by Aisha Saeed
“Naila.” My chacha lowers his voice and presses a hand on my shoulder. “This isn’t the time or the place—”
“No!” I shove his hand off of me. My voice breaks. A tear slips down my face. “You don’t get to tell me the time or place for anything anymore.” I look at my relatives. Their arms are crossed. They wear frozen smiles on their faces. Amin is sitting in the running car. I don’t know if anyone can hear me, but I no longer care.
“You’re my daughter. My only one.” My mother’s voice breaks into sobs. “We did what we did for you.”
“I was your daughter. I’m not anymore.”
I feel my mother’s gaze on me as the car pulls away.
I never want to look at her again.
Chapter 43
The car ride home is silent. The servants open the steel gates, and Amin pulls into the carport. Nasim and Saba walk outside, shielding their eyes from the sun. They watch us approach.
“Welcome home.” Nasim hugs me. “Ruqaya, my dear friend, stopped by for some chai. I didn’t realize you’d be home so soon. Come in and meet her.”
I step into the foyer.
“There she is!” I look up and see Ruqaya. Short and perfectly round, she wears a bright yellow salwar kamiz and smiles at me widely before she clears her throat and then, slowly, in broken English says, “It is nice . . . to meet you.”
I swallow and look back at her.
“That bad?” She laughs, switching back to Urdu. “Well, maybe now that you’re here, you can teach me how to speak it properly.”
I look down at the ground. Just days earlier, I thought I would never have to set foot in here again.
“I’m making some tea.” Nasim takes my hand and leads me toward the kitchen. “Just help me set out the biscuits, and you can teach Ruqaya all the English she wants.”
“We need some time alone,” Amin says.
“First, some tea.” Nasim looks at Amin with surprise. “And then you can have as much alone time as you want.”
“It can’t wait.”
Nasim releases her grip. “Fine. I’m starting the tea—don’t be long.”
I follow him toward the bedroom. I watch him lock the door. My heart races. My knee, I think. If he dares try . . .
“Have a seat.” He points to the worn sofa but catches my expression. His voice falters. “I mean, only if you want to.”
It’s been only a few days, but I’m shocked at the depth of betrayal I feel. I had no right to expect anything from him. Still, the humiliation stings.
Amin paces the length of the room, his jaw tense and angular. “First, I’m sorry.” He stops and looks at me. His eyes redden. “No, sorry doesn’t begin to cover it. I had no right. I have no excuse. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me.”
He sits down on the bed across from me. “Since you left, I’m haunted with one question. I keep thinking, why does my wife look at me like she does? Why do I have to work so hard to bring one smile to her face? What did I do wrong?”
I watch him rub his temples with his fingers. His tone is heavier than I’ve ever heard it before.
“I remember when I first saw you. You were wearing a lavender salwar kamiz. You were so different from any other girl I ever met. I must have met twenty others before you, but you know what made me certain I wanted to marry you? It was when we first met and you looked up at me while serving tea and you smiled. Most girls look away, but you looked me directly in the eyes. I thought in that moment we shared some sort of connection. But since then I’ve never seen a smile like that again on your face. And I have been driving myself crazy in all these weeks trying to figure out what happened, what changed to take away your smile.”
I stare at him, trying to recall the moment he remembers as vividly as I don’t.
“Then I thought, maybe it’s because I can’t provide her with the lifestyle she is used to. She is from America, and life is very different there. But the more I thought about it, the way your father just left, the way you looked at your mother. Something didn’t make sense.” He looks at me. “Then it hit me last night. I realized what it was. You didn’t want this, did you?”
I look at him.
“That’s what I thought.” His face clouds over. “I’m the man they made you marry.” He is silent for a few moments. “Why?” he finally asks. “Why did they do it? Was there someone else? Is that why you didn’t want to marry me?”
“Amin,” I blurt out, “it’s because there was someone else that all of this ever happened. None of this was my choice.” I press a hand against my mouth, trying to regain composure. “His name is Saif.” I squeeze my eyes shut, but tears trail down my cheeks.
Amin swallows. “Oh,” he says. “I see . . . I had no idea.” His voice trails off. “They forced you to marry me.”
I look down, unable to speak.
“Do you want to leave?” His eyes are now downcast.
Is this a trick? I wonder. Does yes mean he will unlock the keys to my cage? Or is he trying to gauge my risk of flight?
I hold my breath and then, “Yes,” I say, looking at him. “I want to leave.”
Amin swallows. “I wish life were that simple. I wish I could tell you to just go. But I can’t tell you that. Maybe I could have five years ago, when I was younger and knew less about the way the world works. But one thing I have learned in this life is that you have no control over it. Life chooses us. We think we can control it, but we can’t.”
“There are some things we can control. You can change this. You can.”
“Change what?” he asks. “Change the fact that your uncle will probably kill you if I send you back?”
“Kill me?” I repeat. “Look, Amin, I know he has a temper but—”
“It’s more than a temper, Naila.”
“It doesn’t matter. He knows my father would never let that happen.”
“The same father who did this to you?” he asks. “Besides, we can control many things. But not whom we marry. Our marriage was written before we ever existed. We could no more keep this marriage from taking place than we could control the weather.” He looks at me. “If you think I want this, I don’t. How can I be happy when my wife finds me repulsive? When she will never trust me again? But what can I do? Not only would your life be in danger, we would bring shame to both our families. The little chance my sister has of getting married would be gone.” He shakes his head. “I wish I had known all this before we ever got married. I was deceived—my whole family was. Just like you, I feel cheated. But it’s too late now. We cannot escape our destiny. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing I can do.”
As I watch him get up and walk away, every ounce of hope—the hope I didn’t know until now I had bottled up and stored away—shatters, vanishing into the air. My prior life is now better left as a figment of my imagination, a reality wrenched away for good.
Part Three
Chapter 44
Your face is a window to your world,” Saif once teased me as he sat across from me in the high school courtyard. He had pushed his tall red energy drink toward me, insisting I try some, and burst out laughing at my concerted effort to smile as I took a sip.
“It’s good!” I had protested with a wince before grabbing and downing my water bottle in one long gulp.
“Don’t ever play poker with me.” He grinned. “You couldn’t lie if your life depended on it.”
He was wrong.
The sun has long since set; dinner was over hours ago. I sit on a plump leather couch in the living room of Amin’s home. Feiza sits next to me watching television. She hardly blinks. Nasim sits on a recliner across from us hemming Amin’s pants. On the surface, everything is exactly as it has been these past three months.
I stare at the television, but nothing registers except the desire to keep my breathing steady and my face as expressionless as
possible. No one must know what I am feeling right now. No one can know what happened today.
The morning began like all the others before it. I propped a squirming, giggling Zaina on the kitchen table.
“Zaina!” I lifted up her sandals. “I can’t put your shoes on if you keep moving around!”
Feiza walked into the kitchen and shook her head at her daughter. She wrapped a gray chador around her shoulders. “Be a good girl, Zaina, or we won’t take you to the market! I mean it this time!”
I love going to the market with Feiza. She picks the things we need while I look after Zaina. Our time there is nothing special, but trips to the market are a chance to escape the four walls of the house, a momentary reprieve from the boredom that otherwise pervades my existence. Now that I’ve become a permanent fixture, the servants have slowly intervened in my chores, gently insisting I leave the labor to them. They can’t understand that I want to clean and dust. I want to scrub the grout until it gleams white. What would I do if I stopped and stayed completely still? I can’t be sure, but I fear I might slowly go insane.
Now as I sit on the couch this evening, I think back to what happened and wonder: Despite my greatest efforts, have I finally gone mad?
We made our way down the road toward the market as we did nearly every other day. I remember my shock when I first encountered open-air markets such as these, with raw slabs of red meat hanging on hooks in the open air. Carrots, radishes, and turnips in crates lining the front of the store. It all felt bewildering, but now, a few months later, I can hardly believe I ever shopped anywhere else. Crisp, cool stores with sliding doors and fluorescent lights and stock boys in white aprons talking on cell phones as they line up groceries on white metal shelves now feel like a fable, a fairy tale I might have heard a lifetime ago. This market, the dusty floor, the women’s voices at a steady hum, the flies buzzing overhead, this is reality.
I never thought I could feel this way, but it turned out Selma was right: letting go helped ease my anger at the unfairness of it all. I couldn’t say I was happy now, but I had accepted that this was my life. The farther away I let the past feel, the more I could accept my reality.
This morning, Bibi Fatima had nodded at us from where she sat by her house on the corner near the market, sorting through her lentils. She smiled a toothless grin at Zaina, as she always did. The market was busier than usual. I recognized most of the women here by their chadors, each with uniquely patterned reds, pastels, and blacks; some women covered their heads with them, others wrapped their chadors around their shoulders. A tall man with a wiry build and thick mustache carefully inspected a fresh batch of goat meat swaying on a hook.
I stood apart from the shoppers as I normally did. Zaina, now more confident in the use of her sturdy legs, no longer let me hold her in my arms. Now she demanded to explore every corner of the store and taste as many things as possible before I inevitably caught her. Today was no different. She whimpered in my embrace, squirming against my hip and pointing toward the floor.
“Okay,” I finally told her. “I’ll let you walk with me, but hold my hand and don’t let go.”
I set her on the floor, gripping her hand tightly in my own. She looked up with pleading eyes, her hand tugging mine, small tears forming as she babbled in a language known only to her. I looked at the splotches of red appearing on her cheeks, a tantrum approaching.
“Zaina.” I leaned down and kissed her cheeks. “You like sugar cookies, don’t you? The ones with the sprinkles? Or maybe some ice cream? You want to go with me to get some?”
I was looking up at the cooling display shelf tucked in the back corner of the store when I suddenly stiffened.
Someone was watching me. I could feel the gaze boring into the side of my face.
I had grown accustomed to the penetrating stares of strange men. Oftentimes the glances were merely curious ones by those passing by and wondering who I was, the one with a gait distinct from the other women in the area. Sometimes, however, my eyes had met those of an admirer, taking me in, seeming to undress me with his gaze. At first, in my anger, I stared back at these men brazenly, expecting them to blush with shame and look away. But I was always the one who ultimately looked the other way; the men seldom did. I grew to understand why Feiza and the other women chose to cover themselves in large chadors, cloaking themselves when out and about, and soon learned to keep my focus on the ground, a charcoal-gray chador cloaking me as well.
Then why now, after months of averting my eyes, had I looked back?
I fidget now on the sofa, trying to keep my eyes fixed on the television. Why today had I met this gaze?
I ignored it at first; I did my best to look away. I rushed to catch Zaina, who had yanked her hand from me and raced toward the shelf full of glass spice jars. I scooped her up into my arms. I lifted my hand to adjust my shawl.
And that’s when it happened.
I caught for an instant the eyes of a man staring back at me.
It was a strange sight—a figment so real, I could reach out and touch it. Despite the months of perfecting the art of looking away, I was transfixed in shock. Zaina wriggled from my grasp and bounded toward the chickens in the wire coop in the distance, but I could only stare at the hallucination, the strange incarnation standing in the store, a short distance from me.
Saif.
I slowly stood up straight, afraid to move too suddenly, afraid the mirage would vanish. I looked at the cream-colored round hat on his head, his white salwar kamiz, and the light brown chador draped loosely around his shoulders. It wasn’t Saif. It couldn’t be. This person had light stubble around his jaw. This person had closely cropped hair. Saif in his jeans and wavy hair looked nothing like this person standing across from me, staring at me now.
But why, then, did I see his eyes and recognize somebody familiar?
I felt a tug on my salwar. Zaina held a half-eaten apple. “Up!” she squealed. I reached down and lifted her in my arms. She rested her head on my shoulder, humming softly to herself.
I turned back, but he was gone. Nothing stood in the space he occupied just moments before.
Now, as I stare at the television screen, I wonder, Is my mind finally cracking? Why now? After all these months, after I have finally accepted it, why does he haunt me in the faces of strange men in the marketplace?
* * *
“Feiza, come with me to the market,” I say the next morning.
“We just went yesterday. Did we forget something?” Feiza steps into the kitchen.
“We didn’t forget anything—rice wasn’t on our list.” I pull out an empty sack of rice.
Feiza stares at the empty bag of rice and places a hand over her mouth. “Thank God you checked! What if Saba had noticed first? I swear that bag was nearly full when I checked yesterday.” She frowns. “Usman is coming in a few weeks. I’m just too distracted to function properly these days.”
I blush, feeling guilty about the upturned rice at the bottom of the garbage can. “I don’t know, but we should get some more.”
“Give me a minute. Zaina is asleep. I don’t want to wake her. Let me make sure Saba can watch her before we go.”
I just want to be sure, I tell myself. I just want to confirm that I simply hallucinated.
We step into the market and make our way toward the large brown rice sacks at the far corner of the store. “These are going to be heavy.” Feiza lifts the handle of the largest bag. “We should have sent Mushtaq. We just got so nervous, we headed over here without thinking. He always brings the rice.”
“Let’s just pick up a small bag. If we go back empty-handed, Saba will be upset.”
Feiza lifts the handle of the smallest bag. “I understand why she’s bitter, but we’re not the reason her engagement broke. You know she taught at the primary school here before her engagement ended? Nasim still tries to persuade her to go back,
but she’d rather sulk at home all day. I wish she would stop taking it out on us.”
“Should we tell her that when we get home?”
“You’re terrible! Let’s go pay for this.”
“Let me get some cookies,” I tell her. “I promised Zaina I would get her some sugar cookies yesterday, and I forgot.”
“You are so good to her.” She smiles. “She’s lucky to have you.”
I watch her make her way to the vendor at the front of the store. She pauses at the stall of fresh produce. I glance around. A handful of women are milling about in the distance. No figments linger in the open-air market today.
I count out the money I brought with me and make my way to the row lined with packaged goods and biscuits. Suddenly, I gasp.
There it is. The hallucination. The same clothing. The same hat. The same stubble. And the same eyes. He’s at the edge of the aisle close to me. Close enough to touch. He does not look away. He’s watching me.
“Are you okay?”
I turn around. It’s Feiza, standing right behind me. “Naila”—she puts a hand on my shoulder—“you don’t look well.”
“I’m fine.” I take a deep breath. “I’m just going to step outside.”
“Sure.” She watches me with concern. “I’ll be just a second.”
The world seems uneven, moving faster than it should as I go. Hallucinations are supposed to be blurred, hazy, and translucent. Yet this one seems real. Solid.
The sky grows overcast, giving me reprieve from the otherwise bright sun. The months have passed; the heat has grown more forgiving, and yet—it lingers.
Maybe that’s what’s going on. I have heatstroke.
I draw in a deep breath and adjust my chador to keep it from sliding down my hair. A figment, I tell myself. You’re having some sort of setback. Just take a deep breath. It will pass.
I am turning back to see if Feiza is nearly done when my heart drops. The figment has stepped outside. He looks at me. He hesitates for a moment. And then he walks toward me.
