The Girl From Foreign: A Memoir

by Shepard, Sadia

  “You are only too sad, Miss Sadia, this is the problem with your heart,” Julie says. “You are trying to find your place, that’s all.”

  21

  TRAVEL ADVISORY

  BOMBAY/SOUTH DARTMOUTH, JULY 2002

  Before I leave Bombay, Rekhev comes to visit. When I go out to retrieve my mail from the mailbox, I find him smoking a cigarette at the edge of my driveway, having an animated conversation with the man in the checked shirt, the one who talks to himself. When they finish, the man wanders off absentmindedly, and Rekhev turns to me.

  “It’s quite amazing,” he says. “It seems that he received some sort of scholarship to go to France, many years ago, to get a doctorate in math. I believe he thinks that he’s in Paris half the time. He asked me if I could help him get a map of the city, because he keeps getting lost. Incredible. I’m fascinated with characters like this.”

  I laugh, happy to see him again.

  “You’re going somewhere,” he says, noting my jeans.

  “I have to go home to Massachusetts, for a few weeks,” I explain. My parents have finished their assignment in Miami and are now renovating an old farmhouse in South Dartmouth, about an hour and a half south of Boston. I tell him about the travel advisory. I don’t tell him that I want to get a second opinion on my strange, irregular heartbeat, that the test my doctor in Bombay conducted was inconclusive. I feel strange telling him that I’m leaving, like I’m cutting something short. I’m not sure what.

  “I don’t understand it. How you travel,” he says finally, looking at the street.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Moving so quickly between different realities. I can’t do that.”

  Rintu approaches, carrying some incongruous plastic objects: cheap toys made in China—spinning tops, noisy rattles, things that it seems no sensible person would ever buy. He shakes his wares at us, trying to gauge whether we’re impressed.

  “Rekhev, this is Rintu,” I say.

  “You’re making new friends, I see,” Rekhev says. “What is this stuff ?” he asks Rintu in Hindi, picking up a long spindle with silvery threads hanging off of it.

  Rintu shrugs, looking noncommittal. He offers me a rattle.

  “Want one, madam?”

  “No, thank you,” I say.

  “It’s terrible stuff, isn’t it,” Rekhev says to me dryly, inspecting a shiny top.

  “Hus-band?” Rintu asks, jerking his thumb in the direction of Rekhev.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head and feeling a little embarrassed.

  “Where is hus-band?”

  “No husband.”

  “No husband?” Rintu says, raising both eyebrows and looking shocked. “Why not?”

  I shrug. I can’t believe I have to defend being single to my local street kid.

  Rekhev and I go inside my apartment, and I set about the business of making tea, measuring spoonfuls of sugar, tea, and cardamom into a pot and bringing it to a boil. I’m not very good at it yet; my results are inconsistent.

  Rekhev sits down at my round glass table. “The trouble with you is, you do want to get married.”

  “Why do you say that?” I ask, laughing.

  “You’re very Indian that way. Not American.” He thinks for a moment. “You should have married that Tony,” he says finally. “That was your mistake.”

  I told Rekhev about Tony once, about how he and I had once talked of getting married and how he asked me if I was ever going to stay in one place. Despite how strongly I felt about him, I knew then that we weren’t right for one another. I feel a welling up of resentment that Rekhev would bring this up now. I disagree with him, but I don’t feel like fighting on the eve of my departure. I let his comments hover in the air. At this moment, I am too full of all of the possibilities laid out before me, and all the things I could not have done if I had stayed in the U.S. I look over at my open suitcase on the floor. I left that life so that I could stand here, with this wide expanse of not-knowing before me.

  Going back will be temporary, I remind myself, just a chance to be there and see a doctor, and then I’ll return to Bombay.

  MASSACHUSETTS SEEMS impossibly strange, its patterns too tidy, the streets that surround my parents’ house too green. I wake up to an unfamiliar quiet; from my bedroom window I can see a silo and fields of corn, the patch of blue of a nearby river in the distance. I watch with amazement at how sheets of hot water come out of the bathroom shower at all times of the day; it feels excessive to me. I walk to the country store, a yellow clapboard house where an elderly couple sells groceries and candy. “Hear you’ve been to India!” the man says when he hands me the mail from our post office box. I’m thrilled to see my mother and father and Cassim, but I feel out of place, as if I am watching my arrival from afar. I visit my friends in New York and find that I am unfamiliar with the new details of their daily lives, with the shorthand we used less than a year ago. I don’t know how to summarize what I have been experiencing in Bombay. I don’t know the words to explain how I spend my time, the work that I am doing, how strangely exhausting it is. I don’t know how to explain my friendship with Rekhev or what it means. This is the first time that I encounter the split-in-two feeling of dividing a life between multiple places.

  Even though I know better, what Rekhev said about Tony sticks in my mind. I trace Tony’s number on the keypad of my phone and give in to the temptation to call. The phone rings and rings, and I decide that I will leave him a message. I’ll just let him know that I am back. Then he answers.

  “It’s Sadia,” I say, rushing my words in my excitement to hear his voice. “I’m home from India.”

  Then I hear him speaking to someone else in the room, in the warm, hushed voice that he used to use with me. There’s a long silence, and I wonder if I should repeat myself.

  “It’s Sadia. Sadia is calling,” I hear him explain. I feel the knowledge sink in that he is no longer mine to tell my news to. I should have realized it earlier.

  We exchange a few clipped greetings, but he sounds strained, very far away. It’s clear that he wants to get off the phone.

  “Can we talk later?” he asks.

  “Of course. Call me anytime.” I hang up.

  I sit, looking at the receiver, knowing that I won’t hear from him again.

  MY DOCTORIN BOSTON tells me that ten months in India have given me the lungs of a smoker. My strange heartbeat is more mysterious. Tests reveal that I am experiencing something called ectopic beats: some of my heartbeats are appearing prematurely, others in what sound like pairs. He asks me if I find India stressful.

  “No one knows where they come from exactly, but they are called PVCs, premature ventricular contractions. We did a study once with medical students. One fellow had them, and we had him wear a monitor as he went about his daily life. Every time he went home and saw his wife, he had the ventricular contractions. No one could explain it exactly. But a year later, they were divorced.” He chuckles slightly at the memory. “If you ask me, I would say that something in India is causing you anxiety, and I would think about how long you really have to be there. But will it kill you? No, it won’t.”

  ON MY MOTHER’S bedside table, I notice the small Qur’an that she’s kept there as long as I can remember. I don’t know that I’ve ever examined it closely. I pick it up, studying the dark green Arabic script.

  When she comes into the room, she finds me looking at it and lies down next to me on the bed.

  “How long have you had this?” I ask.

  “Since I was small,” she says.

  “The same one?”

  “We had a lady Qur’an master, Ustaaniji, who used to come to the house and teach us, my sister and me. When we learned to read the entire Qur’an we had a ceremony and a celebration. I remember I stood with the Qur’an on my head, and my father took my picture with his Brownie camera.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “About nine, I think,” she says, trying to remember. “My
sister was six years older, but we were at the same level. She always resented me for it,” she adds, chuckling. “But it was so much easier for me because I had a photographic memory—I could literally see the shapes of the letters in my head, and Arabic is a phonetic language.”

  “How often do you read the Qur’an now?” I ask her, thumbing through the pages.

  “I read the Pansura every night,” she says. “The most important sura of the Qur’an. And I keep a copy of it in my purse. Then there are my duas, the verses that I say and read to comfort me when I am worried about something. It’s an eclectic kind of practice, I suppose. Since Nana died, I’ve read it more and more. It gives me comfort.”

  “Do you ever feel tied to Judaism, Mama?”

  She thinks for a few moments before answering.

  “When I was a baby, they recited the azaan, the sound of the call to prayer, in my ear. I am interested that Judaism is a part of my DNA, but I know that I am a Muslim. It’s the faith I was born into, raised into, it’s the faith that I practice. Those are the rituals I have followed all of my life. My mother made a promise to my father that she would raise her children as Muslims, and I am that. I am the fulfillment of that promise.”

  “I miss her so much,” I say.

  “Sadia, you can pray in whatever language you feel like,” she says, reaching out to rest her hand on my shoulder. “You can always talk to God, to ask him for guidance. I’m concerned that you feel that you have to fix everything yourself. That’s a kind of arrogance, you know, to think that everything is within your power. . . . Your father and I, we’ve never wanted to push any one thing for you kids, but I don’t want you to feel unanchored, either.”

  “Mama, did you and Abba talk about choosing one religion to raise us in?”

  “When you were a baby, we were very torn about baptism—we thought seriously about it, but we felt that we didn’t want to choose for you, to say, ‘Now you are a Christian. . . .’ There is more than one path to God, it says so in the Qur’an. My father used to recite, ‘Unto every one of you have We appointed a (different) law and way of life. And if God had so willed, He could surely have made you all one single community.’ I taught you about my religion, and your father taught you about his. . . . Nana taught you what she knew, and now you are learning so much more. I believe that we’re saying similar things in different languages.”

  “Do you think I have to make a choice, the way that Nana did?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, thoughtfully. “Muslims believe that each faith contains the essential truth that God is unified and singular. My father used to tell me that Muhammad was the last prophet, but that all prophets are only messengers. Our first duty is to God. That’s what I believe.” She picks up the edge of my sleeve, playing with it. “Sweetheart, I wish you would come home.”

  “I know, Mama.”

  “How much longer are you going to stay in India?”

  “I think I need seven or eight more months to finish my work there.”

  “Seven or eight months?” she asks. “That’ll be March. . . .”

  “Or maybe April.”

  “Promise me that when you’re done you’ll come back.”

  “I will, Mama.”

  22

  HIGH HOLIDAYS

  BOMBAY, SEPTEMBER 2002

  The threat of war between India and Pakistan has diffused, and I arrive back in India the day before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Several weeks have passed, and I am shocked to find myself reassured by the wave of heat that envelops me as I step out of the airport, by the long queue of waiting relatives and drivers, by the familiar way my clothes stick to me on the winding drive back to Gamdevi, where I’m greeted by my familiar belongings. It strikes me that this is the easiest homecoming I’ll ever have in this part of the world—my apartment established, my clothes folded, my drawers filled with rolls of film. I have received a grant from a foundation in New York that will allow me to continue my work after my Fulbright funding runs out in the next two months. My aim is to spend my remaining time here creating a photographic record of the Bene Israel, to make something tangible that Nana would have appreciated.

  I begin my fast for Yom Kippur at sundown, dressing in an all-white salwar kameez, according to Bene Israel tradition. I take a taxi to an area of the city once known as Jacob’s Circle, where Magen Hassidim Synagogue is located. This year, the Jewish High Holidays overlap with Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and as I walk through the Muslim area surrounding Magen Hassidim, I hear the call to prayer and instinctively place my dupatta over my head, the way my mother does when she hears it. I have trouble finding the synagogue and walk in circles, getting frustrated, until I finally see the building—that large familiar boxlike structure set back from the road and separated by a gate bearing painted blue Stars of David.

  When Cassim and I were growing up, we typically kept the first and last fasts of Ramadan, occasionally one in the middle. We fasted as a family, when it was possible on a weekend, and we made a day out of it, going to the movies to distract ourselves from hunger, talking about the things we were thankful for. During our fasting days, my mother would tell stories about what Ramadan was like when she was a child, what it was like to fast in a country where it’s the rule, not the exception. At night, Nana would give us dates, which we ate to break our fast, saying a prayer and drinking a glass of water. Then we would eat our iftari meal, usually Nana’s kebabs followed by her handmade pastries, light sheets of dough layered with a paste of coconut, honey, raisins, and pulverized nuts, folded into pockets. I have not fasted in recent years, and just two hours into my first Yom Kippur fast I am aware of a slight panic that I will not be able to eat anything for twenty-five hours. But as I enter the main hall of the synagogue, I look around and see what seems like the entire Bene Israel community in quiet, contemplative prayer, and I feel reassured.

  The synagogue’s marble gleams with fresh cleaning; the floors of the hall are lined with new white sheets. The men’s bowed shoulders are covered in prayer shawls. Upstairs, I join the assembled women, dressed all in white, their heads covered with white handkerchiefs, and look for a place to sit. I have been reading about Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, a day when one is meant to atone for all of the sins of the previous year. These are sins between a person and God, not between people, and I begin to consider the difference.

  As I search for a place, I spot Shoshanna Auntie from ORT India. She looks up and waves. She gestures to the space next to her and shows me where we are in the prayer book. The prayer books are in Marathi and Hebrew, neither of which I can follow, but I take the book gratefully and smile at her, thankful for her welcoming presence. She explains to me about the Kol Nidre, the prayer in which we ask God to annul all vows that we might try to make in the coming year. Then she explains the confession of the sins of the community, in which the group confesses as a whole and takes responsibility. Interspersed with these prayers are petitions for forgiveness. It is a powerful feeling to be surrounded by the strength of these shared thoughts. I close my eyes and think of Nana, who must have sat in these same benches as a girl. I atone in my own small way.

  I spend most of the next day back in Magen Hassidim, resting my head from time to time on the banister in front of me, asking for God’s forgiveness for the sins I have committed in the last year, knowingly and unknowingly, as I have been instructed. Since this is the first time I have observed Yom Kippur, I also ask him for forgiveness for the other years of my life, and for guidance through the next few months. I begin to feel faint in the early afternoon, but my hunger gives me clarity as well. Toward the end of the service, I watch as the congregation rises and laments together. Several men approach the Ark, placing the Torah scrolls back in their protective enclave. As the men slowly begin to close the doors, the women around me intone their prayers with greater fervor, the pitch and intensity of their voices rising. This is their last chance to make reparations and face the new year
with open hearts.