I had always been careful to find out what she was reading and to know what she was thinking. I’d bought some of her books myself — introduced her to great literature: Sir Walter Scott, Lord Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Charles Dickens. But now I felt shut out as I looked at the titles she was reading — all American sidewalk psychology and all this American liberty theory that only America with all its land and so few people can afford. I didn’t want her to spend her time shopping like all her old friends from college in Delhi did till they were decently married off, but it is a big responsibility to have an unmarried daughter, and I didn’t want to be blamed if she went astray.
I’ll never forget the moment I knew she had betrayed our trust, the money we had wasted on her education, the way we had borne the dire predictions of our friends in sending her abroad to study. All in one moment, I knew we had created a monster, an ungrateful, rebellious, selfish monster, and we had no one to blame but ourselves. The knowledge came to me the moment I picked up the telephone and heard a male voice interspersed with static say, “May I please speak to Simran?”
I said, “She is not here.”
And I slammed the receiver back on the hook. I saw Kanti looking at me with surprise from the kitchen, and I said shortly, “Wrong number. ”
I had to protect my daughter’s reputation.
MIRZA
I had only been in Grand Central Station once before, when I arrived in the States and took the train to Raleigh two years ago. It’s a comforting place for me, grimy and garish with lots of beggars — Americans call them “homeless people” — just like home. I had taken advantage of a Christmas discount and traced my beloved’s last journey to this place. I don’t know what I had in mind going there — it just seemed better to leave the campus than spend my time listening for the tinkle of glass bangles, lying in her spot on the third floor of the library.
I decided to get some coffee (Americans have no idea how to make tea) and a doughnut. It’s a strange thing about doughnut. Americans have twenty names for the different kinds of doughnut, more than they have for the relationships in their families. So I just pointed when the girl at the counter asked what kind I wanted. She looked at me nervously. I suppose my eyes looked a little bloodshot — I had been trying to stay awake at the same time as my Simran and sleep at the same time as she did, too.
I sat in the glass booth dubbed a café, gazing past a long line of telephones, and afterwards I would have taken my return ticket and wandered back to the platform for the Raleigh train, but I felt a tap on my shoulder and some fellow with a Yankees jacket over baggy corduroy trousers said in Urdu, “Are you from India or Pakistan?” I drew myself up proudly and said, “Pakistan.”
“I too am from Pakistan,” he said, lapsing into English. And he placed his tray on the table next to mine and slipped into the seat beside me so we both sat looking outward at the great hall milling with people.
“In Pakistan there would be many more people at a train station,” I mused, companionably.
“You are missing home?” he said sympathetically.
“Yes, of course,” I said, not without a twinge of guilt, for I really hadn’t thought of my family ever since I met my new love.
“You want to call home? I have a credit card.”
“You are very kind, but how could I use your credit card?” I was somewhat surprised. We Pakistanis usually have a little less trust of strangers than he exhibited. Usually we will at least ask one another’s village of origin before offering hospitality.
“Well, it is not really my credit card,” he explained. “It is a credit card number you can use for the phone. And then you can call anywhere you like and never have to pay. ” His glee began to remind me of an American TV commercial, so I stopped him with a line I’d heard them use. “So what’s the catch?”
He closed his eyes with all the sanctimony of a Christian at prayer and said, “Allah is my witness, no catch. Here, you go and try the number. If your call goes through you can pay me only ten dollars — not even enough for one call, leave alone all the calls you can make for free with this number. ”
I knew I was placing myself in danger. I was a computer science major — did he think I didn’t know how easy it is to trace a call with a bum credit card? But my obsession was strong in me, and I yearned for one syllable of Simran’s voice, so I made my way to the phones and tried the call, billing it as swiftly as my fingers could enter the code to some fat rich American who could well afford it.
I followed the phone call in my mind, hearing the static rush over the Atlantic, felt it cross Europe, dance over the Khyber pass and drop through Pakistan, bridging the winter-dry riverbeds of the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Sutlej, the Beas, finally swooping down to the plains of Delhi. I felt it sidle into Simran’s house. There was a ringing, trr-trr trr-trr. Someone — was it Simran? — said, “Hello?”
And then I said, voice cracking like a schoolboy, “May I please speak to Simran?” I felt as though I would choke.
“She is not here,” said the voice that was Simran’s and yet not Simran’s. And then, click. That was all. And the risk I had taken to call her brushed aside, the sacrifice I had made in following her to Grand Central ignored. Any minute I could be arrested. I would tell them then, “It was all for her. The woman tempted me, arrest her, that wanton harlot!”
None of this passed my lips. I had the credit card, and I would call again.
I went back to my new friend and gladly paid him ten dollars, saying, “It worked but I will not try that again. Once is enough, mia. I don’t want to get caught. ”
He said knowingly, “As you please. Consider it a gift — just a small tofah — in case of emergency. ”
Then he was gone, and I took the train back to Raleigh. By the time I got back to my empty, silent room, I could stand my thoughts no longer, and so I ran out again to the pay phone at the corner convenience store and tried to call my heartless love again.
AMRIT
My daughter seems intent on ruining this family. I went into her bedroom and had a talk with her after that call, asking her, “Who is this man who thinks he can call you in your parents’ home?”
She looked so surprised and so innocent, and she said, “Mummy, I don’t know who it can be. Did he say his name?”
But I was not born yesterday and I said, “How did he get your number?”
She looked worried and said simply, “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? So he just dreamed it or what? Ten o’ clock at night and he thinks he has the right to call you?” I was beginning to sound shrill, but I was frightened for her. Better that she should get a taste of my anger first, for Veeru would not spare her.
“Mummy, maybe it’s important — why didn’t you let me speak? I would have told you what it was about.”
“Let you speak! That man didn’t have an American accent, my dear, he had . . . ” I searched for the right words, but my fears made me say, “he had a Muslim accent.”
Then she laughed. Laughed in my face as if my fears were nothing. “Oh, that must be Mirza,” she said.
“Must be Mirza. How well do you know this Mirza?”
“He’s just a friend, Mummy. ”
And there I had to let it go — until he called again.
It was five in the morning, and the doves roosting in our air conditioner were just waking when the phone rang. I answered it, and there came that man’s voice again, “Is Simran there?”
“There is no Simran at this number,” I said in my severest teacher’s voice.
“No, no, please. Don’t hang up,” said the voice. “I know she is there. Please let me speak to her. ”
Veeru was stirring in bed, so I said, “You have the wrong number. ” And I hung up.
“Who was that?” said Veeru sleepily.
“Wrong number. ” I wrapped my shawl around me and put on my warm slippers. Our house is built for cross-ventilation
in the ten months of Delhi summer, and it’s draughty and cold in the short winter.
I padded into Simran’s room and said, “That man called you again.”
She said, “So why didn’t you wake me? I would have told him you don’t like my getting calls from him and I’m sure he would stop.”
“To think I believed you when you said he was just a friend,” I said.
“He is — was — just a friend, Mummy!”
I wanted to smack her as if she was five years old. “Are you mad? No man calls an unmarried woman from overseas in the home of her parents if he’s just a friend! You must have encouraged him somehow. ”
She considered this carefully. “No, I don’t remember encouraging him. I felt sorry for him, but I didn’t feel anything else. ”
“It’s not a question of what you felt, Simran. How do you think it looks?”
“But I’m telling you how it was, Mummy. Isn’t that enough?”
I wanted to believe her, but my fear was too strong. I said, “Well, don’t let him call again, because I will have to tell your father. ”
“Don’t worry, it costs money to call India all the way from America. He’s not a rich fellow, I know. Anyway, next time I will pick up the phone and tell him.”
“You will do nothing of the sort.”
MIRZA
I wandered around the campus for hours, peering into empty classrooms, turning lights on and off, taking the stairs one at a time, two at a time, three at a time. I went to the Union and sat before the TV eating candy bars and popcorn and trying to laugh when the sitcom audiences did. Even the janitors — sweepers, we call them in Pakistan — looked at me without expression. I went down to the gym, thinking exercise would bring sleep, but I found I didn’t know how to use the exercise machines, and there were women shamelessly baring their bodies in the swimming pool, so I left.
And from every pay phone I passed, I tried to reach my lost Simran. By this time I was convinced her parents had her engaged, and married off as well. I was in mourning already, imagining her committing suicide on her wedding night rather than marry anyone except her loving Mirza. Then I would become incensed, shouting “I hate her!” across the deserted football field.
I began to read the Koran and feel its truth. “Oh, you who believe, do not take My enemies and your enemies as friends. You show kindness to them, but they reject the true way that has come to you. They expelled the Prophet and you, for you believe in God your Lord. If you have come out to struggle in My cause, having sought My acceptance, do not be friendly with them in secret.”
I told myself I should not have loved her in secret. That was my sin. I should have told her the words every day so that she could not forget, so that she would begin to think about her unbelief and know that I would wish for her to believe, that she might be mine. Every time her mother cut the tenuous connection between us, the more desperate I became to speak with her, just once.
AMRIT
Veeru found out about it, as I knew he would. How many times could I protect her by saying the phone calls at all times of day and night were just more wrong numbers? He had a long, intense, sorrowful talk with her, explaining how much she had disappointed him, describing the dreadful things people would say if they ever found out that she had consorted with a Muslim fellow. Still she denied it, as he explained disgrace as patiently as though she were a visitor from some other country. I felt now she was definitely pretending to be innocent. I even began to worry if she was still a virgin. I would look at her face and think, “America has taught her to lie to her parents.”
When the phone calls became more frequent, so that the phone would ring almost as soon as I pressed the hook, we forbade the servants to answer the phone, just as we had forbidden Simran, but they could all feel our discomfort, our suspicions. Kanti watched me from the kitchen, wondering. Always she had been my confidante, my own loyal woman, but this was a family matter, and I could not speak of it to her, could not admit my daughter had so betrayed her parents, we — enlightened, well-travelled, English-speaking parents — who had always allowed her as much freedom as if she had been a boy, we who were even willing to spend fifteen thousand dollars on a woman’s foreign education. My own father would never have wasted his money in such a fashion.
We concentrated on introducing her to several very well-to-do families, hoping for a quick engagement that would protect her from all men, Muslim or otherwise, but the mothers of well-educated boys were wary.
“Did you live in a co-ed dorm on campus or in a girl’s dorm?” they asked.
And she, with a stupidity that made me want to throw out all her fancy books, replied truthfully, “In a co-ed dorm.”
Then I would watch them encircle their precious sons with mental shields against my dim-witted daughter.
She seemed to delight in telling them just what she had been studying, although the effect it had was to make them afraid for their sons. Veeru even explained to her, “If you want to get through to the boss in America, don’t you have to be nice to the secretary?” But his words were lost on her.
Now she stopped protesting her innocence as much as before and began to sit in her room for hours on end.
“What are you doing?” I would ask.
“Thinking,” she would answer.
With her three-week visit drawing to an end, and with the phone calls showing no sign of abating, Veeru and I had a difficult decision to make. How could we send her back to America knowing that Muslim fellow was lying in wait for her there? Of course we could not. We did not want her to be ruined.
If I had any remaining doubts about her absolute ingratitude and total disregard for our feelings, she managed to dispel them completely the day we caught her trying to give Kanti a letter to post. It was addressed to that Muslim fellow. She swore it was only to tell him to stop calling her, to go away, but by this time I wanted no more lies.
“Why don’t you read it if you don’t believe me?” she wept.
I said, “I don’t have to read it, you shameless, ungrateful girl. You think I want to read your love letters to a Muslim?”
Veeru said, “That’s enough. You are not going back to America. Not now, not ever. ”
I expected her to be repentant, to beg for forgiveness. But she didn’t. She just went into her room, and after a few seconds we heard a quiet click. She had locked the door.
She never used to lock her door before she went to America.
MIRZA
I went to the railway station to meet every train for three days before the new term began. Then I took the bus to her dorm and saw the residence hall manager in Simran’s room packing her belongings into cardboard boxes.
“What are you doing?” I asked. How dare she touch Simran’s clothing?
“She’s not coming back. I have to pack up all this stuff and ship it back to someplace in India. I oughtta get extra pay for this work. ”
I sat on Simran’s bed and looked out her window. They had engaged her to some fat Sardar, maybe someone with a business in London or the Middle East.
Then I smiled at the January sun. She would find a way to contact her Mirza. I just knew it.
photo: David Baldwin
SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN’s What the Body Remembers received the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book in the Canada-Carribean. The Tiger Claw, a novel about a Sufi Muslim secret agent who searches for her Jewish beloved through Occupied France, has been optioned for film. English Lessons and Other Stories received the Friends of American Writers prize. We Are Not in Pakistan, her collection of cross-cultural stories, was published in 2007. Her play We Are So Different Now was adapted for performance in India and off-Broadway in 2011. Her latest novel, The Selector of Souls, about a Hindu midwife who tries to balance her karma after a terrible crime, received the 2012 Anne Powers Fiction Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. She holds an MBA from Marquette University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. www.ShaunaSinghBaldwin.com
> Fiction by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
All the Broken Things (2014)
Perfecting (2009)
The Nettle Spinner (2005)
Way Up (2003)
“What Had Become of Us” previously appeared in Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer’s 2003 story collection, Way Up, published by Goose Lane Editions.
Pieter Van Dongen and I were in another forest completely, and not surprisingly, my life had changed irrevocably and in subtle ways that I did not necessarily wish to examine. The acknowledging of change in any way brought with it a tenderness, a weepiness, a general atmosphere of misery that I would sooner deny. The forest in which we stood had been ravaged by a hurricane. Very few trees had survived the winds. It was a year to the day since Erwin’s death.
What are we supposed to do here? I asked.
Cleaning up, Pieter said.
I had come to Belgium in order to leave Canada. It was as simple and as complicated as that could be. I wanted to leave home, family — a family I suspected of subversive politeness and congeniality, which was okay if you liked that sort of thing, but I had decided that on the whole I didn’t — and seek the sort of autonomy that I expected might be found in the arms of a foreigner, on foreign terrain, in the imagined, nuanced otherness of a stranger’s bed, in heavily accented intercourse. I had dreams — vivid sleeping dreams — that assured me this was possible, and so I sought, in my naivety, a non-Canadian boyfriend, a saviour from a far-off land, someone cultivated, if possible, but certainly non-English speaking. I had no desire for argument.
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