by Kim Echlin
Why not? I thought. For three weeks. I wanted to smell Karachi again, to walk on Seaview, to see the moonflowers under my old bedroom window. I was thinking about Kamal. I wrote to tell Katherine I was going, that I’d come to New York in August as soon as I got back. I found my old shalwar kameez in the bottom of my suitcase and bought presents for Aunt and Uncle and a small scarf for Minoo and I closed my suitcase all ready to go home. I kept thinking about seeing Kamal.
Katherine telephoned.
Mahsa, I’ve already got gigs in July for us. I’ve arranged for an album recording for us at Marian’s. Two pianos. That’s hard to get.
I know. But Katherine, I haven’t been home for two years. Can’t we do it in August?
Mahsa, you agreed. It is almost impossible to get two pianos recorded. I will have to do it alone. Don’t you get that?
Uncle will be angry if I don’t come. It is only for a few weeks. I can come straight to New York when I get back.
I was heedless. Katherine said, You’re on the brink. Don’t blow it.
But I said, You can get them to reschedule it to August.
I thought I had all the time in the world.
It began delicately. Sleeping in. Meals served. The unspoken luxury of life with servants. Aunt said she’d heard Kamal’s father had sent him to work in Afghanistan. I wrote and did not hear back and I wondered if he was angry that I had written so little. The hottest time of the year was coming and my old school friends were married or abroad and I was annoyed that I had given in and come back. Martial law had been lifted in April and the Simla Agreement was coming. The streets were full of protests. Aunt seemed dwarfed to me, her heavy perfumes suffocating, and she would not look me in the eye.
On the third day, Uncle called me into the sitting room and I saw Aunt there too. No. Please no.
Uncle said, We are worried about you far away and alone. We think it is time to marry and we have found someone we think will please you. He is the son of my oldest friend.
My apartment with Monique. Rockhead’s. My studies. The Surf Maid. The Greyhound bus. The mountain.
Aunt said, His father is expanding his business to Montreal. You will be able to continue your studies.
I do not want to marry.
Mahsa, we are only suggesting. Your uncles visited again. They think it dishonourable you alone in the West. Honour is like milk, which the lightest dust dirties. We are only your guardians. They have spoken of taking you back to the Helmand with them.
If I was in danger why did you bring me back? I will go back to Montreal tomorrow.
Mahsa, remember the angels, Yameen and Yasaar, who write down everything your right and left hand do? Things are known, Mahsa.
What things? My bank account? Little Burgundy? Kamal? What? What? Shame on the two angels … It is better to live in hardship than end up as a whipping girl.
Aunt said, Your mother would have wanted this.
I said, Mor married for love. She did what she wanted.
Uncle looked at me as if at a stranger. He got up heavily to leave and said, Know the mother, know the daughter. You have not asked one question about the young man.
I ran back to my room to get my passport, but Minoo had removed it while we talked.
The weeks that followed. Weeping. Wailing. Silence. Uncle’s rage. Aunt’s visits to my room and sighing and shouting and stomping out again. We were a bad Bollywood film. I had taken more freedoms than Uncle could have imagined.
Who do you think you are? he said and threatened to lock me up forever.
Mor always said about meeting Abbu, The first time our eyes met I felt strength and tenderness and love.
Why had I come back? How had I forgotten so quickly?
In the hottest days of July, Aunt had a heart attack and I still think it was angina. Uncle said to me at her hospital bed, You are stealing your aunt’s life. You are humiliating me before my friends. We took you in.
Always I was to be a shamed orphan. I imagined Monique with her feet up on the balcony, smoking, talking to me. I imagined her saying, Câlisse! You pay your own bills. You get jobs in New York!
Uncle put a lock on the outside of my bedroom door and when I heard it click at night I felt a despair I had not felt since the servant’s closet after Mor and Abbu were shot. His face was smooth marble. How long was he capable of keeping me?
The day after Aunt was released from hospital, Ali’s family was invited. What a touching first meeting, the sick aunty-guardian cared for by her devoted orphan-niece. Aunt welcomed her guests from the divan while Minoo cooked and made tea and I served the traditional sweets, peeking to see what Ali looked like, complying, screaming inside, What am I doing? For a passport?
Ali was twenty-two years older than I was but vigorous and handsome, still young enough at forty-four. He was not some fat third cousin and he played squash and his skin was firm and his hair thinning a little at the crown. He was a British-trained lawyer. Now his parents wanted him to marry and to start another branch of TradeWorld in Canada. I looked at him, thought, You are my way back.
Was Katherine in Central Park with her children? Was Jean St. John madly playing the outdoor festivals? Had the mountain been littered with lovers after Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day? Who was Monique bringing home to our apartment? What play was she directing? Where was Katherine playing? What was I doing here? How could I get away?
Ali took me to his parents’ club, the Muslim Gymkhana, a place I had never been. We sat across from each other at a small table and he asked, What do you do for fun in Montreal?
I thought, I play the bars on Saint-Antoine and take the bus to New York and fend off drunks in piano lounges.
I answered, Go for walks.
He said, Don’t worry. I’ve been living in London for years. I know life is different there.
He was impatient as if talking to himself, and he said, I wanted to return to England. But the family wants Montreal, so I’m stuck with it. Then he looked up again, Is Canada all right? I heard quite boring.
He did not want this marriage either. He had been happy living abroad too. Was there a chance of anything? Why had he not married earlier? He said, Mahsa, my family says you are good with languages and that you have easily adapted and that you will be useful with our clients. I like you very much. Do you think we can find something together?
This measuring and questioning felt strange to me. Had I become Westernized? Kamal had loved me. Jean St. John reached for my hand with passion. I wanted to get out. I said, Yes, I think we can.
Mahsa, there is something I must tell you. We must begin our life together in honesty. I have had a girlfriend in London, a British woman. Neither of our families approve. They don’t want her with me. My father threatened to cut me off. There has been a lot of tumult and I’m done with all of it.
He reached over, touched my elbow, our first touch, and he asked, Can you forgive me? We will find love together.
He did not ask me if I had a past.
I thought, I will make this work to get back to Montreal. I felt even a little softness toward him.
Ali must have taken my silence as acceptance because he withdrew his hand and called to sign the bill.
On our second date, Ali told me about a legal case in the north that he had returned from investigating for a magistrate who was a distant relative. Two brothers had stolen money from a cousin. One of their wives was accused of the theft, splashed with gasoline and set ablaze.
What do you mean, accused? I asked.
The family needed a scapegoat. She took the blame and they walked free.
But did you report it to the magistrate?
He was paid off, said Ali and shrugged. I was sent for appearances.
I would never forget that shrug.
At home Aunt told me that Ali’s mother has visited to ask about my experience abroad. Aunt said, I told her you are good. Conceal your faults.
Tell her what you like, I said. I’m going back.
&nb
sp; The tiresome three days of our wedding began two weeks later. The families wanted to do it before Ramadan in October, but I insisted on marrying immediately so I could go back to school. It was the single concession I won. The weather was unbearably hot. I shopped with my new sisters-in-law who were both married. We drank tea. Spoke of the latest Indian movies.
Why is your uncle letting you return before Ali?
School is starting, and it is taking some time for him to organize the business.
Now that you’re married you won’t have to go to school.
But I want to. I am teaching this fall.
Well, you won’t have time for that once the babies arrive.
Babies?
They laughed and asked, Will you send us some jeans?
Monique sent a postcard of Montreal at night with the cross lit up at the top of the mountain. It looked exotic here. She wrote, Félicitations! Really? Jean-Claude moved out after you left. There’s an empty apartment upstairs—I can take that one!
Uncle read it and said, Are you not living with her family?
I lied, said, She must be thinking of an apartment in the same building for Ali and me. It is a good idea, Uncle. The building is close to where Ali will have his office.
Aunt’s mehndi ceremony for me was rushed and small, with my new sisters-in-law, Ammi-jaan, Ali’s pinch-faced mother who adored her only son, and Aunt’s neighbours. I was ashamed of this marriage. I wore green and the sisters and neighbour-women fed me sweets, according to the tradition, and hennaed my hands and feet. The women told funny stories about husbands and marriage and all that a woman must put up with. One neighbour whose husband hit her joked, Marriage is bliss and then becomes purgatory. But divorce is hell. Aunt stopped them and said, I’m bringing in the music.
The dholki group was the best part of the evening. The three musicians sang traditional women’s songs about love and drummed and poked fun at the in-laws. I thought, If I get stuck here, I will run away with them. And I snuck out to Minoo in the kitchen and begged her to steal back my passport for me but she was terrified and covered her face with her hands.
On the day of my nikah, Uncle and Aunt organized a room in the Beach Luxury for the wedding, decorated with long tables for our feast. The maulvi presiding over the ceremony came to a side room, the money to pass hands was agreed on, and a great many rupees and American dollars came to Uncle from Ali’s family. Though the meher is said to give a bride freedom in her marriage, I have never heard of a bride who got her money. Mine was used to start the business in Canada.
I was dressed by Ali’s sisters in a purple gharara with elaborate red and green and yellow embroidery. A row of tiny roses along the edges of the scarf fell over my dress. The maulvi read the marriage sermon and the proposal and acceptance. I sat in the bride’s room and Ali’s father came to me from the men’s sitting room and he read me the nikah-naama and I had to accept by saying qabook kiya and I stumbled on the words, said kiya twice, and Aunt looked stern and I could see Ali’s youngest sister biting her cheeks to stop laughing.
I was caked with makeup and my hands and feet were hennaed and the embroidered dress was damp and heavy in the heat. They lowered the green shawl over us and put the nikah-mirror in Ali’s hands. Alone together, under the stifling shawl we were to enact an old tradition in which I was to remove my veil and we were to see each other’s faces in the mirror, as if for the first time. I jerked off my veil in the stifling heat. I wanted it all to be over. His eyes in the mirror were uncertain and eager to please but there was no desire. I took the mirror out of his hand and turned directly to him. His eyes did not say, You. I want You. I had seen love in a man’s eyes. I knew what that looked like.
I took his dry hand which did not press mine and I whispered to him, Let’s get out of here, and he looked much relieved. His London girlfriend and his mother and sisters had always made his arrangements. When the green shawl was lifted I would take care of him. Now he had a wife.
The walima-party after was easy and tedious, music, dancing, worn-out wedding jokes, girls stealing Ali’s shoes and him paying to get them back, rose petals thrown, plenty of food, the pretending to be happy. Ali and I were sent away early while Uncle and his father continued to entertain the business guests. We spent our first night together in a room at the Beach Luxury. This was the beginning of my double life, pretending inexperience, pretending I would come to love him.
I did not want to be in the same room with Uncle and Aunt when I told them I would never ever return, that they should not have forced me. I wrote the letter from Montreal and I mailed it the first day I was back.
Aunt had the grace to write the single letter she ever sent me: Life is what you make it. Marriage takes many forms. The thought of you gives me hope.
Wistful words, sad fetteredness. The envelope was from the Beach Luxury Hotel and I wondered if she had found a way to continue her Saturday mornings without me.
KATHERINE
Marian hired Cecil Williams, a young double bassist, to play on my first album for Halcyon Records. For texture, she said. For rhythm. We’re doing it at the Vanguard. He was just finishing a Juilliard scholarship, a decade younger and he played great ostinato. It was a revelation to play with a man who didn’t resist, who assumed I knew where I was going. Our third day recording together we went deep, improvising, and he liked it. At the end he said, You’re cool, cool Kat.
Mahsa finally came back from Pakistan, weeks late. She’d gotten the hell married over there. I told her to get to New York fast and we’d record a track for my album.
She said, I’m taking the morning bus. Did you record “Take Off Your Clothes” and “Tea for Me”?
She was right—those were the pieces I had chosen. She knew my music better than anyone.
She looked so beautiful the day she came into the Vanguard. She wore high leather boots and a cropped jacket and her hair was caught back in a huge tortoiseshell clip. She held open her arms and wrapped them around me and I bent over to hug her. I said, Mahsa, you look more French every time I see you. How’s married life?
She laughed and said, He’s not here yet. At least I made it back.
Before I could ask her what that was supposed to mean, she took off her jacket, said, Let’s start. I’m going to play until my fingers bleed for your first album.
Don’t out-cut me, I joked.
Oh, I will.
That recording of us playing “Two to Love” is one of my favourites. I’ve never heard any two pianists do it better than we did, and a lot have tried. We were like hands clasped in prayer.
At the end I said, Stay for a few days.
I’ve got to get back.
Why?
Well, Ali’s coming.
Mahsa didn’t want to talk about him and I wasn’t very interested. She said something about her uncle putting it together. She was worried that she would lose her student visa now that she was married. But I was hurrying back to listen to my tapes.
T was supposed to play a piece I wrote for him called “Long Road.” When he didn’t show I said to Marian, I know he’s playing at Francis Hines’s tonight. Send someone up to record us live.
Marian said, This is a bad idea, but she did it anyway.
I showed up at the loft with the recording engineer and T was stoned and I said to the piano player, Excuse me, mind if I take a turn? The men fell back a bit because they felt a warring woman but T didn’t budge. He saw me and smiled and his lips were pressed against the reed and he winked and I thought, You shit, you like a bit of battle, and we played together and it was sexy as hell. We went deep that night like we used to when we were on the road and everyone was digging us. The recording is rough. You can hear people moving around and voices and glasses. You can even hear a match striking just at the moment when the room fell silent and everyone started to listen. When Marian heard it she said, Recording’s not perfect, but the playing is great. Want to put it in?
Yes, I want it in.
On the rest of the recording, there was just me and Cecil. I felt open. Raw. You can hear a bit of my caught breath at places and I decided to leave it. I liked the live feel. You’re lucky to get one like that in a lifetime. Some people shy away from raw. I have made many, many recordings since that first one in the Vanguard and it is still my favourite.
I kept the first take of Mahsa’s and my “Two to Love” and didn’t change much. She was pumped to play that day and we sat down and played it right through. When we finished we sat back and just looked at each other.
Where did that come from?
I love to play with you.
I called the album Katherine Goodnow: Precious. I got them to shadow in the Chinese character for Ming behind the title.
The cover is a photo of me with my hair wild and my children posed as vagabonds out in an alley near our apartment. Bea pulled a stray dog into the picture. The kids liked being part of things. Marian wrote the liner notes and I wrote my thank-yous, including to Ma. I had worked my whole damned life to make that first recording.
I packed up two copies, one to take to Ma when we visited and one to mail to Mahsa. She phoned as soon as she got it, said, I’ve been listening to it for six hours. You sound so good.
We’re both out in the world now, I said.
I should have stayed to do the whole album with you, she said.
We’ll do one later, don’t worry.
There were two reviews, one good and one that said there was a feminine tint to this jazz. I threw the paper on the floor and Dexter picked it up. Ma, you’re out there now. You gotta learn to take it.
I have not been taking it all my life, Dex. I’m not starting now.
Some people want you to bleed for them. I wrote to the critic, When was the last time you said music had a masculine tint? Go make your own album if you don’t like the sound of mine. I play my own vocabulary.
