Mehendi Tides

by Siobhan Malany

  “Okay. Stop your pitying,” Nasreen teased, reading Kate’s expression. “Have a bagel.”

  Nasreen lifted the lid off the bread tray then opened the refrigerator door.

  “There is cream cheese in here somewhere,” she said, her head stuck in the fridge.

  Kate heard the sound of crisper drawers opening and closing, something tipping over on its side.

  “Are you thinking of adopting?” Kate asked suddenly.

  “Wait a sec. Can’t hear,” Nasreen said as she continued to rummage through the fridge searching for cream cheese.

  “Here are leftover samosas and chutney,” she said, bringing forth a plate wrapped in plastic wrap along with the tub of cream cheese. “Better than bagels. Would you like some?”

  “No thanks.”

  “What was it you asked?” Nasreen set the samosas and chutney on the island countertop.

  “Are you adopting? Mona mentioned you were.”

  Nasreen turned to face Kate and cringed. “She did?”

  Kate nodded.

  “I was going to tell you. I was,” Nasreen said apologetically.

  “When? From Pakistan?”

  “I haven’t seen you in months!” Nasreen snapped back. “You seem so distracted. And…sad, really. What is up with you?”

  Nasreen’s words pinged guilt and hurt.

  “I looked into adopting when my doctor confirmed I had endometriosis severe enough to cause infertility. I think I knew all along,” Nasreen said, brushing back her hair from her face. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up so I didn’t tell anyone… except Mona. Mona is easy to talk to about disappointments, and she encouraged me not to give up and to find a different path.”

  Her voice was empty. She paused for what seemed a long time.

  Kate couldn’t find the words to fill the silence between them. If Nasreen could keep going, find another path, what was so difficult about getting through graduate school and moving forward with life, Kate wondered.

  “My uncle is very connected in Pakistan. He can help us. You have to know someone in the government to adopt in Pakistan…if you are American,” she stressed.

  Nasreen began slicing the multigrain bagel down the middle. “I think I will just have a bagel after all. Sure you don’t want one to go?”

  She looked at Kate, then placed the knife down.

  “Look, I meant to tell you and Krishna that Mustafa and I started the process to adopt. Just didn’t seem the right time. All of us appear to be going through our own life phases,” Nasreen explained.

  Phases? Kate thought. Was she just going through a phase?

  Nasreen dropped the bagel halves into the toaster and flicked the lever.

  “This is a big thing,” Kate remarked, “adopting a baby. I don’t know quite what to say.”

  Kate glanced out the French doors again.

  The bagel popped from the toaster. Nasreen grabbed each half, and as it started burning her hand, she flung the toasted bagel halves on a plate and blew profusely on her fingers.

  “Do you want a girl or a boy?”

  “Both,” laughed Nasreen. “Maybe a boy first. Always good to have the eldest be a boy. There is an orphanage in Islamabad, one of the better-off ones,” Nasreen sighed. “The conditions aren’t great. Similar to the village we visited in India, you remember.”

  It was not a question but a statement. One never forgets images of impoverishment. Nanima took them once to visit a woman, and the only way to get to the woman’s house was to walk through the outskirts of a village of tin-roofed, handmade huts. Women cooked in open pits, cleaned clothes, and flattened them with the charcoal-filled rusted irons. Children ran along the sewer streams, others sorted trash, pounded rocks, and played cricket. A city within a city. Babies were born, babies died, and sometimes the lucky ones were taken to orphanages for the slim hope of something better.

  “You will be saving a child,” Kate stated with honesty.

  “That is a good thing to say.”

  “When will you hear something about adopting?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nasreen said as she spread cream cheese on the bagel, licking her fingers to cool them. “I may have to pick up and go as soon as we know something.”

  “How does Mustafa feel about all this?”

  As soon as she spoke, Kate realized her question didn’t sound the way she intended.

  Nasreen’s smile vanished. She wrinkled her forehead.

  “Of course he is as excited as I am. This is what we want,” Nasreen said defensively.

  “I didn’t mean anything. I should get going.” Kate took a step back.

  “Were you eavesdropping?”

  Kate’s heartbeat quickened. She heard it vibrating in her eardrums, growing louder and louder.

  Then a piercing sound startled them both. It was the coffee maker beeping, flashing its green light. Nasreen, astonished, turned away. The coffee cups rattled loudly in the cabinet as she fumbled to grab two. The cups clanged against the countertop; a little more force and they would certainly have split into pieces. Nasreen reached for the coffeepot, held it for a moment, and then placed it back into the holder with force. She slumped over the counter, bracing as if she had been thumped on the back.

  “I admit, the process of adopting from another country has been a bit of a strain on the marriage, but Mustafa has been very supportive despite the pressure he has been under with work and from his parents.”

  “What do you mean pressure from his parents?” Kate asked.

  “They are from a different generation.”

  “They don’t want you to adopt?”

  “Mustafa’s parents are not completely accepting of raising ‘someone else’s child.’ That is what they said.” Nasreen’s fingers made quotation marks in the air.

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry,” Kate apologized.

  “It’s not okay,” Nasreen objected. “Mustafa is the eldest, and his role is to care for his parents in their senior years. I completely respect my in-laws living with us. In Pakistan, things are different. The mother-in-law generally rules the house. This is America and this is our house,” she stated confidently. “If I want to bring a child into my house, I will! I’m not asking for help,” Nasreen shouted.

  “You have every right to feel that way,” Kate said. “I’m sure it isn’t easy for the two of you.”

  “What did you hear?” Nasreen asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing.”

  Kate backed out of the kitchen soundlessly and walked past the foyer, empty now except for the echo of Mustafa’s words. She reached the front door.

  “Kate!”

  Kate turned to face Nasreen.

  “Okay. I overheard everything,” she confessed. “What did Mustafa mean that he has never judged you?”

  Nasreen shook her head, annoyed.

  “Never judged you for what?”

  “For not being a virgin at eighteen when I married him,” Nasreen said reluctantly.

  Kate was taken aback. She felt a strong distaste in her mouth and swallowed hard.

  “I knew Mustafa would keep it to himself when he realized I wasn’t pure. In our culture, most husbands would reject their wives and bring shame on the family. I knew Mustafa wouldn’t do that.”

  Kate blinked in astonishment. “You married Mustafa because he was safe?”

  “You don’t understand,” Nasreen said.

  Kate folded her arms across her chest. She thought for a moment of the times in Hyderabad and Karachi. The two of them explored together, climbed the rocky cliffs, stomped through the murky river, and rode a camel on the beach. She thought of them dressed in silk and sparkling head to foot and moments later sharing the same heart-wrenching sympathy for the crippled and poverty-stricken children on the street. Even in the most foreign place she would ever be, the comfort and connection with Nasreen was there, always there. Now in Nasreen’s home, Kate felt like an awkward stranger on unfamiliar ground.

  “I d
o understand, Nasreen,” she said, angry now. “It was a mistake. Anees was weak! He should have known better than to have sex with you when you were sixteen! Now you’re paying for his mistake ten years later in your marriage!”

  Kate took a breath. Nasreen said nothing, waiting for Kate to finish.

  “All these years, I regretted saying anything. Revealing how horribly wrong this all was! I have hated feeling this way, Nasreen. And what is really maddening is that Anees has always acted as though it was nothing.” Kate stressed the word “nothing,” her face contorted in pain. “He even had the nerve to say to me, ten years ago at Rahim’s nikah, that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions! Like, what the hell did that mean?”

  “I should have told you the truth,” Nasreen said calmly.

  “What truth, Nasreen?”

  “It wasn’t him,” she said with clenched teeth. “Yes, I had a crush on him. It’s true! I was fifteen the first time he visited, a college man of twenty-one. I looked forward to his visits. The relationship was forbidden, but it was innocent. Really it was!” she shouted. “It wasn’t Anees. It wasn’t Anees!”

  Nasreen squeezed her eyes shut and doubled over as if she had suddenly become nauseated.

  “I was…raped!”

  Kate stood in shock.

  Then Kate pictured him, the young doctor who had moved in across the street! Memories flooded her mind, his confident air and salacious smile at Nasreen as she poured him a cup of tea. At first, Kate thought he was charming, and Nasreen’s parents were so hospitable and welcoming, she ignored any awkward thoughts she had of the doctor. But she had felt something was not quite right. Kate closed her eyes and scanned her mind. The moving van was in his driveway the day Nasreen revealed she might be pregnant!

  Suddenly, Kate’s jaw dropped in horror. She covered her mouth. Her stomach ached. It was a pain that wrapped around all of her and crept upward, tightening around her lungs, making it difficult to breathe.

  “Dr. Khan? It was Dr. Khan!”

  Kate’s head felt muddled and pounded from lack of caffeine.

  Nasreen didn’t speak.

  “Nasreen!” Kate’s eyes welled with tears.

  “His wife had to go to India to visit a sick aunt or something,” Nasreen began slowly with a shaking voice. “My mother felt bad that he was working so hard at the clinic and had no one to cook for him. She made her famous meat patties, a platter full of vegetable samosas, and a tray of baklava. I was just across the street,” she said.

  Nasreen’s gaze went through Kate to somewhere beyond.

  Kate’s breathing became erratic, the anxiety rising again and making her face flush. The tears streamed down her face as she listened to Nasreen’s story.

  “I took over the food. He was inviting. Attractive. We flirted.” Nasreen’s lips twitched. “He showed me around the rooms in the house. It was like a dream. I couldn’t wake up, I couldn’t move. I was immobilized as if rods anchored me to the bed in a guestroom.”

  Kate wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  “When it was over, he looked as shocked and horrified as I must have. Then he asked me if I wanted baklava,” Nasreen said angrily. “I found that so odd. How could he ask me that after what he did to me? I was sixteen! To this day baklava makes me sick! I ran from the house. Anees came that weekend and I told him. It just came out.”

  “Who attacked Dr. Khan?” Kate still held her hand over her mouth. “His attack wasn’t some random act of violence, was it? But Anees?”

  “Anees couldn’t stand up to his own mother,” Nasreen sneered. “It was Rahim who attacked that creep. Rahim has old India tradition in him, an eye for an eye. He sent him to the hospital with a bruised face and broken ribs. It might have been worse if Anees hadn’t stopped him. It was enough to scare that bastard into moving away.”

  “All this time,” Kate choked. “How could you make me believe it was Anees?”

  “Think about it, Kate,” she asserted. “It would have been my word against his! My mother would have suffered so much for having sent me there. Not to mention having a ‘ruined’ daughter. Anees and Rahim would have been arrested for sure,” Nasreen said rationalizing, trying to make sense of something senseless.

  Kate couldn’t see Nasreen’s face, blurred by her tears.

  “Too many sacrifices,” Nasreen sternly defended.

  Abruptly, a key in the door sounded.

  Kate gasped, blinked the tears away, and smeared the evidence of sorrow from her face.

  “As-salaam-alaikum,” Nasreen’s mother-in-law sang from the foyer. Shopping bags rustled. Her mother-in-law appeared, arms decorated with brightly colored boutique bags with roped handles.

  “Wa-alaikum-salaam,” Nasreen greeted cordially, smiling. She instinctively reached for the packages, kissing her mother-in-law’s cheeks and nodding to her father-in-law as he was in the process of removing his shoes.

  “As-salaam-alaikum,” he said in a hoarse tone.

  “Everything okay?” her mother-in-law questioned, catching her breath. “You look a little pale,” she said to Kate.

  Nasreen set the packages carefully on the hall table.

  “Oh, we’re just tired. Late night,” Nasreen said cheerfully, covering for Kate. She waved her now free hands in disregard. “Good sales today?”

  Her mother-in-law nodded. “Very, very good sales at Macy’s today.” She eyed Kate hesitantly. “I will make something to eat.”

  “No thank you,” Kate said as she cleared her throat, squelching the rising dread in her chest. “I was just leaving.”

  Nasreen’s father-in-law appeared in his stocking feet behind his wife. He nodded in silent greeting, seemingly exhausted from the shopping spree.

  “Please stay for tea at least. I will make chai.”

  Her mother-in-law did not wait for an answer but turned and headed into the kitchen.

  “I would love to, but I…I have to run.” Kate sounded panicked.

  “Oh,” Nasreen’s mother-in-law said, dejected, standing at the entrance to the kitchen. “I will make tea for us then. Nasreen, bahu, will you help me?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Kate fumbled with the knob of the front door and quickly slipped out. She hurried down the front steps, nearly stumbling, and around the corner to her car where she had parked it among the parade of cars the night before, her eyes filling with fresh tears as her mind flooded with images of the young doctor.

  Had she always known it was Dr. Khan and not Anees?

  Chapter 7

  Banjara Hills

  Hyderabad 1987

  In the back of Nanima’s house was a detached mud-brick room with a toilet and a large metal tub for bathing. A crooked trail of fragmented rock, buried under earth and dense moss, led from the bathhouse to the back bedroom Kate shared with Nasreen. The trail continued from the bedroom through the garden to the main room of the house.

  Kate traversed the path every morning in search of Rahmsing, Nanima’s longtime servant, to prepare for her a cup of chai.

  Kate was dressed and already sweating.

  “I’m going for breakfast,” she whispered.

  “It’s too early,” Nasreen moaned, still curled up in the cot.

  Leaving Nasreen to doze, Kate leaped across the stones through the sprawling, wild garden full of blooming succulents, evergreens, and water lilies to the main house, balancing barefooted on the rock. This was Kate’s favorite time of day, standing in Nanima’s garden, a sanctuary from the city. It was the only time of day she was not overstuffed with food, overheated, or plain overwhelmed by India.

  The fallen white blossoms from the wild chickweeds crushed under her weight as she continued along the path, the stones warming her feet. She ducked under the laundry line extending from the corrugated roof to the trunk of the large native banyan tree. Nanima’s white saris, undergarments, and linens hung limply in the still air, soaking in the scent of earth and sassafras.

  In addition to the banyan tree, two b
ushy tamarind trees guarded the untamed garden. The trees produced pods of fruit that Rahmsing blended into juice and jams for breakfast. Among the many strange new fruits Kate tasted in India, she found the tamarind to be quite tangy and not as sweet as the guava fruit they bought on the street.

  The tranquility of Nanima’s garden was intruded upon by the construction of a six-story, five-star hotel. The shell of the hotel towered over the one-story sectioned house. Kate peered through the entangled tamarind trees and watched the women high on the open floors. The trees’ pulpy hanging fruit blocked the sun’s rays, gaining strength in the early morning, and allowed Kate a better view.

  The women working at the construction site knelt in their thin saris and soaked up rainwater with a sponge then squeezed the water trickle by trickle into a pail while the men pounded and drilled. Engulfed by construction dust, the women workers seemed oblivious to the screeching noises, focusing only on the murky water, filling the pails, soaking and wringing, soaking and wringing.

  Under the canopy of Nanima’s garden, the moist leaves of the banyan and tamarind trees collected a grayed outline from metal and stone. “Nanima will put up a big fight to keep her house,” Nasreen told her. Kate hoped she was right and that the construction would not break the tamarind trees’ embrace and convert the property into a parking square or café garden.

  Continuing toward the house in search of Rahmsing to serve her chai, Kate tiptoed past the row of potted ivies sitting on the kitchen windowsill. The ivy strands followed the trails of rust extending from the corrugated gutters of the house down to the dusty earth.

  A dingy red ball rolled to a stop in Kate’s path. In a moment, Rahmsing’s barefooted children—a girl and a boy—appeared from behind the trees. The girl, maybe five years old, stared at Kate, frightened. She wore a loose white dress so sheer Kate could see the outline of her thin legs beneath. Her younger brother hovered behind her, holding his worn trousers up with one hand. Kate swooped up the ball, startling the girl who promptly grabbed her brother by the arm and scurried under the laundry line and disappeared into the stalks of the lily plants and under the shadow of the banyan tree.