by Nawaaz Ahmed
Tahera leaves an awkward silence behind her. Fiaz raises an eyebrow at Seema, but Seema is herself baffled. “I don’t know,” she mouths. Tahera has made no mention of Fiaz all day and had seemed happily engaged in the kitchen with Ammi when she’d left with Leigh. She looks to her mother for a clue.
Nafeesa murmurs, “Some things back home are upsetting her.” She wishes now that she’d not provoked Tahera that afternoon. Or that she’d asked forbearance from Tahera for tonight, but she’d been afraid she might only make things worse.
Fiaz asks, “Was there more trouble at the Islamic center?”
“What trouble?” Seema asks, and Fiaz explains, an eye out for Tahera’s return.
Nafeesa is surprised that Fiaz knows and Seema doesn’t. “Seema, you should pay more attention to your sister’s life.”
Seema runs through her various conversations with Tahera in the past few days—how is she to know if Tahera doesn’t talk about it? She has heard about the protests at Ground Zero in New York, of course, but hasn’t followed the news. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to connect it to Tahera and her family, anyway. She feels abashed at her ignorance. “Has it really gotten that bad?”
“I did a report on the protests at Yorba Linda and Temecula—people waving flags and chanting ‘God bless America’ in front of mosques,” Leigh answers. She recalls how taken aback she’d been by her first sight of Tahera in her hijab and jilbab, and is conscience-stricken learning about Tahera’s ordeals. “I’m not surprised worse is happening in Texas.”
They’re conversing in low voices. When Tahera comes out of the bathroom, the discussion halts. She’s had a shower and changed her clothes—a dark brown jilbab, a light gray hijab with large indigo flowers, which strikes Nafeesa as pretty and unlike anything she’s seen Tahera wear. Perhaps it’s intended for the guests? Nafeesa notes that Tahera hasn’t dried her hair properly—drops of water drip down her face—but before Nafeesa can say anything, Tahera walks straight through the room toward her belongings, as if there’s no one else in the room. She picks up and unfolds the janamaz with a flick and spreads it out in her usual spot.
“Tahera, you should pray in Seema’s room,” Nafeesa says, a little sharply. “We have guests.”
The walk across the room has required all of Tahera’s resolve. Like with the men in front of the meat shop in the Tenderloin and the shoppers in Safeway, she is the target of stares and whispers, judgment and contempt. She’s sure Seema and her friends, even Ammi, have been discussing her affairs, pretending concern, but in reality, judging her for her beliefs and practices, as Ammi had done that afternoon. Thankfully they don’t know about Arshad, but if they did—the shame burns brighter. They would judge her as negligent, condemn her son as hateful and out of control.
She trembles. She’d unfolded the janamaz out of agitation and habit, but the reprimand in her mother’s voice stings. What is so discomfiting about namaz that it needs to be out of sight, as if Seema’s guests can’t abide it? Perhaps because it reminds them of what they owe Allah. She feels compelled to continue where Seema and her gay friend and her lesbian lover can watch.
She starts her salat with the takbir, but in her haste has forgotten to mentally voice her niyyat—Allah, I intend to pray four rakaat as fard for isha namaz, facing Ka’ba—and must start over.
If she’d been concerned earlier that her namaz may not be accepted for praying while her period isn’t over, she has more reason now, riddled as her namaz is with makruh acts caused by her lack of concentration. For though she’s facing the corner walls, she’s unable to dismiss the presence of the others. She struggles on, feeling none of the peace of mind she’d sought in the namaz.
Fiaz does notice Tahera’s small mistakes: arms not clasped when they should be, an extra sajda instead of sitting up in jalsa. Tahera is clearly becoming frustrated, fumbling even more as she tries to recover.
“Let’s go to the kitchen,” he whispers to Seema, “and let your sister pray in peace.”
He leads the way, and they stand awkwardly around the dining table, until Nafeesa says they may as well set the table while they wait.
They set the place mats, the plates, and the cutlery. Seema is to sit down, since she’s experiencing some pain, as if contractions were resuming. The three work quietly so Tahera isn’t disturbed. And then the food is transferred to serving dishes, except for the biryani, which must wait until Tahera joins them so it doesn’t get cold.
Their muted actions are still too loud to Tahera’s ears. Even as she strives to focus on her namaz, she recalls the evening she arrived—was it less than a week ago?—when Seema and her mother were setting out dinner. She’d been right to be anxious then, for hadn’t Seema already wreaked havoc on her life once? She had come, anyway, to support her dying mother and offer what aid she can her sister, because that’s what her mother wanted. And this is what it has led to: while her own life in Irvine threatens to fall apart, she’s here participating in Seema’s licentious life.
There is no getting away from it: Seema and her community talk of tolerance, and the Quran warns about judging in Allah’s stead, but Allah could in no way have intended that she be accepting of what He has denied His creation. If she had known that Seema had returned to her former ways, she still may have come to San Francisco, for Ammi’s sake, but she would have known to hold her distance from Seema.
Maybe this day is a warning, that the permissive comforts from her past life, which she’d been slipping back into so easily, are really distractions to her faith she needs to guard against, whatever Ammi may say.
If she needs proof of how easy it is to forget the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet, then an account of her visit provides a list of temptations: the non-halal chicken the very first night, the book of poetry, the steadily impairing association with Seema’s friends, Seema’s request of guardianship, the music, and tonight’s dinner. She’s been led to this point, step by step. If the Shaitan needed a helper, he couldn’t have done better than use her sister. And she’d fallen for it: she’d been on the verge of letting Seema back into her life, even believing it to be the answer to her istikhara.
Why is she still here? She has better things to do: she has her own family to tend to, a daughter who needs her, and a son whom she’s failing. She is unable to even find the immersion she craves in namaz—each sound from the kitchen yanks her back into a depraved world.
Finally, the sounds stop. She’s done with her rakaat for isha but decides to pray a few more for the optional prayers. And also duas for forgiveness and mercy, if Allah is indeed unhappy with her lapses, and for Arshad’s safety and well-being. Perhaps his act was intended by Allah to remind her of her true life in Irvine, to return to it immediately. This must be what her vision of Jahannam on the rooftop means. She’d mistaken that, too, imagining in that moment of grief that the loss of sister and of son were alike. Until her eyes had been opened to Seema’s continued transgressions.
She raises the volume of her recitation, so the buzz of the surahs can fill the living room and infiltrate the rest of the apartment, cleansing it.
In the kitchen, Seema succumbs to irritability. Surely Tahera is keeping everybody waiting to call attention to how namaz is more important to her than the dinner she’d spent all day cooking for Seema’s friends. Like the martyr Tahera used to like playing as a girl.
“I’m hungry,” Seema frets. “At this rate, I’ll be in labor by the time she finishes.”
Nafeesa looks: Tahera is still moving through her prayers. It would be unseemly to start dinner without her—especially since the dinner owes its existence to her—but Nafeesa is nettled by Tahera’s disregard for their guests. She decides: “Why don’t you and your friends start? I’ll wait for Tahera. She won’t mind.”
Fiaz demurs, but she ignores him. The aroma of biryani fills the room as she transfers the fragrant rice and mutton to a serving dish.
Fiaz breathes in the aroma, his chest and frame expanding as th
ough to suck in all the air in the room, a smile on his face. “How can I say no to this?”
Nafeesa is gratified. “Eat, eat,” she urges. “I hope it’s to your liking.”
She searches for bigger chunks of meat to serve him and Seema. And Leigh as well—at first hesitantly, unsure if Leigh likes Indian food, and then with growing assurance as Leigh praises the dishes.
Satisfied, she settles down to watch them eat. The way they pass the food around, the way their eyes exchange smiles—like a family, she thinks. Something intimate is being shared, without words, through the very harmony that permeates their eating together.
Tahera faces the quiet dark of the living room corner. Behind her is laughter, the sounds and smells of a celebration, from which she is excluded. She can picture the scene, as if she were observing by the kitchen door: Seema and her lover and her friend all focused on their plates until the first throes of hunger and desire are sated, while Ammi, having prepared the feast, would barely be eating, her eyes more on their faces than on her own plate, feeding off their pleasure. A new family coming together.
Whatever be the rewards in the afterlife, Tahera has no doubts now that she is to be punished here on earth, shunned by family and country alike, for never straying from the straight path, while Seema, who has only ever pursued her own desires, is to be feted, rewarded with this new family. And soon the pleasures of a son, while Tahera is to be left with the pain of failing hers, which too could be traced back to the day Seema walked out of their home. The evening fires from the rooftop may have diminished, but now they spark and flame again, only this time with anger.
31
Grandmother, you hear Tahera finally moving around in the living room and you call out, “Tahera, come to eat. We’re waiting for you.”
There’s no response, and you decide to check on your daughter.
“Tara,” you start, and then stop at the sight of the red suitcase lying open on the living room floor, her clothes and belongings stacked in piles around it. “What are you doing?”
“I’m packing,” Tahera says.
“Why do you have to do that now?”
“I’m leaving. I’m going back to Irvine tonight.”
You stand still, not knowing what to make of her statement. Tahera is down on her knees, stowing her clothes in the suitcase. “Why? What’s happened?”
“My son is ill,” Tahera says.
You bend over Tahera’s suitcase, not sure whether you mean to help her pack or unpack. What could an eleven-year-old be suffering from that suddenly required his mother’s presence? Tahera must be overreacting. “How can you leave now? Seema will be in labor soon. Is Arshad really that sick?”
“What does it matter? He’s my son. I have to go. I want to go.” She dumps the last of her belongings into the suitcase and slams its top shut. “I’m not needed here anyway. You all can manage very well without me. Go, enjoy the feast I cooked for Seema and her friends.”
You place a hand on your daughter’s shoulder to help her rise, worried now. You lower your voice: you don’t want anyone in the kitchen to hear you. “I didn’t want to keep our guests waiting. I’m sorry I asked them to start without you. I still haven’t eaten. Come, don’t behave like a child. You’ll spoil the evening—you put so much effort into it.”
Tahera, squatting on the floor, stares up at you—she seems to have shrunk to the willful child you once knew her to be, though never as wayward as Seema. She shrugs your hand away, and struggles to rise, lifting the suitcase at the same time.
“Yes, I’m the one spoiling the evening. It doesn’t matter that Seema already has. She gets to do whatever she wants, and you’ll still fly to her side, even feed her your biryani.”
“Tahera, please!” you say, gesturing her to calm down. Surely Seema and her friends must be listening—the sounds of eating have ceased. You glance back at the kitchen door—at least no one’s watching. You lower your voice even further: “What’s all this about?”
“Ask her what kind of relationship she has with her friend.” She resists your attempts to lead her to Seema’s room. “I thought she’d given up all those haram activities.”
You’re perturbed: How did she learn about Leigh? But more importantly, what do you tell her? Grandmother, how do you speak when you haven’t made peace yet with Seema’s choices yourself, even though just a few minutes ago you’d been grateful for the friendship and love surrounding her?
“Tahera, this is not the time to discuss this,” you say in Urdu, so Leigh won’t understand—you wish you hadn’t been speaking in English before. “They will hear. Please.”
“So you knew, already,” Tahera replies, still in English. “You knew and didn’t tell me. What you must think of me, that I wouldn’t help if I knew, even if my dying mother asked.”
You shrink at her anger—where does it stem from? You want to deny knowledge, you want to say: I learned of it only today, I learned of it from Fiaz. You know she’s seeking reassurance that she’s a good daughter, and you want to assure her you know of her love and thoughtfulness and kindness toward you. But you’re so focused on preventing further disruption to the evening, that instead you say, “Tahera, they are our guests. What will they think?”
“Let them think what they want. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.” She turns toward the kitchen. “I’m not the one violating Allah’s decrees. And for what? Just because Seema wants to draw attention to herself, she wants to think herself different—unique—so she can look down her nose on the rest of us, as though we’re mindless sheep for following the Quran and the Prophet.”
She makes a quick round of the room, as if searching for something. You follow a step behind her, trying to gather your courage to hold her by the arms and calm her down, if you still have the strength to.
You know your words from the afternoon rankled: she includes you when she talks about being looked down upon. You want to tell her: it wasn’t just frustration that drove you but sorrow too. You know as well as, if not more than, anyone else the effect of the constraints on one’s lives, real or assumed, imposed from the outside or by the self. For hadn’t you let yourself be ruled by your husband’s dictums all these years and paid the price for adhering to them, and for breaking them? The price in both cases was crippling.
But you can’t say this, because you know your comparison won’t be welcome. You can’t tell her, when she’s this angry, that you understand Allah can demand a heavy price from His creation. That you understand she believes she has no choice in the matter. Just like Seema does.
Tahera sees the Quran and rehal on the bookshelf, grabs them, and darts to open her suitcase to put them away.
“Tara—” You touch her arm, grieving for both your daughters. Why should they each struggle separately, when they have each other and could use each other’s support? “Don’t judge your sister so harshly. She doesn’t deserve it.”
“Always thinking only about Seema.” She spins around to strike your hand away. “I’m not doing any judging. But Allah will. She will burn in Jahannam if she doesn’t correct her ways.”
The upright suitcase, latches released, falls open. In Tahera’s haste to prevent its contents from tumbling out, she lets the Quran and rehal slip from her hands. The hardback suitcase halves crash to the floor anyway, followed by the thump of the Quran, and the clatter of the rehal.
You’d stepped back to avoid them landing on your feet, and you stumble. You’re afraid you too will fall, but someone catches you. It’s Fiaz, and behind him Seema and Leigh, pale as ghosts.
“Look what you made me do—” Tahera blazes, at you, at everyone behind you.
32
“Enough, Tahera, enough,” Fiaz says. “We respect your choice—to live according to your strict interpretations of the Quran. It’s not the only way to be a Muslim. You don’t have to insult us.”
Seema has never heard Fiaz this forceful before, or this stern. He stands between her and Tahera. She’s ashamed of
hiding behind him, like she hid behind her mother with Bill yesterday. She hadn’t expected she would feel this sick to her stomach even after it was clear how Tahera would react.
A stranger stands before her, a stranger in her stark attire and implacable face, with the Quran in one hand, silhouetted against the light from the floor lamp. She’s unrecognizable as the sister of her youth, or even the sister from just days ago—not the girl in twin plaits who’d looked up to her, nor the woman who’d cried in her lap after braiding her hair. And not even the sister from just that morning, the one who’d reassured her that she’d be there with her for the delivery.
“Seema can speak for herself,” this stranger says to Fiaz. “What you do is no concern of mine.”
“What your sister does is no concern of yours either,” Fiaz says.
Their mother cringes at Fiaz’s tone. “Son, please—” Nafeesa restrains him with a hand on his arm. “Tahera, let it go.”
“Son!” the stranger sneers. “Your son and daughter are birds of the same feather. You must be proud of who they are.”
Even this Tahera, the one with the dark flint inside her, seems to have some power over Seema: Leigh squeezes Seema’s hand, but Seema instinctively withdraws it.
What does my mother continue to want from this sister?
Now that she is on the verge of being deprived of it, my mother can admit it to herself: she wants what that day spent with Tahera’s children promised.
“Will you come visit us?” Amina asked, and even as my mother sought a lie to let down the child, she grasped at the prospect of a permanent mooring, which has eluded her since her exile, where she could access again and again the unadulterated happiness of that day, reminiscent of her childhood where she didn’t have to fight the world for it. Even her happiness with Leigh doesn’t compare, accompanied as it is with the fear that it isn’t meant to last.
