The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

I looked back at Belle, watched her stab a piece of Bihari kabab on her plate with her fork and place it carefully into her mouth. She didn’t chew for a moment, just savored the flavor, with her eyes closed, and said, “Mmm—this is heavenly! I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying the food here in Pakistan! It’s my first time here, you know.”

  “Is it?” I didn’t care if it was or not.

  She nodded, her mouth—which she had indulged again with another fork-stabbed piece of meat—too full to speak. My own food was getting cold, the grease on my plate visibly starting to congeal. But the way she was eating—with so much simple pleasure and delight—made my mouth water. With an inward shrug, I started in, too, following her example and beginning with the kabab. We ate together, in silence, for a while. Then Belle, having worked her way around her plate, issued forth a loud sigh, and burped, ever so softly.

  She laughed. “Excuse me! Oh! That was delicious!” Her eyes were fixed on me, as if waiting for me to agree. When I didn’t, she said, “You know, Saira, I would have known you for Kasim’s granddaughter anywhere. You look just like him.”

  “I do?”

  “Oh, yes! Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

  I shook my head. Belle studied my plate for a moment, long enough for me to wonder whether she hoped I would offer her some of the food on it, since her own was now scraped clean. But I didn’t.

  She looked back up at me and asked, “How is your mother? I was so sorry to hear that she wouldn’t be coming to the wedding. I would have loved to have met her.”

  I felt obliged to respond, “She couldn’t—um—come,” failing to do so with any grace.

  “I’ve heard so much about her, you see. About all the mischief she got into as a child. Kasim would never have admitted it, you know, but Shabana was definitely his favorite child.”

  “She was?”

  “Oh, yes! Without a doubt!” Belle’s smile was bright, loud, sincere.

  I blinked. And this time, when I smiled back at her, it was without effort. She took my hand back in hers, making my smile fade immediately.

  “I’ve been looking for a chance to pull you away and get you all to myself.”

  “You have?”

  She nodded happily. And then looked away, toward the flower-studded stage where Zehra sat with her soon-to-be husband, Shahid. My own gaze followed hers as she said, “How I wish Kasim were here—to see all of you, his granddaughters, dancing together! All of you except your sister, of course. Ameena.”

  It was odd, to hear this woman—a stranger, with a British accent—talking about my mother and my sister as if she had some claim on them. I pulled my hand away from hers.

  Belle didn’t seem to have noticed. She asked, still looking at Zehra, “Does she look like you?”

  “Who?”

  “Ameena?”

  “Oh—no. She looks like my mom.”

  Belle nodded. “Who looks like hers.”

  “How—how do you know that?”

  Belle laughed at the look on my face. “From your grandfather, love. He told me she was very beautiful.”

  “Oh.” I watched Zehra for a moment. I saw Belle’s daughter, Tara, who sat beside my cousin. Her niece. She leaned in and said something in her ear, something which made Zehra crack up with laughter. Before I knew what I was doing, my mouth was open and I was asking her, “How did you meet him? My nana?” I said the last word a little defiantly, the emphasis serving as a declaration of sorts.

  Belle gave me a measuring look and asked, gently, “What have you heard?”

  I already regretted the question—for too many reasons to list. “Uh—something about a park?”

  “Yes. At Hyde Park. At Speakers’ Corner. Have you ever been there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Your grandfather—your nana—you know he was in London, with your grandmother, waiting for Zehra to be born? Can you imagine? And now she’s all grown up—about to be married herself!” Belle sighed, deeply content. Then, her eyes met mine, her nose wrinkled just a little bit in distaste. “I know what you’re thinking—what everyone thought. That he was going through some kind of midlife crisis. And I just happened along, at the right time and place—or the wrong one, I suppose, depending on your point of view. All I can tell you is what he told me himself.

  “Your grandfather was not an unhappy man. Before he met me. But those days in London—I think those were the first days he ever really had to himself. Walking about in the park. It was spring. And all those lovely clichés about London in the spring—they’re all true. He was enchanted. By the flowers, the soft blades of grass sprouting from the earth. The song of the birds that he actually listened to—for the first time in his life—instead of just hearing it in the background. He would hang about for hours at Speakers’ Corner, listening to new voices and ideas. It was toward the end of the sixties, you know. Really exciting.

  “Well, one day, he was standing there, listening to an especially excited speaker at the Corner—a rabid feminist, between you and me—who was demonstrating her point—something to do with the bondage of patriarchy and its partner in crime, capitalism—by burning a bra.” Belle laughed. “I don’t think your granddad had ever seen a bra being thrown about in public before. He was all stiff and proper, his lips pursed, like he’d just sucked on a lemon, shaking his head, in his three-piece suit, umbrella in hand. He looked more like an Englishman than any of the hippies around him. He turned to go, embarrassed, I think, by the display of ladies’ undergarments, when I saw—I’d been standing right beside him, watching him out of the corner of my eye, laughing to myself a little, I have to admit—that he’d dropped his wallet. I picked it up and grabbed hold of his arm, saying, ‘Excuse me? I think you dropped this?’

  “Well, he turned around and saw me, giving me one of those head-to-toe looks that men give and think we don’t notice.” Belle winked at me as she said it, and I felt my face flush at the “we” she’d tossed my way. “I don’t think he quite liked what he saw—I was a regular hippie in those days myself, wearing a pair of tattered old jeans, beads and shells around my neck, a roach clip in my long, dirty hair, and, to top it all off, no bra to speak of. Because his lips pursed up even more tightly as he took the wallet from me. I thought he looked a bit worried, as if he were resisting the urge to check if all his money was still there.

  “I laughed and said, ‘It’s all in there, I’m sure. You can check, if you like.’ And then he was embarrassed, as if I’d read his mind or something. He thanked me and stood there, pretending to listen to the woman who was still going on up there, shrieking like she was mad, raining spittle down on the lot of us. And then, she nailed him, with spit, right on the nose.” Belle was laughing loudly now. “I felt so sorry for him—he looked so absolutely disgusted by the whole thing. I reached up and wiped off his nose with the sleeve of my jacket.

  “I reckon he thought we’d crossed a line or something. Of intimacy, I suppose. Because, next thing I knew, he was introducing himself to me. And off we went to tea. We talked—about everything under the sun. And I saw that I’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t prim and proper at all. He was charming, full of life and laughter. Interested in everything I had to say—staring at me, open-mouthed, for half the hour, as if I were a creature from another planet.”

  “Did he tell you he was married?” I knew it was a rude thing to ask, but I couldn’t help myself, and—I suppose—I wasn’t afraid of Belle’s opinion of me the way I had been of Razia Nani’s.

  Belle gave me a long look. And I knew, somehow, that she wasn’t angry. “Yes. Almost as soon as we sat down in the tea shop, actually.”

  My face burning, I said, “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  Belle took my hand. Gave it a squeeze. And then let it go, perhaps this time sensing my discomfort. “No, love. You have nothing to be sorry about. It’s—it’s not easy to understand what happened—and I’m not sure how to explain it without muddling it all up. That day—o
ver tea—well, it was very clear that there was something there. Between us. In the end—I don’t know why I did—but I gave him my number. Told him to give me a ring. Knowing that he wouldn’t, of course. It’s not something I’d ever done before. Chatting up married men—especially older married men—was just not in my book. Not normally.

  “Your granddad told me what happened when he went home that afternoon—that your aunt had begun labor and she and your grandmum were already at hospital. Zehra popped out later on that night. He was ecstatic. Hung around the next morning at hospital, showering cash all over the staff, handing out jewelry to his daughter. But he was getting in the way there, hushed out of the room whenever the sisters brought the baby in to be nursed, or the doctor came to check stitches in places he didn’t want to think about. He decided to go for a walk. And ended up at the Corner—where I was mooning about, hoping to see him, without admitting it to myself, of course.

  “I saw him before he saw me. I came up to him from behind, put my hand on his shoulder. He turned. Our eyes locked. Without a word, we went back to my place. And—well—things happened. He told me he was a granddad now. Asked me why I was with him. I told him I’d answer that when he did. And there we were. In the middle of something totally unexpected. Nothing was the same for either of us. Nothing could be.

  “When Kasim went home that night—after spending the rest of the evening at hospital, holding Zehra in his arms—your grandmum found a button on his shirt missing. He thought for sure he’d caught it now. But she just sewed a new button on, like the good wife that he’d always taken for granted. He told me that he felt sorry for her. Isn’t that awful? I almost cried when he told me, I felt so dreadful for her. He did, too, for what it was worth. He knew, you see. What his own role was in the life she led. She was his wife. He’d been her husband. They were married before they’d ever gotten to know each other—or even to know themselves. And that was fine. Before. But it wasn’t anymore. He knew that it was over. You see, for Kasim—for your nana—there was never any choice in the matter. It was the same for me. And because he had changed—had been reborn—the people who depended on him, who were what they were, who they were, because of him, would also have to be reborn—to recreate themselves. And while he felt badly about his part in their past, he could no longer be responsible for their futures.” Belle stopped talking to take stock of what I was thinking. I don’t know what she saw on my face. But her next words made me jump. “Have you ever heard ‘Getting Better’? By the Beatles?”

  Very slowly, I nodded.

  Belle started to sing, softly, under her breath. And then said, “That song was playing on the radio in those days. When your granddad and I met. In it, the man says he’s changing his scene. That’s what your granddad did. He changed his scene. He had to.” There was a long silence that I didn’t know how to end. “What bothered him most was losing touch with his family. We had Jamila, of course”—she said Jamila Khala’s name with an er at the end of it—“and her children. But he longed to see your mum and Lubna. And all their children. Especially when we started to have children of our own.”

  Reminded of my mother, who had slipped my mind toward the end of Belle’s story, a question popped out of my mouth before I could even acknowledge it in my head: “Did you—did he take you dancing?”

  Belle lit up. “All the time! He taught me—ballroom dancing, I mean. Speaking of dancing!”

  Someone had put on some music and I jumped out of my seat, seeing my cousins starting to collect again for another performance, wanting to get away from Belle before anyone noticed us tucked away so intimately in that corner of the garden. I turned to her and stared down at her shoes for a moment, unable to think of what to say. Finally, I mumbled, “It was—uh—nice—talking to you.”

  “It was lovely! Now away with you. The girls are lining up already!” She was laughing at me.

  I carried a lump of guilt around in my throat for the next hour after dinner, when the dancing resumed. The choreographed numbers shifted into free-form. Jamila Khala danced with Zehra. Lubna Khala danced for what looked like the first time. Belle’s daughters got up and moved in time to the music, joining in with the rest of us, their nieces. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Belle approach Big Nanima, the only close relative still seated, and pull her up out of the chair she was sitting in. Big Nanima shook her head at first, sternly. Then she smiled a little, then laughed at something Belle said to her as she pushed her up into the center of our circle and danced with her until we were all breathless from dancing and giggling at the strange sight of them together.

  When the music stopped, I heard them laughing together, Belle saying, “You’re a terrific dancer, Adeeba!”

  I heard Big Nanima’s answer, too, a little breathless: “Well, don’t tell anyone, but I used to go dancing a lot. In London, when I lived there many years ago.”

  SIX

  RAZIA NANI AND I left Karachi—the image of Belle and Big Nanima dancing together still vivid in my mind. Razia Nani, dissecting the details of Zehra’s wedding, took great pleasure in calculating the value of the jewelry and gifts that had been exchanged between the bride’s family and the groom’s. As we got closer to landing, I prodded her attention away from the wedding that had just taken place and to my father’s family, with whom I would stay in London.

  “He’s a big shot, your Ahmed Chacha. Very rich and important.”

  I listened closely, because I didn’t know Ahmed Chacha as well as I knew my mother’s family. On past visits to London, I usually stayed with Jamila Khala. But she was still in Karachi, basking in the afterglow of success that a daughter’s wedding affords.

  Razia Nani was still talking. “He married well, your Ahmed Chacha. A banker’s daughter. Nasreen. A very nice woman. Though their children are another story! Oof! Rude and disobedient. They never greet their elders properly and wear outrageous clothes.”

  My twin cousins, Mohsin and Mehnaz, were assigned the task of retrieving me at the airport. As I emerged from customs with Razia Nani, my eyes searched the faces in the crowd gathered, waiting to greet arriving passengers. The air felt crisp and impersonal—not like the cloying, humid breath of hot air that wrapped around me like a sheet of plastic as soon as I had disembarked in Karachi. But the view, in some ways, was not all that different. The skin color, the facial features, and the languages I heard spoken among the majority of the people lined up before me were all familiar. Brown. Desi—though most were dressed in Western clothes and many spoke English with British accents. The British, after all, were not the only ones who left India after Independence.

  I found my cousins in a hazy waft of smoke. Mehnaz was leaning, one foot up, against a pillar outside of the terminal building. Mohsin’s face was hidden behind a camera, its focus trained on one of the Sikh women who worked at Heathrow, comprising the whole custodial staff, whose uniform was desi—a shalwar kameez, complete with dupatta. A cigarette dangled, defying gravity, from his lower lip. Mehnaz saw me first and lifted a finger to point, mumbling something under her breath, something apparently amusing, which made Mohsin’s lips lift, nearly relinquishing their hold on the cigarette. He clicked his picture and lowered the camera as they both took steps forward to meet me.

  “Well. ’Ere you are, then!” said Mehnaz cheerfully, as she stubbed her cigarette out under a heel that looked like a lethal weapon. “’Ow are you doing? ’Ad a good flight, did ya?”

  The only way, as an ignorant American, oblivious to the subtle differences and nuances among working-class English accents (yes, I knew they existed; I had, after all, seen My Fair Lady at least a dozen times), that I could describe Mehnaz’s accent would be as “cockney.” Years later, I felt an acute sense of betrayal to discover that she, and Mohsin, too, for that matter, had attended very upper-crust schools in London…the kind that made class (and, in desperate times, money) an entry requirement and accent an exit one. The kind that meant that her accent was about as authentic as Audrey Hepb
urn’s. But I have to admit, I admire the effort that dropping all of those hs must have required.

  I turned to say good-bye to Razia Nani again. Another of her sons was standing to the side, head lowered in shame from the scolding his mother had given him for being late to pick her up. She gave each of my cousins a disapproving once-over before asking, doubtfully, “Are you sure you will not come and stay with me, Saira? I’m not sure if I should let you go home with these—uh—children.” Mohsin had his camera up again, pointing it at Razia Nani, playing with the huge lens as if he were focusing a slide under a microscope.

  I said, “No, thank you, Razia Nani.”

  With one more suspicious look at Mohsin and Mehnaz, Razia Nani nodded and left.

  Mohsin, who had not yet said anything to me, cradled his camera to his chest with one hand and picked up the bigger of my two bags, shoving it onto his back with the other hand, like the porters that I had seen so many of at the airport in Karachi. Except that this porter had purple streaks of color in his longish hair, through which I could see a silver peace sign hanging from one ear. He wore black, drain-pipe jeans. And thick, clunky combat boots.

  When we got to the car, Mohsin packed and smashed my things into the “boot” and handed the keys back over to his sister.

  “Bollocks! I drove ’ere! You drive this time, Mo!”

  Mohsin’s hand did not retract, fearfully, as mine would have at Mehnaz’s forceful tone. He merely shook his head, still mute, and jingled the keys even closer to her face.

  “Bloody ’ell! Stupid, bleedin’ ’art joey! The air’ll be just as polluted whether I drive or you do!” Mehnaz turned to me, her words still punctuated by exclamation points, to explain, “Mo ’ere is going to save the whole bloody world! By not driving! ’E doesn’t mind if I do, though! Bloody fuckin’ ’ypocrite!”

  “I can’t help being a passive participant in the desecration of our planet. But at least I’m not an active one.” Mohsin’s words were delivered in a carefully neutral monotone, as if to make up for the distinctive language of his sister.