But she didn’t see it that way, did she? Iqbal now said to himself. Of course she didn’t. Why should she, when all she’s been doing is looking for reasons to leave you?
His attention snagged by this last thought, Iqbal abruptly stopped walking, causing a bicyclist to almost run into him. He ignored the man’s muttered curse. Of course. Of course. That explained the disquiet, the upheaval he had felt ever since she’d told him about Laleh’s visit. Because even without knowing it, he had sensed this agitation, this restlessness in Zoha for—how long now? And the intelligent part of him, the Allah-blessed part, had figured it out before the rest of him had, the threat posed by Laleh’s return into their lives.
But why now? Iqbal railed as he resumed walking. Now, when everything was already so hard? Even in his all-Muslim neighborhood it was impossible to escape the madness of a world thirsty for Muslim blood. How wrong their analysis in college had been. Back then they had seen the fight as between rich and poor, a global class struggle. Maybe the world had changed since then, or maybe Allah had seen fit to drop the scales from his eyes, but everywhere he looked these days, someone was out for Muslim blood. Iraq. Afghanistan. Chechnya. Kashmir. Sudan. Gujarat. Even on the streets of this cursed city. Hadn’t he seen it firsthand?
But the affairs of the world were not his concern. He had humility now, unlike during his arrogant student activist days, when he had believed he could change the world. Now he knew that only Allah can change the destiny of an ant or an emperor. Now he had more pressing concerns, like the conversation with Murad earlier this week, when the latter had told him that business was bad and so he would have to take a pay cut. At first he had assumed that Murad was bluffing, getting even for his calling in sick the afternoon of Adish’s visit. But when he realized Murad was not joking, Iqbal had been unable to look his uncle in the face, afraid that his eyes would show his contempt for Murad’s obvious lie. Business was good, and for two months now Iqbal had been trying to muster up the courage to ask for a pay raise. It didn’t come easy to him, this asking, this talking about matters of commerce. But Murad must’ve sensed something and had thought to preempt him with his outrageous untruth. And because Murad had no shame, the burden of shame had fallen on him, on Iqbal. He had been the one to look away, afraid of calling the thief a thief.
As he walked, Iqbal renewed his vow to hide the news of the pay cut from Zoha for as long as he could. He didn’t want to revive the old discussion about allowing her to find a job. He was the man, the head of the household. It was his duty to support his wife.
At least there have been no new calls on Zoha’s cell phone since the day Adish stopped by to see me, he thought. Seems like they have finally gotten the message. A car horn sounded, setting off a long string of horns, like the firecrackers that the Hindus set off at Diwali. Iqbal blocked his ears as he walked, frowning slightly. In retrospect, he was glad he had agreed to chat with Adish. He had almost refused, so upset had he been by Adish’s showing up at his workplace. But he had noticed the unexpected wetness in Adish’s eyes at his rudeness and something in him had weakened. Some hand of friendship had reached out from the past and tugged at him and he had agreed to lunch.
Iqbal sighed heavily. Could things have gone differently? he asked himself. Or was it inevitable that those college friendships had to end? Zoha had always blamed him for pulling away from the group. But this was not his recollection. What he remembered was that they had begun to go their own ways even before graduation. Iqbal squinted hard, trying to part the veil of the past, and what emerged was a memory of him carrying a small vase of roses to the hospital for Armaiti the morning after the march. He remembered the large bruise on Armaiti’s forehead and how she had drifted in and out of sleep, while her mother spoke in whispers and rearranged the pillows on Armaiti’s bed. Where were the others that day? And then Iqbal remembered: he had left the hospital and gone directly to the courthouse, where Adish was waiting for him, Laleh’s father at his side. Rumi uncle, who had agreed to represent the arrested students in court, had lectured both of them about their naiveté, about the perils of political activism, but Iqbal had barely listened, anxious as he was to see Zoha, who had been arrested along with twelve of their comrades the previous day.
Even now, after all these years, in the middle of a crowded street, the hair on Iqbal’s neck stood up as he remembered the shock of seeing Zoha and Kavita as they made their disheveled court appearance. It is as if they’ve been in jail for a year instead of a day, Iqbal had marveled to himself then. Kavita especially had looked half-crazed, but when he’d asked her if she was okay, she had looked straight through him.
It all began to come apart after that, Iqbal now thought. Laleh seemed to continually apologize to us for having missed the march. Kavita developed those strange eye tics and nervous habits, spinning around to look behind her even if we were just walking down a street. And if we asked her what was wrong, she just shook her head.
No, Zoha was wrong. He remembered that a few months before graduation Armaiti had won a writing contest cosponsored by the Indian and Czech governments which took her to Czechoslovakia for eight days. Upon her return, she had described to them in hushed tones how dark and drab Prague was, the soldiers with machine guns on the streets, the old ladies in black coats standing in food lines, the ever-present surveillance cameras in the hotel elevators. There had been a stunned silence, none of them knowing what to say or believe. “You’re making it sound like something out of a CIA propaganda film, yaar,” Laleh had finally said, and they had all looked at Armaiti, wanting her to deny it. Armaiti had kept quiet.
He and Zoha had gotten close in the months that followed. He knew it without her having to say it—for the first time, Zoha was letting herself imagine a future that featured him in a starring role, rather than her three friends. She was seeking him out now. Laleh was spending more and more time with Adish; Kavita had grown secretive and distant; Armaiti seemed disenchanted by the movement. Now, finally, there was a place for him.
Well, he would not let that place be usurped by the others. Not now, not after all these years, not after everything he’d sacrificed. Did Laleh and Kavita really think that they could swoop down into their lives after years of zero contact and scoop up his wife? Zoha was so impressionable. Always had been. And so influenced by Laleh, especially. And Armaiti. Iqbal increased his pace as his building came into view. He was very sorry for Armaiti’s suffering. But what did she expect? That she could pick up Zoha as easily as he could buy a tomato at the vegetable market near his house? How blithely these Americans—yes, he considered Armaiti an American now—thought they could buy and sell people. Out of the whole lot of them, Adish was the only one he truly trusted. It was a good thing Adish had visited him, Iqbal decided as he walked past the vegetable market. He trusted Adish to keep his word. Let the others go to see their sick friend. Let them spend their money to visit a country that they had once condemned. None of this had anything to do with him. All he asked was to be left alone.
But there was still the matter of Zoha’s cell phone. When to return it to her? When was it safe? Did he have the right to confiscate it? Was Zoha right? Was he holding his wife a prisoner? He had tried to ask such a question of the imam at his mosque earlier today, but the old man had looked at him with puzzled eyes. “What’s the question, son?” he’d asked. “Cell phone belong to you. Wife belong to you. What is the problem?”
He had not dared tell the imam about slapping Zoha. To this question, he knew the answer. He was wrong. It was an unforgivable thing he had done, a gesture born out of a desire to protect his family from the intrusions of the outside world. But never again, he promised himself. I swear to you, Allah. May you chop off my hands if I ever strike a woman again.
He had almost reached his building when he remembered. The bruise. An ugly purple bruise and swelling had risen on Zoha’s face where he had struck her. Mumtaz would notice immediately. Would Zoha cover for him? He could not be sure. Iqbal su
ddenly felt tired to his very bones. He glanced at his watch. Zoha would be dressed, waiting for him so that they could leave for Mumtaz’s house. But the thought of facing his sister’s hostility made him sick. Not tonight. He just didn’t have it in him to put up with Mumtaz’s attacks tonight. He took out his cell phone and dialed his sister’s number as he climbed heavily up the rickety wooden stairs of his apartment building.
“Yes?”
“Hey, Choti,” he said, lapsing into his nickname for her. “It’s me. Listen, sorry about the last-minute cancellation, but we can’t make it tonight.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nahi, I’m not feeling well, yaar. Tell Husseinbhai I’m sorry. I just need to go to bed early.”
“Is Zoha coming?”
He stopped climbing, stunned by the question. “No, of course not.”
“Why can’t she come alone?”
He could tell where this was headed. “She doesn’t want to come without me, Mumtaz,” he lied. “I asked her.”
“Let me speak to her.”
He gnashed his teeth. Mumtaz had always been like this, even as a toddler. Relentless. “I’m not home,” he said shortly. “I was at the mosque.”
“If you’re well enough to go to the—”
“Mumtaz,” he snapped. “Wish Husseinbhai happy birthday from us, okay? Khuda Hafiz.”
“Wait,” she began, but he hung up.
Iqbal shook his head in exasperation. He was so tired of Mumtaz and her seething resentments and misguided feminism. One of these days he would not keep his mouth shut. One of these days he would tell her to grow up, point out to her that she wasn’t the only one who wore disappointment like an iron choker around her neck.
Chapter 15
It was a feeling she had forgotten, this lightness of being, this feeling of wholeness. For years, everything had been a performance, a churning stew of anxiousness and achievement, of striving, of moving ahead. For years, she’d felt like a figure in one of Picasso’s paintings, disjointed, cut up, her knees where her nose should be. Not a person so much as a patched-up doll. Hoping that the golden luster of professional success could hide the tarnish of her failed personal life. And help slow down the whirling, like a mad fan, that she always felt within her.
With the other three she had had that. A feeling of contentment, like ice on skin on a hot summer’s day, like running your fingers lightly over a patch of grass. No need to perform, to even speak, because weren’t there always three other voices speaking for you, vocalizing your thoughts and dreams, cracking your jokes, singing your heart’s music?
And tonight. Nishta and Armaiti, still as distant as stars, flung into unreachable space. But Laleh with her, sitting across the room from her, warm and familiar as the sun. The red wine turning her lips purple. And Brahms—it was Armaiti, Kavita remembered, who had first introduced her to Brahms—on the stereo. Nishta and Armaiti were not here, but Ingrid was, sweet Ingrid sitting on the couch next to her, her bare arm occasionally grazing hers. And dear old Adish, as painstaking and elegant a host as ever, rushing to fill their glasses, to replenish their plates, making sure they never excluded Ingrid from the conversation by dwelling on people she didn’t know. A new foursome, and although they were a lifetime removed from those eccentric madcaps who had once been her best friends, tonight it felt enough—better than enough, it felt rich and precious and tender.
“She’s drunk,” she heard Ingrid say, and despite her immediate indignation, something in her thrilled to hear the quiet possessiveness in Ingrid’s flat assertion.
“No I’m not,” she exclaimed, but the last word somehow came out in a childlike squeak, so that she had no choice but to join the others in their laughter.
“This whole evening makes me wish I had a cigarette,” Laleh said lazily.
“You smoke?” Ingrid said.
Laleh smiled. “Used to. Before the children were born.” She pointed to Kavita with her chin. “This one, too. We all did. In college.”
Ingrid turned slightly toward Kavita. “You never told me you smoked.”
“There’s a lot I haven’t told you about me,” she said saucily, aware that she was flirting with Ingrid, aware of Laleh’s watchful, slightly incredulous gaze, but unable to help herself.
She felt rather than saw Ingrid and Laleh exchange conspiratorial smiles. “She’s in a good mood today,” Laleh said. “Generally she walks around all stooped and sulky, like she’s responsible for every ill in the universe. You’re good for her,” she added.
“Thank you,” Ingrid said lightly. “And I’ve heard so much about you for years now.”
“Well,” Laleh said. “I just wish that we’d met sooner.”
Kavita heard the faint rebuke in Lal’s voice but there was something else, too—regret? Self-chastisement? She looked up to see Laleh looking directly at her, her long, beautiful face serious, even sad. And then Laleh smiled slowly, and the warmth and love Kavita saw in her face took her breath away. She stared at Laleh wordlessly, unable to look away. She knew now without a shadow of a doubt that Laleh knew her secret, probably had always known. And that it didn’t matter and probably never had.
Even as she looked away, Kavita had the weirdest feeling that Laleh and Ingrid were communicating silently with each other, that Laleh was handing her over to Ingrid, and that Ingrid was making some silent promise to Laleh. As discreetly as she could, Kavita pinched her right cheek. The numbness confirmed her suspicion—yes, she was drunk. You must be imagining things, she said to herself.
Adish, too, seemed to have picked up on some change in the atmosphere, because his voice was a tad too hearty as he said, “More drinks? Ingrid? Little more wine?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Kavita put a cautionary hand on Ingrid’s knee. “We should be going, no?” she said.
“Bullshit, yaar,” Adish said as he topped off Ingrid’s glass. “Let the poor woman enjoy her drink.”
“It will be hard to get a cab this late—” she began before he cut her off.
“Who said anything about a cab? You think I’m going to let you get in a taxi smelling like a bloody bevadi?”
“I’m not drunk,” she said indignantly, punching him on the arm, but he just laughed as he fended her off. “Right, sure,” he said. He turned to face Ingrid. “She was always a lightweight. Even in college.”
“What was she like? In college?”
“I’d appreciate it if you people didn’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” Kavita said.
“Listen to her,” Adish said with a grin. “Just like in the old days. She’s trying her best not to slur her words.”
“I certainly am not,” she said, trying not to slur her words.
Adish got up from the couch. “I think I have a few photos,” he said. “You want to see?”
“Adish, don’t you dare—” Kavita said, but he winked at her and headed toward the wooden trunk in the corner of the living room.
The first photograph was of the three of them standing around Armaiti as she played the piano in her mother’s living room. Armaiti’s head was flung back, her mouth slightly open as she sang. Kavita stared at her own youthful face, noticed the intense way in which she was gazing at Armaiti. Would it be obvious to a stranger that the slim girl standing with one hand resting on the piano was in love with the piano player? Ingrid seemed to know, because she said, “So this is Armaiti?”
Their eyes met across the photograph. “Yes,” she said.
Laleh had come across to where they were sitting and reached out to take the photograph. She stood studying it for a moment. “I know exactly what song she was singing that day,” she said suddenly. “ ‘Bridge over Troubled Water.’ Isn’t that funny? I remember the day perfectly.”
And just like that, Kavita heard it, heard Armaiti’s voice, light as gossamer, soaring on the high notes like a bright yellow kite. If you need a friend, / I’m sailing right behind. / Like a bridge over troubled water, / I will
ease your mind. What kind of a trick was youth that they had believed the words of a pop song as fervently as others believed in God?
She knew that Laleh was waiting for her to respond but found that she couldn’t. All she could hear now was Armaiti’s voice melding with hers on a hundred songs—What do you see, my blue-eyed son? . . . Bluebird flying high, telling me what you see . . . A working class hero is something to be . . .
“This one here played a mean guitar, let me tell you,” Lal was saying to Ingrid. “She and that guitar were inseparable.”
Ingrid turned to her, her eyes curious. “You play guitar? How come you never played for me?”
“I don’t, anymore.”
“Why’d you quit?”
There was no easy answer to that question. Kavita shrugged. “Because.”
Laleh turned to look at her. “What was that song you wrote that we used to sing?”
Kavita blushed and shook her head. “I don’t know. I forget.”
But Adish and Laleh were smiling at each other, their eyes narrowing with the strain of remembering:
“The years, like waves, drew us apart, / Out of mind, but not out of heart,” Laleh sang.
“Something, something, something,” Adish hummed vaguely.
And then together they sang the chorus:
But we are all here.
We are all here.
Ingrid clapped while Kavita looked mortified. “This is so unfair,” she said. “Bringing up youthful indiscretions.”
“I think it’s sweet,” Ingrid said, patting Kavita’s knee. She turned toward Laleh. “You know, I’ve never so much as written a poem in my life. But then, I have the perfect excuse—I’m German.”
Kavita heard Laleh’s delighted laughter.
They were still laughing when they heard a key turn in the front door. “What the hell?” Adish said, staring. “It can’t be the kids. It’s much too early . . . ?”
The World We Found Page 13
