I wrote a fifth grade essay on “Going to America,” painted the American flag in my art class and bought an American Barbie doll that was fashioned after a lifeguard in the TV series, Baywatch. I kept a five dollar bill under my mattress just as a reminder that this trip to America was not just a dream—that this is what I would work towards. Abraham Lincoln looked back at me from the faded green bill, resolute. Lincoln. Liberty. The bald eagle; a symbol of everything that is great about America.

  September of 2001 then came. My brother and I had the TV on and were watching an episode of the American show Friends. Ross had just told Rachel he had a new baby boy. The screen then turned blank and blinked, “America Under Attack.” This was unreal.

  The TV was left on throughout the day, throughout the night. My mother and father were anxiously glued to the screen, waiting for updates. My brother was too young to understand what was happening. He pointed to the plane as it neared the first tower of the World Trade Center and tugged at my Mother’s dupatta, asking, “Ma, which movie is this?”

  Everyone talked about it in school in the days to come. We discussed it in class, with our teachers, at break time, everywhere. Funnily, while this was all going on, while everyone around me was moved in some way or the other, I didn’t know how I felt. I was sympathetic, confused, fearful. What happens now?

  The world-aware kids in my class talked about how 9/11 would affect America’s relations with Muslim countries. The religious ones slashed out against America, declaring the whole thing an orchestrated setup. “Bush just needs an excuse to invade the Middle East and get his hands on oil!”

  I didn’t know where I stood. I was just shocked that the country in which we had been on vacation only a few months ago, where there were jumbo-sized coke bottles and fruit tarts in all colors and sizes, where people were civilized enough to stand in lines without pushing or cursing, where the store lady was so nice to me when I dropped a mug off the shelf and broke it, where all those radiant, smiling people and sweets were now part of a nation that … hated us? I wondered if the store lady would still smile at me as sweetly if I had gone there two months after the attack.

  I crumpled my five dollar Abraham Lincoln bill and stuffed it into my closet—where it couldn’t be seen.

  At the same time, I was confused. I hated that everyone around me was shaken enough to weep for the innocent victims, but barely blinked when a poor child died of malaria on the streets, in our own land. Once I was fired up enough to say as much in class.

  While my teacher and the students chatted on about the implications of 9/11, I suddenly shot up, “How come we’ve stopped looking at the problems affecting our own country before moving on to others?” I was shocked that I had the gall to say something like that. I was only twelve at the time. My classmates labeled me “anti-American.” From then on, the religious sect in our school tried earnestly to include me in their ranks; they thought we had the same interests. What could I tell them? I don’t agree with you. America is not the enemy. I’m just angry at our own people. Our people care—they do—they hate to see these lives taken. But they’re so fascinated with a foreign land’s problems that they’ve forgotten about our problems here.

  One day I asked my mother, heatedly, if Americans would keep their TVs switched on the whole day if one of our buildings had been attacked. And like everyone had at school, she, too, misunderstood my feelings. “How can you be so heartless?” she asked me.

  And when college application time finally came there were still persistent whispers in my school. You know before 9/11, twenty people from our high school got admitted to Ivy League schools in the U.S. right? This year, only four have been accepted to the U.S. Four! And three of those four happen to be U.S. citizens. Students are being stopped and scanned at the airport—young boys are being interrogated for hours for no reason. Guys with names like Osama, Muhammad, Akbar, they’re all being stopped for no other reason than their names match that of terrorists. These are kids! Fifteen, sixteen years old! Forget about applying, dude. Save your energy—go to the U.K. Head to Canada.

  The face of a boy in my class haunted me. A straight-A student. Destined to go to a big name school, we all thought. Smart, polite, a math genius. I thought back to our class talent show and how he had been voted “person least likely to be accepted to an American college.” We had laughed about it. The boy’s name: Osama bin Waleed.

  It was seven years later. 2007. Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first female to ever occupy a prime minister role in any Muslim country, had returned from exile back to Pakistan. Elections were afoot. She was Oxford-educated. Smart. Eager to purge the country of militant influence and extremism. Her voice resounded on TV every day now. “I fully understand the men behind Al Qaeda. They have tried to assassinate me twice before. The Pakistan Peoples’ Party and I represent everything they fear the most—moderation, democracy, equality for women, information, and technology.” Her voice rose sharply. “We represent the future of a modern Pakistan, a future that has no place in it for ignorance, intolerance, and terrorism.”

  My college applications were still incomplete. I wanted to go to America. But that numb fear remained. Will they want me? Am I ready? How will I represent my country when I’m there?

  As I was thinking about this, the kitchen door burst open. The new cook, Ishaq, came lumbering in. He greeted me and went back to washin
g vegetables over the sink. I went back to reading my newspaper, crackling the pages as I flipped them. My little brother, Asad, came running in, poured himself a glass of milk, and went back out. I looked up from the paper for a second, and caught Ishaq looking at me. He had protruding ears and a long weary face. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He just stood there, leering at me expectantly. He was almost smiling.

  Something within me shook. I put the mug back down on the table, got up and fled from the room. My heart was beating wildly against my rib cage. I hurriedly locked my room and stood against the door, breathing heavily. I sat down on my bed, breathing more steadily now, and held my knees up against my chest. Horrid images flashed inside my mind. He tread onto the garden as the girl ran around with her ball. The grass crunched weakly under his shoes as he approached her. The happy grin on the girl’s face vanished as he stopped before her and picked up her ball.

  My brother must have heard me breathing loudly. I heard him stop outside my door and pause. He started knocking loudly.

  “Aapa,” big sister, “open the door,” he cried in his small voice. His yelps grew into loud squeals. I wiped my tears and let him in. “Aapa, what’s wrong?” He asked. I shook my head and said nothing, but he didn’t believe me. “Aapa, what’s wrong?” He repeated over and over again. I playfully whacked my pillow against his face to shut him up. He picked it up and hurled it back in mine, with more force. We did this back and forth, and soon even I broke out laughing. It was all forgotten.

  ~

  Evening had arrived. The time for our visit to the bride’s house had come. As Ma and I rode to her house, she kept looking at me from the corner of her eye, certain that I had a hidden agenda on my mind.

  “I won’t embarrass you in any way, Ma,” I assured. “I won’t speak out of line, or ask any personal questions.” I flashed her a smile.

  She sighed. “Yes, you had better not blurt out anything that comes to your mind. God knows, with all your assumptions about the girl, you’ve even got me interested.” She chuckled to herself.

  I didn’t really know what I was waiting for, or what I expected to happen. If all went by the rules, we would merely chat over tea and then leave, nothing asked, nothing given. I knew that I probably wouldn’t even be given a chance to talk to Tanzeela in private. And even if I did, did I really expect her to pour out her life’s worries to a complete stranger?

  We reached the house exactly at eight o’clock. Shumaila Aunty, Tanzeela’s mother-in-law, answered the door.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said warmly, and hugged Ma. She turned to me and a slight hesitation came on her face. Perhaps a memory of our conversation earlier. “Ah, and here’s our lovely Ay-la,” she said briefly.

  I looked around the large house in wonder. A long chandelier hung from a high ceiling above us. Beyond Ma’s shoulder I could see a long, winding staircase, with a red carpet. Very Oscar-like, I thought to myself. I silently hoped that we would have to ascend those red-carpeted stairs. Ma’s friend, however, led us beyond the winding staircase and into another room with a high ceiling. White leather sofas with gold piping were strewn effortlessly across the room. Beneath us was a plush, white rug, the kind that I imagined Persian cats sleekly curl up on.

  “Please be seated.” Shumaila led us to a large white sofa. My mother and she exchanged pleasantries and updated each other on the recent happenings in their lives. I did as my mother instructed and said very little. Shumaila Aunty’s son, the young man who had come to our house with her, soon entered and chatted with us as well. Finally, after the tea had been served and we had started to wonder if Tanzeela would ever make an appearance, she came.

  She entered the room as silently as a cat, so that I didn’t even realize her presence until she was right there before me. Today she looked a little fresher, a little more happy. She wore a soft-cream shalwaar kurta, long shirt and trousers today, and no jewelry; no cumbersome necklace and heavy bracelets. Her hair was tied up in a neat little bun. “Asalamalaikum, welcome to our house” she greeted in her soft voice. She greeted me as she would any other guest. “Hello, Ayla,” she said graciously to me, and sat down. There was no look of silent familiarity, or interest, that she had made to me when she had come over before.

  After some time had gone by, Shumaila gestured toward me and told Tanzeela, “Why don’t you give our Ayla a tour of the house?” If Tanzeela was uncomfortable, she didn’t show it. “Of course,” she smiled at me, polite as ever.

  She showed me the ground floor of the house; the kitchen and the lounge. I nodded appreciatively where I could, and asked questions wherever appropriate. “What a beautiful painting,” I said, stopping at a large portrait of an old woman holding a pigeon. “Where did you get this from?”

  She looked at the portrait keenly, narrowing her eyes, and then shook her head, laughing. “I have no idea.” We both laughed at that, feeling more at ease around each other. I told her how I felt the exact same way when her mother-in-law had asked me where the cherub statue was from. “And it really wasn’t from Quebec,” I told her. “I realized this the day after.”

  She laughed again. “Come, let me take you upstairs,” she said. I felt overjoyed at being offered the chance to saunter up the red carpet, up the stairs. I clung on to the railing, trying to assume an air of importance. When we reached the top, Tanzeela showed me the upstairs parlor, the balcony, and finally, her room. It was a large room, with a sprawling king-sized bed, but minimalistic. I almost forgot that the room belonged to her husband as well. I had yet to see him.

  “So which school is it that you go to?” she asked, breaking the silence.

  “Karachi Grammar” I replied. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Oh! We went to the same school then.” This was great news. “Which year did you graduate in?” I asked. 2006, she said. She was two years older than me. I tried to remember if I had ever seen her before, around school. Is that why she had looked so familiar to me in the first place? I looked at her bright face, with her large eyes and sweeping eyelashes, but I couldn’t remember her at all. As she continued talking, my mind rummaged for an image of her. Little snippets were coming back to me. I remembered Natasha, a friend at school telling me, during a conversation, that a girl in our school had been offered a position in the London School of Economics. But she had turned it down. To get married.

  “Were you offered a position at LSE?” I blurted. I just had to know.

  Her smile weakened now, and she looked down. “Who told you that?”

  “My economics teacher,” I lied. “She was raving about how smart you were.”

  Tanzeela seemed uncomfortable now. She didn’t meet my eye. “Yes, I was,” she tried to laugh. “But then my marriage got arranged. I had to make a decision.” She went silent.

  I nodded in understanding. “Well, you put your family first. There’s nothing wrong with that.” We were sitting on her bed now.

  She fidgeted with a crease on the bed-sheet. “Well, there are times when I do regret it.” I was silent, unsure of what to say next. She looked up at me. “But there’s no going back now, so it’s useless to imagine, right?” She chuckled. “Hey, I think I saw you at a yoga class on Twenty-sixth Street, a few months back. Do you still go?” I couldn’t blame her for trying to change the subject.

  “I haven’t been for a few weeks now. Do you go there, too?”

  She nodded. “I used to. But I barely have any time. I was thinking of joining again …”

  “Well, you should!” I piped up. “We can go together if you want. It’ll be fun.” I lowered my voice and tried to sound more casual. “I was thinking of joining again as well.”

  Thankfully, she seemed pleased by the idea. “It’ll be nice to go with someone,” she agreed. “Is next Saturday good for you?” We arranged a date to meet and go to the yoga class.

  My eyes suddenly rested on a picture on the bedside table. I hadn’t noticed it the whole time. It was a photo of Tanzeela and her husband, o
n their front lawn, I presumed. They weren’t holding hands; standing side by side, they were barely even touching. Even though her husband was grinning, he looked ferocious. His deep set eyes were buried deep in his dark, hooded face. I remembered his thick, meeting eyebrows from the night of the wedding. Tanzeela looked so small and meager next to his puffed out chest and broad shoulders. Like a kid sister, not a wife, I thought. Tanzeela noticed me gazing at the picture and turned to it. There was that uneasy look on her face again. “My mother-in-law took this picture,” she said quietly. “It was the day after our wedding.” She suddenly turned to me, as if adamant to drop the subject. “I think we should go back down,” she tried to resume her cheerful voice. “Before your mother thinks I’ve kidnapped you.”

  We went back to the drawing room in silence. I was amazed to see who had arrived since we had left. It was none other than Tanzeela’s husband. He sat across from my mother, large and robust, in a navy blue suit. They were in deep conversation. I heard his booming, deep voice and saw his hands move swiftly as he gesticulated. He seemed at ease with himself; confident and in control. He smiled as the two of us walked in.

  “Ayla,” my mother said. “Meet Amar, Tanzeela’s husband. We went to their wedding, if you remember,” my mother was looking at me nervously, scared that I’d lash out at him like a disgruntled monster, digging my claws into his designer suit. “Hello,” I said, and sat down beside my mother. I was surprised at how friendly he was. My mother seemed completely taken by him. From what I gathered, they were discussing whether smoking should be banned in all public places. My mother was sure that it should. “It is the only way to curb the habit. Allowing kids to smoke in cafés and restaurants is like giving them a license to kill. Themselves, that is.”

  Amar said that my mother’s argument was valid. But banning smoking was a terrible business decision. “Kids these days go to the café to smoke. And they don’t mind having some coffee while they’re at it.” Everyone laughed. “No smoking would mean no customers. Businesses would have to change their entire marketing strategy. It would be crippling.”