by Minal Khan
“This wasn’t the first time she did this,” Tanzeela said. “Every time we showed each other some sign of affection, she would visibly get angry at us, lowering her eyes and abruptly leaving the room when we so much as held hands. That’s not even all. She would tell me to sleep in a different room when Amar had an early start at work the next morning. ‘You’ll distract him.’ Tanzeela mimicked sourly. “I was a distraction for him through and through. She just couldn’t bear to see us both together.
“One day the maid came and complained to me. Her brother had just died and she hadn’t been given leave to attend his funeral. I went to my mother-in-law to try to convince her to let the maid go. But she spat out at me, ‘Then why don’t you clean the house and wash the clothes? You’d like to see what it is like without the maid? Then take on her work.’ After that day she made me do the housework. I lied when I said I have to supervise the gardener and the cooks. Yes, there are many servants in the house; there are sweepers and there are cooks. But she made me pull out weeds from her garden and cook her breakfast nonetheless.”
“But,” I interrupted, unable to control myself, “Didn’t you ever tell Amar?” Tanzeela said she had. Many times. Each time Amar would go talk to his mother, and each time she’d promise that she would be milder. And she always was when he was around. But as soon as he flew out of the city—as he did so very often—she resumed her habits. She gave Tanzeela grubbier tasks every day.
Then one day, an old friend of Tanzeela’s from school called her, apologizing for missing her wedding. Her mother-in-law had picked up the other line accidentally and heard her speaking to a man. She erupted, going around the house ranting that Tanzeela was having an affair. “That’s why she didn’t like me coming here to Ghazal’s class,” Tanzeela said. “She didn’t believe that I was really going for yoga. She thought I was meeting my old school friends behind Amar’s back. I was only allowed to come when Amar put his foot down and said that his mother was being ridiculous. ‘She will go wherever she pleases,’ he told her, ‘so long as she is in this house.’ My mother-in-law relented, so long as I came home before dark. I felt like I was a child again, you know.” Tanzeela shook her head in amazement, “I had never felt so babied before.
“Amar left for Turkey last week,” Tanzeela said. For two weeks. Her mother-in-law had been looking forward to the opportunity, when she knew that there was no one to defend Tanzeela.
“She came into my room one night, and screamed names at me; calling me a whore, a prostitute, saying she knew I was having an affair. She went to the trove I kept inside my closet; the trove filled with the clothes and jewelry my parents had given me before the wedding, and emptied it on the floor. She snatched my jewelry; necklaces that my grandmother had passed down to me, and said I didn’t deserve them because I was an infidel. I tried to stop her and then she slapped me.”
I looked at Tanzeela’s shuddering hand and asked, “But how did this happen?” Tanzeela’s voice quivered more with every word. Shumaila Aunty had ripped her bridal clothes to pieces and set them on fire. “A mad surge had come over her. It was worse than anything I had ever seen her do before.” Tanzeela had panicked and tried to put the fire out with the only thing that was in her hand—a book. The pages of the book caught fire; and burnt right in her hands.
I was jolted with the memory of that day in the laboratory, during the K1 experiment. We had both tried to put out fires, I thought, tried to fight against what was uncontrollable.
And then I thought of Tanzeela’s mother-in-law, and imagined the time when she had just been Shumaila Aunty, my mother’s friend. I remembered her warm, pleasant smile and how I had been taken away by the way her soft, silk sari fluttered against her feet as she had walked over towards me. I thought of how she boasted that her daughter-in-law had great cooking skills and that all she had to do was “step aside” and watch Tanzeela take over house duties. She looked so proud. Only to terrorize Tanzeela minutes after we had gone? It couldn’t be the same person.
That girl lying lifeless in the dark over her bathtub couldn’t be Alia. It wasn’t true just because Shahaan and Tanzeela had fed me each of these stories … was it?
“So how did you manage to come today?” I asked Tanzeela.
“She locked me up in my room. But she left the keys in her room.” Tanzeela was sobbing now. “I cried and cried in my room until one of the servants heard me. The same maid who I’d given leave to. She had a soft spot for me, I think. She let me out. I grabbed whatever I could and just left. No one knows where I am right now. “My mother in law won’t be back till late at night. I just needed to get away after being locked up for so damn long. I can’t go back there.” Tanzeela hung her head in her two hands.
“You need to think about getting out of that house. Permanently,” I wanted to hug her and soothe her out of her misery, but more than that, I wanted her to be free. “Have you told Amar what’s happened?” I asked, holding her burnt hand in my own. Tanzeela hesitated and then slowly shook her head. “Why not?” I asked heatedly. “You can’t give her the satisfaction and let her do this to you again and again!”
Tanzeela looked down and nodded. “I can’t tell him because I’m scared.” She raised her eyes and looked at me. “Have you ever done that? Have you ever kept a secret, even if it had worked against your interest, because you’re afraid of what will happen after, of the effect it will have?”
She wasn’t expecting me to say yes. Of course she didn’t expect that I would ever be in a situation that she was in right now. It couldn’t have happened to me. But did it? Maybe it was the reason I hadn’t told my mother what had happened that day in the garden ten years back, why I still couldn’t tell her the anguish I felt whenever Ishaq was around. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings, Caius Cassis had said on a stormy night. It seemed a perfect match, but of a different nature.
The fault, it seemed, was not in our handicaps, mine and Tanzeela’s, but in us.
15
Alia returned from Malir after three days. I knew this because she e-mailed me once again, writing, “I’ll tell you everything when I come back tomorrow.” And tomorrow had come. I didn’t reply to her telling her that I already knew everything. I didn’t mind her repeating the entire story to me. Perhaps it would finally make it real to me. She called me on the day she arrived and asked if she could come over to my house to talk. I agreed.
She was to arrive at four o’clock. I went about trying to clean my room, to make the place look spotless. I asked the driver to fetch brownies and nimco salted snacks from the bakery nearby. When the food arrived, I arranged it using the small, delicate cutlery that we reserved for guests.
I had never taken so much trouble when Alia had arrived before. The idea seemed almost ludicrous, treating Alia like a guest. But I hadn’t had anyone over at my house for weeks. I pitifully felt deprived of human contact, like one of those inmates at drug rehab centers who dressed up carefully on visiting day for loved ones that they had never bothered to take the trouble for before. Suddenly, I felt like I had to make an impression.
When Alia arrived at the doorstep, dressed head to toe in mourning white, I didn’t quite know what to say. She looked no different. Her hair was of the same length, her features rigidly the same. I had almost expected her to look completely changed; with longer, lankier hair, frail limbs, chipped teeth, swollen lids and red eyes. Like a drug addict?
I offered myself for a timid hug, but Alia latched on to me instantaneously, like a magnet to metal and threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad to see you,” I heard her say.
“Me too,” I said automatically. I had missed her these past few weeks, I really had. But, it seemed to dawn on me; maybe I still did miss her.
I wanted to lead her to my room, not that I needed to—she already knew the way. But all of a sudden it seemed more appropriate to take her to the drawing room. I didn’t know why I felt so; it wasn’t as if I was afraid to b
e alone with Alia in my room. But I led her to the drawing room, like I had led Tanzeela and her mother-in-law the first day they had come to my house, and seated her.
“Do you want anything—a cold drink, coffee?” I sounded even alien to myself. Alia looked at me strangely and slowly shook her head. I ignored her and went into the kitchen to get her Pepsi and biscuits. When I came back, she was still looking at me strangely, as if she had just discovered that I was bald. She didn’t say anything as I put the tray of sweets and biscuits in front of her. Before I had the chance to sit down next to her, she said matter-of-factly, “You know what’s happened.” She was looking ahead, past the food tray and plates, and her arms were folded.
“H-how did you know?” I knew exactly how but wondered if she had sensed it.
“Oh, come on,” her tone was acerbic. “You’re treating me like a stranger in your house. You’re making excuses to run out of the room and get me ‘sweets.’ You don’t want to be around me.” Her voice gave way in her last sentence and became a pained murmur.
My throat swelled up momentarily; I felt like the guilty child whose hand had just been spotted in the cookie jar. “I’m sorry.” There was a tremor in my voice. “I’m just hurt by this all.” Alia looked at me quizzically. Hurt by what? Her expression read: how dare you be hurt at a time when I’m the one burning in agony, when I’ve just made it through hell and back?
“Why did you tell Shahaan and not me? Why did you do it at all, you silly fool, how could you?” The dam had burst. “You were clearly upset about something for the past few months; there’s a reason you started smoking, and tried … drugs. What was wrong? What was pricking at you this whole time, something so deep and secret that you couldn’t even tell me?” I tried to stop myself crying. I looked at Alia for answers but she just shook her head back and forth and stared through me as if I was air. To my great surprise, she started laughing. Disgustedly. I was in the nightmarish game show again and was the center of ridicule.
“You know, I am not surprised,” she said, still shaking her head. “It’s just like you to tell me, after I have been through the most difficult week of my life, how much you’ve been affected by my, by my wayward actions, how much it’s traumatized you.”
“Well, it’s because I’m worried about you,” I said. “I’ve been waiting here, worried sick for the past few days, dying to hear any word from you—”
“You, you, you, you!” Her eyes sparkled with anger. “You always have to be the leading lady of the show, don’t you? Try asking me what it was like for me. Try hearing me out before ranting on about your misery. Why can’t you do that?” Her angry voice now collapsed and she broke down in tears.
I had seen Alia cry many times before. She had cried on my shoulder when her first puppy died, sobbed in my hands when she failed her calculus test. But now she crumpled to the side of the couch, away from me, her head buried inside her own arms. She was alone. Not because she wanted to be, but because I had abandoned her. I had heartlessly reprimanded her for smoking without trying to find out what had caused her to turn to cigarettes in the first place. I was pushing her away now, when she only needed me to forget about how I was feeling and focus on her pain instead. But had I always known about her pain? When I had read her song in the garden, I knew something was wrong. Why had I ignored it? I thought to myself in alarm. What kind of a friend was I?
I leaned towards Alia and hugged her, something I should have done long ago but couldn’t find the courage. She shivered in my arms, gasping after every sob.
“Alia,” I said softly in her hair. “You were the handicapped girl, weren’t you?”
Alia turned to me in confusion. “Wh-a-at?” she said in between snivels.
“The girl in your song. It was you.” Alia didn’t register what I was saying at first. She stared as if waiting for me to continue. Her lips were swollen and red, and her eyelashes were spiked with tears.
I told her what had happened on that rainy day; how I had read the song without ever mentioning it to her. At first she seemed baffled, but then a knowing look crept over her face, as she realized what I was talking about.
“So you read it …” Alia averted my gaze, unblinking. I nodded, and repeated my question.
“I don’t know if I was the handicapped girl,” Alia shrugged indifferently. “Maybe.”
I wasn’t going to let it go easily this time. These were questions that I should have asked her years back. I needed to be there for her now.
“You wrote that the girl’s parents chopped her wrists off. Is that how you feel?” Alia looked bothered, and seemed unwilling to talk about it.
“I don’t know. I just never thought about it.” She looked away, sending me silent signals to stop.
“I want you to tell me exactly how you feel, Alia,” I said pleadingly. “I know I was wrong for not asking you, but you knew that you could always tell me. So why didn’t you?”
Alia was picking at the stitching of the border of the sofa. She was smiling sourly to herself and shaking her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter now.” She sniffed quickly.
There was silence. I could hear the scrape of the gate outside as the chawkidaar—our gatekeeper—shut it. The biscuits lay untouched on the table in front of us. The ice cubes in the glass of Pepsi had now melted into tiny beads and were floating at the top of the drink, like little rafts on sea. It was silent enough for me to hear the minute hand on my wrist watch tick, hear the sound of Alia inhaling and exhaling softly. “I’m going to run away,” she said. “So that no one forces me into this marriage.”
The room was still silent. My heart pounded loudly and fiercely. Ayla finally turned to me. “When I told my mother I got mugged, do you know the first thing that she asked me?” I remained unmoving. “She asked me who I was with.” Alia’s eyes had become hollow, empty of any emotion. “She thought—still thinks that I’m having a relationship with Shahaan. No matter how much I deny it. And she figured that you had introduced me to him. That’s why she stopped me from seeing you,”
Alia’s entire neck tensed as she sniffed. “I just couldn’t deal with things any more. My own mother treating me like dirt right after we had been held at gunpoint and refusing to believe my story … having no one to talk to … being wrongly accused over and over. I couldn’t live with my thoughts. I just needed to feel … out of myself. That’s why I did it.”
She let out a sigh and closed her eyes. “Then I found out I got into NYU. I was so happy. I couldn’t believe it. I got a full ride—a one hundred percent scholarship. You know that I was born in the U.S. before my parents moved back to Karachi. I was a year old. I’ve always dreamed of going to New York but have never been. And I’m a U.S. citizen, technically! When I got that acceptance letter, I felt like this was the message I needed from the world. I am meant to go to college. I want to study design. This is my dream. But my parents won’t let it be.”
“Have you told your parents you got in?”
“No. I meant to. I had my acceptance letter in my hand and was on the way to my mother’s room to tell her. God, the first thing I wanted to do was tell my mom. She knows how much I’ve wanted this. Then I overheard her talking to my aunt when I was outside her room. She was talking about me. Saying I have gotten into the wrong company, that I’m out of control. They want me to get married to this boy who lives in London. He’s an architect. If I tell my mom I got into NYU there is no way she is going to let me go.”
“But your mom seems okay with you getting married and moving to London,” I said. “Your family won’t even let you leave the house unsupervised, but don’t mind you moving all the way to London?”
“Believe it or not. I think my mother thinks as long as I have a ring on my finger and a husband to ‘control’ me I could move to the moon for all she cares.” She turned to me. “I’ve never been to London before. I’ve only read about the city in books. Sherlock Holmes. I wrote an essay about that book in a class and fricking failed it. That’s h
ow much I know about England, or Sherlock Holmes. Or both.”
“So you’re going to run away?” I asked quietly, looking into her solid eyes. “Where will you go?”
“With you. To America. To NYU.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know you’ve been accepted to Cornell. Congratulations, by the way.”
“Huh? No, you’ve got it wrong. I applied early decision. Haven’t heard back yet.”
“Oh no, you have,” Alia quipped contentedly. “There’s a fat, heavy envelope sitting by your gatekeeper’s room addressed from Cornell University. I saw it on my way in to your house. Surprised he hasn’t given it to you. But we know what the heavy envelope means. So congrats.”
My mind was racing. I was holding my head now.
I got into college. I got into college. Am I going to America?
“It’s quite simple.” Alia was talking now but I could barely register her because my mind was switching in and out of joy, exacerbation, fright, jubilation. “You’re going to Cornell. I’m going to NYU. The only difference is, my parents can’t know about it. Now my Dad is smart and he’s pretty good about tracing me in Karachi. But no way on God’s planet is he ever going to expect that I’d run away to New York.”
“Alia, what are you saying?” I asked.
“Look, I’ve thought about this for a while and it can work.” Alia was speaking calmly now, even reasonably. “The engagement ceremony is in the summer. I will go through with it. By the time it’s over, you will be ready to leave for college. I’m going to buy a one-way ticket to New York. We will meet at the airport and fly out together. No one will ever know where I’ve gone.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Alia said before I could interject. “What am I going to do when my parents send the police out to find me? When they think I’m dead? Look, I don’t mind telling them where I am when I’m already in New York. I don’t want them to think I’m hurt or in danger. By that time, I’m already away. They can’t force me to come back. But if they know that I’m planning to go to college right now, they will make sure I don’t go.” Alia paused and then looked at me. “Are you with me?”
