Seven

by Farzana Doctor

  At the door, our mothers socialized for a few minutes and then all three rushed away to complete their shopping or errands. Mom told me that she nearly always returned home to nap.

  I don’t know how Nani coped with three of us still in diapers. Perhaps a servant helped. I cannot recall the earlier days, but I have snippets of memories from later. Nani would greet us in Gujarati with a jolly, “Welcome to the Secret Cousins’ Club.” There were sweets, and dollies, and lots of spots for hide-and-seek in that magical flat.

  We spent our preschool years together, and after my family emigrated when I was four years old, we exchanged weekly blue airmail letters that often took a month to arrive, our questions, answers, and news shuffled and stale before reaching their destinations.

  We let go of letter-writing when affordable long-distance telephone plans were introduced. Later we switched to email, then Skype and text. But we are busy, and so much of our communication is through Facebook, each of us peeking into one another’s lives, liking and commenting. I sometimes wonder why we don’t more regularly text the way we do with our nearby friends and family, especially now that it’s all free. Maybe we’re used to the geographical distance creating a barrier, have grown accustomed to being apart.

  On social media, I’m the opposite of Zainab; while I use my birth surname in life, I’ve hidden behind Murtuza’s on Facebook so that my students won’t find me. The choice is sometimes disorienting; how can I be Mrs. Tyebji when I am Sharifa Bandukwala? Perhaps now that I’m no longer in the classroom, I might be able to return to my real name again. But then maybe not; Facebook is still a touchy subject for Murtuza and he might read more into it than I’d want.

  Fatema took a good deal of cajoling to join Facebook, citing her growing reputation as a businesswoman. Of course, when she heard about it in 2006, she put her marketing people on it and her publishing house was one of the first in the world to advertise there, but she didn’t create a personal account until 2010, as “Fat Ema.” In the beginning, her posts reminded me of her teen self: interspecies love stories (the dog and the elephant, the donkey-cow pair) and jokes with a hint of political satire. But over the last couple of years, everything has centred on feminist issues.

  Most recently, her energy has turned to reports about depressing things like female genital mutilation. I’d heard about it in the news, but before her posts I had no idea anyone practised it in India, let alone in our Dawoodi Bohra community. It seems borderline racist now, but I’d assumed it was an African thing; all the previous media stories I’d read focused on Egypt or Sudan or Kenya.

  Today’s article is a confessional, written anonymously by a woman who lives in Mumbai. I presume that her family hails from a small village. Hers is a horrible narrative about being taken, at age seven, to get “khatna” done, and only realizing it later, when she was in her thirties. “I’ll never forget the pain, it was the worst I’d ever felt.” I skim another paragraph, close the article, and click “like,” a not-quite-appropriate reaction, under Fatema’s post.

  I turn off the computer and head to the basement laundry room to find our luggage. One by one, I haul three large suitcases up the narrow wooden steps and then up to the second floor.

  “How does one pack for eight months away?” I ask Mom, over the phone.

  “Lightly,” she jokes, her way of letting me know that I’m taking the task too seriously.

  “Right.”

  “But seriously, you’ll be staying a few blocks from Zainab’s and Tasnim’s flats,” she reasons. “You can take your dirty clothing there twice a week and a servant will launder everything for you. You’ll buy anything else you need.”

  “We’ll have our own washing machine.”

  “And a dryer?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re going to have to hang your clothes on a line. We did that when we first came here, in the summer. When we had little money and needed to save electricity.” Her tone is wistful, almost romantic.

  We say goodbye and I head to Zee’s bedroom. She needs a full school year’s worth of second-grade curriculum and supplies. Once the workbooks and her pencil case are in her suitcase, she and I lay everything else on her single bed that she cannot live without for half a year: five everyday outfits, two special-occasion dresses, three pairs of shoes, a handful of favourite storybooks, and Ronald, her stuffed raccoon. The pile is much smaller than I’d imagined.

  “That’s all, Zee?”

  “I think so.” She’s approaching this interruption to her routines with an attitude as casual as her grandmother’s; the only reassurances she’s needed are the promises that she will Skype weekly with Elena and rejoin her classmates in time for her late April birthday.

  “Is there anything you want to put out of sight for when Su-Lin stays here?” She’s the three-year-old daughter of the visiting academics who’ll be renting our place and feeding our turtle.

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno, any toys or stuffies you don’t want her to play with?”

  She does a slow pirouette, scanning her room. “Nah. She’ll feel more at home if all the toys are here, right? I’m getting too old for most of them, anyway.”

  Later, Murtuza and I continue packing. We’re taking Mom’s advice to carry one large suitcase each. We lay them out on the bed. His is navy blue and scuffed, and mine is pink and nearly new.

  “We’re a heterosexual stereotype, aren’t we?” I shake my head.

  “I’ll trade you. I like pink.” He tosses a pair of slacks in my bag. I refold them and place them in his suitcase.

  “I’ll keep mine. It has all these meshed compartments.” I point out the bag’s features, but I’ve already lost interest in my own argument.

  “Do I need a suit?” Murtuza stares into the closet.

  “Yeah. We’ll probably be invited to a couple of weddings. And take a saya kurta in case it’s an orthodox one. I’m taking my two ridas with me.”

  “Oh god,” he groans, “we’re going to have to go to a beardwala event at some point.” He frisbees a topi, the pillbox-style skullcap Bohra men wear, into his bag.

  “Murti! You shouldn’t say beardwala!” I wag my finger at him.

  “Is topiwala or ridawala better?” He raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Go ahead. Get it all out of your system now.”

  I wouldn’t have imagined I’d marry someone from our community; I’d heard too many stories from my Bohra girlfriends about men who started out as good boyfriends and transformed into fifties husbands after the wedding. Dinner on the table when I get home, keep the baby quiet, all that nonsense.

  On our first date, Murtuza picked me up five minutes early in a car that smelled of pine. During our dinner at Mirchi, he scooped rice with his fingers while discussing the work of Audre Lorde and Zadie Smith. We shared our mixed-bag identities; we both grew up in towns near large cities — Edison, New Jersey, for me, and Brampton, near Toronto, for him — with liberal parents.

  He can be absent-minded, the stereotype of a professor who, when engaged in his work, manages to tune out my calls. But he also is a rememberer of anniversaries, of my dislikes, of shopping lists. And when I was pregnant with Zee, he accompanied me to each prenatal class and read books on birth coaching. Because Zee was born the last week of April, when his academic duties were waning, he was the one to sacrifice sleep so I could catch up. I rarely changed a diaper. That sort of devotion, during the most tender period of Zee’s life — and mine, too, as I learned to become a mother — sealed the deal for me; I truly knew he would be my partner for life.

  Of course, we’d already been committed for two years by then, in a civil ceremony. Our choice not to also partake in a nikah disappointed my parents, who harboured secret and misplaced hopes for a sliver of traditional respectability. Murtuza rebuffed his parents’ more persistent requests with “I thought you’d be happy that I married a nice Bohra girl!” And they were, for we’d both only dated white people before th
at.

  Truthfully, I was ambivalent about the nikah — it takes exactly seventy seconds and approximately five hundred dollars — but Murtuza felt strongly about not including religion in our union. He’s an agnostic, bordering on atheist, while I’m harder to label. I like a little tradition and membership in a community, even if I don’t always follow its rules.

  Our parents didn’t press the point and paid for a reception under Mirchi’s makeshift tents. It’s still our favourite spot, but it’s not the same these days, now that the place has grown popular among non-Indians and they have real plates and cutlery and ask if you’d like the food cooked mild, medium, or hot.

  When I announced I was pregnant, both our mothers suggested that Alifiyah, Murtuza’s sister, email the Syedna, the religious leader of the worldwide Dawoodi Bohra community, for a baby name. Mariam Fayji, my father’s sister, did the same for my naming, only back then, before computers, she’d sought an in-person audience in Mumbai. Murtuza called the idea archaic, but I supported our mothers’ wishes, arguing that the Syedna’s suggestion wasn’t binding. He acquiesced; I suspect his protest-response is a superficial one, while his Bohra training has the depth and strength of an old-growth tree’s root system.

  In the end Murtuza was vindicated. Normally, the Syedna offers a male and a female name, but Alifiyah forwarded us the email that offered a single, unusable name for Zee, or any child growing up in the West: Fakhruddin. Later, an ultrasound confirmed we were having a girl. “Who knows?” Murtuza had scoffed. “Maybe modern technology is wrong and the Big Guy is right. And it has a nice ring to it. Fakh-ru for short.”

  During the chhatti, the naming ceremony, Alifiyah whispered the surah into Zee’s tiny ear:

  Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem

  Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil ’aalameen

  Ar-Rahmaanir-Raheem

  Maaliki Yawmid-Deen

  Iyyaaka na’budu wa lyyaaka nasta’een

  Ihdinas-Siraatal-Mustaqeem

  Siraatal-lazeena an’amta ’alaihim ghayril-maghdoobi ’alaihim wa lad-daaalleen

  Zee opened her eyes wide, as though her wise old soul knew Arabic and was finally hearing words she could comprehend.

  “Arre waah! Zeenat is a very smart girl!” my mother gasped, which caused a collective murmur, like a gale through a stand of trees, to rustle through the room. I wondered about my daughter’s future right then. Would good luck bless her? Would she be protected from danger, from society’s ills, temptations, cruelties? When she was handed back to me, I held her tightly and uttered God’s name. Murtuza heard me, met my gaze, and reached for my hand.

  “Don’t forget we’ll be in Mumbai for Ashura. It might be difficult to avoid all the functions. You might need more than one saya kurta.” I fold my new polka-dot red dress into my bag.

  “Will we be allowed into those functions? I mean, they’ll know we aren’t even red card holders,” he counters. He’s referring to the now defunct system of cards that was used to regulate access to religious services, based on an assessment of a person’s orthopraxy.

  “It’s a universal card now, Mom told me. I think she said it’s called an ITS, or something like that. No more green, yellow, and red tiers.”

  “Oh, but you know that they’re tracking everything and grading everyone: whether a man grows a beard or a woman wears a rida, whether they pay their dues, drink alcohol. It’s Bohra Big Brother.”

  “Ha!” His sacrilegious talk tempts me. “If they had a card for sinners like you, what colour would it be?”

  “Leopard-spotted, tiger-striped?” He laughs and I grab his arm and pull him into a hug. I love his quick wit, his ability to play with language. After a moment, he looks away, shyly.

  “Shari, there’s something I want to pack, but I’d like to talk with you first.” His voice is a half whisper.

  “What? What’s wrong?” I sit on our bed.

  “No, no. I just don’t want Sleeping Beauty to wake up and overhear us.” He gestures to Zee’s room next door, then places a pleather case in my lap.

  “Before you open it. I want to say that I’m looking forward to spending time with you in India.… And I thought this would be fun.”

  “Okay …” The zipper’s metal teeth unlock. I pull out a black blindfold and handcuffs.

  “They’re soft, made of leather,” he says, taking them from my hands and pointing out the workmanship. There is a slight tremble in his voice. “Do you think you might like to try them?”

  “I thought you hated Fifty Shades,” I tease, deflecting my own discomfort. He discarded the book after the first twenty pages, claiming it had no literary merit. His face falls, and I drop the joke. “Sure, let’s try it.”

  “Really?” He bounces a little on his feet, nervousness leaking out of him.

  “Yeah, but listen, I don’t need any bells and whistles.” I grow tense, thinking that this is going to be like the vibrator shopping.

  “I think it’ll be fun. For me. For us. If you don’t mind?” He is tentative once more, his face soft, his gaze vulnerable.

  “I don’t mind, Murti.” I rezip the case and place it in his bag. “Thanks for getting it.” I look him in the eye and kiss him with my eyes open, watching as he closes his and relaxes into my embrace.

  SEVEN

  Bombay, 1870

  “Abdoolally, sweep up this mess!” Hunaid, the herbalist’s son, was only seventeen, two years older, but loved to act the boss. Abdoolally did as he was told, brooming the leaves and stems discarded after Dr. Chunara had compounded an herbal remedy for cough. He pushed the pile of green out the back door, where another boy, a poorer one, would sweep it elsewhere.

  When he returned, Hunaid was helping a British officer in the shop. The short, broad man was squinting and making hand gestures, while Hunaid spoke to him in Hindi, pointing to the bottles and tins around him. Abdoolally had picked up a few English phrases from listening to the herbalist speak with the officers. In private, he mimicked their exotic words.

  “Hullo. How you?” he attempted. The officer turned his green eyes to Abdoolally. They were bloodshot, with pink bags that clung like slugs underneath.

  “Something for headaches, I need something for headaches,” he said, pointing to his head.

  “Chai banouoo?” Hunaid looked to Abdooally, speaking to him in Gujarati. He pointed to a packet of ginger.

  “You make tea,” Abdoolally said. “One cup water, one spoon this.”

  Just then, Dr. Chunara returned from his errands and took the packet from Abdoolally’s hand. “What are the symptoms?”

  The officer repeated his ailment, this time rubbing his temples to demonstrate his distress.

  “Take the tea twice a day until the headaches pass.”

  The officer paid Dr. Chunara. When he’d left the store, the herbalist split the four coins, placing two into the register and two into Abdoolally’s hand.

  “You should follow his example, Hunaid! Learn some English so you can talk to the Angrez!” Dr. Chanara turned away from them both, returning to his work.

  Hunaid glowered at Abdoolally, who reflexively rounded his shoulders and avoided the older boy’s gaze. He busied himself with wiping the dust off the counter. Then he cleaned the large glass jars that held the loose herbs. Dr. Chunara glanced at him and nodded his approval.

  Later, Abdoolally would hand over one of the precious coins to Hunaid, to maintain the peace.

  EIGHT

  I scrounge through kitchen drawers at 5:00 a.m. I’d been lying awake in bed, circular thoughts about whether or not to pack a flashlight making their eighth loop. Do power outages still happen in Mumbai? What about in the deluxe place Fatema has organized for us? I find a working flashlight, roll it in one of my T-shirts, and tuck it into my suitcase. We leave for India in six days.

  I debate whether to crawl back into bed and realize I’m too awake for that. According to my mother’s reports, I’ve always been a “fussy” sleeper, as though insomnia is much ado about nothing. I�
��m easy to rouse, and I usually need to use the toilet two or three times during the night. When I was a kid, my parents tried a number of strategies, including no liquid after eight o’clock at night, then seven, then six. But then I’d just wake up thirsty.

  Zee is the opposite; from the beginning, she slumbered longer than other babies, and by the time she was two, she was quiet through the night. With puffy eyes and slack bodies, my friends would tell me how lucky I was to have a baby like Zee. I’d nod, knowing that yes, my life was easier than theirs, but that didn’t mean I, too, wasn’t sleep-deprived. I’d watch Zee sometimes, dead to the world, even when a phone rang or Murtuza and I squabbled. How I wished for that.

  I grab naps when I can, push through with caffeine (before 3:00 p.m., obviously), use the middle-of-the-night wakefulness to get caught up on work. I imagine that during my year off I’ll find a way to clear my sleep debt, that quicksand pit of accumulated time. It must be thousands of hours by now.

  This morning, as I drink my first cup of coffee, my nerves are frayed, like wires chewed through by the mice I know live in our walls despite last year’s pest-control call. I shake the thought, sip my coffee, watch the sun rise.

  When I check my email a few minutes later, I see that my first Abdoolally survey has arrived.

  Abbas Kaaka is my father’s youngest paternal uncle. I sent him the survey link a few days ago, after Mom reminded me that he’d be a good source. He’s well read, has travelled more than his contemporaries, and was a teacher, a career different from the men of his generation, most of whom were businessmen.

  We’re not close but I try to visit him at least once on each trip back. When I was doing my master’s, we discussed my thesis topic, and he’d commented, “Did you include the Komagata Maru in your project?” He is my only relative, including my North American ones, who knows anything about this history.