by Nafisa Haji
The next driver was a little more skeptical, but still polite. And the one after that—for whom Jaffer raised the toll to two rupees, given the relative ease with which these men seemed to be convinced of our authority, and the amount of labor moving those rocks back and forth entailed, for the servants, not for us—cursed at us, using language that made my ears turn red, involving, as it did, both our mothers and our sisters. Jaffer met the volley with a string of equally colorful epithets, and the two of them rallied back and forth for a bit before the driver jerked the car into reverse and bumped backward up the street, waving his fist at us all the way.
Altogether, we made about fifteen rupees before Phupijan, Jaffer’s mother, came running out, screaming and yelling, having been informed of our activities by the big-mouthed cook, who must have come out for a smoke and seen what we were doing and knew that his job, at least, depended on pleasing adult taste buds rather than allaying children’s tantrums. The money was nothing to us, but well worth the effort for the number of times we laughed later, marveling at our own audacity.
When I was fifteen, I learned the truth about how my father had died, though I didn’t accept it as the truth then. And not for many years after. Jaffer and I got into a fight, a very bad one—I don’t remember over what. We were trading insults of the usual kind lobbed back and forth between boys. I pushed him, hard. He fell on his wrist, breaking the new watch Dada had given him for his birthday. A digital watch, with a calculator on it.
He was furious, standing up to rush at me with his fists stretched out in front of him, shouting, “You bastard! Look what you’ve done! You’re a bloody, mad bastard, Sadiq! Just like your father! And your mother is a whore, marrying that son-of-a-bitch Sunni bastard. No wonder your father killed himself!”
I didn’t even hear him. Not at that moment. I was fending off his blows as he shouted the words. Dada came running at the sound of the commotion we were causing in the lounge.
“Jaffer! Shut your mouth! Get out! Go home! Now!” Dada shouted as I’d never heard him shout before.
The expression on his face, the fury in his voice, made me stop and turn, my anger at Jaffer suddenly dissolved, to look into Dada’s face very carefully. His eyes would not meet mine. I reviewed what Jaffer had said, what I hadn’t really listened to as I warded him off. Dada turned and left the room. It took me a few hours to go and find him, to ask him about what my cousin had said.
“Don’t listen to him, Sadiq. It’s all nonsense, what Jaffer said. You boys! What horrible things you’ll say out of anger. Lies, all lies.”
I pretended—to him and to myself—that I was convinced and reassured. If Dada was lying, covering up the truth, a part of me decided that I didn’t want to know. Jaffer came over later and apologized. I told him I was sorry about his watch. He never raised the subject again.
Neither did I, too distracted by the gift Dada bought for me the very next day. A car of my own, though I was still too young to legally drive it. Dada sent Sharif Muhammad to obtain a license for me—illegally, bribe in hand—and, after Sharif Muhammad taught me to drive, Jaffer and I were free to wander around town on our own, to pursue a suddenly feverish social life that began to involve other licenses that my grandfather did not approve of when he found out. I am ashamed, now, to think of how I fought with him—an old man who had given me everything and anything I wanted. But I thought I was a man. He himself had told me I was. I spent the money he gave me as if it were no object, buying gifts for my friends, picking up the tabs at restaurants, buying booze and hashish for everyone. Soon, Jaffer was no longer allowed to go out with me. But no one could stop me. I was the youngest at every party and felt I had something to prove. The slightest provocation was all it took for me to come to blows. I deserved the reputation I had—racing my car against others’, equally indulged—for being wild and reckless.
One day, I drove home from a party in the early hours of the morning, in a thoroughly inebriated state. I was veering and swerving my way home, missing turns and running stoplights. I turned fast onto one street, too fast and too late to stop when I saw them. A woman and a small child.
I remember the sound of the screech of the brakes. I remember her face, caught in the headlights, her scream, the sickening thud of steel hitting vulnerable flesh, her body flying and then disappearing off to my side. The car was stopped. I pushed open the door and stood to see what—who—I’d hit. The woman was crumpled on the ground, the child kneeling beside her, howling. Men started to spill out from a mosque up the street, where the dawn prayer had just ended. I heard shouting. Someone stopped to check on my victim. The rest of the men gathered menacingly into a clump, heading in my direction. I didn’t think. I jumped into the car, turned the engine, and fled, remembering nothing of the rest of the way home.
When I got there, I honked for the chowkidar—the gatekeeper—to let me in at the gate. Bleary-eyed and resigned—he was used to my odd-hour homecomings, along with the regular payments I made him to lie to my grandfather about them—he opened the gate. I drove in and parked on the driveway, noticing, for the first time, the race going on in my chest, between heartbeats and ragged breaths. Sharif Muhammad came in from his prayers just behind me, walking into the compound by the pedestrian gate. He saw me sitting in the car, my head pressed against the steering wheel.
“Sadiq Baba? Are you all right?” he asked loudly, knocking at my window.
I raised my head and looked at him. I must have looked wild-eyed. I didn’t answer him. He reached to open my door, which was unlocked, not even properly closed.
“What’s wrong, Sadiq Baba? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I sat there, unable to move.
He sighed, a long, hard sigh of disapproval. The chowkidar had not felt obligated to keep my secrets from Sharif Muhammad, who lectured me regularly about my drinking, words I ignored, words I laughed at, in his face. Sharif Muhammad reached into the car and helped me get out, mistaking the reason for my shaky state, understandably—the smell of my breath must have been all the evidence he needed. He was walking me toward the door of the house, trying to get me to speak all the while, when he stopped, suddenly, at the front of the car.
“What’s this, Sadiq Baba?” he asked sharply.
I looked down at where he was pointing—at the front bumper of the car, bashed and bloody. I heard myself moan and realized that I had been moaning all along.
“That’s blood! Whose blood, Sadiq Baba?” He squeezed the arm of mine that he held, hard enough to hurt. “What did you do?”
I started crying, unable to answer. I closed my eyes and saw them again. The woman on the pavement. The child kneeling beside her.
Sharif Muhammad shook me and asked again, “Whose blood? Who did you hit? Where did it happen?”
I mumbled an answer, suddenly remembering the street I’d been on. In Karachi, directions are given by landmark, because most of the streets have no name. So, I gave him directions that way—naming an ice cream shop, a newsstand, a bakery as signposts for him to follow.
“Did you run away, Sadiq Baba?”
His question was a formality. Later, I would be ashamed at the presumption in his words. He knew damned well I had run, without having to ask. And it didn’t surprise him that I had.
He left me at the front door of the house, shoving me inside.
“I will go. I will see what happened.” His voice was harsh and gentle at the same time, waylaying the objections he thought I might offer.
This time, at least, I didn’t lower myself to his expectations. I nodded gratefully, still shaking. This was a line that he offered, I knew, to keep me from drowning. “Yes. Yes, go see, Sharif Muhammad. See if they need anything.” As soon as I said the words, I moaned again, out loud. The tone of my voice sickened me. The privilege in it. The patronage.
I made my way to bed and fell asleep in my air-conditioned room, oblivious to the heat of the rising sun, oblivious to the life or death of the woman I’d hit, to t
he grief of the child I may have orphaned.
I woke up from my dreamless, pampered sleep and made my way out into the lounge. Both of their backs toward me, I came upon Sharif Muhammad, returned from his errand, filling my grandfather in on the consequences of what I’d done.
“She’s dead. Leaving behind a little boy.”
“How old is the boy?” Dada asked.
“Four or five. Younger than Sadiq Baba was when he came to live with you.”
Dada stopped short his pacing, his hands behind his back. He frowned at Sharif Muhammad’s words.
Sharif Muhammad didn’t flinch. He said, “I left the boy, still crying, in the care of the old imam of the masjid. The masjid on the street where his mother was killed. They will try to find out who she is—was. Who her people are.”
“Hmm. Yes, the boy must be restored to those he belongs to. We’ll do what we can for him.” Dada resumed his pacing, already moving on from the matter of the boy.
Sharif Muhammad, too, switched gears. “And what about Sadiq Baba?”
My grandfather frowned again, unhappy with his servant’s tone of voice—a tone I had never heard him use before with his employer. Defiant. Interrogative. Peremptory.
“It seems you have an opinion you wish to express, Sharif Muhammad.”
Sharif Muhammad took a step forward. He took his skull cap off his head and crumpled it in his hands. “Yes, Mubarak Sayt. I have something more to say.” He stopped, as if to line up words he had amassed in an arsenal he had long waited to deploy.
“Then say it, Sharif Muhammad. Say what you will.” Dada’s voice was menacingly stern, belying the invitation he offered.
“It is time, Sayt. To reckon with the dirty deed you sent me to do for you more than nine years ago. This is something I should have said then, but I didn’t. You have been a good master. Fair and just. I have not forgotten any of your generosities over the years. I carry them with me, always, in a heart that is grateful. You took care of my sister, found her employment when Deena Bibi left for Amreeka. But what you made me a party to, when you took Sadiq Baba away from his mother, was not right.”
“Sharif Muhammad. The matter is none of your concern.” Dada’s voice was final. I thought he would stop there. Sharif Muhammad didn’t budge. He stood, silently, forcing Dada to utter more. “I was in my rights. The boy belonged here. You are a religious man. You know that what I say is true. Ask any mullah. Your Sunni ones will tell you the same, I am sure.”
“I don’t care what any mullah says,” Sharif Muhammad said. “I have a mind. And I know how piety and religion can mask the truth of what justice calls for. You took that boy away from his mother. That was wrong. You caused his mother grief—a good woman, who did nothing to deserve what life handed her. And now kismat has played out its retribution. Your grandson is the reason another boy’s mother has been taken from him.”
“These are matters you don’t understand, Sharif Muhammad. The law was on my side. The law of the nation and the law of God.”
“The law of the nation? What is that? Nothing but a plaything of big people. The law of God? When law is separated from justice, Sayt, that is not the law of any god I worship. That is when the true test of faith and wisdom comes—that is our opportunity to shine the light of humanity and compassion on the misfortunes we inflict on one another. There are no laws you can quote me that will change the way I see it. And what have you done with the boy? By separating him from the love of his mother? If heaven, for him, lies under her feet—as the Prophet, peace be upon him, said—then you have kept him far away from heaven, casting him on the path to hell. Send him to her, Sayt. He is out of control. Even Asma Bibi, your own daughter, will not let her son spend time with him anymore. The tragedy he has caused today is only the beginning—this, I promise. The boy needs his mother. Has needed her all these years. Send him back to her, I beg you. It may be too late already to undo the damage. But give him a chance at least. All your wealth and possessions have done and will do nothing for him. He is a coward. He ran over a mother and ran away from what he did. He will always run away.”
“Enough, Sharif Muhammad! You are a good man. You have always served me well. For this, I will forgive you today’s impudence. Leave me now!” Dada roared.
But what Sharif Muhammad said must have had an effect. Two weeks later, Dada put me on a plane to America. At the airport in Los Angeles, I saw my mother for the first time in six years. She was with her husband, the crocodile, and her daughter, Sabah. When she hugged me—her stiff-backed stranger of a son—her face was wet with tears. She took my hand and put it on her face, smiling through them. “See? These are sweet tears, Sadiq. So very, very sweet.” I stepped back from her, because she was so unfamiliar. Even the smell of her was foreign. But she welcomed me into her home. She and Sabah and Umar, the crocodile. But it was their home. Not mine.
While I was there, only a year—until I graduated, early, from high school and went away from them to college—I met Jo’s mother. Angela. I was still fifteen, new to America, living with my mother though I had already, long before, learned to live without her.
When I was done telling Jo my story, on that day she was born to me, I looked up to catch an expression on her face that was plain and easy to understand, despite my having never learned to read her stranger’s features. She had come to ask who I was. And the answer I had given her was one that she did not understand. I realized, almost immediately, that what I had told her would drive her away and out of my reach.
Since then, I have tried and tried to call her. I keep thinking of more I should have said and also of what I shouldn’t. Her departure had been abrupt, as sudden as her arrival, coming before it was my turn to listen. That, too, keeps me awake at night—the questions I would have asked, which surely I had the right to ask, but which she gave me no opportunity to voice.
The boxes in my living room are all gone. I have delayed my trip twice already. Today, when I called her, she picked up. She was sorry, but there was nothing more she wanted from me. She was glad to have met me, she said, very graciously. But that was it.
Jo
Drop, drop, slow tears,
And bathe those beauteous feet,
Which brought from Heaven
The news and Prince of Peace.
Phineas Fletcher, “A Litany”
For a while, that day with Sadiq, I lost myself—dizzy in the spiral of his stories inside of stories. It took a lot to keep my face clear of all that I felt in response to what he told me—pity, disgust, revulsion. Until the end, when his eyes—dark brown and dominant—came back into the room and found mine, staking a claim I had no intention of granting. I left him as fast as I could, chased away by the questions I didn’t give him a chance to ask.
I knew what those questions would have been. About my mother. But I didn’t want to talk about her. I didn’t want to hear about her, either. Not from him. To see her through his eyes would have been too much—making her as alien to me as he was.
He might have asked about Dad, too. Scenes with him flashed through my mind. Going into his workshop when I was little, when I knew Mom was too tired to listen to me. He’d be sawing or hammering away. When he’d see me, he’d put down his tools, clear a space on the counter for me to sit on, lift me up to place me there. I’d start talking. He’d resume working and listen—his hands busy, his head nodding. His hands would pause as he looked at me, from time to time, smiling, laughing, or frowning to let me know he was still paying attention. He didn’t talk much himself. His favorite joke was that I never gave him a chance to. Eventually, the sight of those hands working would catch my attention so fully that I’d run out of words.
One day, when Dad and I were in the car on our way to the library, we stopped at a red light and saw a homeless guy standing at the corner. He was holding up a sign—homeless vet. Dad pulled the car over and took the guy with us into the coffee shop around the corner. My father bought him a meal, me sitting next to Dad, sipping
on a milk shake, my eyes staring at the long-haired, bearded, scary-looking stranger across from us at the table. When we were done, we took the guy back to his corner and went on to the library as if nothing had happened.
Except, when he turned the key to start the car, Dad said, very softly, “That could have been me. It would have been. But for your mother. She saved me. Brought me to Christ. Gave me a reason to live. Two reasons. You and your brother.”
My brother. Sadiq would have asked if I had any brothers or sisters. And Chris was off-limits. Because of what I’d promised Mom.
The minute I got back to my dorm room from Sadiq’s place, while they were still fresh in my mind, I wrote down all the words I could remember, the foreign ones from his story, adding them to the lists of words in my special notebook, which I’d packed and brought with me from home, on a fresh page, under a new heading: Urdu—though I remembered he’d mentioned Arabic, too, and wasn’t sure which words were which.
Amee mother
Dadi grandmother
Dada grandfather
Zakira preacher?
Rickshaw motor tricycle
Majlis ?
Mushk water bag
Noha religious song—sad
Muharram month
Shia
Sunni
Jamun kind of fruit
Chacha uncle
Dupatta scarf?
I wrote down names, too, which was something I hadn’t done on any of the lists I’d made before. Sharif Muhammad. Deena. Jafar. Abbas. Husain. Sakina. I wrote them as a way to unpack the images Sadiq had loaded on me, not because I wanted to remember the people he’d talked about.
