by Nawaaz Ahmed
The surah could easily take an hour to recite, and they’re twenty minutes in. Ismail worries that the congregation may lose patience. Thankfully, Imam Zia stops as soon as there are growing signs of restlessness.
Released, the entire congregation erupts in a cacophony of suppressed noises and deferred movements, men clearing throats, cracking necks and knuckles, shifting noisily in their seats. Amina stirs in Ismail’s arms—bored, she’d fallen asleep, turning her body sideways and resting her head on his shoulder. She now opens her eyes, wondering where she is that the lights are so bright and the noises so loud, but her father is here, his comforting smell—the cucumber soap he uses, tinged with something that is peculiarly him—engulfs her, and she smiles up at him through sleep-heavy eyelids, then settles back and shuts her eyes again.
Looking around the crowd, Imam Zia prepares to address the assembled. Arshad has waited eagerly for this moment. He’d managed to remain patient through the recitation—which he would have at other times enjoyed—afraid that were he to fidget or complain, his father would regret bringing him. There are few children here tonight.
Imam Zia first speaks about the vandalism. But emotionlessly, with very few details, without quoting anything scrawled on the walls. He then describes meeting with the police, who he declares have promised to investigate the matter and apprehend the vandals. Meanwhile, he will contact the pastors and ministers from the surrounding churches to release a joint statement condemning the act. The community must remain calm. Arshad is disappointed. Isn’t Imam Zia going to rebut the accusations and call down the wrath of Allah for the blasphemy against the Prophet?
The congregation appears dissatisfied too. At first the questions are hesitant, logistical. Should they deploy security cameras? And what about the expansion? Should the fundraising continue? Will they still be applying for approval from the city planning commission by the end of the month?
A contingent advocates restraint. Maybe they should wait until the furor around the country dies down, as it’s bound to once the midterm elections are over and the hostility subsides. But what starts with only a faint whiff of finger-pointing—perhaps this wasn’t the most well-advised time to initiate the expansion project?—soon becomes heated: Why court so much trouble simply over soccer practice? Hadn’t the mosque functioned so many years without any problems until these newfangled schemes were instituted? What else could lie behind the decision to publish interviews in the Sentinel, if not publicity-seeking and self-aggrandizing?
Arshad squirms, his fists clenched: Why are they squabbling among themselves when the enemies are outside? He senses his father tense up. He looks around the room for signs of support from his father’s friends. Won’t someone respond? Won’t Imam Zia say something? And why won’t Abba defend himself? He fantasizes leaping to his feet and shouting down the men attacking his father and Imam Zia. He’s puzzled by their passivity. His father continues stroking Amina’s hair as though it were the most important task in the world.
An anger mixed with pity illuminates Arshad. He’s always cherished that his father is named after the forefather of all Muslims, Prophet Ismail, who’d submitted without demur to being sacrificed on Allah’s behest, awaiting patiently his father’s knife until Allah intervened. But how powerless Abba must feel if the only person he’s willing to show any anger toward is his own son.
Fortunately, the tide begins to change. At first one voice protests: They’re doing nothing wrong, why should they be the ones to restrain themselves? Doesn’t the Constitution give them the right to practice their religion? Then another voice joins, and then a third. There are dissenting voices too, but in agreement: What has the Constitution got to do with it, when Allah has already granted them rights?
Someone makes an impassioned speech, in Arabic, and Arshad can’t fully understand it, and neither can half the assembled, yet the room responds with a standing ovation when the man finishes, along with chants of “Allahu Akbar.” These grow louder, despite Imam Zia’s admonitions to keep their enthusiasm in check. The chant soon moves to a call-and-response format: three calls of the takbir to which the congregation responds once, in one thundering voice.
Arshad joins in. At first softly, imitating his father, who murmurs the takbir while covering Amina’s ears. But the pent-up grievances of the day aren’t contained so easily. He feels the words outside him, their crash and ebb rocking everything in the room like a frenzied sea, and they stir up a storm inside. The takbir fills his lungs to overflowing. A feeling of elation courses through him, and the room and the congregation merge in a handful of joyously roared syllables.
During the relative lull of a call, a whimpering cry is heard. It’s Amina, rubbing her eyes, waking up from a nightmare. Ismail hurries out of the room, her face pressed against his chest to muffle her sobs.
The congregation returns to its call-and-response takbir, but the rhythm has been broken.
Arshad hesitates: Should he follow? He wriggles his way out through the crowd, sulking. This is why girls, especially seven-year-old girls, should not be allowed into the mosque.
He pauses at the door to listen one last time. Imam Zia is finally able to regain control over the congregation and the room slowly subsides into silence.
47
Grandmother, you are playing a role tonight. You and your daughters are gathered in the living room watching TV—an Indian reality show, a competition modeled on American Idol, but for kids, none of them over twelve. Like old times, Seema, beside you on the futon, claims space and center stage, commenting animatedly about the show, its judges, its competitors, while Tahera sits in a chair, reading Keats and only occasionally looking up to see what’s exciting your attention. But you, who like Tahera were usually a silent participant too, allowing your husband and eldest daughter to dominate family gatherings, feel compelled to assume the role of your husband tonight. The exuberance you assume now—joining Seema in remarking, exclaiming, laughing—as mild as it is, is alien to your nature.
The next competitor is a girl, no older than seven or eight, dressed in a frilly purple frock. “How beautifully she sings, just like Amina!” Seema exclaims. “She looks just like Amina, too.”
Tahera glances up from her book, and the three of you watch, and listen, entranced. The girl never takes her eyes off her mother the entire time she’s singing, the camera panning back and forth between them.
“Oh, it’s her, what’s her name?” you say, recognizing the mother as an aspiring playback singer from yesteryear, who’d disappeared from the music scene as suddenly as she’d entered it.
When the song is done, the audience roars in applause, the judges stand up and clap, and the host runs to the girl and lifts her up to his shoulders and invites the mother to join them on stage.
“She does look like our Amina. Does Amina sing too?” You haven’t heard your granddaughter sing, you didn’t even know she sings. Yet Seema seems to know.
“Amina sings wonderfully! She could take part in this competition with a little training.”
And like the mother on TV, a lovely smile transforms Tahera’s face. It’s like witnessing a full moon break out from behind clouds. Very rarely does she smile. Even as a child she refrained, as though smiles were some currency she needed to hoard. How pretty she looks when she’s smiling like this, how aged and careworn when she’s not. You wish you could smooth away the creases that will soon return to her face and shoulder some of her worries. But you don’t really know the extent of them. She withdrew from you after Seema left and, over the years, became estranged. She even adopted Seema’s habits of secrecy and defiance, as if with Seema absent she had chosen to take her sister’s place.
“Amina loves to sing,” Tahera affirms, still beaming. “Seema, how do you know?”
“The day I spent with them, she sang that song we used to like as children, the one about the runaway horse. Do you remember, Ammi?”
Of course, you do! The tape recorder blaring, the two girls re
winding and playing the song over and over again, singing along, clopping all over the house, or twirling in tight circles to it, their twin plaits and dupattas flying horizontally. You were afraid your daughters would hurt themselves by crashing into furniture as they collapsed from dizziness. When the tape caught in the spool, the house was quiet again until, giving in to their pestering, their father bought them another copy. You scolded him for spoiling his daughters, and he laughed at you, chucking your chin, saying, “Should I spoil you instead, my beautiful unsmiling wife?”
The phone rings and Seema answers it, and Grandmother, by her face you know this is him: your husband. You’ve been missing him all evening. Your husband has called, finally, and right when you were thinking about him. Perhaps the timing is a good omen, presaging a reconciliation.
My grandfather’s voice floats thinly into the room: “Nafeesa?”
Without saying a word, Seema holds out the phone, the liveliness from moments ago erased. You want to shake her: Say something to your father.
He’s querulous. “Why didn’t you call me? I was worried about you.”
He’s never called Seema’s number before; he’d vowed never to use it. What made him change his mind, when he could so easily have called Tahera on her cell phone? You want to scold him: Why call here if you’re not even going to address your daughter?
You’re not going to apologize for not calling, you’re not going to say anything unsolicited, even though fifteen minutes earlier you’d yearned to speak to him. Instead you answer to the point: you’re fine; you’re eating well, sleeping well; yes, you’re taking your tablets; yes, Tahera is here, she’s reading Keats.
Unsought, he volunteers information about himself: the monsoons have started, and he got drenched in a downpour; the street outside is flooded; the maidservant hasn’t come for the past two days, citing the rains as an excuse; your sister, Halima, has been bringing him food.
There’s a whiny quality to his voice. You’re aware of the others in the room listening to your conversation, and you keep your responses short and impassive.
Hesitantly, he asks when you are likely to return.
“I don’t know. Seema is due anytime.” You mention Seema’s name casually to him, something you wouldn’t have dared a week ago. His timidity bolsters your courage. “Do you want to speak to your daughter?”
Tahera rises to take the phone from you, and Seema has stiffened. You set a trap for him with that word—he has sworn many times he has only one daughter now—but he doesn’t fall for it. “Not now, I’m heading out. I’ll speak to Tahera later, it’s been years since we discussed Keats.”
He prepares to end the call, but Tahera takes the phone and disappears into the kitchen.
You strain to hear Tahera’s conversation, but her voice is too low. Now that you can breathe freely again, the extent of your transgression begins to sink in. You wouldn’t have dared speak this way in Chennai. Being away from him seems to have loosened his hold on you. You’re glad that you undertook this journey. But why did you wait until the final months of your life before taking this step?
Seema’s eyes are still glued to the TV, avoiding you, though she too seems to have relaxed. “Seema, when shall we ask Fiaz for dinner?” you say. “Can we do it this week?”
Your sudden switch of topic catching her by surprise, Seema is less resistant, as you hoped. She says, with only a slight frown, “It’s not necessary.”
“He’s so good to us. I promised him.”
“He’ll understand, Ammi. I’m having a baby after all.”
“It’s not a question of understanding. I want to. You should call your other friend too. What’s her name, Divya?”
“Why? You’re sick, you can’t stand in the kitchen without coughing. I can’t help you cook. Are you going to ask Tahera to cook for my friends?”
“What’s wrong with that? Can’t your sister do this for you?” You’ve tasted your first victory, against your husband no less, and you won’t let your daughter(s) defeat you. Tahera has finished her conversation, and you call out, “What do you say, Tahera? You’ll help me with the dinner for Fiaz?”
“I’ll be there in a minute, Ammi.”
Seema grows restive. When Tahera returns you notice her fraught face—what could father and this daughter have clashed over now? You regret your peremptory tone.
One glance at Tahera and Seema struggles up from the futon. “What did I tell you? There’s no need for all this.”
A subdued Tahera registers the scene unfolding. She eventually answers, “Of course, Ammi. If that’s what you want.”
“What about what I want?” Seema glares at the two of you, then before you can react, turns to retreat to her bedroom. “Fine. Let’s not make a big deal of this. I’ll ask Fiaz when he’s available.”
“Ask Divya too,” you say.
“No Divya.” She yanks the bedroom door shut behind her.
Tahera sits by your side. “Why do you force her, Ammi, when she doesn’t want to?”
But it’s to be a celebration: You want to cook for your daughter’s friends, to throw them a feast. It’s to be a thanksgiving, for all the years they were there for your daughter, and atonement, for the years you were not. You recall the chilha, the celebration on the fortieth day after the child is born. But you can’t leave it for so far into the future—who knows anymore what the future holds? And besides, you need Tahera’s help.
You can’t explain all this. You switch the TV off and take Tahera’s hand in yours, squeezing, in gratitude for her acquiescence to your plans. Despite the confidence you’ve shown, you fear that she might still be resentful of your decision to come to San Francisco, to Seema’s side, instead of Irvine, to hers.
48
Tahera takes the phone into the kitchen, determined to speak with her father. Refusing to speak to Seema is understandable, but declining to speak with her—how like Abba to cast out all of them when one displeases him, holding them all accountable for each other’s lapses.
Naeemullah gives in to Tahera’s insistence and desultorily inquires about Nafeesa. Their conversation, like it has the past months, takes on a professional tone—prognosis, progression, pathophysiology. As their discussion tapers off, he clears his throat, signaling he’s ready to hang up.
Desperately Tahera casts her mind for something further to interest him. “I’ve been reading Keats’s poems again, Abba,” she says, in a rush. “After so many years.”
“Wonderful!” His attention is temporarily held. “And what do you think now?”
It’s their old debate, one she’d lost to him many times. Naeemullah prefers Wordsworth, pooh-poohing Keats as immature and mawkish, idolized only by young girls with romance on their brains. He would accept grudgingly that Keats’s later odes had some merit but was scathing regarding the narrative poems, especially the long Endymion: “All sighs and pretty words.”
But Endymion had been her best-loved. She’d wandered through her youth likening herself to Endymion roving doggedly through earth and heavens seeking his love, the moon. She’d spent countless evenings alone on their rooftop terrace after dinner, pacing back and forth, with only the clouds and the moon for company, futilely trying to memorize the almost thousand lines of the poem. Eventually she’d settled for learning only her most treasured sections.
“I haven’t gotten to Endymion yet,” she lies, slipping once again into her childhood habit of protecting Keats (and herself) from her father (and sister). She’d started on Endymion earlier that evening, the poem appearing as strange and otherworldly now as it had years ago, with its descriptions of miraculous natural beauties and its mysterious and mystifying allusions—Phoebus, Dryope, Hyacinthus, Zephyr—names once again unfamiliar and intriguing.
“Ah, your rambling lovesick shepherd—” Naeemullah chuckles. “We’ll talk when you’ve reread it. You’re definitely older, but are you any wiser?”
“No one can hope to be as wise as you, Abba.” Her bitterness
overflows. “Seriously, why do you still treat me like a child?”
An exaggerated surprise, his usual tactic. “Haven’t we been discussing your mother like two equals?”
“Like doctors, not father and adult daughter.”
“What else do you want me to say?” His voice turns harsh. “That I’m unhappy your mother is there, when her place is here?”
“I would have come to Chennai to look after her.”
“I’m fully capable of taking care of her. My only request to you is that you see that she returns soon.”
“She’s not only your wife, Abba—she’s my mother, too. Why do you insist on keeping me at a distance?” From holding her tongue for months—years—she’s gone to confronting everyone in a few days: first Ammi, then Seema, now Abba. But the words don’t produce relief, they merely serve to reinforce a feeling of wretchedness.
After Seema had left, after he started cutting her off for even mentioning Seema’s name, she’d hoped—despicably, for didn’t she still miss Seema then?—that her presence would make up for his beloved’s absence, that she would in time come to replace her sister. But he’d distanced himself from her as well. Did he expect her too to fail him, or was she just too poor a substitute?
“But, Tahera, you’re in America.” The jocular edge to his voice is back. “The last time I checked it’s still thirteen thousand kilometers away.”
And before she can respond—It was you who sent me here, Abba!—he attacks: “And why have you started reading poetry again, anyway? I thought you had no use for anything other than the Quran.”
“I can read whatever I want. But how are you doing, Abba?” She lowers her voice to a careful whisper. “Are you scared that Ammi will choose to remain here with her daughters—even Seema—rather than return to you?” She can feel her spiteful laugh sting, trilling its way across oceans and continents.
