The Architecture of Loss

by Z. P. Dala

  Afroze eventually retreated behind locked doors to spend time with those precious books. And Moomi would walk many times past the door, pacing and wringing her rough hands, feeling stupid and inadequate. She began to imagine that with each new book that Afroze soaked up, she was getting closer and closer to her mother, her educated doctor mother, the woman who haunted Moomi’s dreams at night. The woman who was thin and beautiful and carried large, important books in her hands.

  One day, while cleaning out the little curtained-off haven that Afroze had created for herself in Moomi’s bedroom for want of a sliver of privacy in a cramped, tiny house, Moomi found that old architecture magazine. She ran to the bin and almost threw it in. But somehow she just could not.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Afroze was no longer a girl. She was a woman. She had excelled at school, bringing home prizes and trophies that found themselves pushed into boxes or collecting dust behind huge, ceramic ornaments on shelftops. Afroze didn’t bother at all about the prizes and medals and where they eventually found themselves. There was a burning resolve in the girl as she grew into a teenager, a desire for only one thing—success and its trappings. She had a desire to be seen, to be adored and lauded, and it was a desire that came from a lifetime of invisibility.

  As she streamed through school like a silver bullet, brilliant at subjects that brought her the envious ridicule of boys and the hatred of girls, Afroze could not be stopped. Her teachers even feared her. They feared how she would march up to the blackboard in the front of their classrooms, grab the broken piece of chalk from their hands and with nonchalant ease solve a complex geometrical theorem that they had been grappling with for days. It was inevitable that she would be noticed. Her school principal tried to call in Moomi and Ismail for meetings where he could outline all the amazing opportunities such an exceptional girl could have. But Moomi refused to enter the school yard, and no one even bothered to ask Ismail.

  When Afroze won a scholarship to study at the University of Cape Town, she didn’t mention it to either of them. She marched into the principal’s office and informed him that their permission or support was certainly not needed here. She instructed the principal, who stood in awe of this child-woman, to promptly accept. And he did.

  When she went home that night, Afroze approached Moomi and Ismail, who were huddled over a very old black-and-white television set that had been a hand-me-down from someone, watching a show about a fancy black car that spoke to its owner and could drive itself. Moomi was fussing over fabrics. As Afroze’s school year drew to a close, Moomi had been obsessing over the young woman’s year-end dance. She paid particular attention to selecting the head scarf that would cover the mane of hair on Afroze’s head. How else would her Afroze get a proposal from a decent Muslim boy if she went around showing off that glossy, brown mass?

  “Hey, girl. Move from blocking the TV. We gonna miss Kitt telling Michael who the crook is,” Ismail barked.

  Afroze rooted to the spot. Michael spoke to his watch, and his car replied in a tinny voice, telling him that the crook was the blonde girl he had been sleeping with all along.

  “I’m going to university,” Afroze announced.

  The silence in the room was punctuated with the beeps and mechanical music of Michael and his Kitt chasing the bad guys through the streets of a deserted city. Michael barked orders to his obedient car.

  Ismail stared at Afroze for a long time, his interest in the talking car forgotten. Suddenly he burst out into mocking laughter. “University!” he roared, in between bouts of belly-rolling laughs, “Do you hear that, Moomi? Our girl here wants to do big big things with her life. She’s mad. Tell her, Moomi. Mad.”

  Moomi looked first at the dramatic hysterics of her husband and then up to Afroze, who was standing with balled-up fists.

  “S’true girl? You think you going to university?” Ismail asked. His placid tone was ominous.

  Afroze nodded, determination written on every taut line of her face.

  “Ja, and where you getting money for fancy university studying?” Ismail asked, laughter ceased, mocking still.

  “I have a scholarship,” Afroze said simply.

  “Scholarship, hey? Using so big words now, this stupid girl. Moomi, sort this out. I’m going to the mosque. And, no no no, Madam Big Words, no university.”

  Ismail stood up. Forgetting that he was in the presence of his wife and daughter, he reached into his pants and adjusted his underwear, doing a funny motion with his leg, high up in the air and then back down as he fiddled with himself. Afroze looked away in disgust. Every reason she could ever think of to get away from that house, to escape this frustrating and ugly destiny, hit her face like bats. She decided. Enough. Enough now.

  “Papa, I am going to university. And that is final. It is my decision. I have worked very hard. And I am going. That is all.”

  Ismail squared up to his daughter, who, like her mother, had grown tall and straight backed. And, like her mother, defiance poured out of her every gesture. Stubborn woman, eyes of steel.

  “Hey, you watch your mouth, girl. Don’t forget, I took you in when that woman threw you away. I fed you, I clothed you . . . I will tell you what you can and cannot do.”

  “Nonsense, Papa,” Afroze continued, fearless and strong, “You did nothing. Bloody nothing. Moomi fed me, she paid for everything. Even the very clothes on your ungrateful back. I am going to university. I am going to study, and I am going to become somebody.”

  Ismail began almost to vibrate with rage. The personal truths—that he was kept by his own wife, that he grew fat and lazy on her broken back—picked at the scabs all over his body. It was enough enduring the jibes of the men at the mosque, the men on the street, who told him how he rode on the sweat of a woman. But to hear his daughter say it, the daughter that he never really wanted in the first place, was enough to make him boil. He lunged at the girl, trying to connect his huge palm with her face.

  His age, weight, and days of lazy sitting made him clumsy. Ismail had long ago left behind his street-running days, when he was lithe and slippery like the worst snake, outrunning gangsters, loan sharks, and angry husbands. Afroze simply stepped to one side, and her father landed in a messy lump at her feet. He dared not look up.

  Now it was Afroze who laughed. And she laughed. And she laughed. “Stupid, lazy, useless man. I am not a baby anymore. Not the scared little thing that you hid away under the blankets of your car as you drove me here to Cape Town, starving and crying. No, Papa. I have grown up. See, your Afroze is not an insect anymore, hey.”

  Ismail scrambled to his feet, now trying to dive at the one target that would never evade him. Somehow, he felt that if his fist connected with Moomi’s face, everything would be all right with the world. But here, Afroze stepped again in front of him, and she pushed him with force toward the door.

  “Get out. Get out of here. No more. You won’t touch my Moomi anymore. I am going to university, and one day, Papa, I am going to be rich and famous, and I will take Moomi away from this hole and I will treat her like she deserves. Better than you ever did.”

  Moomi remained silent, glaring at the fight between the two. A lioness, challenging the old lion that once ruled the pride. Moomi felt strangely afraid. She knew that she should have felt protected and strong, with Afroze baring her new fangs, defending her. But Moomi felt the Earth shifting away from her, and under her feet the movement of the steady plates of the way things had always been shifted. Moomi could not balance in this shift. This new world was not comfortable; it was too new.

  Ismail grabbed his old coat and prowled toward the door; he did not look back at Afroze standing with planted feet and tight fists. At the last moment, before he left, he turned to her, and with a sarcastic lip curled like a sour taste, he asked, “So, what you going to study, huh? Medicine? Like her . . .”

  Afroze looked away. Ismail of the street gangs knew exactly how to push a dagger into a flank. “No. I am going to study architecture.
”

  After Ismail left, Afroze looked at Moomi, imploring her with her eyes to say something, anything. It seemed that Moomi’s ominous silence was an even sharper dagger in the flank of this new strong Afroze. She felt secretly that Moomi was ashamed of her.

  “What, Moomi? Are you also not happy for me?”

  “Agh, my child. I have a soup on the stove, neh. Ismail, he fusses when it tastes burned.”

  Moomi scuttled away, a crab that could not meet the fire in the eyes of this girl. This girl, who was begging for acknowledgment, got nothing. Even now, after all the years of studying, she was still the Afroze that was unseen. All she needed to hear were a few rare words.

  You did good, my child. You did good, my daughter.

  Moomi did not return to speak to Afroze. She sat silently in her kitchen, occasionally standing up from the kitchen stool to stir the thick soup, waiting like a faithful hound for her husband to return. The ultimate betrayal. Afroze thought she had been fighting for Moomi’s freedom. Now she realized that Moomi did not want to be free. Moomi enjoyed her cage. It was the comforting place that she called home. A sick feeling gripped Afroze and she also grabbed her coat, fleeing out the door, down the steep hill, and toward the bar where she knew some of the students from the university hung out.

  Afroze didn’t return home that night. In the morning, she tumbled out of the bed of her very first lover, a boy whose name she barely recalled, and took a bus back home. She thought that the walk from the bus stop to the house would sober her, drive away the rank smell of alcohol from her body and hair. But the air had just exaggerated it. In contrast to the freshness of the breeze, the smell of alcohol in a Muslim home in which such smells had never wafted was a damning thing. When Afroze walked into the kitchen door at dawn, on tiptoes—wondering why she even bothered to be on tiptoes as she knew Moomi hadn’t slept—the smell walked in before her.

  Moomi looked at the girl. A woman knows. She was not this girl’s mother, but she had bathed her after her very first period, she had watched tiny buds on her chest bloom into beautiful breasts, she had seen her hips rounding, a woman forming from the clay shape of a girl-child. A woman knows. She knows when her daughter has been with a man and lost her pride to him. The scent of a lover coupled with the ugliest of smells—stale alcohol and cigarettes—and Afroze hid nothing but her eyes as she stood facing Moomi.

  Moomi said nothing. She walked to Afroze and slapped her. A hard, loud whack across her face. It was the first; it was the last. It was the only time. It was the worst time.

  “Go. Go to your university, whatever. But never enter my house if you drink that poison again. And learn to respect that thing between your legs. Go have a bath.”

  Moomi had spoken to Afroze in perfect English, not a smidgin o’ pidgin. Nothing of the laughable dialect of her mixed-up words. It sounded very disturbing.

  Of course, Afroze and Moomi could stay away from each other for no longer than a few aching hours. They patched up their differences in the language of tea and cakes. They never spoke of the slap, and certainly not of the alcohol or the boy. But in this silent understanding, Moomi chose that she would look away. And Afroze decided that she would live her own life. In secret.

  Afroze went away to university. She managed to find a room in the girls’ hostel. She excelled. She grew proud of herself and swelled in arrogance with each new award and medal that she threw into a cardboard box. She visited Moomi and Ismail on every alternate weekend, bringing them news of life at one of the country’s top universities. They listened, nodded. Ismail had mellowed with age and even asked her a few interested questions about architecture—he seemed strangely obsessed with windows. Moomi listened absently, sniffing the newfound arrogance of the girl and praying every night that this overconfidence would not drown the girl one day. She didn’t say much, but muttered prayers in her mind and stared at Afroze’s face, and, like the mothers of her culture, she blew toward Afroze after she had muttered all the prayers she could think of.

  All was well. But things could not stay as they were. Afroze finished her studies and began working immediately as an apprentice in one of the best architecture firms in Cape Town. She began to earn money, and it felt so much like love when she put fat wads of notes in the hands of her father. Moomi refused to accept the money, telling Afroze that it would be more respectful if she handed it to her father. Ismail enjoyed his daughter’s largesse. He crowed to everyone he met about how rich she was and boasted every day about new appliances or new furniture she bought. Afroze played the game, telling him, “Papa, I bought a new, special sofa for you. See, it opens out for you to rest your legs.”

  But really, the soft sofa was for Moomi’s tired legs, and the special microwave oven was for Moomi to enjoy, helping her to warm Ismail’s food faster when he arrived late at night and pulled her from sleep. Afroze never knew that only Ismail used the brand-new gifts. Moomi still rested her aching legs on an old plastic footstool, and she refused to even learn how to use the microwave oven.

  One day, many years later, Afroze arrived home telling Moomi and Ismail that she had fallen in love. He was a cocky, handsome American surveyor who had come to Cape Town to help design the new soccer stadium, for a World Cup that was three years away but already the most highly anticipated event in the country’s calendar.

  Both Moomi and Ismail disapproved, and they were even more furious when Afroze said that she intended to live with this man but never marry him. They had both heard enough talk in their community; Afroze’s reputation as a marriageable young woman was lost a long time ago. Yet they still nursed hopes that she would find a boy, a Malay boy, a Muslim boy. That she would marry according to Islamic law, and not live in the ugliness of sin.

  “That man will abandon you,” Ismail said.

  “Really, Papa, like how you abandoned my mother when I was a baby?” Afroze asked sarcastically.

  The blazing row lasted well into the night. Afroze was relentless and brash. She dug up the nastiest of secrets about both the people she had come to call her parents. She ignored their old faces, she ignored their hearts, and she stuck knives into every wound that she willfully opened up. And she left. Ismail stood at the door with tears in his eyes.

  “Agh, Moomi. Our girl, she is finished for us now. I don’t want her to come here ever again.”

  Moomi did not argue Afroze’s case. She was equally disgusted, even more deeply wounded by the stinging words that lashed her from the girl, once sweet and quiet and now a typhoon of haughtiness and cruelty. Moomi stood next to Ismail, and for the first time in many years she placed her hand on his sagging shoulder. The child had once divided them in their marriage bed. A woman now, the child once—united them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The morning Afroze decided to leave for Brighton after she received the call about her mother’s illness, she decided to visit Moomi first. She, as always, parked her brand-new car far away down the hill and trudged up to the house that she grew up in. She saw the familiar car in the driveway, and at the familiar time, the car started with one rebellious choke. Afroze smelled burned gasoline and smoke as her father backed out of the bushy surrounds. Afroze craned her neck to try to catch one last glimpse of the driver, but the fan heater and the large flask of hot coffee had created a veil of condensation. She saw only the glitter of headlights on his thick, old-fashioned spectacles as the battered Toyota turned onto the street. She craved this time to see his face, to tell him of where she was going, why she was going back there after so many years.

  But, Afroze had learned a long time ago, her father preferred to leave some things inside a crypt. Never to be opened again. Afroze knew that she was the living flesh of secrets inside this sealed crypt. The reminder of mistakes made. Knew, too, that her father had refused to speak to her for years now because those who are born of mistakes make the worst mistakes eventually. She remained cloistered in the foliage, resisting the temptation to jump out and fall into his embrace.

 
; I’m sorry, Papa. You were so right. I am, after all is said and done, abandoned. Like you always told me I would be.

  She wished that, just for today, she could have plucked up the courage to run out of the thorny hideout and knock on the window, hoping to see a smiling face. A father’s face. But courage eluded her, and the moment died away with the retreating sound of an old, battered car.

  She knew that the gate to the kitchen would be unlocked. It had remained unlocked to her for many years now. She could never stay away from her Moomi and had crept back to her after months of exile. Moomi, being the woman that she was, had welcomed Afroze back into her warm arms. Moomi could forget hurt so quickly. And she could so easily forgive.

  Now Afroze was expected, even compelled, to creep into the house, at each and every visit. She had been doing it every morning, and she did it again this day. An intruder. In a home she knew so well. After the dreadful night when her father made her choose and she had not chosen his path, Afroze had kept away for as long as she could. It had not been long. She craved Moomi, and secretly she craved her father as well. He had given her no comforting love, but he was all she had. He had taken in a six-year-old girl and given her a home. And blood remained blood, after all.

  Just take her. Take her. Take her away. Now. Please. Now.

  Leaving the cover of foliage, Afroze followed her routine. It comforted her. Even the secrecy comforted her. Once safely inside the warm house, she rapidly locked the gate and went straight to the coffeepot, fragrant and simmering on the stove. The recognizable smells of a waking house held her shoulders and soothed the aches from her body. She knew well enough, those aches were not just from crouching in the shadows at the fence. Those aches were signs. Those aches were from a body that was tired and struggling.