Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  “I’m sorry I got carried away,” Fiaz says.

  She rubs his arm where she’d tweaked him hard. “All this talk about death and dying—I’m scared, Fiaz.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know how much longer my mother will be here. Tahera’s lucky, she has her family. I’m alone, and I’ll have to bring up my child alone.”

  “You have me, you have Leigh.”

  “You I’m sharing with Pierre. And Leigh—” She can’t bring herself to complete the thought. Completion implies a decision made. “What if I can’t do this by myself?”

  She’s had this conversation with him before, knows what he’ll say—“You can,” he says, “you’re the strongest person I know”—and she’s always found his words reassuring, but today she feels strangely empty. A life is turning within her, and what has she to offer it?

  She’s not strong the way Tahera is strong, the way she suspects Arshad is. All her childhood she’d been confounded by Tahera’s enthrallment with things she remained blind to: a perfectly purple jamun, a line of poetry, a rainbow. Arshad had stood on this bridge, his eyes focused on the cap being swept away by the breeze until it was no more than a glittering speck. They have something she doesn’t have, never had, may never have. Even Amina—she recalls the look on Amina’s face as she sang.

  They are like this bridge—anchored, and held upright and strong by their unshakable faith in the rightness of their devotions and their ecstasies and in their capacity to bear the weight of them. Her strength, on the other hand, lies chiefly in her ability to raise anchor and sail away, and reestablish herself elsewhere, in more favorable waters. They’re the bridge, she’s the ship beneath, tramping from port to port.

  Fiaz puts an arm around her, gives her shoulders a squeeze. “You know you can always count on me to play the doting uncle. As long as I don’t have to change dirty diapers.”

  “What use are you then?” She swats him, masking her disappointment in playfulness.

  Fiaz jokes, but this is his way of hinting at the limits of what he’s willing to do for her child. Pierre doesn’t want children, and Fiaz doesn’t regard himself as free to make a choice for himself. Would he agree to more if he weren’t with Pierre? That’s not a question she can ask him. Fiaz will continue to show her and her child many kindnesses, and she has to be satisfied with that.

  She’s startled by the ship’s warning horn as it sails into the bay. The kitesurfers and sailboarders zipping back and forth by the bridge race to get out of its path.

  She leans against Fiaz and lets him bear some of her weight as they walk up the incline from the bridge to the parking lot.

  27

  Nafeesa’s comment—how good Seema and Fiaz look together!—unsettles Tahera. It hadn’t occurred to her to suspect more than friendship between them. There’s something about Fiaz that is too reassuring—too nice, too normal—to imagine him as Seema’s lover. But perhaps her mother knows something that she does not.

  Tahera now watches Seema’s every interaction with Fiaz with suspicion. Throughout the morning, at the Golden Gate Bridge, and later on the crooked Lombard Street and at Coit Tower, every time their bodies draw close, she takes note. She edges closer to eavesdrop; she insinuates herself into their conversations under cover of interest; she projects innocent curiosity even as she asks questions: How did they meet? How do they like working together? Do they see each other often outside work?

  Their replies are wary, evasive, giving her little to go on. There’s no denying that some (deep) connection exists between them. This much is evident in the easy familiarity that marks their intercourse, the conspiring smiles Seema gives Fiaz, the readiness with which he cooperates. There’s a tenderness too in his concern for Seema; he helps her into the car and bends to whisper something into her ear, and Tahera burns. She needn’t have abandoned her family. Seema has already found herself a willing servant, if not a new suitor.

  It’s close to 1:00 p.m., and Fiaz and Seema discuss lunch at one of the Pakistani places around Union Square. It’ll be halal, Seema tells Tahera.

  “But it’s time for my zuhr namaz.”

  Fiaz offers to drive her to a mosque.

  “If we’re going to Union Square, I can pray there. I’ve prayed before in parking lots and lobbies. I just need a place to spread my janamaz.” She’s brought it with her, for just such an eventuality. The passersby in Union Square won’t faze her; in fact, today she’ll relish the challenge. She feels combative. She’s ready with an answer if anyone in the car chooses to question the advisability of praying in public: people pray on the roads in Mecca all the time, both men and women!

  Nobody speaks until they pull to a stop in front of a building. “I bring my mother here,” Fiaz says. “The mosque’s on the second floor.”

  The neighborhood looks sketchy. There’s litter on the pavements, and shabby loiterers lean against the garbage can. If it weren’t for the inscription across the building’s nondescript entrance, Tahera wouldn’t believe it housed a mosque. A small prayer space, likely, in this large commercial building, nothing like their mosque in Irvine, stand-alone and impressive, with its green dome and tall decorative arches.

  She clambers out from her side, chagrined. “I told you not to bother. What will you all do now?”

  “We’ll wait here for you, if you won’t be long,” Fiaz says. “Or I can drop your mother and Seema off at Union Square and return to pick you up.”

  “Don’t wait for me. If they’re hungry, they should go ahead and eat.” She immediately turns around and heads for the entrance, not waiting to see what they do.

  But the mosque is not what she’d expected. The prayer hall is spacious, occupying the entire second floor of the building. It is carpeted in red and aglow with light streaming in through large floor-to-ceiling windows. The light reflects off the carpet and suffuses the space with a ruby hue. Nothing she’s seen this morning matches this, not the Golden Gate Bridge, not the view of the city from the top of Coit Tower. Nothing she knows of San Francisco has prepared her for this.

  “Subhan’Allah,” she exclaims involuntarily, before realizing that the congregation has already started the prayers. The zuhr is recited quietly, there’s only the buzz of the verses whispered, the takbir barely audible: Allahu Akbar. She’d interrupted the namaz.

  She stands by the entrance to the prayer hall, watching. She is awed, dazzled by the light. The space seems to pulse, the walls receding and then closing in, for every time the worshippers bend forward or genuflect, the room flares instantly brighter, from the reflections off their backs. Like crystals in a chandelier. The ayat from surah An-Noor comes to her mind: Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth. His light is like that of a crystal lamp in a niche, burning brilliant like a star, even the oil glowing. Light on light!

  Only then does she notice that there are women praying in the hall as well. Unlike in Irvine, where the women have their own room, here they’re all gathered to one side, while the men occupy the area in front of the mihrab. There’s no barrier separating them.

  It’s the same surah An-Noor that enjoins modesty, chastity, fidelity.

  “Yes, they’ll do that in San Francisco,” she can hear Ismail say, deriding this lack of separation as an unnecessary innovation, a false notion of equality trumping every other consideration. How familiarity breeds contempt—contempt for the purity of the body, contempt for the merit of Allah’s decrees. She wouldn’t be surprised if Seema and Fiaz are having an affair after all. The affair could even be the reason for Seema’s divorce, adultery just another transgression added to her already long list.

  But instead of the punishment that the surah decrees, Seema is to be rewarded. A new baby and a new husband—Muslim, good-looking, smart, successful—and Seema is all set for a prodigal daughter’s welcome. No doubt their mother will now broker a reconciliation between estranged daughter and father. No doubt Seema’s many lapses will be forgiven, and Seema will soon be reseated
on her pedestal.

  Tahera won’t join this perverse San Francisco congregation but will pray after it finishes. Seema, Fiaz, and her mother must wait. She pictures them in the car driving away without her: it only needs her father now to join in their complicity.

  There’s this consolation: Seema may have been her father’s favorite but is not one of Allah’s favored. For the surah also says: Only by Allah’s bounty and mercy could anyone attain purity. And Allah decides who will and who won’t. He guides His light to whom He wills.

  Why then does it feel to her, watching the worshippers move through the light—aglow as if they were made of that very light, like angels—that she stands in the shadows while they are blessed, transformed, redeemed?

  28

  Grandmother, the morning has energized you. You see your daughters together, behaving cordially if not affectionately, and you’re greatly heartened. They’re finally talking to each other, not using you as their intermediary. Your scheme of forcing them to spend time together seems to be working.

  San Francisco is so unlike Chennai, with its picture-postcard blue skies and emerald-green waters, a perfect miniature city secure in its glass globe, except for the occasional panhandler or loiterer. Yet, all morning you’ve been reliving the past, with many former selves of Seema and Tahera and your husband walking beside you, resurrected by the most ordinary of occurrences. Here—in Union Square—you see two sisters skipping up and down the stairs holding hands; on a cable car you see a teenage girl leaning out, waving at passersby; at a store, a father holds his child up so she can better see the mannequin’s painted face. The past seems not the past—untouchable, unchangeable—but something that floats just beyond your fingertips, something that you feel you can reach and perhaps reshape.

  These visions fill you with hope. Already, Seema’s life feels more real, her future more promising. While waiting for Tahera, Seema has encountered more friends at a campaign booth in Union Square. Three women and a man—all Americans you think, by their accents, two Black, one White, one Indian—rush to surround Seema as soon as they catch sight of her. Clearly Seema is not living the isolated and cheerless life you sometimes imagined her to.

  If her father could see her now, so engaged and animated, and surrounded by well-wishers! Perhaps it will be Seema running for election one day. You picture Seema’s face on the poster instead of the candidate’s, even though it was your husband who’d nursed these ambitions for your daughters. All you wanted for them were happy, fulfilled lives.

  The Indian American friend introduces herself as Divya. She’s very pretty and dressed more fashionably than the rest. “I’m so glad to have a chance to meet you,” she gushes. She praises Seema to you and thanks you for flying all the way over to help Seema with the delivery. “If it weren’t for the election, I would be there to help anytime she wanted.”

  “I’m so glad Seema has such a good friend,” you say.

  She draws Seema aside to discuss some matter. They whisper to each other, and you note that Seema seems a little uneasy, glancing over as if to reassure you. You wonder what they’re discussing.

  Fiaz returns with Tahera. She looks a little downcast but makes no objection to the restaurant chosen for lunch. Divya can’t join you—she apologizes profusely, taking leave of Seema with an embrace—but the other two women can.

  The six of you walk to the place—you can’t call it a restaurant, since it’s so shabby. It’s smoke-filled and sharp with the smell of stale curries, with cheap tables and chairs strewn in disarray on not particularly clean flooring. Seema’s friends don’t seem to mind, though, continuing their chatter on politics. Tahera keeps mum. You let her choose dishes for you. The dishes arrive floating in oil, but, apart from Tahera, everyone finds them delicious. You eat a little to not call attention to yourself, but you decide that you’ll have to cook a proper meal for Seema’s friends—to treat them to a real feast, to thank them for supporting your daughter.

  After lunch, Fiaz takes you all back to Seema’s apartment, none inclined for further sightseeing.

  “Thank you so much, son,” you tell Fiaz when he’s leaving, in Urdu, in as perfect and chaste a diction as you can contrive. You’re brimming with gratitude, for the morning of course, but also for his reassuring presence in Seema’s life. “You must come to dinner. I must feed you something I’ve cooked with my own hands.”

  “You shouldn’t put yourself to so much trouble, Aunty. All the pleasure was mine.” He replies in Urdu too.

  You grasp his palms in your bony fingers, unwilling to let him go without securing his consent. It will be harder later, for you sense Seema shift uncomfortably, ready to intervene. “You must come. Otherwise I’ll be very disappointed.”

  “Of course. Just say the word, and I’ll come wearing a pajama, with drawstrings to loosen.”

  When he’s gone, you start planning the dinner you’ll cook. You’ll ask Seema to invite her other friends too. You’d like to feed them all, at least once. You know Seema will resist, but you’re determined to override her. You have little time to make amends for all the sorrow and pain that your silence and inaction have perpetuated.

  29

  It’s late afternoon. The ghosts of the morning still torment the two sisters.

  Seema is seated by the bay window in the living room with the book of poetry she’d bought Tahera, while her mother naps in the next room. She reads what she remembers as her sister’s favorite poems, recalling the intensity and earnestness with which Tahera used to recite them. But the poems evade her—she remains unmoved by their lyrics or music. She has recited poetry herself in competitions at school, but they’d been mere performances, to be crafted and perfected. She stares outside the window, idly stroking her stomach, while she works on shoring up her will to talk to Tahera. Are there traces of the childhood sister still lurking in the stranger moving about the apartment?

  Tahera is restless, too stirred up to remain idle. The asr namaz doesn’t take long, even with all the voluntary rakaat in addition to the obligatory ones. She calls Ismail, but he is busy at the mosque, overseeing the arrangements for the fundraiser that evening, and the children are having too much fun in the air castle set up in the parking lot to remain on the phone for long, even Amina. At least there’s no sign yet of any trouble. Tahera throws herself into tidying the apartment. She puts away her stuff and straightens the living room; she cleans the kitchen, and washes and shelves the dishes in the sink; she even mops the kitchen floor. When she’s done, she looks around for something else to do.

  “Tahera, you’re making me tired just listening to you,” Seema says. “Come sit down. I want to speak with you.”

  Tahera is thrown off balance by Seema’s request. “I don’t want to talk about Ammi right now.”

  “No, not about Ammi.” Seema notes Tahera’s pinched face, which shows more anxiety than the hostility her voice suggests. “Please?” Almost unconsciously she employs the tone her younger self would use with Tahera to get her way.

  It still seems to work. Tahera hesitates, then says, “I’ll make us some chai first.”

  While Tahera brews chai, Seema counts fetal kicks. Her hands slide slowly over her stomach inch by inch, fingers spread wide. Both sisters are intent on their tasks as the minutes drag on, as though the future somehow depends on how conscientiously each carries them out.

  Tahera returns and places one cup by her sister’s feet, then pulls another chair to the bay window and sits down, studying her. “How many so far?” she asks.

  “Good boy,” Seema murmurs to me, reacting to a particularly vigorous kick. “Ten in fifteen minutes,” she tells Tahera. “He seems very active.”

  They sip their chai deliberately, with exaggerated care, as if that were the sole reason for their sitting together.

  The sun streams in through the window, the rays cutting into the living room, glancing off the hardwood floors, bathing them in a golden afterglow. The light softens them, making them appear less
substantial, almost translucent.

  To Tahera, Seema looks slight. The light has shaved off mass from the edges of her frame, stripping her of her pregnancy, rendering her small and oddly vulnerable. And in Seema’s eyes, the light masks the lines and wrinkles on Tahera’s face, smoothing out its textures—her sister could be any age now, twenty or eighteen, fifteen or thirteen. A window to the past has unexpectedly opened.

  “Tara,” Seema says, and the word feels so awkward on her tongue that she falters. She has not used this nickname in more than two decades.

  Tahera’s heart stills. Seema has only ever called her Tara when asking a favor or cajoling her into a shared exploit. She has never heard Seema utter it this way before, stuttering, unsure of herself.

  A sudden hope flares within her, and it sets the very light in the room quivering. Tahera is reminded of the mosque that morning, of the worshippers shimmering in the light. The morning and the afternoon mingle and fuse in an incandescent moment: confession—supplication—absolution.

  “What is it?” Tahera clutches at her cup to steady herself, gazing at her sister over its rim.

  “Tahera”—Seema enunciates the word carefully so as not to slur it and have it sound like the diminutive again—“I know we haven’t exactly been close for some time now. But I’ll be very grateful if you’ll consider this carefully before you say no.”

  “Say no to what?”

  “I never thought anything would happen to Ammi, at least not this soon. She’s only sixty-two. But look at her—it happened so quickly, in less than three months.”

  “We agreed, no talking about Ammi.” Tahera sets the cup down.

  My mother plunges ahead. “I’d like you to bring up Ishraaq if something were to happen to me. I’d like to name you as his legal guardian in my will.”

  And how does my could-be mother react? The enormity of the ask takes Tahera’s breath away. Whatever Tahera had expected, it hadn’t been this. Surely not even Seema has the audacity to make such a request, with so little acknowledgment of the hurt and pain she’d inflicted.