by Anosh Irani
“I want to tell you how my daughter died,” Jalal said.
There was no quiver in his voice—or was there? Maybe it was just the echo of the small shop, its glass magnifying details, especially human ones.
“She was on her way to school,” he said. “It was the first time we sent her alone. She used to beg us to let her go alone, pleading that she was old enough, and that is when they decided to strike.”
“They?” asked Majid. “What do you mean?”
“Please, brother,” said Jalal. “I need you to stay calm.”
“I am,” said Majid. “Please, go on.”
“They had warned me that if I didn’t listen, something would happen. I didn’t listen,” he said. Majid was about to respond, but Jalal held his hand up: “I need you to listen.”
Then Jalal reached into his pocket and took out an iPhone. He glided his finger across the screen, sliding it this way and that. Then he pressed something, once, twice, and a sound filled the room—of traffic, of Indian traffic, the incessant honking, the revving of motorcycle engines, the weak, empty putter of old Vespa scooters that Bombay still housed. Yes, it was unmistakably Bombay.
“I want you to see this video,” said Jalal.
He turned the phone towards Majid, and when he did, Majid’s heart felt a jolt. “This is…isn’t this Madanpura?”
Jalal did not look up; he kept his gaze on the screen.
It was Madanpura. And it wasn’t just Madanpura, it was the leather shop Majid’s brother owned, the leather shop where Majid’s wife worked. Why was he staring at Fatima? She was walking out of the shop, her faithful brown bag in hand. And…who was this? How had Ayesha grown up so fast? She was tall, so tall.
“What the hell is this?” Majid asked.
“Calm,” said Jalal. “Stay calm. The people I work for, they need you to do something.”
“What people? Did you film this? What’s going on?”
“I’m here, brother. How would I film this?”
“Then who did?”
“The people I work for.”
“But who? Who do you work for?”
Jalal took a deep breath, so deep it was for the both of them. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what they want you to do.”
“Me?”
“You will carry a suitcase. You will carry a suitcase, one that is in my cab.”
“A suitcase?” Majid was uttering words, meaningless words, but his mind was screaming. “This is…I’m not comfortable with this. I need you to leave.”
“You have to leave the suitcase somewhere.”
“What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”
“You do this and then you live your life. But not here. You go back to Madanpura.”
“What is this? Who are you, madarchod?”
“Calm, brother. Calm. My daughter was filmed by the same people who made this film. I refused to carry their suitcase. Do you see what I mean?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Jalal. I’m a father, just like you. And I drive my dead daughter around,” he said. “I will take you home. You will get your passport. We will get you a business class ticket tonight. After you have dropped off the suitcase.”
“Please, why are you doing this?”
“Because my wife begged me to. Because I need to save my other daughter.”
“We can go to the police, we can…This is Canada, we are safe here.”
“I don’t want to own two cabs. One cab is enough.”
“But what does this have to do with me? Why me?”
“You remember I asked you if you believed in destiny? And you said, ‘Certain things are destined. No matter what we do, we must encounter them.’”
But then, apart from all that, there is this huge sky, upon which we can write whatever we want. Majid remembered saying those exact words.
Now, as if reading Majid’s mind, Jalal mentioned the sky. He was stuck on the sky. “The skies are where the real battle is going on,” he said. “I have never met the people who killed my daughter. It’s all text messages and videos and chat rooms. The real enemy is up there, invisible, deadly, all-seeing. When I refused to do their bidding, they showed me what they are capable of. Now I am their recruiter. I need to make sure you do your job or, as I said, I will own a second taxi. And you, my brother, will go through the pain that very few on Earth can know or withstand.”
Majid was so cold that he began to shiver. Jalal reached out and steadied him. Majid recoiled, as though a serpent had touched him. He rose from his chair and breathed heavily down on Jalal.
“Easy, brother,” said Jalal. “All you have to do is drop off a suitcase. Aidah will take us there.”
“I am not your brother.”
“But you are,” said Jalal. “We are born from the same circumstance. And we will do anything to protect our children.”
Majid’s hands were turning inwards, the fingers curling into fists. How he wished Isa were here. But Isa was inside his fists, ready to unleash himself upon this man.
“You are not my brother.”
“Am I not? For the rest of your life, who will you wake up with? Who, if you do get a chance to grow old, will you remember? Who will haunt you, who will make your teeth chatter? Only fathers, mothers, and brothers can do this. We are not blood brothers. We are much, much worse.”
Majid pounced upon Jalal across the tiny table with a force he had never used but always possessed, a force he had suppressed when it showed up, because of Binny or Isa, because it had promised to override his good self, but now this force delivered the most immaculate punch and flattened Jalal. Jalal did nothing to fight back. He let Majid destroy him, he let the blood flow from his lips, as though it were simply an extension of the threat his lips had just leaked.
“If someone sees us, they will call the police,” said Jalal. “And that’s the last you’ll ever see of your family. Please, I beg you.”
There were tears in Jalal’s eyes. Majid stopped. He sat. He felt an overwhelming urge to call someone. He wanted to speak with Fatima. Or even Isa would do. Isa was great in a crisis. Especially when there was blood involved. Majid was panting, ribs expanding and contracting like those of the pye-dogs that lived in his old lane, those angry, scared night-howlers.
“I…What’s in the suitcase?” he asked. His voice was quiet.
“I don’t know. And it’s better if you don’t either.”
“If I do this, how will I know they will leave me alone?”
“They keep their word, both good and bad.”
“But…I will be sinning, this is not the way.”
“It’s the only way,” said Jalal.
“But what about the shop? Mr. Taylor, he…he showed so much faith in me.”
“So did Aidah. She showed faith in me, and I let her down. My wife did not speak to me for a year. One day when I got home, she had written a word on the wall. It broke my heart to read it.”
“What word?”
“Don’t let Fatima write that word on the wall.”
“What word?”
“We must leave now. I’m afraid there is nothing else to do.”
“But Allah…” Majid wanted to say more, but his mouth was dry.
The Almighty is all-knowing, all-seeing. Surely He was capable of intervening. Could it be that Majid was not deserving of His protection? He had watched porn, he had laid eyes on the breasts and thighs of women, women who showered their cheap affection on any man for the world to see. He had encouraged them, joined them in their glee. He had judged Isa, a brother, a real brother, for being violent, inhuman, and now he himself was about to do the most inhuman of things. He had never forgiven Mr. Binny for torturing him, and now he envied Mr. Binny, his small room and the days to come—there were so few of them left, but Majid’s days felt like a piece of land racing towards the horizon, never catching up. If only he had called Mr. Binny and forgiven him, maybe things would have been different.
“But this…
this is against the Quran…” he said.
“What makes you think these people are Muslim?” asked Jalal.
Majid felt as if he was choking. He needed air.
It was Jalal who let him have that air, Jalal who escorted him outside. Majid threw open the doors to his shop and stood in the empty parking lot. The barber next door had gone home to his family. How beautiful that must be. Majid looked up at the sky, where his destiny had been written by men he did not know, men whose orders and intentions were travelling across the sky right now, silent and undetected. Messages from one keyboard to another, one country to another, the true keepers of the planet. They were farishtay, but apostles of the dark. He saw a star appear, then another, then a third. They were revealing themselves to him, new constellations were being born right before his eyes, the constellations of his wife and child. How he wished he could have his grandfather’s glasses this very moment. Things wouldn’t look so real and scary then. He would clean the glass, clean the glass. He would put them on, he would stare at the sky, and perhaps another star would appear, for people like him, a star where he could buy time, appeal to a higher power, consult with better apostles, apostles who would show him the way home, tell him to open the suitcase because it was empty in the end. Or perhaps, he thought, Aidah, now reborn in the realm of love, would ignore her father’s hands on the wheel and drive both men to safety, to a place between the mountains, where the constellations did not work, where the signals were unable to reach, where two brothers sat in silence and waited for the real angels to come.
* * *
As my time to leave India approaches, my heart starts beating differently. It pulses with the knowledge that I’m going home, and leaving home, at the same time. Of course, I will come back again, but for now I must ready myself for another year in Canada. What is it that gives immigrants arrhythmias? Is it knowing that each time my plane lands in Vancouver, my feet never touch the ground? It is said that sexual identity exists along a spectrum; so does coming home. One day I am kind of home, the next I am somewhere in the middle, the third I am staring at the deep end.
Two more days to go.
Sleep is irrelevant now. I start jet-lagging before I change time zones. Melatonin has no power compared to exile.
I lie in bed, feel the sheets turn into water again.
I start doing my first lap, but now I notice a man who is floating on his back. I notice his lungs, in particular. They are charcoaled with cigarette smoke, and around them, a black dye is being released in the water. His lungs are signing his last will and testament in the pool, and we who watch are all his notaries, but no one is taking the job seriously. I get out of the pool and give sleep a shot, the way you would a former lover.
I fall asleep early for a change, and I have a dream. An Indian dream.
I’m an Indian king, asleep in my bed in ancient India. I’m being fanned by giant leaves, Indian leaves, but soon those leaves turn into pine and fir and maple, and I wake with a jolt. It’s only 2 a.m. The night is still young and I am growing old, so old. I go to the window again and stare at the playground. I still haven’t discovered why I want to write about it. Right now it’s a silent mixture of earth and iron—mud, swings, and jungle gyms. A story will grow from it, I know.
Dr. Hansotia is still ignoring me. His wife’s underwear isn’t. It’s the flag of a nation now, such is its power, its silence. I think of Jaloo aunty. When I was a kid, she was the one who taught me to make chai. Isn’t that strange? I had gone to her home to tell her that Yezdi was crouched underneath the stairway, three floors below, crying. We were all playing hide-and-seek, and he hid there, and it was my turn to seek, and when I found him, he was already crying; when I asked him what was wrong, he didn’t respond, and when I gently touched him on the shoulder, he yelped and winced. Could she go down and fetch him? I didn’t want the other kids to find him. They’d make fun of him. She nodded, and asked if I would watch the tea she was boiling.
I didn’t count on the milky, frothy liquid rising. I had been told to watch the tea, but what could I do about it rising? I had never even entered the kitchen at my own place. As the tea rose, more volcanic by the second, I took a pair of tongs and lifted the pan. I didn’t turn the stove off; I just kept putting the pan on until the tea frothed, then taking it off again—a method I use to this day. It’s weird how something you do every day is connected to someone who is so far away from your present.
When Jaloo aunty came back up that day, Yezdi went straight to his room.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing,” she said. “My son is…”
Then she trailed off, the way you walk in a forest and the path just disappears. It leads nowhere. She looked at me with tenderness. She patted my head. She wanted to say more. I wanted to hear more. It was the first time I had connected with a woman her age who was not a relative. Suddenly, the distance between us wasn’t vast. I felt that she was just as old as I was, and I was just as old as she. She was hurt, or perhaps scared, the way strong people get scared when they realize something is out of their control.
“Do you know how to make tea?”
“No,” I said.
“Would you like me to show you?”
“Yes, Jaloo aunty.”
I don’t remember much else from that conversation, but I do remember her telling me exactly when to put the lily chai in, how long to boil it for, when to add sugar, and so on. We both were silent as she made the tea again, this time especially for me. “Now you strain it,” she said. I held the strainer in one hand and picked up the vessel with the tongs. Making tea is something I do even today when I am stressed out. I take out tongs, and watch the residue remain as the liquid goes below and the fragrance rises above, available then gone.
Jaloo aunty and I drank our tea in silence. It was my first cup of tea in a long time. I had had it last in Kashmir, when I was three. I remember standing on the balcony of a hotel, sipping from a red plastic cup. After that day, Jaloo aunty and I never spoke at length again. On the rare occasion that I went over to her apartment—I visited once or twice to give Yezdi comic books—she barely acknowledged me.
Now I want to share this with Dr. Hansotia. Three a.m. seems like an appropriate time for us both. One man nearing the end of his life, approaching a deep sleep; the other in his forties, trying to sleep. Sleep, when it comes, is so delicious for me, like ice cream, or a naked body, or a great piece of literature. Sleep is my god, the one to whom I pray, the one who will never show itself. Sleep is androgynous, that beautiful long shadow, a precursor of death, who will come one day for sure, but never at your convenience.
This time, I ring the bell.
This time, I announce my arrival.
The meaning is clear: I’m not here to offer my condolences.
Dr. Hansotia opens the door. His stomach peeps out at me. It seems to lead the way. “Son, it’s late,” he says.
“I just wanted to see you. I’m leaving tomorrow,” I say.
He thinks for a second. Then he opens the door wider and I slip in. But I had already slipped in. I was sitting on the sofa while he was still at the door. The house has that same peculiar smell I remember, the doctor’s smell. We sit across from each other. The bookcase is still there. I cannot tell if Mr. Williams is, too.
“I hear you’ve become quite well-known in Canada,” Dr. Hansotia says.
“Not really,” I say.
I don’t know what to make of my own average well-knownness. On some days it feels like a legitimate thing; on others, it is ridiculous. To be known. For one’s work to be recognized. Awarded, rewarded. Critiqued, criticized, analyzed, cauterized.
“I haven’t read any of your books,” he says.
“That’s okay,” I say.
I’m used to it by now. No one in my family reads my work either. They buy my books as gifts to give to others, as one would a T-shirt or a perfume. What’s a book, anyway? What is a novel? Labour + blood + deep thought + ca
rpal tunnel. No wonder people prefer T-shirts. What is a short story collection? Writing about characters who don’t deserve novels. Lives so insignificant that they can be summed up in a few pages. I would be a short story; so would Dr. Hansotia. We are two short stories facing off, staring at each other, wondering how we could become novels. No wonder authors write memoirs. In a memoir, you can stretch your own significance.
“I’m sorry about Jaloo aunty,” I say.
He nods. He sighs. He says nothing.
“Why didn’t Yezdi come for the funeral?” I ask.
This takes him aback, awakens him. To him, I am still that little boy, a young man with a deviated septum. Only a wolf would ask such a question, a wolf that is biting sleep, chomping its jaws on something he will never catch, and so is hungry for everything else.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean…”
He waves his hand; it’s okay. At least, that’s how I read the gesture.
“I liked Jaloo aunty,” I say.
“You are the only one who has asked me that to my face,” he says. “The others have asked too, but with sweetness and embarrassment.”
“It’s just that…why wouldn’t he come for her funeral? It’s his mother.”
“Exactly,” he says. “I’d expect him to not come to mine.”
“I’m sure you were a good father,” I say.
“I’m not his father.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. He sees the glow on my face, how he has provided some meaning to my visit with him, perhaps to my visiting India, even.
“She had an affair during our courtship. It didn’t stop me from loving our son, but it stopped her.”
“Did Yezdi know?”
“He found out. It had an impact. She saw him as a sign of her infidelity. I even offered to step out of the way.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s no need to say anything.”
But…why the underwear? I want to ask, but that would make me just as pedestrian as everyone else. What does it mean? Is it to embarrass others, to make her infidelity public? To send her a message in case her spirit is watching? Am I reading too much into an undergarment?
