The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  “Did he?”

  “Did he what?”

  “Did he share his wealth?”

  Mummy wrinkled her nose. “Yes. He did. Some of it. A lot of it.” Mummy sounded defensive.

  “But he was still rich?”

  “Yes! Yes. I told you. He was very well-to-do. But he was kind to those less fortunate. And generous. His only weakness was his love for things from the West. After Independence, his business boomed. And what he didn’t spend on the poor, he spent on the merchandise that Westerners of high status seemed to treasure. He wore elegant Italian tailored suits and shoes and expensive Swiss watches. Nothing but the finest. He drove a big American car with fins and tails.

  “When he and his beautiful wife were first married, in the days before his fortunes were made, he took her to a beauty salon and asked the stylist to cut her hair according to the latest trends to be found in European beauty magazines. They cut off her yard-length, dark, silken hair. She cried for days, not consoled by her husband’s praise and assertions that now, at least, she looked ‘modern’ and ‘Western.’ He made her wear her saris with sleeveless blouses, the kind that were in fashion among the Bombay film crowd. Her mother-in-law pursed her lips disapprovingly when she first saw her in one of these. Her grandmother-in-law said, ‘Your arms will burn in hell from here to here.’” My mother’s hand swept down from her shoulder blade to her wrist.

  “Did she tell her husband?”

  “Yes, of course. When his wife told him, in tears, what his grandmother had said, he said, ‘Next time tell her that her arms will burn from here to here.’” This time, my mother swept her hand down from mid-upper arm to wrist, which the traditional sari blouse left exposed. “‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘it’s only a few inches’ difference. It won’t hurt much more than hers.’ He took her to all of the latest clubs and nightspots. She was from a conservative family, like his own, and she was pitied and admired for gallantly suffering the whims of her husband. He even took her ballroom dancing, actually hiring a tutor to teach her the steps!

  “The word we use to describe men like that is shaukeen. It means ‘keen’—he was keenly interested in trying out new things, keenly enthusiastic about the way things looked and tasted, keenly excited about life in general.” Mummy sighed. She got up to pour a cup of tea. “It’s always wonderful to meet someone who is shaukeen. You find people sort of riding along in their wake. They bring a kind of energy with them when they enter a room.” Tea in hand, Mummy turned back to face me, walked back to the table, and stared at me for a moment before getting on with the story.

  “This man’s wife learned, very quickly, how to ride quietly in that wake. It wasn’t easy for her. She had been a young bride, a child. The transition from her parents’ home to her husband’s had been a challenge. But she was lucky for two reasons. One was that she had been brought up well enough to understand the difference in what was expected of her—before, she had been a pampered, youngest child. Everyone in her house, her parents, her brothers, her sister—had spoilt her and cherished her. But now, she was a daughter-in-law. And she had to learn to obey not only her husband, but also his mother and grandmother. They were constantly complaining and criticizing. But she managed to learn the steps of this dance, too. To maintain her composure, to nod her head respectfully in front of her in-laws. The other reason that she was lucky was that her husband really was a charming gentleman. He was kind with her, and patient and loving.

  “During the time of Partition, when India was divided into India and Pakistan, her family, her parents, decided to leave Bombay for Pakistan, where they settled in Karachi. Like so many, many others. Though she was sad to have to say good-bye to her family, she knew that her place was with her husband. That her home was where he was. That her happiness depended on his.

  “She built her life around him. They had three children. When her grandmother-in-law and mother-in-law died, she finally gained control of her household. She supervised the servants—there were many of them now that her husband had become a rich man. And took care of her husband’s brothers and their wives, whose marriages she had helped to arrange. They all lived together, still, as a joint family in a big, new house he had bought. She took pride in maintaining an ordered and disciplined home. She was not a materialistic person, but she took pleasure in her husband’s success, because it gave him pleasure. She had always been a pious woman, but she became more religious as the years passed—spending more and more time on her prayer rug and focusing more of her thoughts on the remembrance of God. Her husband was pleased. He used to say that his wife’s piety was another reason that God smiled upon them with such favor.”

  “Was he religious, too?”

  “Religious? Yes. He prayed. He didn’t drink. He tried to always do what was right.”

  “Except for the dancing?”

  Mummy seemed to have forgotten the point of her story. “Hmm? Yes. Of course. Except for that. A good man—a satisfied husband. Still kind enough to often express his appreciation for the efforts and virtues of his wife, publicly, as their children grew up around them. He was well loved by his children, respected by his brothers, honored by the community. He had everything a man could want.” Mummy took a long sip of her tea before saying, “His wife was happy, too. Her children were all well settled.” Mummy looked up at me, her forehead creased. Then her face relaxed as she set her cup back down onto the saucer and reached out to touch my cheek with her fingers, tucking a lock of my short hair behind my ear as she said, “She was happy the way that I will be when you and Ameena are grown and married.” My mother sighed—lightly, happily—at the thought and didn’t speak for a few moments.

  “When their eldest daughter, who was married and settled in London, was due to deliver their first grandchild, husband and wife decided to await its arrival in person. They leased a flat there—close to their daughter’s—and settled down to wait well in advance of the baby’s arrival.”

  “Why didn’t they stay with their daughter?”

  “Hmm? Well, it wasn’t done. In the old days, it was not considered right. For a man to stay in the house of his daughter. That is, his son-in-law’s house. It is like trespassing.”

  “Even for a visit?”

  “Even for a visit. So, every day, in the final days before their grandchild was due, they would walk together, after breakfast, to their daughter’s flat and take tea with her. Then, he would go for a walk. To Hyde Park. That’s where the scandal began. Somewhere, somehow, the man met a woman there—a girl, really. Young enough to be his daughter. Who knows how it happened? How that girl, an Englishwoman, seduced him? How it began, how long it went on? Within a few weeks of the birth of their grandchild, the man came home and told his wife that he was in love. That he was leaving her for some woman he had met at the park. A hippie girl.” Mummy stopped talking then. She took some more sips of tea, quick now where the last one had lingered.

  “What did his wife do?”

  “What could she do? Nothing. There was nothing she could do to stop him. He walked away from her. From his life in India. From his business, his social connections, making a fool of himself in the eyes of the whole community, humiliating his wife, shaming his children. He left his whole family behind without a second thought.”

  I was shocked, I remember, at the idea of an Indian man—a Muslim man—behaving in this way. “What happened then?”

  Mummy’s eyes met mine for a long moment. Then she looked away and said, “He died soon after that. Alone and cut off from his family.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. For a little while. Then I remembered why my mother had begun this story in the first place. “But, Mummy—what has any of this got to do with the prom?”

  Mummy clicked her tongue impatiently. “Don’t you see, Saira? Dancing—that’s what led to that man’s downfall. He—he didn’t follow the rules of his own culture and community. He liked to dance in the Western way. In our culture, men and women only touch each
other when they are married. And in private. When you forget the rules of your culture, you lose it. You forget about what is right and wrong. You forget that the reason we are here is not just to enjoy ourselves selfishly. What we do affects other people who love and care for us. It’s not right to overlook other people’s love and loyalty, to be selfish instead of being mindful of what you owe them. We all have duties and obligations in life. And those duties come first, before our own selfish pleasures and whims.”

  Duty and obligation. Did I roll my eyes at this conclusion? I must have. I must have pouted, stomped out of the kitchen, and sulked for hours at the prospect of having to forgo the prom. I never considered going to my father. The feminine triangle of our family dynamic left my father, geometrically speaking, on a plane far off in the distance, a single point whose relation to us could not be traced in precise mathematical terms. I suppose that was natural—he was male. But I was uneasy about that rather simple explanation for his exclusion, feeling responsible in some way for not having been born a son.

  Simple explanations always made me uneasy. I suppose that’s why I became a journalist. For years, I have traveled the world, uncovering the details overlooked by others, avoiding the details of my own past.

  Those details are unavoidable now. Still, I try, seeking refuge on the couch, my hand reaching for the clicker. Images of war pour into the room. James Earl Jones announces that “This is CNN.” And I realize that I am not ready to be mesmerized by twenty-four-hour news, Darth Vader’s voice notwithstanding. The voice of Authority. The voice of the Empire. Telling neat and tidy stories, with neat and tidy morals. Like my mother’s. Stories with all the messy details removed, because they don’t serve the message. In different circumstances, I would be there, halfway around the world, working hard to uncover those details, those babies killed by bombs, those wedding parties showered with shrapnel, those soldiers scarred and wounded, killed and killing—all of the collateral damage that Darth Vader’s voice dismisses as insignificant. Details. I click off the TV.

  I wonder how this has come to be—how it is that I am back in my parents’ home, alone, my sister’s daughter asleep and in my care. I breathe in the silence and darkness of the night—and think about the details. How to separate them out of the past, which I thought I understood, and reclaim them in the present, which I cannot.

  TWO

  NO. NO! I will not come to the wedding. Not if she is invited…that kuthi with her brood of haramzadas.” I remember walking into the room, hearing my mother’s words as she turned down the invitation to my cousin Zehra’s wedding. I had stopped short at the entrance to the kitchen. A bitch? With a brood of bastards? I was fourteen and I couldn’t recall ever hearing my mother use an obscenity before. In any language. I remember how quickly she changed her tone when she saw me staring at her, mouth hanging open in surprise. Maybe it was my shock that prompted what followed.

  “Acha, baba, acha. All right. I’ll send the girls, teek hay? They’ll enjoy the wedding and it’s a long time since they visited you all in Pakistan. Yes, yes of course they’ll stay with you.” She was speaking to my Lubna Khala, her younger sister. (It was amazingly easy to figure this out. Among the three sisters—Jamila, the eldest; Shabana, my mother; and Lubna—sentences began in Urdu and ended in English with liberal lingual hybridization sandwiched in between, which none of them had any trouble following. They were loud, too, something that perhaps became a habit from having spent all of their adult lives apart—Jamila Khala in London, Mummy in Los Angeles, and Lubna Khala in Karachi—connected by long-distance phone calls.)

  My thrill at the thought that Ameena and I would be traveling to Pakistan, unaccompanied by our parents, almost outweighed my curiosity about the nature of my mother’s refusal to attend the wedding. Almost. But here, Ameena proved to be typically less cooperative than I could have wished.

  “I don’t want to go to Karachi for Zehra’s wedding,” was her response to my triumphant announcement of Mummy’s decision.

  “What?! Why not?”

  “I just don’t, that’s all,” said Ameena, with the familiar stubborn twist to her lips with which she met most of my suggestions. But those suggestions usually involved breaking rules or defying Mummy. Now, I was baffled. We already had permission for this particular adventure. Baffled and frustrated.

  “But Ameena, why not? It’ll be so much fun. We get to go on the plane alone and it’ll be so cool. Please, please don’t say no.” There was no hiding my own selfish motives. “And Mummy won’t let me go if you don’t come. Please, Ameena, please!” I could feel my voice getting shrill in my desperation.

  Too late, I realized my mistake. There is a particularly nasty quality among older siblings. Something to do with the sheer pleasure of power, the ability to withhold an object of desire from a younger brother or sister…whether through the use of brute strength, the physiological advantages of height, or the mere flaunting of privileges yet to be permitted the younger child…the older sibling, I am convinced, develops a sadistic streak that younger siblings everywhere will recognize. Ameena never failed to take advantage of the weakness she sensed when the pitch of my voice began to move up.

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to go.”

  Always, in situations like these, I strived to maintain my composure. To hide the fact that I was desperate for what she withheld. But it never worked. Ultimately, I always succumbed to the only recourse left to a younger child. I went to Mummy.

  Who, finally, was able to get to the bottom of the matter. I was—at Ameena’s request—sent out of the room. But that had never stopped me from keeping myself abreast of the news. I stood, in my usual position for such situations, just outside the door, listening anxiously for the no doubt ridiculous reasons my sister had for refusing to go to Pakistan.

  “But why not, beti? I thought you would be happy to go. You’ve always enjoyed yourself there.”

  “That was different, Mummy.” Ameena’s voice lacked the power and authority that she had wielded over me just moments ago. “That was before. It will be different now.”

  My brow furrowed in puzzlement. I honestly did not understand what she was talking about and had to stop myself from asking what she meant. My mother, when I chanced a peek, was nodding her head. She seemed to know what Ameena was thinking.

  “I know, beti, I know. It will be hard to go there now that Nanima has gone.”

  Of course! I slapped my head, silently, in realization. And then lowered it in a gesture that might have resembled shame. I had forgotten. Worse, even now it didn’t bother me. Our grandmother’s death, the year before, had meant little to me then. It was so far away. And we hadn’t been to Pakistan since, not Ameena or myself. But for my sister, of course, it would be different. She had been the favorite grandchild. Then, Ameena asked the question that formed in my own mind.

  “Is that why you’re not going?”

  “Well, beti, you know that I went to Pakistan when Nanima died.”

  I remembered that vividly. The day and a half that Mummy had spent crying and mourning before we saw her off at the airport, racing to Pakistan to be able to attend her mother’s funeral. Her mother’s funeral. That night, when Mummy was gone, I had tried and tried to imagine life without Mummy. The thought had driven me out of my bed to seek out Ameena. She had welcomed me, had held me close, and we had cried together—Ameena for the death of our grandmother and I at the prospect of ever losing Mummy.

  “So, I’ve already faced that. And it was difficult. But, no, that’s not the reason I’m not going. I—” I leaned closer to the door in anticipation of hearing more about the kuthi and her haramzadas, the bitch and her bastards. “I want to go in the winter. The weather will be too hot now. I can’t bear the thought of it.”

  It was a lie. But I don’t think Ameena realized it. She was starting to cry now.

  “I still miss her. Do you think she can see us?”

  “I think she is always with us. I dreamt of her last we
ek, did I tell you?” I peeked into the room again to see that Mummy had put her arm around Ameena, pulling her head close into her armpit.

  Nanima was the only grandparent that I had ever known. My father’s parents had passed away when Ameena was a baby. On his side of the family there was only an uncle, my father’s brother, whose family we were not very close to. My mother’s father had died, as far as I knew, before Ameena and I were born.

  Widowed, Nanima had left India and moved to Pakistan to live with her maiden sister, whom we called Big Nanima and who was my favorite relative. My first memory of Nanima was when I was about four years old and Ameena was eight, on one of our then annual trips to Pakistan. When Nanima greeted us at the airport, she kneeled down in front of me, put her hands on my shoulders, and stared into my face as if searching for something.

  After a moment of scrutiny, she patted my shoulders, as if in sympathy, and declared in Urdu, because she didn’t speak English, “This one has totally gone after her father.” The way she said it left no doubt about the disappointment that this entailed.

  Immediately after, she put her arm around Ameena, rubbing her back as she said, “Now, this one! This one is totally ours.” It was a scene that was repeated at each subsequent visit with Nanima.

  It wasn’t that she was wrong, empirically speaking. It was merely the confirmation of what I had already observed. But it was the first time that I remember making a judgment about my own appearance with respect to that observation. The most important feature she looked for to determine a likeness, I suppose, was color and complexion. Ameena had our mother’s smooth, milky-white skin tone—the kind that reminded me of Dove soap commercials. My own skin was dark. Like my father’s. But that wasn’t the only proof of Nanima’s accuracy. Ameena was sharp-featured. Her nose was long and thin, her cheekbones high and well defined. She was slender. Long-legged and high-waisted—sleekly built. I was shorter, of course, because I was younger. But my proportions were also stubby, compared to hers, in a way that had nothing to do with the developmental differences between us. I had shorter limbs, stumpier fingers. I was round and plump, too. Nanima was the first person to bring these differences to my attention and she reinforced them in a less than positive light every time we met.