The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  My memories of Big Nanima, who was still alive, an English professor at a women’s college in Karachi, were far more vivid and warmth-filled than those of my grandmother. She was very unlike her younger sister. Nanima was thin, while Big Nanima’s clothes were daily challenged by the effort to contain her rather large and generous proportions. Truly, the amount of flesh that spilled out of the sleeves of her sari blouse defies description. It rolled and waved as she spoke, gesturing, it seemed, with the whole of her massive self to emphasize her words. As a child, I believed that the “Big” in Big Nanima referred to her size rather than to her being my grandmother’s older sister.

  Nanima disapproved of dining out in general and of Karachi street cuisine in particular. She insisted, with good reason, that the food made on the streets of Karachi was dirty and not fit for consumption. Big Nanima scoffed at such caution. Food, as her figure could attest, was her friend, and the cheap and spicy fare sold in the stalls at every corner in Karachi was what she thrived on. Bun kababs, a hybrid hamburger made mostly of potatoes smothered with sweet and sour tamarind chutney and chili paste, were among her favorites. And pani puris, deep-fried, crispy, and puffed up little flatbreads dripping with a spice-flavored water that had never known the process of boiling, which was mandatory among people respectable enough to afford the luxury of having a kitchen. She introduced me to these delicacies, among others.

  One of my favorites was paan, a betel leaf stuffed with ground betel nuts. These were prepared to the specific taste of each customer by paan-wallas all over the city. I liked them sweet, oozing with multicolored coconut shreds. Nanima especially condemned this particular treat, trying to scare us off of them with dire predictions of premature tooth loss and ominous warnings about the possibility that they may contain illicit drugs. The one time that Ameena went along with Big Nanima and me and succumbed to the temptation of the colorful pastes and powders that went into the complicated process of paan-making, she spit it out after only a few chews, convinced that she was feeling dizzy from the drugs Nanima had persuaded her they contained.

  There wasn’t any secret to the fact that Ameena was our grandmother’s favorite, or that I was her sister’s. One incident in particular, memorable because of its sheer absurdity, illustrated this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Ameena and I were both suffering from our regular bout of dysentery, which usually kicked in within a week of our arrival in Pakistan. Ameena, careful to abstain from all street-hawked food and unboiled water, was especially susceptible to this disorder and usually became pretty queasy for the rest of our visit. I, on the other hand, merely suffered for a day or two at most before recovering fully enough to continue to partake of all that the filthy streets of Karachi had to offer—a fact that Big Nanima never failed to crow about to Nanima.

  Both of us, on this occasion, were running low-grade fevers. It was the middle of summer and the heat was unbearable. Even more so in the small home that was too modest a household to have air-conditioning. Ceiling fans were the only remedy. And, of course, there was only one in each room. And here lay the foundation for the controversy that was about to erupt.

  Whenever we visited Karachi, Nanima would move into Big Nanima’s room, leaving her own accommodations for my mother and father. Two small cots were set up in the middle of the grandmothers’ room for Ameena and me. It was the placement of these cots, now, that was to be hotly contested.

  Nanima had just finished readjusting the location of our cots when Big Nanima walked into the room with a bowl of ice water and a couple of hand towels to put on Ameena’s forehead and mine. Ameena and I had been playing Ludo, a primitive form of Trouble, which always seemed to be more fun than its American counterpart, despite the lack of a pop-o-matic dice. We were sitting on Big Nanima’s bed, because Nanima had strict rules about the hours of operation for hers. It was a bed, not a chair. Not designed for sitting on, but for sleeping in. I don’t think I took these rules very seriously, and I am not sure what consequences breaking them would have entailed, but playing with Ameena always meant playing by the rules.

  Big Nanima stopped short in the doorway to the room, took one look, and saw what Ameena and I had not.

  “What are you doing?” She had set the bowl and towels down and the fact that her hands were on her hips was a good indication that she had already drawn some conclusions.

  “I’m shifting the cots over a little,” Nanima said, as she shifted her own slight weight a bit from one foot to the other. “Ameena needs the fan. She’s burning up with fever.”

  “Oh? And what about Saira? She’s sick, too.”

  “Yes. And she’ll be fine. She’s a sturdy, hearty child. Ameena is too thin and weak. You know she can’t take the heat. I’ve just moved her bed over a little to make sure she gets the air directly from the fan. Poor child.” There was a brief pause before Big Nanima’s sudden motion caused Nanima to ask, “What are you doing?”

  Big Nanima let her actions answer for her as she, not very gently, shoved Ameena’s bed over with her leg and pushed my own into the favored position directly under the fan. Ameena and I forgot our game as we stood up together, near the foot of Big Nanima’s bed. Our heads began to move from side to side, like tennis spectators’, as the drama unfolded and the cots began to be volleyed back and forth in a battle of wills that, looking back, I am sure had nothing to do with us. The contested space was a difference of about eight inches and neither position was going to make the difference between life and death for either of us.

  “What are you doing? I have decided, haven’t I? Ameena has the greater need. She will be under the fan!” Nanima said this in an imperious voice as she, once again, arranged the cots to her liking. Her volume was going up, and the fact that she had to stop to tuck in a lock of steely hair that had strayed from her tightly wound bun was a grave indication of the loss of her composure.

  “No! Saira is very sick. She has a higher fever than Ameena. She needs the fan more!” Big Nanima’s long, wild, and curly locks of gray and black hair swung forward onto her face as she shoved the beds back again.

  “Yes and she wouldn’t be sick, would she, if she hadn’t eaten all of that trash with you? Her illness could have been avoided. Poor Ameena has been good. She has eaten only what I make for her at home.” Nanima tried to push the cots back, but Big Nanima had planted herself in her way.

  “And it’s no wonder she’s sick!” shouted Big Nanima.

  Nanima stood up, lengthening her spine to its usual straightness. Her thin, frail figure was no match for Big Nanima’s bulk, and Nanima, realizing this, turned and walked out of the room with a “Hmmph” that left us no illusions about the depth of her anger.

  Remembering Nanima, I felt guilty that I seemed to suffer so little grief over her death. I supposed it was my own fault that she preferred Ameena to me. For more than one reason. Though I understood the language, I didn’t speak Urdu as well as Ameena did, and Nanima never hid her displeasure at that fact. I also remembered running away from her on several occasions when she’d stopped me to request that I massage her aching and arthritic legs. Ameena took pride in the task. She believed, as we were taught in Sunday school, that service to our elders was a sure-fire way of earning the points needed for gaining eventual entry into heaven.

  For me, the potential long-term gratification was not worth the short-term pain. Any moment alone with Nanima meant the onset of a lecture—which was odd, considering that her sister, Big Nanima, was the one who actually lectured for a living. It was easy to see where Mummy had gotten her moralizing tendencies from. But Nanima recited essays rather than stories. Her themes of virtue and vice were always illustrated through the abstract. There was a lot of talk about heaven and hell. Good and evil. And little representation of what that might look like in actual fact, making these little sermons, devoid as they were of people and plot, rather too dry and humorless for my taste.

  Big Nanima, too, told stories. In beautiful English, which made my communication with her l
ess lopsided than the kind I ran away from with her sister. Her stories, however, had no apparent moral messages. They were rude, crude stories, peppered with plenty of practical lessons on the process of human digestion with all of its funny sounds, sights, and smells. They were told solely for the purpose of eliciting laughter…totally devoid of any ulterior motive that I could ever find. And they were usually accompanied by demonstrations. The sounds of belching and farting, coming from Big Nanima, never failed to bring on a giggling fit. Even Ameena, when she could tear herself away from Nanima long enough to hear one of Big Nanima’s stories, couldn’t help but laugh.

  As I spied on Mummy consoling Ameena, I remembered another conversation I had listened in on one afternoon in Karachi, on our last visit there, when Nanima was still alive. I was restless, pacing the hallway, waiting for Big Nanima to finish her prayers. It was even hotter than usual and she had promised me a gola ganda, a snow cone, one of the deadliest sins and a sure harbinger of deathly illness in Nanima’s eyes because of the unknown quality and origin of the water used to form the ice that was its primary ingredient. Ameena and Nanima were in the dining room, both seated at the table. Ameena was shuffling her fingers through a tray of uncooked rice, sifting through it for stones and pests. Nanima was slicing onions as she talked, her quiet, firmly uttered words punctuated by the rhythmic thud of the knife falling effortlessly, it seemed, and repeatedly, on the cutting board. It was the only time that I remember being drawn into their company—the topic was personal and there was a wistful, smiling tone to Nanima’s voice that, because her back was to me, I am not absolutely sure I would have found confirmation of on her face.

  “You never met him? Never even talked to him before the wedding?” asked Ameena, who was so engrossed in Nanima’s words that she didn’t notice me standing in the doorway to the room.

  “Oh, no. It wasn’t done. No, no. Not until the wedding day. And even then—I was veiled, my face was covered. So was his. He wore a veil of roses, a sehera. When I peeked up, once—when I thought no one was looking—all I could see were strings and strings of bright red roses.” Nanima laughed, “Your poor grandfather! He must have been so hot! Oh, yes. It was a very hot day. Maybe as hot as it is today.”

  “But how could you have—I mean—” Ameena’s relatively fluent Urdu seemed to fail her.

  “Well, that was the way it was done. It was very, very different then. And it worked. Your grandfather and I—” Nanima faltered inexplicably for a moment, using the end of her scarf to wipe her face, her eyes. For one brief second, I thought she was crying. Then I remembered the onions. And she continued, her voice strong again, “Your nana and I were very happy. For many, many years.”

  They were both quiet for a few moments, had both seemed to settle back into the tasks at hand and into the cheerless, boring kind of companionship that they enjoyed in each other, when Ameena’s fingers stopped shuffling. She pushed the tray away from her, put her elbows on the table, and propped her face into the cup of her hands.

  “Nanima, that’s the way I want to get married. Like you.”

  Nanima laughed and shook her head. “No, Ameena. Times are different. I was only sixteen when I got married! Just a child! You will meet your husband before you marry. Like your mother met your father, at your uncle’s wedding. He will be someone they find for you, yes. Someone they approve of. Your mother and father will have a tough time of it, I know.” Nanima’s head tilted as she looked into Ameena’s face. “You are a beautiful child, Mashallah. Like I was. The boys will line up at your father’s door, like they did at mine. But you will get engaged only after you have seen the man your parents find worthy of you. And met him. Then, he will take you out. For ice cream, maybe. And you will get to know each other. You will not marry a stranger.”

  A hand touched my shoulder. I gasped, but not loudly enough to disturb Nanima and Ameena. It was Big Nanima. I don’t know how long she had been there, how much she had heard. She had a thoughtful look on her face when she beckoned silently for me to come. She took my hand as we left the house, unusually quiet. But then, so was I.

  When I had finished my gola ganda, I asked, wiping the sticky red syrup on my clothes before taking Big Nanima’s hand again, “Is that true?”

  “Is what true?” Big Nanima squeezed my hand, unconcerned about the residual stickiness that I could feel clinging, still, to my fingers.

  “Is that the way it used to be? The way that Nanima got married? She and Nana didn’t even know each other?”

  Big Nanima frowned and paused before answering, “Used to be? It still is! Too, too often. Girls married off before they become women, like cows at an auction. Before they are old enough to understand what the world is about and what it has to offer. That there is more to life than breeding and birthing.” The frown faded into a smile. “But not for you, that same old story. Not for my Saira. From you, I expect big things.” She tweaked my nose and challenged me to a race home. I remember feeling glad and proud of myself, too. As if in advance for all that she hoped I would accomplish.

  THREE

  IN THE FACE of my rather traumatic, tantrum-filled railing against Ameena’s refusal to accompany me, Mummy arranged for a way to let me go to Pakistan alone. Almost. As far as London, at least. From there, I went on to Karachi in the company of Razia Nani, a distant relative of my mother’s—I tuned out when my mother tried to clarify the exact nature of the connection and have no idea of whether the tie was by blood or marriage—whom I vaguely recalled as a somewhat elderly lady. It was a compromise that I could live with, if reluctantly. The same was planned, in reverse, for my return three weeks later, when I would stay with my father’s brother and his family for a three-day visit before coming home. I was nervous about this, because it had been several years since I’d seen my paternal cousins, Mohsin and Mehnaz—eighteen-year-old twins whom Ameena and I had always tried to avoid, finding them more than a little frightening and exceedingly weird.

  Razia Nani would, my mother said, take good care of me. “Besides,” she’d added, probably to try and avert the objection I was about to offer regarding the need for anyone to take care of me, “she needs you, too. She’s a lonely old woman. It will be good for her to have your company on the plane, poor dear.”

  As it turned out, I found Razia Nani’s company to be highly educational. She was a bona fide gossip, talking nonstop for the duration of the ten-hour-long journey from London to Karachi—with no regard for the tenderness of my young age; with no notice of how close or far my relationship was to the people that she tore through with a generous impartiality that included people she considered to be friends as well as foes; and with no care for the possibility that I may repeat the sensitive and potentially dangerous information that she shared with me.

  But for one detail, it would have been a perfect trip. The volume of Razia Nani’s voice—quite unconsciously, it would appear—seemed to increase in direct proportion to the delicacy and sensitivity that her subject should have commanded. While I was thrilled to get the lowdown on so many family secrets, I have to admit that I was quite mortified at the sinking certainty that everyone on the plane seated even remotely within our vicinity would be privy to the same information. I remember spending much of the early part of the flight slumped down in my seat, desperately balancing the need to keep these secrets in the family by urging Razia Nani to “shhhh” against the knowledge that such a “shhhh” would, in my mother’s estimation—and, more important, in Razia Nani’s—not be acceptable behavior toward an elder. Whenever the impulse to hush her became overwhelming, I entertained nightmarish visions of Razia Nani cozying down to tea with my other relatives and making loud declarations about how rudely I had behaved with her on the trip to Karachi, saying, “how ill-mannered and disrespectful that Saira girl is,” and “how badly Shabana has brought up her besharam daughter.”

  My fear of being overheard was compounded by my childish belief in the degrees of separation between people who could trace
their heritage to the Indian subcontinent. That there were, essentially, very few of them. It was an irrational belief, I know, but one that I have never really outgrown. Perhaps, originally, it was born from the curious perspective that growing up as part of a very small minority population afforded me. When we were children, my mother always seemed to make friends with anyone and everyone who could claim any connection to the geography in question—so that strangers, encountered in grocery stores, malls, movie theaters, or restaurants, became part of an intimate circle of friends that always felt like family.

  This feeling was underlined by the culturally appropriate titles of “auntie” and “uncle” by which Ameena and I referred to these friends of our parents. Totally different from the less intimate Mr.’s and Mrs.’s that we used to refer to neighbors and acquaintances outside of that circle: people who were white, black, or anything other than desi—a slang word for compatriot that was more about geography than religion, ethnicity, race, or even nationality.

  It was always rather confusing, on visits to Pakistan, to be confronted with a whole population of aunties and uncles. To look into the faces of racially familiar people who looked back at me with the blank strangers’ stares that I unconsciously associated with people of another hue. And part of my discomfort, on that journey with Razia Nani, was due directly to the fear that all of the brown people on the plane must know who we were…must bear some relation to my family within a number of degrees that made their passive participation in Razia Nani’s discourse less than disinterested.