by Sheba Karim
Chotay Dada completed his tasbih circuit, carefully setting the beads next to his plate.
Was what happened to him during Partition very traumatic? He didn’t seem traumatized. But then Dino fled a genocide and you’d never guess it. The Holocaust survivors had their number tattoos and museums and lots of Hollywood movies. Actually, the Bosnians had that movie by Angelina Jolie. I’d suggested to my mother we see it once on our movie night, but she refused, saying it would be too depressing, so we’d gone to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D instead.
If Angelina were here, she’d ask Chotay Dada what happened to him during Partition. Then maybe she’d make a movie about it.
Come to think of it, Rwanda also had a Hollywood movie.
I realized Chotay Dada was looking at me, and smiled.
“You start college in the fall?” Chotay Dada asked.
“Yes.”
“What will you study?”
“History,” I replied, an answer that seemingly came from nowhere.
“Very good.”
“Thanks.”
“With what focus?” he asked, in English.
“South Asian history,” I answered.
“Very good,” he repeated. “What era? Mughals?”
“I’d like to learn about colonial India, and Partition.”
I’d said it. The P word had left the building.
“Partition?” Chotay Dada said. “Interesting. Why this?”
Shit. I hadn’t expected him to interrogate me. “Well, because it’s a monumental event in history, but no one really talks about it.”
“This is true.” He picked up his fork and stabbed a single chickpea. “Usually, with such things, there is a good guy and a bad guy,” he continued. “But Partition, there was no good guy—or bad guy.”
“What about the British?” I asked. “Aren’t they the bad guys?”
The newspaper lowered, revealing my father’s face, his mouth full of food as he said, “Of course they are. Bloody Churchill and the Bengal famine. Three million people starved because of him, and people here call him a hero!”
“Yes, the British were bad,” Chotay Dada agreed, “but we still killed each other. The Muslims, the Hindus, the Sikhs, they all did terrible things, had terrible things done to them. I think after it was over, people wanted to forget.”
“But how do you forget something like that?” I said.
Chotay Dada was quiet, staring at the framed Picasso print on the wall, two hands holding a bouquet of flowers, and I thought, oh no, I’ve gone too far.
“I am glad you are studying it,” Chotay Dada said. “More people should study it. What is that saying—you must know history to make sure it does not repeat itself.”
“Shabnam’s studying Partition?” my father said.
“I might, in college.”
“Very good,” my father stated. “But you can start learning now—Chotay Dada was a boy in Lahore during Partition.”
Lahore, not Delhi. My grandfather had lived in Delhi before Partition, and I’d assumed the same about Chotay Dada. So the setting of my story was wrong. I don’t know why this surprised me, when I’d basically been talking out of my ass.
“Why don’t you tell her about it?” my father continued.
Leave it to my father to ask the socially inappropriate question, a cringe-inducing trait that actually came in handy once in a while.
“What do you want to know?” Chotay Dada asked me.
This was actually happening.
“Anything,” I ventured.
“Tell her how bloody it was,” my father insisted.
I was worried this would offend Chotay Dada, but he stroked his beard thoughtfully, his prayer beads dangling from his hand. “The bloodiest thing for me was what happened to our neighbors. I’m sure you know that Lahore was a diverse city for centuries: Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Parsis, some Christians, too.”
I knew little about Lahore, but I nodded as if I did.
“Most neighborhoods were segregated, but ours was mixed. In the months leading up to August 1947, there were mobs, killings, fires. People were scared, people were dying. It was a very violent time, but there were also times of boredom, when we were shut up in our house playing chess or carrom, waiting for the curfew to lift. Every day more and more Muslim refugees from the Indian side arrived in Lahore. The expressions on their faces . . . there was no more light on anyone’s face, not in those who ran, or those who chased, or those who hid. Non-Muslim houses were being marked so when the angry mobs came through they would know which ones to attack. The police were mostly Muslim and did nothing. They even helped sometimes. Our neighbors were Hindus, old friends. Our fathers had grown up together. They played cards together. They always used to bet. We knew when my father won because he’d come home with sweets for us.
“My father was an easygoing man. He was a civil servant but he didn’t like politics. He liked to fly kites and play cards. Nor was he a religious man. I learned about religion from my mother. My father didn’t agree with what was happening, but he wasn’t the type to get involved. You might call him, in English you say meek.
“Soon, the non-Muslim families with means were all gone. But my neighbor’s wife was on bed rest, about to give birth to her fourth child. The doctor had said she might not survive the journey, so they stayed. One day, the mob arrived. We could hear them chanting. Maro, maro, kill, kill. My father was at the gate, listening, my mother yelling for him to move away. The chants came closer and stopped in front of our neighbor’s house. What my father had been fearing was now right in front of him.
“‘Take the children and hide,’ my father told my mother.”
“‘Now, of all times, you decide to be brave!’ she said. I’d never seen her so angry, but still my father opened the gate and went next door.
“I remember my sisters and me crying for him to come back, my mother clapping her hands over our mouths.”
My mother had arrived in the middle of this story, too compelled by its narrative to interrupt. She was covering her face with a napkin, like she might throw up into it, and my flesh was covered in goose bumps. I didn’t know how Chotay Dada could talk about it so calmly.
“We locked ourselves in a room and hid. I was certain the mob would kill my father, we all were. But, a while later, my father came limping home, badly beaten, but alive.”
“And your neighbors?” I asked.
“Dead. Parents, children, servants, all dead.”
“Bloody Brits,” my father spat, and when it became clear that was the end of the story, resumed reading his newspaper.
My mother picked up the serving spoon.
“Some chole?” she said as cheerfully as she could, as if the spoon wasn’t trembling in her hands, as if Chotay Dada’s plate wasn’t already full of chole he’d barely touched.
“I prefer to eat after my morning walk,” he said. “I think I’ll take it now. Do I have time?”
My mother glanced at the clock. “Yes, the car service isn’t coming until noon.”
“Good. I won’t be long.”
I imagined him circling our block alone like he did last time, and it depressed me. Plus I was also a little worried he might keel over in tears. The least I could do was offer him some company and a nice destination.
“Do you like roses?” I said. “There’s a really nice rose garden in the park. I could take you there.”
“Yes,” he said. “That sounds nice.”
“But the walk back is uphill,” my mother warned.
“That’s all right,” he assured her. “It will be good for my health.”
Chotay Dada went to the bathroom and my mother summoned me to the kitchen. I hopped on a stool and watched as my mother paced around the island, wiping it frantically with a sponge. “Do you think he’s all right?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, I think so,” I said.
“How did this even come up?”
I was about to say my father was
the one who asked, but that wasn’t exactly fair, because I was the one who’d brought up the topic.
“He’s not freaking out,” I told her, “so you shouldn’t either. You know you’re using the dishwashing sponge?”
My mother looked down at the island, now covered with foamy bubbles. She dropped the sponge. “I hope he’s okay. Promise you’ll only talk about pleasant things on your walk!”
“Happy thoughts all the way.”
My mother came over and hugged me, sighing into my hair, squeezing me so hard it hurt.
When Chotay Dada came in, she let go and exclaimed, a little too loudly, “Shabu, Chotay Dada is ready! It’s such a beautiful day, what a lovely walk it will be!”
It was a beautiful day, and Chotay Dada seemed content to observe the scenery in silence. Sometimes he’d pause to admire a tree, or a well-tended flower bed, or marvel at the gaggle of gnomes in a yard halfway down the hill. It was unusual to see a man like Chotay Dada in our neighborhood, and whenever someone passed us, I made sure to smile and say hello, so they wouldn’t perceive us as a threat.
It wasn’t until we reached the stone bridge in the park that I realized I was taking a long route to the rose garden, one that would take us by the pie shack. For some reason, I wanted to see it again.
But I wasn’t prepared for the stab of pain when I saw it, Mrs. Joan Milton’s bench, the dandelion grass we danced upon, Andromeda’s plaintive face on the side of the shuttered shack, behind whom Jamie and I had so often kissed. I thought it would all seem darker, uglier, given what I knew, but everything looked the same.
It was me who was different.
“You know this place,” Chotay Dada said, his voice startling me.
“Yes,” I said. “I worked here this summer, selling pies. I was a pie wallah.”
“Good pies?” he asked.
“The best.”
We stood looking at the shack in silence a little longer, then he said, “My father’s friend, our neighbor, had a daughter, one year younger to me.”
“They killed her.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t say that he’d loved her, but he didn’t have to.
So he had lost a beloved. Not to a well, but to a mob.
Chotay Dada recited something in Arabic, probably wishing peace on her soul.
I bowed my head, subdued by a sense of perspective. What was my loss compared to his?
“You study history and learn about Partition,” he told me. “Write about it so others can learn, too. All the people we lost, they should be remembered.”
“I will,” I said. It was a weighty promise, and I didn’t know if I’d keep it, but I couldn’t refuse.
“Good,” Chotay Dada said. “And where is this rose garden?”
“Come,” I said. “I’ll take you there.”
Thirty-One
ONE WEEK WENT BY, then another. Some days my heart ached more, others less. Some days I thought of Chotay Dada’s story and felt better about my own, other days I still felt sad, or angry, or confused, or everything at once. But I started getting ready to leave for college, which helped, and I saw Farah lots, and I went to the movies with my mother, and hung out with my father in his study, talking about poetry but also trying to make him a better husband.
I made him play social skills games I’d found on the internet with me, coached him on things like asking my mother how her day was, and gave him a book called How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence: A Practical Guide.
“We can read it together,” I said.
My father glanced at the table of contents. “How to enjoy talking to anyone,” he read. “Nonsense. How can you enjoy talking to people who are stupid?”
“No one’s making you talk to stupid people. Do you think I’m stupid? Mom?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t say yes.
“No.”
“So will you read this book with me then?”
“Do I have a choice?” he replied.
“Nope.”
Toward summer’s end, I felt pretty good, excited about the future, coming to terms with the past. I still hadn’t contacted Jamie, and he hadn’t gotten in touch with me, and though I fantasized about “fatefully” running into him one day, looking slender and lovely, and telling him he was a liar/horrendous person before riding off into the sunset with my awesome new boyfriend, I was beginning to think I wouldn’t contact him at all.
“Are you serious?” Farah exclaimed when I told her. “What kind of hot-blooded seventeen-year-old are you? Don’t you want to give it to him?”
“Of course I do. But I’m finally feeling better, and I’m worried that if I talk to him, or if I email him and he responds, it’ll take me back to that awful place. I don’t want to get caught up in all of that again.”
“Well, I still want to kill him,” Farah said. “If I ever see him his scrotum will not survive intact.”
“Is the Hijabi Renegade allowed to touch balls?” I asked.
She grinned. “You haven’t heard the hadith? And the Prophet said, ‘Women should refrain from touching the balls of anyone but their husbands and infants, unless the owner of the balls hurts your best friend, in which case it is permissible to kick them, hard, with your steel-toed boots.’”
“So that’s what the Prophet would do. Fine. If you ever run into Jamie, you have my permission to kick him in the nuts.”
“You are so kind,” Farah said. “Now will you please let me repack that suitcase? It looks like it threw up.”
“You and my mother. Go ahead.”
We switched places; I lay on the bed while she kneeled in front of the shiny blue suitcase I’d bought from Target. My mother had gone with me and turned teary-eyed from the mere sight of the luggage display.
“You know, that could be a great song,” she said as she organized my clothes into piles.
“What?”
“What would the Prophet do? Like . . .” She started snapping her fingers, pumping her arm in the air. “What would the Prophet do, yeah yeah, what would the Prophet do? Would he kick you in the balls would he catch you when you fall would he send Ali with a sword would he just look really bored . . . Wow, that wasn’t bad for extemporaneous lyrics.”
“You’re so dumb.”
“If by dumb you mean Harvard-bound genius, then yes, I concur. Qureshi, this deranged mouse T-shirt is pretty ugh.”
“It’s a deranged bear. Radiohead’s Kid A album.”
“I thought that was your least favorite album.”
“My least favorite of the most awesome albums of all time, you mean. God, you know what sucks? ‘Let Down’ was my favorite song, and then Jamie went and made it our song, and now I can’t listen to it because it makes me sad.”
“No, what sucks the most is the fact he tried to cheat on you with your BFF,” Farah reminded me.
“Yeah, that too.” I hung upside down, enjoying the blood rush to my head. “Can I tell you something?”
“Whenever you say that it means I won’t like it, but yes, go ahead.”
“I know I’m supposed to hate him, and I do, but sometimes I remember how nice he could be, how nice it was to be with him.”
“Wait. Mr. Milan Kundera has something to say about this.” Farah toyed with her phone, looking up the quote. “‘In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.’”
“Okay, I see Mr. Kundera’s point, but it’s not like I’m waxing nostalgic about the guillotine,” I argued. “Like, whenever we hooked up, he was so considerate, and sensitive—if I ever felt self-conscious, or nervous, he’d totally sense it, and stop and ask me if what we were doing was okay. He was so good like that, he never forced me or pressured me. I mean, compared to a guy like Ryan—”
“Qureshi, stop,” Farah said, holding up her hand. “Listen to yourself. You’re giving Jamie a pass because he’d never insult you to your face like Ryan!”
“That’s not what I said,” I protested.
> “The fact you’re even using Ryan as a comparison—that’s why guys get away with being shitheads, because their baseline is so goddamn low, even lower if they’re cute. Oh, you’d never date rape me? Awesome! Oh, you actually listened to something I said without talking over me? You’re such a great guy! It’s bullshit.”
“My T-shirt,” I said, gesturing at the Kid A T-shirt now bunched into a ball in her fist.
“Do you know my mother makes my five-year-old sister set the table for dinner, and do you know what my eight-year-old brother does? Sits there and plays video games until it’s time to eat.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
“It has everything to do with everything!”
“I’m pretty sure Jamie’s mother made him set the table,” I said. “And my point is it could have been worse. He could have been a dick and bad in bed. He could have been a dick and not taken me to the Theater of Dreams. It’s like you said, no one’s all good and all bad.”
As Farah groaned and hurled a pile of underwear at my head, my phone buzzed.
“Can you get that?” I asked. “It’s next to the suitcase.”
Farah retrieved my phone, her mouth dropping open. “You’re kidding me.”
“What?” I demanded.
“It’s him.”
“Jamie? Let me see.”
He’d sent a photo of a pie, chocolate pecan from the looks of it. Hey Morning Dew made this and thought of you xx
xx. xx! The nerve of him, to write me so cavalierly, like he hadn’t done the worst thing ever. The anger I’d assumed had faded had only gone dormant, and now it erupted, until all I saw was red.
“I’m going to kill him!” I said.
“What are you doing?” Farah asked.
“I’m calling him.”
“But you said—”
“Shut up, it’s on speaker.”
Jamie’s phone rang once, twice.
Thrice.
“Hello there.”
It’d been so long since I’d heard his voice outside of my own head. I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like, an electric lightning bolt from ear to heart.
