The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir

by Shepard, Sadia

  When Segulla-bai returned to her bed, she did not move for weeks. Her meals were brought to her in her bedroom, and she spent hours looking out the window at the pond below, where ducks dipped their long beaks into the water to feed, in and out, in a rhythmic pattern. Rachel tried to keep her company, sitting at the foot of her pallet and pressing her feet. Sometimes she could coerce a smile out of her mother. Most days Segulla-bai just looked back at her, mourning her children. Her arms ached with missing them.

  Segulla-bai began to withdraw, relying more and more heavily on Lizzie. When her son Nissim was born, the midwife placed him in his mother’s arms; she gave him one hard look. She counted his tiny fingers and toes: five, five, five, five. Then she turned her head away toward her pillow and said: “Give him to his sister.”

  The sadness of losing children hung on Segulla-bai like a cloak. Lizzie, now fifteen, took Nissim and raised him as if he were her own child. Rachel watched these activities in her parents’ room with curiosity. She was pleased that Nissim had been born; now she hoped she would have somone to play with.

  Rachel never told her mother about her dream. She kept her secret to herself, where she thought about it only in the safety of Lizzie’s bed. One night, five months later, she had another dream. This time, she saw four heads in a row in the sand. As before, she saw the heads of David, Menahim, and Eliezer, but this time, little Benjamin’s head was in the middle, and bright orange flames surrounded it. Rachel awoke early that morning, her nightdress wet with fear. She ran into her brother’s bedroom and saw that everything was normal; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Her father got ready to go to work at the mine, kissing all of his children on the tops of their heads. Rachel began to play in the nursery, watching her brothers down below in the yard. Benjamin called up to his mother and Rachel, watching him from the balcony above.

  “Mumma, Mumma! Look at the ducks!” he cried, pointing, noting how fast they dipped their heads in the water to catch his scraps of bread.

  Segulla-bai smiled.

  “I see them, I see them,” she called down softly.

  Two hours later, Benjamin walked into his mother’s bedroom. His eyes were red, and he was sweating.

  “Mumma, the ducks are on fire. The ducks are burning!” he cried.

  Rachel and her mother leapt to the window, but there the ducks swam, as peacefully as before. Benjamin was hallucinating, trying to jump out of the window.

  “I can fly! I can fly, Mumma, let me go!” he cried, wriggling out of her grasp.

  Segulla-bai called to George and Lizzie to come quickly.

  “What have you done? What happened to him by the pond?” she asked.

  But George had been playing cricket with his friends behind the house, and had not seen anything unusual happen to Benjamin. Lizzie had been in the kitchen. Segulla-bai sent George to bring the doctor, and he began the four-kilometer walk to the town center. She and Lizzie took turns applying cool cloths to Benjamin’s forehead and taking his temperature with a thermometer. His temperature was 104 degrees, and rising steadily—104, 105, 107. Segulla-bai was in a panic. Rachel hovered by the bed, watching her brother writhe under her mother’s and sister’s grips.

  Benjamin called out, “Mumma! Eliezer is standing in a garden. He’s surrounded by roses. He’s calling me to come play—let me go!”

  Segulla-bai sat on one side of the bed and Lizzie sat on the other. They joined hands across Benjamin’s body, clutching each other, trying to keep him from leaping out of the bed, up toward the garden he alone could see.

  And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The doctor arrived to find Segulla-bai and Lizzie still clasping hands across Benjamin’s limp body, and Rachel, her eyes wide with terror, one hand on the bedpost.

  When Ralph arrived home from work at the end of the day, it was to a changed household. Benjamin had died at 7:15 p.m., within the cruel span of six hours. Ralph had been gone for eight. There was no explanation for Benjamin’s sickness; his brothers searched the pond, running back and forth across the footbridge in their grief. There was nothing to point to—no vial of poison, no mysterious visitor.

  People in town said again that the house was haunted, and a local sage was sent for to perform a purifying ritual. He called out his chants, swinging a censer as he walked from room to room, and around the water, seven times. Ralph woke up one morning and fired seventeen shots into the duck pond. Each one a spark of white, then a burst of red; the squawk of fear, a collapse.

  In the years after Benjamin died and before she left her parents’ house, Rachel had two more prophetic dreams. Two more children died, a daughter and a son. These times, she warned her mother. Her gift gave Rachel a sadness that was hard to place, just under the surface, which she carried with her throughout her life.

  As an adult, Nana would be able to predict the deaths of her father, her mother, her sister, her husband, and both of his other wives.

  ONE MORNING WHEN I was fourteen years old, we received a long-distance phone call from Pakistan at six o’clock. I heard the sound of my mother shouting in Urdu, then silence. A bird outside. One of our shutters banging shut in the wind. Bari Amma, my grandfather’s eldest wife, was dead. Mama and I went to wake Nana, but she was already dressed; she already knew. She had had a dream.

  Mama and I crawled into bed with Nana. She held Mama’s head in the curve of one arm and stroked my hair with her other hand.

  The darkness of the night was lifting, and the day was starting. I wanted to make it stop, to make it still night, to keep this moment in my pocket. I wanted to run all over the house and close all the shutters and stay here in the quiet of Nana’s room.

  “Amma, when it’s your time, you have to promise me that you will warn me,” my mother said. “Promise me.”

  “I promise, beti. Hush, hush. Sleep now.”

  5

  M. IBRAHIM, PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

  PUNE, OCTOBER 2001

  One evening, after I have been in Pune about a month, I am having trouble crossing the street from the library back to my room in the guest hostel. A young man helps me cross, motioning a careening rickshaw out of my way so that I can pass. When we reach the other side, I thank him, and he replies enthusiastically, “No problemo!” Curiously, the young man is wearing a pair of jeans fastened tightly above his navel with a black patent-leather belt, and matching patent-leather shoes. He reminds me of a grown-up Mouseketeer. He walks me to my door and, as he drops me off, offers brightly: “In fact, I have been wanting to meet you for some time. You see, I am not a student. My father works at the university. I am a professional photographer. I would like to talk camera with you.”

  He raises his eyebrows for emphasis, as if he is surprised. I reply casually that we should meet sometime, and shake his hand goodbye. I unbolt my door and walk inside my room, sighing with relief to be in a quiet place, and lie down on my cot. When I get up to go to dinner in the ladies’ hostel an hour later, I find a note that has been slipped underneath my door.

  Miss Sadia

  Respected Mam, hi!

  Remember me? We just met this afternoon.

  I would like to invite you to tea with my family at 9 a.m., 10 a.m., 11 a.m., or 12 noon tomorrow. You may decide and just come. I hope you will accept this invitation. Do not disappoint us.

  Respectfully,

  M. Ibrahim, Professional Photographer

  Flat No. 2218

  The next morning, I walk upstairs with some trepidation, carrying the note in one hand. My mother has warned me to be careful of being too friendly with young men in India. But tea with an entire family of neighbors seems innocent enough. Do not disappoint us. It would be rude not to go.

  When I knock on the door to No. 2218, everyone in the family except for Ibrahim scatters instantly, like birds. I learn that M. Ibrahim lives in a two-room flat with his parents, who are staff at the university, and his younger brother, who is six years old. When I enter, the elder Mr. Ibrahim nods at me stiffly
and leaves the apartment. Mrs. Ibrahim peeks out from the kitchen at me from behind her dupatta.

  Ibrahim and I talk camera. He shows me his color enlargements of flowers, taken in the Botanical Garden, and we inspect an unironic series of self-portraits—Ibrahim wearing ripped blue jeans and leaning on a motorcycle. Silently, Mrs. Ibrahim brings tea and toast from the kitchen, and I stand up, thanking her quickly and profusely before she retreats to the kitchen. Though my visit is clearly an event that is out of the ordinary, Ibrahim behaves as if he invites American women to tea on a regular basis, so I try to follow suit. Ibrahim’s brother points at me and does an impression of an owl: “Hoot! Hoot!”

  Ibrahim is horrified that I don’t have a lens brush and insists that I borrow his, a standard small gray blower with a small brush attached on one end, used to blow away dust particles. I ask him where I can purchase camera supplies, and he replies enthusiastically that he will take me the following day to meet his “Sir,” the man who taught him photography. I want to be polite, but I am reluctant to take help from Ibrahim, for fear of how my neighbors might interpret my entering and exiting the compound on Ibrahim’s motorcycle.

  After tea, I thank Ibrahim and his mother and retreat to the library, where I notice Rekhev sitting across from me in the reading room. I want to tell him about my morning, but I don’t want to disturb him. I decide to write him a note, which I slide across the table, feeling as if I am back in grade school. He slips the note over his book, turning it over to read it without looking up. I can see him frowning. When he’s finished reading, he writes something on the paper and passes it back to me. At the bottom of the page he has written: This is a strange story.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, I wake up to a knock. It is Ibrahim, sporting a newly fashioned handlebar mustache. In his hand is a plate from his mother, and on it, a dosa pancake. How can I refuse a hot breakfast? I thank him for his mother’s kindness.

  When I go upstairs to return the plate, I make the mistake of mentioning that my camera is malfunctioning. Ibrahim jumps, in his twitchy, nervous way.

  “Why you didn’t tell me earlier! Come on, man. I am professional photographer! This is my field! My city! ”

  Ibrahim is jumping up and down and yelling at me. He has a habit of jumping as if he has stuck his finger in an electric socket, and he does it after many things that I say. It’s a comic reflex—he jumps and then looks at me expectantly—but it’s also a fearful gesture, as if I have alarmed him in some way.

  “Ibrahim, why on earth do you jump like that when I talk?” I ask him. It is an incredibly grating habit.

  “You see, my hearing in one of my ears is better than my hearing in the other one.” He points at his ears and wiggles them for emphasis, raising his eyebrows as he does so. I worry that I might laugh. “The sound travels from my good ear to my bad ear very slowly, and then with a bang.”

  “Bang!” echoes his brother, clapping his hands.

  “Ibrahim, if we’re going to be friends, you have to try and stop jumping like that. It makes me very nervous.”

  “Okay, boss!” Ibrahim replies pleasantly.

  “Do you know where I could get a six-volt camera battery?” I ask.

  “Come on! I am working in this photography field, am I not? Why you didn’t tell me? Why?”

  Ibrahim and I take a trip to visit his “Sir,” who runs a photo shop on the other side of Pune. Unfortunately, a new battery doesn’t fix the problem with my camera. Sir sits behind his desk, placing my camera on a kind of lazy Susan, spinning it around and around, and looking at it intently. I watch the camera turn useless circles for several minutes until, exasperated, I begin to explain my theories of what is wrong with the camera.

  “Sir, the problem seems to be that the interior mirror is locked. . . .” I say.

  Sir refuses to acknowledge my presence. After a few minutes, he begins to take the viewfinder off and put it back on, repeatedly and for no apparent reason.

  Ibrahim starts snapping at me in a jovial way. “Stop looking sad! You have too much of tension! It doesn’t matter!”

  We sit in silence for several minutes. The shop is quiet except for the clicking sound of Sir tapping my camera with a small stick. I start to ask about how I might be able to buy another camera in India. No, no, Ibrahim says, that will not be necessary.

  And then, miraculously, I hear the click and whir of the shutter. Sir looks at me for the first time and smiles. The camera is fixed. I am suddenly relieved and utterly grateful. I feel terrible for misjudging the brilliance of Sir.

  “See! I told you Sir would fix it! I told you! Now your tension is gone! Sir has fixed your tension!” Ibrahim starts jumping up and down.

  I am indebted to Ibrahim, and I endeavor to be nothing but patient and kind with him from now on. But I also feel beholden to him. He insists on dropping off my film for me. When I need another battery, he procures one instantly. I am grateful, and Ibrahim seems to get things much cheaper than I can, but I want to do these things myself.

  I often find Ibrahim revving up his motorcycle in the morning outside my door. I ask him about his latest photography projects before heading to the library. He begins to follow behind me to the cafeteria at dinnertime, and I try to strike the right mix of politeness and distance. One morning, I mention gently that I am very grateful for his help but I’d like to start doing my own camera-related errands. Where would he recommend that I have my film developed?

  “Why do you want to do this yourself ? Ibrahim is here!”

  “Thank you, Ibrahim. But I’m here to learn. I have to find out how to do these things by myself. Please understand.”

  The next evening I find a note underneath my door.

  Dear Miss Sadia,

  You say you want to do these camera things yourself. I am always at your service here in my home city, Pune. I get special rates. After all, I have been specially cultivating these rates for years. But if I help you, you must never ever EVER ask me where I get things or how much things cost. These are SECRETS.

  Yours respectfully,

  Your friend,

  M. Ibrahim, Professional Photographer

  Flat No. 2218

  The next day, I see Rekhev sitting on a wall smoking a cigarette. He’s with some other students, and one of them is telling a long story in Hindi; the rest are laughing at some kind of private joke. I don’t know whether I should bother him. I linger for a few minutes, until I can catch his eye, and then I show him the note.

  “He’s a bit mad, no?” he says, shaking his head. “Best to stay away from this one, I think.”

  THE NEXT NIGHT, I can’t sleep. What was it that Nana wanted me to do here? I wonder. I look in the books I brought with me for answers, rereading passages of history and making notes. I look at my contact sheets. I have made two trips to Succath Shelomo, the Bene Israel synagogue in Pune, but none of their photographs seem worth enlarging. When I finally feel sleep approaching, at 2 a.m., I remember with a jolt that I should collect my laundry from the back porch, knowing it will be dew soaked if I leave it until morning. My porch is a small strip of space below my back window demarcated by a railing, where I hang the wet clothes I’ve washed in a bucket, a little embarrassed that my brassieres and underwear are there on the back porch for all to see. Lately I’ve been attempting to dry them underneath my other clothing, which is not the most effective method.

  Exhausted, I begin to grab the loose pieces of clothing and bunch them underneath my arm when I see a dark shape moving behind the railing. It is Ibrahim, dressed entirely in black clothing.