Radiant Fugitives

by Nawaaz Ahmed

The previous weeks, proponents of Prop 8 had sunk enormous sums of money into scare tactics: gay marriage would force the state’s churches to participate in sin and its schools to teach homosexuality to children. California would be devastated by earthquakes and droughts. They’d even sent out mailers using Obama’s own words—marriage is the union between a man and a woman, with God in the mix—and the Obama campaign did nothing to challenge them, beyond reiterating that it doesn’t support Prop 8.

  The day felt humiliating: the desperate attempts to draw the attention of preoccupied drivers, the forced cheer when one of them honked in response. Even the most optimistic of their group exclaimed as the day drew to a close, “Flinging glitter to the winds—it’s just to make us feel good we’re doing something.”

  Tired and hungry, they were shivering as the sun set, when they were asked to head back, the ramps too dangerous in the fading light. People had begun celebrating Obama’s win already, but it felt to Seema, returning to an empty home, like she was participating in an ending, not a beginning. She hadn’t wanted to wait for Bill, though she knew he was on his way back, furious still with his obstruction, his accusations. Nor did she want to spend the evening with Fiaz, awaiting the results of Prop 8. Divya’s call was a relief, the invitation to the party an escape.

  The party is in a penthouse suite, glass walls overlooking the city, the cheers and cries of celebration from the streets below only faintly audible. The 360-degree view of San Francisco is impressive, immersive—unlike the view from her home—and she feels like she’s floating midair, encircled by resplendent towers, the landscape and sky a mute, remote background. The interior is dazzling as well: white marble floors, blazing chandeliers, scattered furniture imposing like sculpture, a glossy grand piano, majestic and white. The TV, despite its huge screen, cannot compete with this glitz, and Obama appears washed out, outshone, even his voice sounding thin and tame.

  Divya is giddy. She’s on her third glass of champagne, prattling away as she weaves through the crowd, dimpling as she greets the Silicon Valley movers and shakers. There are few Asians here, few technocrats, few women—the assembled are mostly venture capitalists and angel investors, the majority White, and almost all men. And Divya moves among them—in her midnight-blue mesh gown, with its silver-threaded spider web and its plunging V-neck—like a princess. No, a courtesan.

  Seema had been in no mood to dress up in anything more fancy than a teal flared dress, and initially she’d felt self-conscious arriving at the party, although Divya assured her she looked gorgeous. Still, under the champagne’s influence, she finds herself slipping again into old habits of performing charm—easy laughter, rapt attention, the occasional admiring glance—as if competing with Divya for the approval of these men. If nothing else, the performance serves to take her mind off what awaits her in her own life.

  She’d turned her cell phone off, vowing not to check her messages or the internet until she’s in a calmer frame of mind. But there’s a buzz building in the room that she can’t avoid hearing. Originating from the cluster of men by the piano, well-groomed and obviously gay, the bitter murmurs ripple through:

  Prop 8 appears likely to pass, though the votes in urban areas like San Francisco have yet to be fully counted, and the result may not be known till the morning. The expanded turnout for Obama is surely to blame, for exit polls show that a majority of Black voters in California supported the ban on same-sex marriage.

  What swirls through her?

  It is cloying, vindicated disappointment: she’d expected this, had reason to expect this—to be disavowed and abandoned, like Prop 22 had done eight years earlier, like her father had done in the decade before that.

  It is vindictive, expanding anger: Against Obama’s feckless expediency, Bill’s half-hearted support. The Black community’s betrayal, if that truly was the clincher—surely Blacks must know what it means to be discriminated against. The No-On-Prop-8’s myopic White leadership, fearful of airing ads with loving gay or lesbian couples in order to allay the fears of straight White people, while ignoring input from minority organizations and shunning outreach in minority communities. The whining gay White men here, conveniently forgetting the much larger numbers of Whites who must too have voted in favor of Prop 8 for it to pass.

  And herself, for she’s been such a sellout, with nothing to show for it—

  What swirls about her? The dazzling constellations of lights, the glass windows, the glowing marble floor. Or is it she who’s swirling, champagne-flushed, in this brilliant hall of glass and mirrors, with its thousand reflections, refractions, distortions, sipping Bollinger from crystal flutes, waited on by earnest tuxedoed attendants roving with platters of hors d’oeuvres? A veritable Sheesh Mahal—a flash of recollection—and she’s performing for their entertainment but without Anarkali’s audacity to challenge and subvert.

  A quartet of men surround her and Divya, leaning in under guise of appreciation, corralling the two women in. Divya doesn’t seem to mind, intoxicated by the night and her successes.

  Seema grips her by the shoulders. “Divya, chal,” she says, rough and urgent. “Bas, kahin aur chalen.”

  “Chal?” Divya struggles to refocus attention on her. Her accent even on that simple word is Americanized. “Where to?”

  The men around are nonplussed, eyes darting from one woman to the other and back.

  Seema ignores them. “Hum in goray aadmiyon ke khilone nahin.” She’s quoting—or misquoting—some long-forgotten movie dialogue, echoing its outraged intonation accurately. The men boxing them in draw back instinctively, to her satisfaction.

  Divya seems unsure how to respond. It’s even unclear if she’s comprehended what Seema means—they’ve never conversed in Hindi or Urdu before. She chuckles tentatively, seeking clarification from Seema, indulgence from the others.

  Seema is unrelenting. “Aati ho kya, ya main jaoon?” Divya must leave with her, a victory snatched from these men. Her gaze holds Divya’s, boring into Divya as if to impel her to acquiescence.

  Something in her gaze—some entreaty, some promise, some threat—makes Divya drop her eyes and nod yes.

  Seema takes her by the hand, flits a quick kiss on her cheek—a first—a reward. “Excuse us, gentlemen,” she says, a triumphant smile further subduing the circling men, “but we have to go.”

  She leads Divya out of the circle, who follows her meekly, her previous light-headedness replaced by a nervous tripping across the room. Seema steadies her, conscious of all the eyes in the room on them. She holds on to Divya’s hand while they wait for their coats: trophy, security.

  “Seema, what’s going on?” Divya asks, when the elevator doors close, leaving them alone together. Her voice rasps, breaks.

  In reply, Seema takes Divya in her arms, tilts her face toward hers in preparation for a kiss. Divya pulls back, pointing to the security camera at the upper right corner, but there’s no mistaking her trembling hand, her shallow breathing, her quivering body.

  Seema thrills: between the security camera’s silvered lens and the elevator’s gilded mirror, here too are more reflected visions, like the trick cinematography so beloved of Indian movies. She pulls Divya toward herself, presses her lips to Divya’s ear in a whisper—Pyar kiya toh darna kya?—then plants them on Divya’s lips. Whether Divya recognizes the allusion to Anarkali or not, she sighs, allowing her lips to open, Seema’s tongue to find hers.

  She should have dared to kiss Divya upstairs, in the penthouse, in full view of all its entitled men, this same way, if only to suck the air out of that ponderous room.

  In the lobby Divya asks, “What now?” She suggests—diffidently still—that she spend the night at Seema’s place, since she’s too drunk to drive back home to the South Bay.

  Seema recalls she’d told Divya earlier that Bill had chosen to remain in Reno, to explain why she accepted the invitation to the party. A momentary hesitation, confusion, thinking of Bill waiting at home for her, then she says, “No, let’
s get a room nearby.”

  25

  It takes Seema another year to decide to separate from Bill. During that time Bill’s desire for a child hardens to a demand. Seema asks for some time apart to ponder the matter, away from the charged context of their home, and Bill agrees.

  But is it merely chance, or fate, that when they get together on the eve of a more final dissolution they come to conceive me?

  Consider: Before returning one last time to her home with Bill, Seema has chosen to have her IUD removed, despite its considerable alleviation of her menstrual suffering, despite the protection it provided from the consequences of unplanned nights like the one in Iowa that resulted in her miscarriage. And that final coupling in the fog—

  Had some part of my not-to-be mother come willing after all to concede to a lifelong commitment? Had she come searching for some new beginning in that ending?

  Just like I must search for a way past her ending, lying silenced on an operating table, toward my own beginning.

  Three

  2010

  1

  I’m born of insecurity and need, of my mother Seema’s desire to fashion a family and home for and by herself.

  Even so, it’s not until a few weeks after learning about my incipience that my mother comes to accept my inclusion in her life. During that time, the promise of me battles with the threat I pose: the disruption I presage, the additional responsibility for someone else’s happiness that I entail. She withholds from my father information of my conception when they meet to sign the summary dissolution, afraid Bill may convince her to keep the child, to raise the child together, or even to get back together, before she has time to decide for herself. But afterward, the task of delivering me, of raising me single-handed, is too formidable, too frightening to consider. You’ll never be ready for a child, Bill had said, and she believes him.

  What changes her mind?

  Is it to a happenstance, her sister’s visit to San Francisco, that I owe this life?

  Consider: Receiving Tahera’s call out of the blue after her separation from Bill, Seema nearly discloses her pregnancy, conjuring up a future that definitely includes me, so she can better arouse Tahera’s sympathy and pity. Later, she feels guilty: she’d come close to trotting me out as an actor in her play for her sister’s compassion. Now she can’t compound the guilt by deciding to abort me. Her guilt makes me real. I’m born of guilt.

  When Seema agrees to have dinner with Tahera’s family on that visit, it is to prove to herself that her sister doesn’t have anything she needs or desires. But despite her impulse toward disdain for the virtuous domesticity presented to her, she can’t help feeling envious of her sister’s life, echoing as it does the vibrance of her exiled past. “Wait till you’re a mother yourself,” Tahera says, as if that prize is out of Seema’s reach. I’m born of envy and rivalry.

  Another way to look at the visit: Seema hasn’t decided yet to keep me. She spends the day with Tahera’s children. She sees my potential in them, and her mind becomes fixed to something more definite—perhaps these eyes, perhaps this voice, perhaps this way of holding the world both in an embrace and at a distance. I become real to her. By the end of the day, in some deep and unconscious stirrings of her mind, she has formed a resolution to give me a chance. I’m born of hope.

  2

  My to-be mother knows the risks associated with bearing me at her age. But she’d not been overly concerned until learning of Nafeesa’s condition. In the last two weeks, witnessing her mother’s decline heightens her awareness of how quickly the pillars of our lives—hers and mine—could collapse, how suddenly the ground could shift beneath us. We are, after all, in a land of earthquakes. She’s single, and she needs to assign a substitute parent for me.

  But in asking Tahera to be my guardian, isn’t she motivated by another reason too? In addition to securing someone to take her place were something to happen, isn’t she also trying to find someone to take her mother’s place? The prospect of being set adrift again, unmoored, when Nafeesa’s gone, agitates her. Who else can she turn to but Tahera?

  And so she comes up with this way of testing her sister, of checking how solid the walls separating them might be. Some ancient compulsions persist, she hopes, despite the barriers built up by history and time. That a dammed-up stream of love may yet find its way through and flow again, ending years of drought.

  On that rain-cocooned afternoon when Tahera, breaking down, accepts provisional charge of me, Seema believes both prayers to be answered. Afterward, Tahera sits by Seema’s feet, watching the rain make patterns on the windowpanes, while Seema finishes braiding her hair. A peaceful silence has descended between them.

  For what more can be said, with both sisters unwilling to imperil the fragile, dearly bought peace?

  Presently, Tahera gets up for the asr namaz. Seema moves her chair so Tahera can use the corner for her prayers, but she continues observing: There’s a fierce grace to Tahera’s motions, a strength in their sureness, each gesture, each posture unfolding without hesitation, as though inevitable. As though ordained.

  3

  Sweet Grandmother! Sweet mother of my to-be mother and could-be mother! You do not know yet of the reconciliation between your daughters—however unspoken and tentative—when you hobble into the living room as day turns into evening. You are unrested from your nap. All afternoon you’d been worried that the pain, returned since the morning like a spring refilling a well, would overflow the confines of your body, once again no longer yours to conceal. It has receded to more manageable levels now.

  But look—Tahera and Seema in twin plaits!

  Your two daughters pose, showing off their hair. You immediately recognize each daughter’s handiwork: Seema’s shoulder-length hair much harder to braid, but precisely done, and you can picture Tahera’s fingers moving with the same sureness and concentration of years ago; Tahera’s hair longer, done looser, with escaping strands, especially toward the tip, showing definite signs of her sister losing patience. You can almost hear Seema complaining, as in the past, “But Tahera, your hair takes too much time, it’s so long, ask Ammi to do your hair today.”

  The memory makes you momentarily forget your pain, and the hasty step you take toward your daughters causes you to wince. But what is a little pain today amid all this happiness! You’d gladly accept more of it if this evening’s flush were to last forever. How young your daughters look in their twin plaits, and how playful they are together, holding the tips of their braids crossed at their upper lips to form a twirled mustache and beard, as though they’ve assumed their childhood selves.

  They insist on doing your hair too, and though you’re reluctant—your hair is so wispy now—you submit to their wheedling, and join in their glee, as they shape what remains into some semblance of plaits.

  How does the evening go? There’s sweet chai and sitting by the window and watching the rain as it lets up. Then clouds begin to disperse, and fleeting golden rays of the setting sun pour through the window.

  “Will there be a rainbow?” Tahera asks.

  The eastern sky cannot be seen from the apartment, and Seema suggests Tahera check from the rooftop.

  There’s no rainbow, Tahera finds. “But, Seema, your rooftop’s very pretty, with great views. And there’s a full moon tonight. Why don’t we have dinner up there, like we used to in Chennai?”

  Tahera brushes aside every one of your objections: The cooking is simple, and won’t take her very long. She will bring the food up to the rooftop herself. There are tables and chairs already there. They can use shawls if the evening turns cold.

  Her only concern is that the three flights of stairs may be too much for you, Grandmother, but you let yourself be carried away by her enthusiasm, and you claim you can handle them.

  A whirlwind of activity follows. Tahera flies around the apartment, straightening objects and furniture, returning everything to its proper place, as though any excursion for pleasure must wait on tidiness. A
nd then the maghrib namaz. This is the quickest you’ve seen Tahera pray, like in the black-and-white film clips from your youth—Gandhi and the freedom fighters at the salt march all scurrying like insects! Up she goes, down she goes, now she bends, now she rises, first she turns her head to one side, then to the other, and there—she’s done.

  “That was very quick,” you say.

  “That’s normal—I don’t have much time on weekdays.”

  You and Seema are infected with Tahera’s energy and want to help. But she waves you away: “Go make sure Seema’s packed and ready for the hospital. I can cook faster by myself.”

  The kitchen comes to life. Cabinets and containers open and close, pots and pans clang, the knife goes chop-chop, mustard seeds splutter, ladles scrape the sides of pans in a frenzy, water whooshes in the sink, papads sizzle. A parade of aromas tickles your nose—curry leaf, asafetida, turmeric, onion, frying oil, rice steam, cilantro.

  Meanwhile, you and Seema have little to do because Seema has already packed her bag for the hospital. So you look into her closet and take out my belongings, newly purchased or gifted, and you show her how to correctly fold my little outfits, not in quarters, bunched up, but with sides folded in, as they were laid out in the store. Seema doesn’t complain but returns the stacks to the closet and brings you more things to fold, including some of hers.

  “Everything’s ready,” Tahera calls out before you know it. “I just need to finish my isha namaz.”

  The dining table is laid out with plates, silverware, napkins, covered dishes, moons of papad, glasses, water—just like you used to do, for your daughters to carry up to the rooftop. You’re impressed by Tahera’s speed, but saddened too: some things you’ve taught her, and some things life has.

  She’s taken a shower, and is dressed again in her hijab and jilbab. Her twin plaits have disappeared, and with that her previous frenetic, animated self. Her isha namaz is back to its unhurried deliberation. She packs plastic bags with the picnic material as methodically.