What I have forgotten is how time passes with my mother’s family, how one conversation melds into the next, people drifting in and out of rooms, offering, making, and serving tea. Off the main living room is Uncle Waris and Auntie Mehreen’s bedroom, crowded with dark wood furniture. I go in search of my aunt and find her lying down on her large bed with the curtains drawn. Mehreen married my uncle Waris and joined the Siddiqi family when she was just eighteen, and my mother has told me repeatedly what a lovely bride she was. She has always been famous in our family for her fair skin and long dark hair, those regional hallmarks of feminine beauty, and my mother, then nine years old, insisted on following her around from the moment she joined the household. The wedding albums attest to this fact, a tiny Samina hovering in the edges of the white-bordered black-and-white images.
“Mehreen Auntie!” I say, finding her in the dark and kissing her soft, round cheeks. “It’s Sadia—I have come to see you. . . .”
“Oh, beti!” she says. “For you I have put new sheets and cleaned my room!” She sighs deeply and lays her hand on her forehead. “I have been working all day, and now I am very tired.”
“I’m honored, Mehreen Auntie. These are very nice sheets,” I say, touching them and tracing the floral print with my index finger.
“Roses!” Mehreen Auntie exclaims. “My favorite . . . always roses! Like Mysore . . . All the time I am choosing roses, my favorite flower.”
I give Mehreen Auntie some mithai that I brought with me for her.
“All the way from Bombay!” she exclaims. “Special Bombay sweets!” she says, fingering the silver box. “My, my!”
“You were from Bombay, right, Mehreen Auntie?” I ask. “I’ve been wanting to ask you about Partition.”
“No, no, I was from the south of India,” she says. “From Mysore. Back then, it was a city of gardens—so many gardens were there! All green around all the time. We were there until ’47.”
“Then you moved to Karachi?”
“I’ll tell you—there were so many problems in India at that time; people were after my brothers. I had older brothers, and people said that a mob was going to come for them, crowds were attacking Muslim houses. Our Hindu friends told us to get out, in fact. My parents did not want to go, but they said, Let’s just make the trip, we need to be safe. My father said, I will put the boys in school in Karachi, and the rest of us will come back to Hyderabad. We packed a few things and we went. We couldn’t even take our old dog. Such a sweet dog he was! He always stood watch over our haveli; he would bark and bark if he didn’t like the look of someone. We left him with our old cook, Mukhtar Bhai, and we came to Karachi. I was so sad to leave the dog, and our garden. It took so many days to get here at that time, and such a difficult journey. I was nine years old. As soon as we arrived, my father said that he wanted to go back, but my mother said: Are you mad? We have just arrived, and the news is filled with stories of Muslims being killed. You must stay here with us.”
“What was Karachi like at that time, Mehreen Auntie?”
“Oh, it was a such dusty place then! I thought, I have come from gardens to this? To what desert have we come?” Mehreen Auntie laughs, a soft, rolling sound, and shakes her head from side to side for emphasis. “Such a confused family we are!” She laughs again. “We don’t know who we are and where we come from!”
Mehreen Auntie takes hold of my hand and squeezes it affectionately.
“Why have you come, beti?” she asks me.
“I am living in India, Mehreen Auntie, in Bombay. I am studying there. And I’m so close by, I wanted to come on my own, to see you and the family. And I miss Nana. I want to learn more about her life.”
“I can tell you,” she says. “I was there. I joined the Siddiqi family when I was quite young. People used to ask me: What is it like to have three mothers-in-law? Do they all get along? I just smiled when they said that. What is the family’s business is the family’s business. What is the use of discussing it? Your grandmother was a good, kind woman.”
I nod, knowing that she must be alluding to the complicated relationships of Siddiqi House. Even with me all these years later, she won’t go into specifics.
“Tell me, beti, when will we hear good news from you?”
“Good news?” I ask her, looking blank.
“About your marriage! Have you decided on someone?”
I laugh, not sure how to explain, and look at my watch. “I was timing this, Mehreen Auntie—you waited a whole half-hour before you asked me. I’m impressed!”
In Karachi, my female cousins typically marry young men who are suggested to them by mutual friends. After an exchange of pictures, the two families meet. Sometimes the young man and the young woman will spend a few minutes alone, talking about their likes, dislikes, and career ambitions. If the match is agreeable to both the young woman and the young man, the families will agree to an engagement, and preparations will begin for the wedding. From the moment the two meet, the relationship goes in only one direction, a linear path toward marriage and children. How can I explain to Mehreen Auntie that in the system I’m a part of we meet many different people, and that the process of choosing and marrying a compatible partner can take years?
“I have not decided, Mehreen Auntie.” This is all I can muster. “I will marry when I find the right person.”
“You must be serious about looking, beti!” Mehreen Auntie says, appearing concerned. “I have told this to your mother, but I have not had the chance to tell you. Time is running away, and then it will be more difficult! You must be serious about finding someone now. Do not be too choosy!”
It amuses me to think of my love life this way, that I am “too choosy.” Suddenly Mehreen Auntie looks at me, remembering something.
“And do you know? Do you know what happened to our dog in Hyderabad?”
“What happened, Mehreen Auntie?”
“The dog refused food after we left. He would not eat a thing. He was waiting for us! For a whole month he did not eat. And that dog died. He died of mohabbat, of love. . . .”
JUST OFF THE MASTER BEDROOM is the library, bordered on one side by a large picture window facing the garden. In the center of the room is a large color television perpetually tuned to Pakistan Television, the other walls dominated by built-in bookshelves filled with English books. I’m intrigued to find a series of handsome older volumes with tooled leather spines, and open up a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. On the flyleaf, I find a stamp with my grandfather’s address in Rajkot, in Gujarat—the household he kept with his first wife, Bari Amma, and her two sons. My grandfather must have taken these books with him from India. When I hear the call to prayer broadcast from a distant loudspeaker, I put my dupatta over my head instinctively and put the book aside. My family members are offering their prayers privately, in their bedrooms, and a quiet stillness has slipped over the late afternoon. It is hot, too hot to feel the impulse to walk outside, even if there were somewhere I wanted to go.
I don’t remember the order of standing, kneeling, and prostrating well enough to do it on my own. Instead, I listen to the Arabic and mutter the English translation under my breath. I think about why I am here. I am struck by how deeply familiar the sound of the prayer is, and think of a fragment of prayer my mother taught me: “O Allah bestow your favor upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad as You have bestowed your favor on Abraham and the family of Abraham.” The people of Abraham. The people of Muhammad. Through a series of historical accidents, I find myself tied to both, the same way I am tied to Christianity.
I feel a welling up of resentment at the idea of choosing one faith, one affiliation, over the others. There’s an element of subterfuge in the way that I live, chameleonlike, presenting different sides of my religious background to different people. But it also allows me to keep asking questions, to hear what is really said behind closed doors. I’m not sure that I’m willing to give it up, not yet.
“COME, BETI. TEA.”
&nbs
p; Uncle Waris shuffles slowly through the library and to the adjacent dining room. Unlike many South Asian men, he is over six feet tall, and as he moves, his glasses swing like a pendulum from a string around his neck. I follow him, and we sit at the large dining table, covered in a thick plastic table-cover. A servant brings the tea tray and sets it down in front of us, pouring the hot liquid from a piping-hot teapot into our cups. We stir in teaspoons of white sugar; Uncle Waris opens a jar and pulls out a few biscuits, which he dips in his tea, and offers me one.
“Your mother said on the phone you want to know about the family.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I say, taking out a notebook from my bag.
“What’s that for?” He points to it.
“Just so I remember.” I am uncapping a pen.
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know about the Siddiqis, how they came to India and where they settled, and how my grandmother met your father. Nana told me that they met in Bombay; is that true?”
“Not at all. They knew each other much before that.”
“Really? But I always thought . . .”
“My grandfather’s father was originally from Arabistan—Saudi Arabia— and came to India to fight in the Mysore War, in Tipu Sultan’s army against the British. Later, my grandfather became a sergeant major of the Indian Army, and after he retired, he joined the rest of the family in Ajmer. In Ajmer, our family had a neighbor who was also Indian Army retired. That man was your Nana’s grandfather. So Nana’s grandfather Jacobs and my grandfather were friends. The two families used to meet, have dinners together.”
“What year would this have been?”
“Oh, my father was born in the early 1900s, so this would have been in the late 1800s.”
“It’s remarkable to me that a Muslim and a Jewish family would have been close friends in the late 1800s in India. . . .”
“Why is it remarkable? We had no problems with Jews, and they had no problems with us. Now there is this problem, this is because of Israel. If you look at the Qur’an, you will find conflict only if you take things out of context. Islam respects Judaism and Christianity—my father used to say: ‘And dispute ye not with the People of the Book . . . unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say, “We believe in the Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; our God and your God is One; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam)” ’[Qur’an, 29:46]. Your grandmother’s people were always good to us. Ahl al-kitab, we used to call them, People of the Book. We had no problems with the Jews.”
“Uncle Waris, were people aware in the family, growing up in Siddiqi House, that Nana was different, that she was born in a different religion?”
“Why bother about this now, sweetheart?” he asks, looking up at me over his teacup. “This time is long gone.”
“I know, Uncle Waris, but I want to know. Did people think of her as Jewish?”
“The only time it ever came up, as I recall, was if someone was upset— ‘She’s a yahudi,’ they might say, but this rarely happened. She was part of our family. We children did not discriminate among my father’s wives. ‘I have three mothers,’ I used to say, and I treated them equally.”
“Did my grandmother practice Islam?”
“In Islam, if a woman is one of the People of the Book, it is not required that she change her religion when she marries one of us. But, yes, I believe she lived her life as a Muslim. Who can say?”
“Did she say her prayers?”
“She was perhaps not as punctual a Musalman as I am,” Uncle Waris says, opening his palm, “but, yes, she did say her prayers.”
“When did my grandmother and your father get married? Do you know the story of their marriage?”
“My father,” he begins, “had an eye for young, beautiful women. That is all I will say on the matter.”
I nod, wondering at the continuing mystery of my grandparents’ relationship.
Uncle Waris looks thoughtful for a moment.
“I have met missionaries at my doorstep, beti. And I have given them tea, and I have said to them, Thank you, I will take this Bible and read it.” Uncle Waris pantomimes accepting a book and placing it in his lap. “I believe in all three books of God.”
“OH, HERE YOU ARE, Sadia Apa! We were wondering where you were!” my cousin Aliyah says, bursting into the living room, where I am looking at old photo albums.
“Are you coming for dinner?” she asks. “I have to offer my prayers, and then we will start preparing the food.”
“Where will you pray?” I ask her.
“Where, Sadia Apa? Well, my room, I suppose. Why?”
“I was wondering if I could pray with you.”
I surprise myself. I hadn’t planned to ask her this.
“I don’t remember how to do it on my own. If you don’t mind, I mean,” I add.
“Mind! Sadia Apa, of course I don’t mind. It would be a blessing for me, too, to pray with you, Sadia Apa. Allah mian would be very happy with me for showing you how. Do you want to go now?”
I nod and follow Aliyah the thirty steps to her house next door. We walk up a central staircase to her brightly colored bedroom, on the second floor of her parents’ large, well-appointed house. On each of my trips to Pakistan, Aliyah’s interests—music, styles of dress, favorite subjects—eclipse the ones she had the last time I saw her, and I have to relearn the rules of her quickly shifting universe. In her room, I notice framed snapshots of Aliyah and her school friends, and cassette tapes of contemporary Islamic singers singing devotional songs. This visit, I notice that she seems more religiously observant. She peppers her conversation with “al-hamdulillah” (“thanks be to God”) and “insh’allah” (“if it is God’s will”) and tells me that she is thinking of adopting the hijab soon, perhaps after her next round of exams.
“It’s a big decision,” she explains as we sit on her bed. “You have to be ready, and it’s a sacrifice. It really is.” Aliyah pauses for a moment and then looks wistful for a moment. “I really love earrings.” She sighs deeply, and then brightens noticeably. “But, al-hamdulillah, I am kind of a role model in my school, Sadia Apa, so I am thinking about it. I really am.”
I nod, thinking about Aliyah’s choice. I have read the passages in the Qu’ran that pertain to women and how they should cover themselves. In my mother’s interpretation, Islam asks its women followers to dress modestly but does not require that women wear a veil. Mama is in agreement with her relatives that to wear it is a highly personal decision, but the debate continues between them on its merits. My mother feels that the hijab draws unnecessary attention, but some of her family members argue that it provides protection, promotes discussion, and is an integral part of being a pious Muslim woman.
According to custom, my mother does cover her head when she prays, and I miss her acutely as Aliyah shows me how to tie my dupatta around my head so that no hair shows, making one side longer than the other and wrapping it around my skull, tucking it into the cloth across my forehead as I go.
“Like this, Sadia Apa!” she says, but I keep doing it incorrectly. “No, like this!” She’s patient with me, guiding my hands in place.
“There,” she says proudly. “You look like a real Muslim now.”
We place two prayer mats on the floor and face in the direction of Mecca, our two angled rugs lying side by side.
Aliyah recites the Arabic of her prayers beautifully.
“Allah hu Akbar,” she says, lifting up her palms on either side of her body. “Allah hu Akbar.”
The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir Page 27
