That’s right, I didn’t have to be nervous at all.
But maybe she was like that. And if she wasn’t now, she might be once Saad began putting another woman first. If he would put me first, of course. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would put us both next to each other on a pedestal somewhere. I was getting ahead of myself here, she had probably just come to wish me a happy death day anyway.
‘Really? How surprising.’
‘What do you mean?’ Aunty looked affronted. Even I was intrigued.
‘He’s been showing my daughter around for three years now, and he’s never once come to meet me, seek my blessings, even simply say salaam.’
‘Three years?’ Aunty was choking on that nasty little nugget of time, ‘three years?’
‘You mean you didn’t know?’
‘I only just found out about it. I mean I suspected there was someone but he never talked to me about her.’
‘And it seems he hasn’t even told his own mother, maybe you should be revising your opinion of your son.’
‘Maybe I should.’
‘Taking advantage of an innocent girl like my Ayesha.’
‘How old is your daughter?’
‘Around thirty.’
I chuckled. ‘Around’ steered clear of the dangerous under or over label.
‘And she’s been working at our company for a few years now?’
‘Yes she has, and we’re very proud of her.’
This was hysterical.
‘That’s a lot of work experience …’
‘I don’t like what you’re implying.’
‘I don’t like what you implied about my son.’
‘Let us simply agree to disagree then,’ Ammi retreated to the safety of the moral high ground, a territory as familiar to her as the back of her hand.
There was an awkward silence for a while, then mother of Saad spoke, ‘Your daughter is very attractive.’
Ammi snorted. It could have meant anything, embarrassment at praise of her genes, muted disagreement or contempt for the speaker, ‘She looks even better without the tube in her nose.’
‘Does she look like you or her father?’ her attempt to mine Ammi for information was sadly transparent.
‘What do you think?’ Ammi’s tone was neutral.
‘I can’t tell, she looks a little like you, but I’ve not seen her father.’
‘I haven’t seen him for years either. He passed away when she was just a kid.’
I had been seventeen, hardly a child, but then parents always saw their children as, well, children.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
There was some more quiet time. Aunty studied the rings on her fingers. Ammi studied the rings on Aunty’s fingers.
‘That’s why she had to start working so early,’ Ammi finally volunteered, ‘I couldn’t shoulder the burden, and there is a younger child too, a young brother, so she stepped in.’
‘Mashallah.’
‘She never complained. She still doesn’t, you know. She’s not the complaining type.’ There was a knot forming in my astral throat. Ammi changed like the seasons, only faster. Sometimes winter repeated itself incessantly. But how I loved the gentle breezes of this Indian summer.
‘That’s a good quality. I think people like us have little to complain about.’
Ammi let the ‘people like us’ comment go.
‘One of many. She has many good qualities.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Hardworking, patient, honest. You name it, she’s got it.’
‘Respectful to her elders?’
‘I wouldn’t raise my children any other way.’
‘I’m glad we agree. Children are a reflection of their parents.’
‘Of course they are.’
‘That’s why I was asking earlier what her father did.’
‘I understand. He was a government employee.’
‘And where do you come from originally?’
‘Hyderabad. Bihar.’
‘Really?’ Aunty smiled, ‘my mother’s family is from there.’
Ammi looked pleased, ‘Yes that’s where her father and I met in fact, at college. My late father was a highly respected intellectual, a professor.’
‘Mashallah.’
‘A very learned man.’
‘And Ayesha’s father?’
‘Also a highly educated man, albeit of a more practical bent,’ Ammi was being charitable.
‘It takes all sorts to make a world, one can’t say this philosophy is better than that one.’
‘No, one can’t.’
‘As long as she is of a religious bent …’
My mother wisely said nothing.
The silence this time was markedly free of tension, nervousness yes, but for now the claws had been voluntarily retracted. I hoped it stayed that way for at least another minute; it was nice to see my mother appear at ease even if she was only pretending. And I wanted time to savour the implications of Saad’s mother’s presence here. He must have finally told her about me, about us, about our future together.
But no. Aunty was speaking again. ‘Mrs Siddiqui, I don’t want to talk to you under false pretenses. My son didn’t bring me here.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Saad doesn’t even know I’m here. He called a dear friend of ours to attend to your daughter personally, and Dr Shafiq told me how emotional he was, how concerned, and I just had to come and see for myself.’
‘I see,’ Ammi’s tone was heading for the Arctic again, but her disappointment could not compare with mine. ‘Why don’t we talk some more outside? Visiting hours are almost over and they’re very strict about not allowing more than one attendant in at a time.’
They left. All my hopes of being able to return to my pakora dream went with them.
TAPISH SURAJ KI HOTI HAI,
JALNA ZAMEEN KO HOTA HAI
BACK OF BUS
~
I replayed a memory of my smiling mother braiding my hair in the morning as my mind did its standard seven hundred cycles per second of the track. It really was the ‘get thee to thy grave son-snatching vermin’ finale after all. A fitting end to a wasted life, devoid of purpose, depth and sustainable love. Ceaselessly betrayed by five year Masterplans that focused on the abstract rather than the tangible, I had wasted time and energy on my brain and in the process neglected my uterus. I had had delusions of turning heads, soon I wouldn’t even be turning doorknobs. As for Saad, he was lost to me for good now.
Ammi sat idly on a sofa, face slack, eyes unfocused, as tiny Adil howled beside her till little Ayesha went and picked him up. How old was I? Eight? Nine?
‘Too old for Saad,’ she turned and whispered to me. I looked away, at a stain on the window.
If Saad had to go against his parents’ obvious objections to be with me (if Ammi wasn’t here, his mother would probably be holding a pillow over my face), I might as well walk away now. What had the last couple of years taught us, if not the folly of going in practically alone? It just wouldn’t be worth the time and energy I would have to spend fighting his family afterwards. I was done fighting. Done. I would finally do what everyone else did to be able to get through life, roll over and play dead. Or was that what I had been doing all my life?
A wide expanse of green beckoned from beyond the window. Colour in the drabness of the city. How pretty. How cleverly rationed, not like Islamabad, where the sheer amount of green was enough to evoke the most primitive response and send all non-Isloo residents scurrying for cover before darkness fell and the beasts of the forest claimed their rightful place. Boars. Or was it bores?
Whatever. I was done. DONE. DUN. I was Khaki. I was boss! I liked this tangent! Did I like it because it distracted me from full comprehension of what a self-absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac I was? But I wasn’t a self absorbed, man-hating, megalomaniac! I was enlightened, if in moderation …
‘Ayesha?’
He was sitting by my bed looking sad, just like he was supposed to have been all along. He was still wearing the shirt from that morning, or had it been the morning before. It didn’t matter. I knew only that I was glad to see him. He looked smaller. Like something had picked him up and squeezed all the juice out of him. I wanted to reach out and stroke the hand he had put over mine, touch his hair as he bent over and kissed it. I could see the first hints of white at the roots.
I could see the first hints of white at the roots.
There was a movement off to the side. I turned my head slightly. Astral me stood in the doorway with my father. He was holding a bunch of flowers. The fifty rupee last bouquet of the night bhai samaj kay lay lain kind. We looked at each other mutely. ‘Stay …’ Saad whispered, his head still bent over my hand.
‘Saad,’ I turned away from the door. My voice was low and hoarse, like I’d been yelling. I suppose I had been, at myself. He looked up. I smiled. He smiled.
‘I’ll wait a minute before telling the others you’re awake shall I?’
I nodded, and held his eyes till a movement in the corner of my vision told me my father had turned and was walking away down the corridor. A nurse looked after him in bewilderment, a 50 rupee bouquet of near-dead blooms in her hands.
‘I want to tell you about my father.’ Only after he’d nodded silently and given my hand a reassuring squeeze did I turn and check that Abba was really gone.
THE END
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