The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  “Then, one of the many excellent fringe benefits that came with my position became the subject of further contention in the family, and this time my sisters-in-law were part of and loudly active in the discussion from the beginning.” Big Nanima put the photograph back on the shelf. “I came home from having signed the contract for my new position and told them the news I knew they would not consider to be good. That I had been offered housing on the new campus.

  “My father was the first to react. ‘Housing? What kind of housing?’ He was looking up from the meal that my sisters-in-law, in less than harmonious concert, had prepared for the family. He had welcomed me back from England a few weeks before, and the expression of pride and happiness on his face, not yet faded, rivaled the one it bore upon the birth of each of his grandchildren, adding to my own happiness in a way that I cannot begin to describe.

  “I explained, ‘They’re building homes on a housing compound adjacent to the campus. They showed me the plans when I went to sign the contract today. They look like they will be very nice homes. Not very large. There are two-and three-bedroom houses, which will be assigned according to need. There are servants’ quarters as well. I would be eligible for a two-bedroom house next year, when they are completed.’ I added the last with a quiet, casual tone. A tone that did not reflect how I felt as I looked first at my mother’s face and then at my father’s.

  “My older sister-in-law had caught the looks. And followed them up with her own. She was apparently unsatisfied with the silence with which her parents-in-law had responded. She said, ‘But surely you told them, Adeeba, that you would not be needing any housing? You have your family, after all. You are not some lonely orphan girl in need of some service quarters.’

  “It was my turn, now, to be silent. I did not know what to say and was further intimidated when I looked up to find all of the eyes of the adult members of the family trained on me with remarkably similar expressions of expectation.

  “Again, my sister-in-law was discontented by the silence. ‘Adeeba? You did refuse the housing, didn’t you?’

  “I stammered out an answer, nervously, ‘Uh—no, I haven’t refused. Yet.’ I added the last word hastily as everyone at the table began to speak at once. Only a few of the voices, however, penetrated the general cacophony to be heard.

  “One was my father’s. ‘Beta? There is no need for such a sacrifice. Perhaps you don’t know how well your brothers’ business is doing. We are prospering.’

  “Another, my mother’s. ‘Adeeba! There is no question! Your bhabi is right, you must refuse this housing immediately!’

  “My sister-in-law, the one who had, it appeared, developed an aversion to silence in my three-year absence, provided the best example of its opposite state with her words, ‘Adeeba! Isn’t it enough what you’ve gotten? That you went to study abroad and made us the talk of the town! For God’s sake, I will not have it! What will people say now? That we didn’t keep you? That we treated you badly? Do you even care? About the shame that we will all have to endure? It is just not done! For a sister to live by herself when she has brothers who can care for her! A father and a mother, too! You are our responsibility! And it is a burden that we carry gladly, Adeeba, gladly!’ The silence that followed was deafening, and my sister-in-law, the one who spoke these last words, at last gave up trying to fight it.

  “Finally, I spoke. ‘Bhabi, I am sorry, but I—’ I cut my sentence off abruptly as I thought better of what I had been about to say.

  “My mother then surprised me, as she had a few years before, picking up the words I had reluctantly set aside: ‘Perhaps Adeeba doesn’t want to be anyone’s burden. No matter how gladly she is carried.’ There was no indication, in the soft words that my mother spoke, of how she felt about my place of residence or her daughter-in-law’s feelings about it. Her gaze was fixed on the curtain beyond the dinner table, fluttering lightly in the hot wind that blew outside. My sister-in-law, hearing the words she had uttered so excitedly reframed in the level tones that my mother employed, seemed to wilt and whither. In any case, the tide of this conversation had turned. And I took up residence in my own home in August of the following year.” Big Nanima waved her hand around the room. “I’ve been here ever since.”

  I looked around, obligingly appreciative. “Was this the best part of it all? Of going away to study? Having your own place?”

  “It was one of them, that is certain. A Room of One’s Own. Virginia Woolf. But teaching itself was its own reward. How to explain it? The sheer joy of it! Have you ever heard that song—I think it was a Beatles’ song? ‘Getting Better’?”

  Thrown off, I frowned, unsure of what she was talking about. “I—I’m not sure.”

  Big Nanima began to sing, her Pakistani accent transformed, the way that all rock ’n’ roll lyrics have the power to do, so that she sounded more like me than herself. “It really is a very catchy tune. Very optimistic. Have you ever heard it, Saira?”

  I was laughing. “Well, now I have!”

  Big Nanima shook her finger at me, threateningly, but I noticed that her toes were still tapping and she hummed the rest of the song to herself before saying, “The words still run through my head. Mocking me sometimes, when we seem to take backward steps instead of forward. But I do believe them. That things—in the world—really are getting better. That song played on the radio, on the Hit Parade, the day I sat in one of the cars, with my brother and sister-in-law, on the way to the airport. My other brothers were following us, with their wives, in their own cars. It was 1967. We were going together—the whole family—to pick up Zahida, your nanima. She was on her way in from London for a visit. I was so happy, I remember! And the words of the song were so appropriate. Only that morning I had thought those words to myself, looking around at the faces of the young women in my classroom, reveling in their good fortune. Every year, since I had come back from England, our enrollment was increasing. School and college had become standard expectations for well-brought-up girls—a prerequisite, almost, for a good marriage, rather than an obstacle to it.

  “My good mood lasted all the way until we brought Zahida home, to our eldest brother’s house—the boys lived separately now that our parents were gone—when we realized that this visit of hers was not the family reunion we had all looked forward to. She told us what Kasim Bhai had said and done. That her marriage was over. I looked at my sister’s tear-stained face and saw that she was no longer the beautiful young sixteen-year-old who had cried out of remorse so many years before. She was a mother—a grandmother—now!

  “But the years faded away as I watched her wrestle with the magnitude of what she had lost. Zahida was—bewildered. She had been everything she was supposed to be—an obedient daughter-in-law, a dutiful wife, a caring mother, a pious woman—and she had lost everything. I—who had been none of those things, done none of what I was supposed to—not out of choice, granted—had everything, compared to her. She was still my younger sister, and—oh, what I felt for her! How to even explain it?

  “You will know, Saira. You have a sister, too. That bond, the one between sisters—it is second only to the one between a mother and a daughter. My brothers still did not realize—they hoped that our brother-in-law would come to his senses. But I knew better. I knew that Zahida could not go back to India—not without facing a kind of humiliation I would not wish on an enemy, let alone my own flesh and blood! I would not—could not—wish for my sister what I had managed to escape for myself. A life of dependency. Living off of obligation. So, I asked her to live with me. I had plenty of room to spare.

  “Zahida moved in here. She moped around for several weeks, still in shock. And then, finally, I raised two delicate subjects that sparked the arguments that would rage between us for all the years that we lived together. One—I told her to divorce Kasim. Why should she stay married to him? Chee! After what he had done to her. Yet, in some kind of misguided attempt to save face, Zahida refused, saying what I know she did not in any way b
elieve! That eventually, Kasim would leave his English girl and come back! Hah!” Big Nanima shook her head, still disgusted by her sister’s assertion.

  “And the other argument?”

  “Ah! Well, within weeks, Kasim Bhai sent her a letter and a check, saying he would continue to send them on a monthly basis for her support. Zahida sent the check back! I understand why she did it—pride. But there is no shame in accepting what someone owes you. She insisted—claiming that if Kasim no longer claimed her as his wife, in name and fact also, then she had no claim on any benefits that arise from the title. Every month it flared up between us. Like clockwork, whenever the check arrived.

  “The whole thing rippled down to affect the children, of course. Your mother and your khalas, out of loyalty to their mother, refused to accept any gifts from their father, though he tried to send them checks, too, on birthdays and when their children were born—you and Ameena, also. When Zahida and Kasim Bhai were both gone, the girls relented. It was quite a large amount they all stood to inherit. All of them, except your mother. Who never took a cent, not while her parents lived, and not after they died.”

  We were quiet together for a while. I stood up to look at the pictures again, and then walked around the room before I came to stand before Big Nanima. “I always knew you were a teacher. A professor. But I guess I never realized what an accomplishment that was.”

  Big Nanima smiled. “An accomplishment? Maybe in my time it was. But, for your generation—getting an education, making a contribution to the world you live in—that is your right and your duty.”

  Again, I looked around the room. “So—this house? It belongs to the college?”

  “Yes. I’ll have to leave it behind when I retire.”

  “What will you do then?”

  “I have a little flat that I bought for my retirement. I’ll live there.”

  I thought of the uneasy companionship that Nanima and Big Nanima had established. “Alone?”

  “Yes. For as long as I can. That is my fear for the future.”

  I raised my eyebrows, questioning.

  “That eventually I will become too old or sick to care for myself. May God take me from this life before that day ever comes. But I have to be prepared for the worst. Because I have no children to rely on. It should have been me, you see. Instead of your nanima. I always hoped that I would be the one to go first. Because she was not alone. She had three daughters to go to when the time came.”

  “You’re not alone, Big Nanima.”

  “In the end, Saira, we are all alone. Some of us more than others, perhaps.”

  I put my hand in hers, like I had when I was younger.

  FIVE

  MOST OF THE rest of my stay in Karachi centered around the drama of anticipation that I felt at the thought of finally meeting the Englishwoman for whom my grandfather had left my grandmother. Despite the behind-the-scenes trauma that she and her children caused before their arrival, my family treated the Foreign Guests—as they had been dubbed—with a gracious, formal kind of welcome that quickly thawed to a genuine, if hesitant, warmth. Because Belle was clearly thrilled to be among us, throwing herself into the festivities of Zehra’s wedding with a carefree kind of abandon that was hard to resist—though I tried to, for longer than most of my relatives. Belle’s presence was the reason for my mother’s absence, and I resisted her smiles and laughter—at first—out of simple, biological loyalty.

  The fact that Belle and her children were put up at a hotel instead of at the house of one of my relatives—an insult the import of which she could not have known in a cultural context where hospitality is defined by even giving up one’s bed for one’s guest if called for—made my initially aloof stance imperceptible, because she was not a part of the day-to-day preparations for the wedding, which we were all so involved with. When I did finally fall victim to her charm, I was bolstered, in my defeat, by knowing that Big Nanima, who had resisted Belle with as much effort as I had, fell soon after me.

  Zehra’s mehndi ceremony was the first of the official wedding functions and for ladies only. It took place in Lubna Khala’s magically transformed garden—the lawn was covered with beautifully woven carpets laid under a colorfully patterned canopy. Chairs lined the perimeter for elders to sit on. Lanterns lit the place, casting an Arabian-nights flavor over the whole affair. A low platform was set at one end of the garden, decorated with strings of flowers and pillows, where Zehra would sit with her bridegroom—the only male invited—wearing traditional yellow. In front of it, one of my second cousins would play the dhol, the two-sided drum, to accompany the songs that all of the girl cousins, myself included, had rehearsed until our voices were hoarse—songs whose lyrics included friendly insults we had prepared especially for the family of Zehra’s groom, who would have prepared similar insults to lob at our side.

  When the evening began, I watched from a sullen distance as Belle—a middle-aged, heavyset woman whose waistline rivaled Big Nanima’s and who looked much older than my mother and her sisters, despite their being, as I knew, all close in age (nothing like the beautiful bombshell I had pictured in my mind)—was invited to perform the rassams, the ceremonies, which included taking out sadaqa, alms, and the symbolic application of henna to Zehra’s betel leaf–covered palm. The real henna application would take place the next morning, when the henna applicators, who were servicing the guests now, would come to spend the day working on the intricate designs that would adorn Zehra’s hands and feet.

  “That is an honor she is not even conscious of.” Big Nanima was standing beside me and her comment was mumbled under her breath, meant only for my ears.

  It was the only opening I had been offered by anyone since Belle and her children had arrived in Karachi. “Do you think Mummy was right not to come?”

  Big Nanima’s head tilted to one side. “Right? I don’t think this is a question of what is right or wrong. I think Shabana made a decision with her heart. Right and wrong are questions of the mind, separate from emotions, which can be slippery to live by.”

  I frowned, not understanding. Big Nanima put her hand on my cheek, laughing a little. “Don’t listen to me, Saira. I’m being a little emotional myself and not making any sense. Belle was your grandfather’s choice of companion. He loved her. That is the simple truth of it. Your mother, Lubna, Jamila—they each had to adjust to that truth in the best way that they could. Jamila was the only one who knew him in his second life. Maybe this”—Big Nanima nodded to the circle in which Zehra sat, surrounded by my aunts and Belle and her daughters—“is not a bad thing. Maybe it’s a kind of healing that they have all longed for. Something that Shabana needs to stop running away from, too.” Big Nanima sighed. “But my loyalty is to only one person in this story. To Zahida. My sister. The woman that Kasim Bhai abandoned without a backward glance. So I am not the right one to consult in this matter, Saira. Because my heart sees that woman laughing with your cousin, with my sister’s granddaughter, and all I feel is that this is Zahida’s place she occupies, just as it was Zahida’s husband that she loved.”

  My cousins called me away from Big Nanima’s words, then, to tell me Jamila Khala wanted us to perform the first of the dances that we had prepared, before dinner was served. The floor was cleared as guests scooted back to the edges of the carpets to give us room to dance, all of the female cousins, all of Nanima’s granddaughters together, except for Ameena, moving barefoot, in synchronized rhythm, to the sound of India’s latest film hits. The hems of our long kameezes—heavy with gold and silver dabka—swung, emphasizing the sway of our hips and the flash of the colors we wore—vivid reds, fuchsias, royal blues. We twirled and circled and squared off while the other guests whistled and clapped and took our measure, thinking of sons and nephews who would need wives in the coming years. When we were done, the smell of tikkas and kababs, of saffron and spice, was our invitation to dinner—laid out on silk-skirted tables under another festively decorated canopy at the side of Lubna Khala’s gar
den. That was when Belle sought me out. By the time I saw her coming, it was too late to escape without being obvious.

  She had gone through the buffet already and stood next to me as I went down the line, her plate piled up with food to a height that began to explain the roundness of her figure. “What rhythm you have, Saira! Your grandfather would have been proud to see you here, dancing with the other girls.”

  She had caught me off guard—speaking to me as if she knew me—and I didn’t know what to say. So I smiled, the kind of smile that only lifted the corners of my mouth. Saying nothing, I took a chicken leg from the chafing dish filled with tikka pieces, and hoped she would go away.

  But she didn’t. She balanced her plate, carefully, in one hand. And took my hand with the other as we reached the end of the buffet, where I had stopped—and was now unable—to pick up a fork.

  Belle put her plate down for a second, unwilling to release me. She picked up a fork and put it on my plate, took up her own again, and tugged at me as she said, “Come, love. Come and sit with me while we eat.” She led us to two chairs cozily set up in a corner of Lubna Khala’s garden. I looked around to find an excuse to escape, hoping someone—an aunt, a cousin—would issue me a summons that I would have to respond to. But no one seemed to notice my captive state.