by Ami Rao
Later, she asked her mother if her father was sick.
‘Sick? I don’t think so, why?’
‘He looks so frail.’
‘He is broken.’
Ameena’s mother said this gently, with certainty, but not anger.
And Ameena looked away because she felt the tears fill her eyes for this person, this imposter, this tired old man, with a son who had in one moment of weakness done exactly what the man had spent his entire life convincing others that people like him didn’t do.
‘Where’s David?’ her father had asked again once she’d come inside.
‘David?’ Ameena repeated, looking baffled.
‘Yes, where is he?’
‘David isn’t here. Why would you think David would be here?’
‘Your Ammi and I were looking forward to meeting him,’ Ameena’s father replied pleasantly.
And again, she saw in his eyes the enormous fatigue of a man who has tried and tried and can try no more.
She looked around the room they were standing in, the odd-shaped room she knew so well and loved so much. It appeared exactly the same to her as it always had, the burgundy sofa in its usual place in front of the telly, the windows intact, but she knows it has undergone a drastic transformation in her absence. Like a person, she thinks, who has a horrific accident and then gets fixed up and looks to the outside world, like the same person. Only he knows, the person himself, and the select few who are privy to his private trauma – the doctor, the family, the lover – how he has changed, how he can never be the same.
‘Where’s Kareem?’ she asked.
Her father looked away. Her mother nodded towards the stairs. ‘Must be upstairs. He sits upstairs a lot. Bedroom door closed. Earphones on. Listening to the “Deaf Leopard”. First, there were no earphones. Then I told him we will all go deaf like the leopard. So now there are the earphones.’
Ameena had knocked on his door before she opened it.
‘Mum, I’ve told you not to barge into my room…’ he started to say, then looked up. ‘Oh, hey!’ he said, removing his earphones, trying his best to sound nonchalant. ‘It’s you!’
Then they held each other, as much for gladness as for comfort and a kind of sanity: ‘It’s you,’ the hug seemed to say, ‘despite everything, despite this crazy messed-up world, it’s still you – and you, to me, are love.’
They didn’t look like brother and sister, even when they were holding each other, their bodies linked together like that. Ameena, with her racially ambiguous looks, had spent most of her life indulging people who found it amusing to guess at her ‘true ethnicity’– Lebanese, Mexican, Italian, Indian, Colombian, she’d heard it all; it never bothered her, she had come to accept her abstractness as a mildly amusing reality. Her bother, on the other hand, looked unmistakeably the way he was ‘supposed’ to look, and with that came other things, things she couldn’t fully comprehend about the world and how it reacted to certain people because they looked a certain way. She only knew what she had seen, and she had seen with her brother that ever since he was twelve or thirteen, he was always being stopped by one authority or another for something or the other. She knew this, and she knew subliminally the difference between the two of them – somehow she had managed to cheat the system; he had been caught in it. Neither had planned it that way. How exhausting it must be, she realised now with sudden surprise, having to constantly defend yourself, not because of your actions but because your physical reality dictates how other people respond to you.
‘How are you?’ she said, pulling away reluctantly, ruffling his hair.
‘I’m okay,’ he said looking down, ‘been better, but could be worse.’ Then he looked up at her, met her gaze and held it. Their eyes were exactly the same, the singular feature they shared; their father’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
And then he had told her about wanting to kill some man whom she didn’t even know, and who didn’t know her, who lived down the road, and who had, for a reason she couldn’t comprehend, put himself through the trouble of going to a butcher’s shop and paying someone to sever the head off an animal and then lugging that grotesque cellophane-wrapped thing back out, only to later throw it into someone else’s living room.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, his voice catching, ‘the disrespect to Abba. I couldn’t stand it.’
‘I know,’ she replied, feeling for the first time, the sense of responsibility, the weight of the responsibility one feels for one’s family, no matter how fraught or fragile the relationship. Why you want to love someone who loves them and kill someone who hurts them.
‘How’s your boyfriend?’ Kareem asked abruptly. ‘Didn’t he come?’
‘God, why is everyone asking the same question? Isn’t it enough that I’m here?’
‘Yeah sure,’ Kareem said nonchalantly, ‘but would have been nice to meet him.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure.’
‘I thought you disapproved.’
‘I haven’t even met him, why would I disapprove?’
‘Because… well, you know.’
‘Because he’s not Muslim? Oh, come on, sis! Dad’s Muslim and look how it turned out for her.’ He cocked his head toward the door to his room as if to indicate that whoever he was referring to was outside.
‘Kareem!’
But he only shrugged. ‘Well, it’s true. You know it is. She knows what he likes for breakfast, but I reckon it’s not exactly Guy Fawkes night in that bedroom. Like, I mean – ever.’
‘I can’t discuss this.’
But before Ameena left to go back to New York, her mother pulled her aside.
‘Tell me something, Ameena, your Jewish David, does he snore?’ Zoya asked.
‘What? Mum, honestly! What kind of a question is that?’
But Zoya tugged urgently at her arm. ‘Ameena, tell me.’
‘No, Mum, he doesn’t! God, this family hasn’t changed a bit…’
The next day, her father pulled her aside.
‘Regarding your… situation. I told you I would think about it, and I have. The world will go about its business, Ameena. And we must go about ours. If he makes you happy, if you love each other, I have no objections.’ Yusuf sighed. ‘I could never make your mother feel that way for me. I want it to be different for you.’
And once again, for the second time in four days, she thought of the sheer force of that responsibility for those people who share your blood. Why you want to love someone who loves them and kill someone who doesn’t.
3.26
He can see she is online. ‘Online’ it says so clearly, and he’s waiting for her to write, but she’s not. Writing to him at least. And then the thought that she is writing to someone else drives him crazy. It’s only been three days.
D: are you online?
D: hey?
D: i can see you’re online…
D: ameena?
A: David
D: hey sweet!
A: Hi
D: how’s everyone there?
A: Crazy
A: As ever. I now know why I left
D: but, they’re ok?
A: Thx. They’re ok. Slowly getting back to normal…
A: Whatever normal is any more. Mum asked me if you snore
D: huh?
A: Exactly
D: i’m not
A: You’re not what? Normal?
D: ok. i’m not ok
D: without you
A: It’s late. Knackered
D: come back
A: Jetlagged
A: But!!!
D: knackered? what means?
A: Tired means
D: come back home
D: please
D: but?
A: Yes!!! But!!!
D:
but, what?
A: ‘Go home’
A: you said
A: ‘Come back home’
A: you said
A: You also confused by that…
A: Or just me?
D: ameena
A: David
D: i’m sorry
A: I’m sorry too
A: But where are we going…
A: …two sorrys later?
D: going crazy
A: Please don’t
D: messing up
A: Don’t. Please. Please don’t mess up
D: can’t do anything
A: I’m going to sleep now
D: without you
A: I’m sure that’s not true
D: can’t think
A: Stoppit
D: can’t play
A: Don’t you dare. Don’t you DARE go there. Goodbye
D: wait. don’t go. we miss you
A: Goodnight. It’s 1 in the morning!
A: Who’s we?
D: new york misses you. jazz too. me three
A: Nite, Piano-man
D: ameena?
D: baby, don’t go…
She’s offline now.
Online again.
A: FYI
A: Home day after tomorrow
D: really? hurrah!
D: which flight?
D: can’t stop smiling
Offline.
D: are you listening?
D: painting?
D: dreaming?
D: i’m still smiling…
D: i’m singing a tune
D: ‘isn’t she lovely’
D: might go try and play it
D: on the mason & hamlin
D: 1932
D: hey?
D: goodnight sweet
D:
3.27
As far as love went – Ameena mused in the fourth hour of her seven-hour LHR–JFK flight, after they had been offered drinks (which everyone wanted), food (which some people wanted), duty free (which no one wanted) – her father had a funny way of showing it. Especially when it came to her brother. This had been true from the very beginning, she realised, ever since she and Kareem were children.
The saddest thing, Ameena thought, was not that their father didn’t love Kareem. Because everyone who knew Yusuf knew he did. The saddest thing was Kareem’s inability to reach it. At the heart of this curious tragedy, she decided, lay the fact that Yusuf’s love, the kind he reserved especially for his son, had always had an aspirational quality to it. It was love not in the present tense, nor in the simple future tense, but in a kind of future conditional, a perpetual state of becoming: if you do ‘x’, you just might receive ‘y’.
It almost didn’t matter what the ‘x’ was, whether it was Kareem’s performance in class, on the cricket pitch, his manner of practising their faith or the style in which he cut (or didn’t cut) his hair; there was endlessly, it seemed, a kind of deficit in their father’s mind where Kareem was concerned, a space between what his son had done, and then – miles above it – what he believed his son was capable of doing.
And even that, even that belief remained a kind of endless shifting of the goalposts, illusory, unreachable.
Years ago, Ameena remembered as she stretched uncomfortably in her tiny airline seat, leaning towards the window, as far away as possible from the man next to her (Irish, over-friendly, drunk), she and Kareem – they must have been twelve and nine – had gone with their father to some kind of county fair; they had spent the entire day with him, the only one in her life when the three of them were together, she doesn’t remember any others like it. And on this day, Kareem had tried his hand at all the games – duck hooking and tin throwing and rope climbing and darts – and, somehow, it had been his lucky day; almost everything he had played at, he had won. She hadn’t even wanted to attempt any, for Ameena had from a very early age found the prospect of losing almost unbearable, but she had cheered her brother on enthusiastically and been so excited, both excited and proud, when he had won. And yet she noticed, even at that age, that their father had remained impassive through it all, not hesitating to pay for the games, no, not even a bit, but equally, expressing no trace of emotion when his son had ended up with his arms full of cheap stuffed-toy prizes. She had noticed this, and she had also noticed Kareem’s eyes, the hurt he carried in his eyes that evening.
And then, she noticed after that, it wasn’t only on that evening, but constantly, that he carried that same hurt in his eyes, only she hadn’t noticed before, like we don’t often notice the things that don’t affect us directly, not from a lack of caring, but from not needing in one’s own self-contained, limited worldview to notice such things.
But on that day – the only day in her life that she had spent together with her father and her brother – she had noticed it, and it had caused, inside her, a hurt, a physical hurt like she was being squeezed round her chest by an invisible band. She understood then, that her physical hurt was linked in some way to her brother’s emotional hurt and that the hurt, their two-together hurt, was the realisation that to Kareem, his father’s love was unreachable.
That same day at the fair, just before they were leaving for home she had asked for some popcorn, and their father had bought some for her at once, a tubful big enough to bury her small face in. But when Kareem had asked for candy floss, he had been refused it – too much sugar was bad for the brain, Yusuf had declared. And like this, they had continued for most of their lives: Ameena had received popcorn, Kareem had been denied candy floss. Instead, he had received other things she hadn’t, in the day-to-day thrum of life – a harsher tone, a tighter voice, a shorter fuse, all things presumably, that were good for the brain.
And yet, and yet, despite this, despite years of Yusuf–Kareem conflict surrounding:
rogue cricket balls on the stairs
angry red circles in notebooks, rugby shoes in the kitchen, dirty clothes in the bathroom sink, bits of food in the crevices of sofas
stern meetings with teachers about bringing ‘outside literature’ to class
stern meetings with different teachers about the use of ‘unrepeatable language’ in the playground
the routine, un-permissioned disappearance of Yusuf’s car
unironed shirts, unclipped nails, dirty ears
reading the bloody dead Shakespeare already
(Yusuf’s mortal fear-list) the religious zeal, the identity politics, the jihadi leanings, the poor choice of friends, the stubborn, monomaniacal interpretation of ideology
(Yusuf’s begrudging acceptance-list) the gold watches, the logoed clothes, the distasteful slang, the hair-raising, soul-destroying, deafening music from that spotted cat group…
Yes. And yet.
Despite all of Kareem’s perceived shortcomings that had caused Yusuf so much private angst, if a certain choice was ever demanded of him (although he would die before he admitted it publicly), Ameena knew, the way a child knows these things about a parent, that their father loved him more.
When Ameena was in Manchester, her mother told her about the day they had gone to bring Kareem home from ‘that place’ – she refused to use the word – about how she had jumped out of the car and hugged him right there on the street, from relief more than anything else, but that Yusuf had not expressed any emotion nor uttered any words on the entire journey home. And then once they were home, with the front door shut, he had struck his son, for the first time in his life, violently across his face.
‘I do not want to hear anything ever again,’ he had said, ‘that makes me ashamed to call you my son.’
And Kareem had not said a word, only stood there bent over from the waist by the force of the blow, the palm of his hand on his cheek where he had been struck, the tear
s streaming down his face.
‘You will do nothing like this again, is that clear? Not in my name and not in His name,’ their father had said, pointing to the sky, and then walked away.
‘I have never seen Yusuf like that,’ her mother confided in her. ‘That kind of anger in a man.’
But then, she continued, late at night, after Kareem had fallen asleep, Yusuf had gone to his son’s room and sat down on the bed beside him and looked at him the way he did when Kareem was a little boy, with awe and with wonder, looked at him for a long time, and run his fingers through his hair and kissed his face where he had slapped him, and when she walked past the room, Ameena’s mother reported, he was crying, crying openly without embarrassment or shame, and begging his sleeping son for forgiveness. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he was saying, over and over and over again.
3.28
There he is at the arrivals gate, standing there, standing out, like he always did to her, even among the crush of people, in his jeans and his checked shirt and his jumper and that hair and that grin and those dimples and a great big sign that reads ‘WELCOME HOME’ in his terrible handwriting, and she feels herself feeling it, spontaneously, powerfully.
Deep inside her chest.
A figure eight.
Flitter Flutter.
Flip Flop.
The flight pattern of a butterfly.
Erratic. Evolutionary.
She doesn’t know what it is, whether it is the handwriting or the hair or the grin or the dimples or all of it, all that makes him what he is, but Ameena realises, in that particular moment of seeing him, something about herself – a truth – and it is that she loves him. She loves him so much that she finds the idea of life without him unimaginable, and perhaps this is one of the side effects of love, up there with dizziness, insomnia and irregular heartbeats, never mentioned – but should be – with cautionary signs on the tin, this particular kind of lack of imagination.
