The Writing on My Forehead: A Novel

by Nafisa Haji

  Suddenly, the rhythmically calm assertions of the British-accented CNN International newsreaders were interrupted by a note of panic and disbelief. All eyes in the room were glued to the television screen, on the image of a skyscraper in flames. A few moments later, we saw an airplane, the second one, flying into the twin of the first building. The gasps and shouts were loud enough to draw Big Nanima out of her room. Her eyes singled me out in the crowd, making me realize the pose I had assumed, my hand clenching and unclenching, clutching at my abdomen in a universally feminine gesture that I had witnessed and written about many, too many times—this is what women all over the world do when confronted with danger. Mothers, clutching at their wombs, where life is conceived and nurtured, a primordial plea for protection offered whenever life is threatened and attacked.

  Big Nanima knew this. She had read everything I had ever written. Her eyes on my abdomen made me still my hand.

  She came closer. “Saira? What has happened?”

  Mute, I pointed to the image of horror and destruction taking place on the other side of the world. It was September 11, 2001.

  SEVENTEEN

  DESPERATELY, I TRIED, in those first few hours after the planes hit the Twin Towers, to call Ameena, to make sure she was safe. She and Shuja and Sakina. I knew they had to be back in California after a vacation spent on the East Coast. But I would not rest until I was sure.

  “They were—were they going to stop in New York on their way home from Florida? I think they were. Oh, God, I can’t remember!” The room was still full of people, but I was speaking to myself, my eyes fixed on the television. Big Nanima was there, watching me pace the length of Lubna Khala’s lounge with phone in hand.

  “Relax, Saira. They must be home. Far away from all of that.” She waved her hand in the direction of the horror on television. “You said yourself that Sakina’s school would have started already.”

  “I know, I know. But I just have to be sure. And—who knows? Who knows what will happen next?” The sky was falling. In New York, in Washington, in Pennsylvania.

  The rest of the night and the morning that followed, I spent in front of the television, like all the millions of Americans at home and those around the world who did the same. In terror, in grief, I pressed my knuckles into my mouth and, through the aid of the footage that rolled around the clock, tried to put myself there, at Ground Zero, in body and in spirit to feel, in solidarity, the panic of those last moments of the thousands, the frantic worry of those left behind to search, to pick up pieces, to grieve. All against the backdrop of a completely foreign digestion of the same events among people who were not American, who could not really understand the pain of what it was to be an American on that day and on the days that followed it.

  Reaction in Lubna Khala’s lounge varied widely as crowds of people seemed to continue to wade in and out of the flickering light of the television screen. It was what people did in Pakistan—in good times, in bad times, and as a part of everyday existence—they gathered to eat together and argue, to live out their lives in the public forum that an extended family provides. The phone rang off the hook as friends and relatives, far more desperately close to Manhattan than me, despite the thousands of miles of ocean and land in between, sought and relayed news back and forth from sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters who worked in the city that was the center of the world.

  And then there were the armchair analysts, people like my second cousin’s husband, who said smugly, when the first few hours of muted shock had faded, “Well, then. Now America will know what it feels like. What it feels like to face death and destruction, the kind they deal out every day and everywhere else, the bloody imperialists! Now they will know what it feels like to suffer.”

  Or my aunt’s husband, who clicked his tongue, shook his head, and mourned, “Such shame! The shame that these so-called Muslims have brought upon us!”

  One of his sons, my first cousin, asked, “What are you going to do now, Saira? You can’t go to Afghanistan. They’ll be dropping bombs there. Masses of them. And you can’t go home, either. You know what they did to the Japanese during World War II, don’t you, Saira? You watch and wait to see how they treat you now.”

  “And what about the rest of us, eh? You think we won’t all be painted with the same brush? Wait and see how they punish us, see how they will bomb Muslims everywhere. Bomb us into oblivion,” his father added.

  Lubna Khala objected, “Surely not. You heard President Bush. He has said it already. He knows. Islam is peace. Islam is not what these madmen have done. He knows that.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

  Finally, almost twenty-four hours later, I made contact.

  “Ameena? Thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you for hours! You’re okay?”

  Ameena’s voice was small and stretched thin. “Yes. But, Saira, we were just there! In New York. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe what’s happened! It’s unspeakable.”

  “Sakina’s all right?”

  “She’s fine. She’s in school. I kept her home yesterday. I don’t know why. I—I didn’t want her to be away from me.”

  “So—you’re all all right?”

  “Yes, Saira. We’re fine.”

  “Did you get my e-mail? About Daddy?”

  “I did. He’s in India?”

  “Yes.” The phone crackled for a few long moments while I tried to think up something else to say.

  “And you? You’re off again with Mohsin? To Afghanistan?”

  “That’s the plan. I—I was supposed to go yesterday. But—I couldn’t leave without hearing from you. I have to rebook a flight to Peshawar. We go on across the border next week.”

  “Is that a good idea, Saira? To go there now?”

  “I—it’s what I do, Ameena.”

  “Yes. Well, be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “And keep in touch. Please, Saira. Mummy’s gone. I—I worry about you. Let me know that you’re safe.”

  “I will. Give my love to Shuja. And Sakina.”

  The phone crackled again, then beeped, signaling the end of time for the call I had booked, before going dead.

  When I had put the phone down carefully on its cradle, Big Nanima shuffled into the room and put her hand on my arm. “You’ve spoken to Ameena? They’re all right?”

  I nodded.

  “Now you can rest. You haven’t slept, Saira.”

  Two days later, I was still in Karachi, unable to take the steps necessary to get on with the business of my life—telling stories that no one wanted to hear.

  Mohsin called several times, urging me to hurry. I said something to him that I had not realized I was feeling. “I—what if you do this story without me, Mohsin?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was thinking about going home.”

  “What are you talking about? You know there’ll be a war here. In Afghanistan. It’s just a matter of time. What’s happened over there—no one’s story is going to be forgotten there, Saira. You know that. It’s what will happen here that has to be covered. You’ve delayed long enough. Waiting to get word from Ameena.”

  “You’re right.” I closed my eyes, wondering at where this doubt was coming from. “Of course you’re right.”

  Still, I hesitated. There was backlash in America. Snippets of tragedy totally overshadowed by the mass calamity still unfolding. Big Nanima showed me the article in Dawn on the day before I had finally determined to leave Karachi to join Mohsin. A Sikh man had been murdered. Mosques had been graffitied and firebombed. There were little attacks all over the country, swallowed up into the back pages of history.

  “Saira,” Big Nanima said, “you must call Ameena. You must tell her to take off her hijab.”

  My eyes widened at the implication of her suggestion. “I—I didn’t even think of it. You’re right. I’ll call her in the morning. Before I leave. But I don’t think she’ll listen.”

  “Of course she will. There’s no poi
nt in taking risks. The world is full of crazy people. She has a daughter to think of.”

  I nodded.

  “Come. Let’s go to Gymkhana. I haven’t gone for a walk for days and if I don’t use these old legs, they will stop serving me at all.”

  Gymkhana. That was where we were when the call came from California. Lubna Khala called the club. She had us tracked down and brought home.

  Shuja had called, Lubna Khala told Big Nanima and me. To say that Ameena had been shot.

  EIGHTEEN

  I DON’T KNOW WHAT kind of string-pulling my uncle had to engage in to get me on a flight home within hours of Shuja’s phone call—bribery and name-dropping had something to do with it, I’m sure. The airport terminal in Karachi was pandemonium—crowded with rich and angry young men and women eager to get back to the United States for the start of their Ivy League semesters, frustrated by the backlog and delay that three days of grounded U.S.-bound flights had caused. Classes would begin without them.

  Before I left, I called Daddy in Bombay, though he was unable to respond to anything I told him, a string of words that meant nothing, because neither he nor I had witnessed the truth of them the way we—the whole world—had witnessed the truth of towers burning and crashing, of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters eviscerated by a hatred that had massive implications. What Shuja had called to tell me was about hatred on a smaller scale—hatred that only a few would mourn, hatred that only Sakina had witnessed.

  No, we could not yet absorb this truth. There were only words and phrases that reverberated in my mind for the duration of my journey—backlash, hate crime, gunshot, surgery, coma, a prognosis that was not good, and Sakina. Sakina was there. Seated and belted into the car when Ameena went round the back to load groceries into the trunk and was accosted by a man spewing epithets—raghead! towelhead!—raging on about revenge. A random spree—the man had been out hunting, shooting people at gas stations and mini markets. A Hindu. A Sikh. At least with Ameena, his aim had been a little less misdirected. The others had survived.

  And Ameena will too, I told myself, over and over again, in the charged atmosphere of my journey through three airports and thousands of miles around the Earth. Over the sound of the cargo doors slamming shut underneath us, the rattling wheels of beverage carts rolling down the aisle, the crackle and pop of the pilot’s announcements, the whispered exchanges among the passengers. Over the smell of the canned, recirculated air of the cabin, the aroma of the mini meals served to those of us in economy, and the scent of too much eau de cologne that some passengers availed themselves of in the lavatories. Over the feel of rough, fire-retardant seat upholstery, static-sticky blankets, paper-covered pillows, and the cold, metal touch of the button that reclined the seat. These sensual details might otherwise have been tinged with the awareness of what it must have been like for the passengers of those other doomed flights, if my own focus was not wholly consumed by thoughts—some random and some very painfully specific—of my sister.

  I thought of my last conversation with her—on the phone, three days earlier. Of the call I had planned to make at Big Nanima’s suggestion. And I remembered the last time I had seen Ameena—the awkwardness of that parting. The relief of it. The guilt. Mine and hers. And the cause of both, standing, oblivious, at her side.

  When I landed, I took a cab straight to the hospital. I found Shuja sitting alone in a waiting room. He didn’t stand when he saw me and said nothing when I took the seat next to him, waiting—hoping—for him to tell me what I had tried to convince myself. That Ameena was all right. That she and Sakina were both all right.

  After a stretch of silence that I was too afraid to violate, Shuja spoke, in a tone that I both recognized and denied—a tone that sounded the same in all the languages I had heard it in before. One that signaled shock. Trauma. Pain and loss yet unassimilated.

  “No one saw anything. Sakina was there. But she didn’t see it happen. She heard a man’s voice. And a gunshot. By the time she got out of the car, he was gone—thank God! Ameena was on the ground. Bleeding out. She was covered in blood. So was Sakina.”

  I couldn’t bear it any longer—that my next words had to be questions. “Shuja? She’ll be all right? Tell me, Shuja. Please. She’s okay?”

  He looked at me then. Really looked at me for the first time since I’d arrived. “No. She’s gone, Saira. Ameena’s gone.”

  NINETEEN

  AMEENA WAS DEAD. I had not reached her in time. Hours later, after Shuja and I collected Sakina from his aunt’s house—Nilofer Auntie’s home, where Sakina had stayed since the shooting, where Shuja had stayed years before, during those months of courting Ameena—we let ourselves into my parents’ house, the three of us, because Shuja could not yet face going home.

  I was scooping tea leaves into the kettle when he entered the kitchen. “She’s asleep?”

  Shuja nodded. “I put her down in Ameena’s old room.” He sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. “I should have told her. I should have told Ameena to take off her hijab.” His voice was flat and distant.

  I shook my head. “You can’t blame yourself,” I heard myself say. “I—Big Nanima told me to tell her the same thing. But—it was too late—” My voice trailed off at the sight of Shuja’s face caving inward. I put my arm around him and squeezed his shoulders.

  After a while, he pulled away and began to speak again: “I didn’t like the idea at first. When she began wearing hijab. All I thought of was what people must be thinking of me. That I was some kind of chauvinistic, Muslim oppressor. It took me a while to admit that to myself. But—after Sakina—she wanted to be the best person she could be. To deserve the gift that we had been given. I knew how she felt. I was the same way. I started working out and eating right. I read everything I could on parenting. We both did. We felt—both of us—that we had to earn the right to be parents. Does that make sense?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “She was always so good. After Sakina, she became even better. A better wife. A better human being. A better Muslim. When I realized—what my own objections were—that people would think less of me—I laughed at myself. She had the right to decide. What she would wear. But I should have said something—after what happened. Done something. To protect her. It’s my fault that she’s dead.”

  “No, Shuja. It’s not your fault.”

  “I’ve lost her, Saira. I’ve lost Ameena. And with her, I’ve lost everything.”

  That was when I should have said something, anything, to reassure him. That all was not lost. That he had Sakina. But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Ameena was gone—leaving behind no script for me to follow.

  When I looked up, Shuja’s eyes were on me, but I looked away, unnerved by my own silence.

  He stood up. “I should go.”

  “You won’t stay here?”

  “No. I—I have to go home.”

  “Sakina?”

  His eyes were on me again, asking a question I couldn’t answer. After a barely perceptible pause, he said, “Let her sleep. It’s better for her to be here.”

  AHMED CHACHA, GRAVE-FACED and smirkless, standing in for my father, who wrestled with a grief that rendered him incapable of travel, was the first among a steady trickle of relatives who came. They staggered their visits in well-coordinated shifts—those who could, the British nationals among them, who needed no visas. He stayed for a week, just long enough for Ameena’s body to be released and buried. Ameena’s body. The subject of a murder investigation that had yielded no arrests.

  Ahmed Chacha left and Zehra arrived as Shuja went back to work and Sakina resumed school. Then, Mehnaz was dispatched. After the uncle and the cousins, it was the aunties’ turn. First, Ruksana came with her baby, Kasim—an auntie by definition only, representing the branch of Mummy’s family that had only recently been reconciled. When Ruksana left, more than a month after Ameena’s death, Jamila Khala and Nasreen Chachi came together—the last scheduled visitors. They cooked and cleaned,
preparing two weeks’ worth of food, which they packed and labeled and stored in Mummy’s freezer in a spectacular grand finale of support.

  Shuja came every night, establishing the routine that we would cling to when all had gone. On the aunties’ last day in Los Angeles, they gathered—Jamila Khala, Nasreen Chachi, and Shuja’s aunt, Nilofer Auntie—conferencing together in hushed tones that were silenced whenever I entered the room. When Shuja came that night, they cornered him while I made tea in the kitchen.

  Carrying the tray in from the dining room, I stopped when I saw them and stood immobile and unnoticed. They were all on the sofa—Shuja, his face in his hands, Nilofer Auntie on one side of him, her hand on his shoulder, Jamila Khala on the other, a hand on his knee, Nasreen Chachi perched on the arm of the sofa next to her—all of them with their backs to me.

  Jamila Khala said, “Beta. I know that your grief is still fresh. We are leaving tomorrow. Otherwise, we would have waited to tell you what we have to say. But we must tell you this—even if you are not ready—for Sakina’s sake. She needs a mother. You must marry again. It’s what Ameena would have wanted.” One of them handed Shuja a tissue from the box on the table in front of them.

  Shuja said nothing, his shoulders shaking.

  From behind, I saw Jamila Khala’s eyes turn to Nilofer Auntie. A visual nudge made Nilofer Auntie clear her throat and say, “Jamila is right, Shuja. You know that. Better than anyone else. You lost your parents when you were so young. You know what it is to grow up without a mother.”

  It was Nasreen Chachi’s turn. “We tell you what Ameena’s mother would have told you if she were still alive. Beta, Saira is here. She is not married. It is the best solution. Who else can love Sakina as much as her mother did? Who else but Saira? My husband—Ahmed Chacha—he lost his mother, too. When he was only a baby. You know about this?”