Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

  The days and months after Seema’s departure she’d obsessed over every detail of that last evening together, sifting for any hint that would explain Seema’s expulsion. She’d asked Seema: What’s up between you and Abba? Seema had replied, shrugging as she scraped the straggling chole off the plate: He wants me to get married now, and I refused, but he’ll come around. Tahera had overheard snatches of discussions between her parents, so Seema’s account hadn’t come as a surprise. And she’d accepted Seema’s easy dismissal of their father’s authority. After all, there was nothing his golden daughter could want that Abba would deny.

  But, of course, she hadn’t understood then why he didn’t relent about Seema’s marriage after her disappearance, brooking no discussion, locking himself up in his office whenever Tahera persisted. Or why Ammi seemed so unwilling to challenge him, barely dragging herself through long days, haggard and woebegone. Tahera uncovered the real reason months later, when she recognized Seema’s handwriting on unopened envelopes while rummaging through her father’s desk for a sheet of paper. She’d snuck out the most recent one, tearing it open in her bedroom, her entire body trembling. That’s how she came to learn what Seema was, what Seema claimed to be.

  “You didn’t reply to any of my letters. I’d cry on Ammi’s lap after checking the post every day, waiting for your reply. I fought tooth and nail with Abba, accusing him of hiding your letters to me. But you didn’t ever write to me, even though you continued to write to Abba, who wouldn’t even open any of your letters. You couldn’t be bothered with me, Seema. I wasn’t worth your time.” Tahera swallows an angry breath and steps off the pavement. A stream of cars prevents her from crossing the road.

  “Tahera, stop.” Seema hurries toward her, grabbing Tahera’s arm as she waits for the last car to pass. “I was trying to figure out some things myself. I thought you wouldn’t understand. And wasn’t I right? Remember that letter you sent me from Irvine?”

  But Tahera cannot stop. “Do you know what you put us through? Did you ever wonder what happened after you left?” She unclasps Seema’s hand from her elbow. “And you expect me to disrupt my family and take on additional burdens for your child simply because you asked. That too without apologizing, or even acknowledging what you did. It seems like you haven’t figured anything out after all. You’re still the same Seema you always were. Only concerned about yourself and what you want. Never caring how it will affect others.”

  Tahera takes a step forward but is tugged back—Seema is standing on the hem of her jilbab trailing on the pavement. Tahera gives it a yank, whipping around to thrust Seema aside.

  Had she jostled Seema too abruptly, too roughly? With a groan, Seema clutches at her belly and lurches. Tahera instinctively throws out a steadying hand, for the second time on that trip, but Seema is already sinking to the pavement, twisting at her knees, grasping at Tahera’s jilbab to lower herself. She drags Tahera down with her.

  Tahera has barely caught her breath to murmur, “Ashukrulillah! Seema, are you okay?” when with another shudder and a piercing cry—“Allah!”—Seema pitches forward on her haunches, forehead dropping to the pavement, as though in sajda.

  Tahera crouches by her sister, fear clenching her chest tight where moments ago there had been fury. Surely this can’t be more than a contraction? But it isn’t the time for panic or self-recrimination, and she lets experience take over, keeping her voice steady: “Seema, are you in pain? Can you sit up?”

  Seema’s back moves in prolonged judders. Tahera places a soothing palm on it, urging: “Take slow, deep breaths. Relax, breathe in through your nose and out your mouth.” She calls out each breath—“in, out, in, out”—for what seems an eternity, practicing it herself for the calm it brings her too. Seema’s body gradually stops trembling.

  A shadow falls on her. A straggle of pedestrians have gathered around. “Is she okay, do you need help?”

  “She’s fine, I’m a doctor, please stand away, she needs air.” She ignores the crowd, bends over Seema, whispers into her ear—“I’m going to raise you up”—and helps Seema to sitting.

  Seema’s eyes are tightly shut. With the fabric of her jilbab Tahera wipes Seema’s face, and Seema submits to it mutely, tilting her face up as Amina would, letting Tahera wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes. Only then does Seema open them.

  There’s distracting chatter from the crowd. Questions and suggestions: 911, ambulance, ER. “No, can you get us a cab please?” Tahera has decided to take Seema home, where she can examine Seema immediately, rather than go to the ER. “Seema, don’t try to get up yet.”

  Seema nods and sits still, head bowed, hands on her stomach, while Tahera occupies herself straightening Seema’s clothes and brushing away dust, glad for something to do, all the while maintaining a firm grip on Seema’s arm. “It’s okay, you’ll be fine, I’m here.”

  Only after she’s assisted Seema into the cab does she allow herself the torment of the deferred guilt and apprehension. Ammi had charged her with protecting Seema and the baby. Instead, she may have endangered their lives. Is she making the right decision taking Seema back home instead of to a hospital? And how to explain to their mother the need for a checkup?

  But there’s gratitude also. Toward Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, for not permitting some harm to befall Seema and for keeping away the monstrous wish of the first evening. Gratitude toward Seema too, for accepting her ministrations without recriminations. She’s grateful again when Seema whispers, just outside the apartment door, “Let’s not say anything to Ammi.”

  41

  Grandmother, when Seema struggles to kick off her shoes, and Tahera bends down to remove them, you’re immediately aware something has happened. Seema holds on to Tahera’s shoulders for support, even as she says they’ve had a good walk.

  She heads to her bedroom, while Tahera removes her hijab and folds it unhurriedly, with her usual meticulousness. But you’re not taken in. Not for nothing are you their mother, even if you haven’t seen them much the last ten years. You’d been pondering how to get Seema alone so you could speak to her about Bill’s visit, but that thought flees your mind. “What happened?” you ask Tahera.

  “Contractions.” Tahera pulls out a small black bag from her suitcase. “I don’t think it’s labor, but I need to examine her.” When you follow her to Seema’s bedroom, she stalls you: “Ammi, can you make us some chai, please?”

  You nod through your anxiety. Why would Seema agree to have her sister look at her now, after refusing so forcefully that morning? You busy yourself at the stove, while straining your ears to what’s going on in the bedroom. But Tahera has shut the door, and you can’t make out much. So you concentrate on making your special chai instead, crushing a cardamom pod and slicing slivers of ginger and adding them along with a couple of cloves to the tea in the bubbling pot. You set out cups on a platter—not the regular mugs but three cups from a fluted porcelain set you’d found while rearranging Seema’s kitchen cabinets that morning—and when you’ve sweetened the chai with an extra spoonful of sugar, you carefully strain it and ladle it into the teacups and carry the platter to Seema’s bedroom. It seems ages before Tahera responds to your knock. She takes the platter from you, and you worry for a moment that you’re not to be admitted in yet.

  Seema is sitting up in bed, her stomach exposed. She listens through a stethoscope, moving a hornlike attachment across her stomach. “Ammi, listen—you can hear Ishraaq’s heart.”

  She holds out the stethoscope. But first you look to Tahera—for reassurance—and only after the slightest inclination of her head do you go to Seema’s side. Still, you fumble with the earpieces.

  Tahera adjusts the placement of the horn. “Can you hear him?”

  You can’t—your own heart is beating too rapidly, your relief is a daze of weakness—but you nod and smile, consoling yourself that all that matters is that the baby is fine.

  Afterward, for the first—and only—time, all three women, my grandm
other, my mother, and my could-be mother, speak to me directly.

  Grandmother, you go first, your face inches from Seema’s stomach, cooing, “Ishraaq, darling grandson, I can’t wait to hold you in my arms, to call you my calfling, my sugar dumpling, to sing you a lullaby.” You apply your ear directly to Seema’s stomach and pretend you can hear me, amid all the other noises the body makes. “He says he can’t wait to meet his Nani either,” you announce. “Tahera, say something to your nephew.”

  Tahera sits down beside Seema, and in a voice that is unexpectedly tender, she whispers, “Sweetest nephew, this is your Tara Aunty. Can you hear me?”

  In answer, Seema’s body rumbles. The three of you laugh.

  “What a majestic voice he has,” you say. “Like Akbar in Mughal-E-Azam.” The rumble reminds you of the deep baritone of the actor Prithviraj Kapoor, who plays the Mughal emperor Akbar in your family’s favorite movie. Your family never missed a chance to watch it, either on TV or in a local theater. You rub the tip of your nose on Seema’s stomach as though to nuzzle me. “You’ll grow up to have a voice just like that, and you’ll be brave, and strong, and wise, and famous, won’t you? You’ll make your Nani proud.”

  This time your daughters’ laughter sounds strained, especially Seema’s. Your reference is a misstep. It’s their father’s enthusiasm for the movie that your daughters embraced, about the doomed love between the beautiful servant girl Anarkali and Prince Salim, which brings down the wrath of his emperor father on both of them. It’s impossible to recall the movie without also remembering the way their father would declaim, in his performing voice, the more poetic of Akbar’s dialogues. “Your voice should ring like that,” he’d exhort, whenever he coached them for their contests, brushing aside their objections that Prithviraj Kapoor, with his quivering jowls and flashing eyes, was given to overacting.

  “Ammi, don’t put so much pressure on my son, he’s not even born yet,” Seema responds. “I’ll be happy if he grows up strong enough to follow his heart, as long as he doesn’t forget his mother.” She caresses her stomach. “Ishraaq, you’ll always love your mother, right?”

  The three of you stare at Seema’s stomach, as if expecting it—me—to reply, and when I’m silent, you three burst into laughter again.

  “He’s going to grow up stubborn, just like his mother and aunt, wait and see,” you say. You shuffle over to the chest of drawers where Tahera has placed the chai and carry the platter back. The three of you sip your chai from the dainty white cups.

  “Mmm, your masala chai!” Tahera says. “And these cups are so pretty. Just like the cups at home, Ammi.”

  “They are from Chennai,” Seema says.

  Cups from Chennai—there’s so little in Seema’s apartment with any connection to her past. And you know that it’s Chennai Tahera’s referring to as home, not Irvine. Something happened on the walk, but you decide not to probe. This is the most relaxed you’ve seen your daughters together; Tahera has even casually placed her free hand on Seema’s. You’re reminded of all the times you’ve seen them like this, Tahera sitting by Seema’s sickbed and reading her a book or bending over her with a glass of water or milk to soothe her parched throat.

  There’s only this to mar the illusion you’re back in Chennai, sitting in your own home, sipping chai from your own teacups with your daughters: the knowledge that their father is nowhere nearby, with no intention of joining you, of fixing back together your fractured family.

  42

  Grandmother, do you remember the night sixteen-year-old Seema played Anarkali in her class production, at her girls-only convent school?

  It’s Annual Day, and the auditorium is packed with parents and hot with the dusty March heat. You’re squeezed in the middle of a long row of chairs, but close to the front, a special recognition accorded to you and your husband.

  Your daughters have been called repeatedly to the stage to accept awards, for their proficiency in various subjects, for their leadership qualities and accomplishments. Seema comes to the stage already half made up as Anarkali, in the glittering apricot-orange ghagra-choli that you altered for her on your Singer sewing machine. Tahera is iron-sharp in her captain’s uniform, all white, the pleats of her tunic starch-pressed; she takes part in her class play too, but as narrator. Your husband is in a Prussian blue suit, white shirt, and checked green tie. Your saree is a bottle-green organza selected by your daughters to match his tie; your hair is in a low bun, adorned with a single strand of jasmine, your style for formal occasions.

  The play to be performed by Seema’s eleventh grade is last on the program. This is the piece the audience always awaits eagerly—an Annual Day will stick or fade in the memory of the school based on this performance, and you and your husband are doubly keen, as it was adapted from the movie by Seema herself.

  Hidden hands pull on cords to twitch the curtains aside, and the stage is revealed: The backdrop is a landscaped garden with fountains encircled by rose bushes, the lawns a bright chartreuse, the sky a fake cerulean blue. On a bench center stage sit two figures. In a cream-and-maroon sherwani is the prince, his status signaled by the gold plume pinned to his crimson turban—played by Seema’s best friend, Reshmi, in make-believe sideburns and a mustache—and beside him, Seema as Anarkali with her head bowed, veiled in a transparent pale-peach dupatta that you yourself trimmed with silver ribbon and decorated with clusters of sequins.

  The prince reaches to lift her veil but is stopped by Seema’s hand.

  “Anarkali, why do you hide your light from me?” he asks, his voice buckling with nervous compensation.

  “I’m only the moon—” Anarkali replies, slowly raising the veil herself.

  And you, Grandmother, for whom Seema’s beauty has become commonplace, clutch at your husband’s hand, surprised by this vision Seema has transformed into, with expert application of lipstick, eyeshadow, and kohl. For an instant you perceive the woman her sixteen-year-old self will become, gloriously beautiful and bold in her allure.

  “Don’t look at me this way. You’re the sun, you’ll burn me with the sun’s burning rays.” Anarkali turns away from the prince, but there’s no doubt she’s aware of her effect on him. Seema’s voice, pitched lower than normal, burns your ears with its sultriness.

  The prince’s hand shakes a little as he tilts Anarkali’s chin toward him. This time his voice is stronger, as though taking courage from her confidence. “Let Salim see in your eyes what your tongue cannot say.”

  But really, there’s nothing this Anarkali’s tongue seems incapable of saying. As the play progresses, Anarkali sheds all pretense of timidity and the submissiveness of a servant girl. It’s the prince who is rendered mute in Seema’s adaptation and Anarkali who rebels against Akbar’s autocratic insistence on conformity to the worth he assigns his world. In fiery exchanges, a disdainful Anarkali declares herself willing to accept death to prove her love’s invincibility. As pink-brown cardboard bricks are stacked around her to form a tomb under Akbar’s unrelenting gaze, and a hapless Salim struggles in the restraining grasp of soldiers, she swears: “You cannot erase my love from the world’s face. Death will only cement it, this tomb will forever bear its tale.”

  The standing ovation begins even before the curtains reopen for the actors’ bows. Everybody is up on their feet, including your husband. How he claps and cheers, his hands high up in the air over his head!

  But though you join him, you don’t feel like celebrating. A new aspect of Seema has been revealed to you: a daughter older than her years, a daughter whose voice and words and poise are already signaling a departure from you, from everything you’ve imagined for her. You don’t know what to make of these misgivings. You’re ashamed of the small-minded suspicions sprouting in you—some disastrous attachment, some unsavory weakness—but you’ll be slipping up in your duties as a mother if you ignore them. Yet, despite your newly awakened fears—you go over in your mind all the boys and bachelors in Seema’s various circles—it doesn’
t occur to you to look closely at Seema and Reshmi as the two girls take their bows.

  Why should it? After all there’s little precedent to alert you to a connection of that sort. With Reshmi’s arm clasped around her waist, Seema inclines a graceful salaam toward the audience, then bestows a dazzling smile on her partner—and you have no inkling of the messages exchanged between them. After the show, an exultant Seema, leading an unresisting Reshmi by the hand, does the rounds, mingling with her adoring audience and accepting congratulations. The two of them, still in their costumes, the beautiful servant girl and her bearded and mustached paramour, pose variously—hand in hand, gazing into each other’s eyes, embracing—as cameras click.

  You have a photo from that evening: You and your husband standing in the center, Seema and Reshmi on either side. You’re all smiling, but formally, as though posing for a wedding photo, like the one you’ll take with Tahera and Ismail on their wedding night.

  Later, alone with your husband, you’ll take him to task. “Why are you encouraging your daughters with all this love business? Can’t you see how mature Seema has become?”

  “What nonsense, it’s just a play,” he’ll reply. “My daughters are too brilliant to waste their time on such matters.”

  Grandmother, years later when you learned of the gender of Seema’s first lover, did you think back to that evening and uncover the identity of Seema’s first love and decode the messages that passed between them?