by Nawaaz Ahmed
As for me: What real chance did I have? My body has always known what awaits it: acids have been building up in my bloodstream, and my brain has for some time been slowly strangled of oxygen. Detached from my body, my mind has all along been hovering—fluttering, skittering, skipping—suspended like a trill clinging to the air, straining to keep afloat, to keep away the final dying cadence.
But what a glorious song, Grandmother! Death sings in ways Birth cannot. It takes a lifetime to perfect that purity of tone, the vibrato of lament.
It has taken me all of three minutes.
Don’t pity me, Grandmother: I may not have experienced anything real but the inside of my mother’s womb, but I still have the song Death sings through me.
In that respect, I’m perhaps no less fortunate than others with more life: for aren’t so many of their songs merely wishful or fanciful, lined with desire and regret and envy, about what might have been but never was—or merely bitter and dissatisfied, lined with anger and remorse and guilt, of what was but never should have been?
I share this song with you, Grandmother, so it might bring you some comfort. I have mere moments to live. You will soon learn of our fates—my mother’s and mine—without needing to hear the words spoken by the doctor, for the expression on my not-to-be father’s face will convey everything you need to know.
Grandmother, somewhere in this building your other daughter, Tahera, my other not-to-be mother, is searching for us. She is lost: the maze of corridors that separate us—identical and blandly monotonous—have confused her. She asks for directions but is too impatient, too agitated, to heed them. Now, in the desperate hope that she’ll somehow be led to us, she’s hurrying through corridors picked at random, clutching to herself her jilbab, which trails her raggedly—the sleeve and skirt were caught in the car door as she made haste to exit the cab, the fabric ripping when she yanked to extricate them.
Grandmother, you will be resting your head against a wall, your gray hair against the white tile, your gray face in the shadows, when she stumbles on you. Bill will be seated by you, holding the shell of me in his arms, the two of you inches and miles apart. Tahera will catch one sight of you and freeze, transfixed.
Will the three of you grieve together, Grandmother, help each other grieve? So much depends on the answer.
There’s what’s left of your life, and Urdu ghazals and Faiz’s poetry and Noor Jehan’s voice. There’s Bill’s and Tahera’s lives, the lives of their loves, both current and future. There’s the lives of my now not-to-be siblings, both born and as yet unborn.
When you sense Bill shudder, will you let your hand stroke his hair like you’ve stroked your daughters’ hair so many times before? When Tahera unfixes herself, will you let yourself rise to take her cloaked and ragged form in your arms, as you’ve done so many times in her childhood? Don’t you see, Grandmother? It’s that past Tahera, too, who runs toward you with her arms open.
Will you forgive, Grandmother, and let yourself be forgiven? Console and be consoled?
Yes, there could be a hereafter. Perhaps we’ll all be resurrected, all our loves and our loved ones, our bones put together, then covered in flesh and skin. Maybe breath will then move our bodies, and maybe breath will then move us. And perhaps we’ll have forever for what may be granted us: kind words, a touch, maybe even a kiss, a caress. Perhaps we’ll be held, or be able to hold.
But in this cold clinical room there’s only the three of you.
18
The light dazzles my eyes, yet I catch a glint of the blade approaching.
Father, was I born for this end?
19
Come with me, quickly. There isn’t much time left, and I want to show you something beautiful: here by the entrance to the hospital, where the fog swirls fiercely, hiding the city and its comforting lights from us, hiding the universe from us.
Wait here, on this ridge overlooking the concealed city, till a car comes by, as one surely will very soon, its headlights aimed directly at us as it swings into the parking lot. No, we won’t be blinded by the lights, we’ll face the other direction, toward the open hillside.
Here comes a car now—don’t be scared, don’t turn around—and here is the fog rising off the hillside in front of us, and here are the headlights illuminating the fog for us.
Look! Strangers approaching us through the glowing fog, from the direction of the hidden city, treading through the air, floating over the hillside! And can you see? Shimmering around them: a perfect halo! And what’s that circumscribed within the halo? They’re trailing folded wings behind them!
How the figures loom larger and larger as they approach us, and then how suddenly—when it appears as though they are reaching out to greet us—they take wing and disappear!
No, they’re not angels descended from some heaven, nor visions from some dream world. These radiant fugitives are created by us: they’re merely our shadows cast on the fog, their wings bestowed by these rails that are protecting us from falling off this ledge.
And the glorious halo is a fogbow—like a rainbow, only with the colors tightly braided—produced by the light from the headlights reflecting off the inner surfaces of the millions of tiny droplets of water suspended in the air in front of us, obscuring the hillside, the city, the sky. So tiny that the droplets of water interact with the very particles of light.
But we are minuscule ourselves compared to the universe, and we are innumerous as well, and there is indeed light cast upon us, so perhaps we too can—
Acknowledgments
When I began this novel, I knew that the poetry of John Keats and the words of the Quran would be integral to the development of Ishraaq’s voice. Aside from the explicitly attributed quotes, I’ve allowed myself the license of incorporating lines and phrases inspired by and adapted from these sources, as signs of Ishraaq’s journey.
Imam Zia’s sermon (Part Three, Section 19) is inspired by Abul A’la Maududi’s Towards Understanding Islam. The ideas presented there are Maududi’s, from the opening pages of his masterful treatise on the nature and meaning of Islam, which I read in a translation from the Urdu by Khurram Murad.
The John Keats speech (Part Three, Section 20) is comprised almost entirely of Keats’s own words, a mash-up of various poems and letters. The main ideas are from a letter to his brother and sister-in-law, dated April 21, 1819. Section 18 (Part Three) makes heavy use of his sonnet “To Sleep,” while Section 21 (Part Three) adapts lines from “Endymion,” and Section 35 (Part Three) repurposes “This Living Hand.” Elsewhere, I’ve drawn on lines from “A Song About Myself,” “Endymion,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “To Autumn,” “After Dark Vapors,” “Why Did I Laugh Tonight?,” “To J. H. Reynolds,” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” etc.
For the quotes from the Quran included in the novel, I’ve consulted the Yusuf Ali translation, along with that wonderful online resource Quran.com, which makes available several other translations, as well as the meanings of individual Arabic words. Section 34 (Part Three) is adapted from the surah Al-Kafiroon.
I’ve also used dialogues and lyrics from the movie Mughal-E-Azam; President Obama’s public speeches, including excerpts from the Cairo speech (Coda, Section 12); lines from William Wordsworth’s “Solitary Reaper” and “My Heart Leaps Up”; Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s “Muhjse Pehli Si Muhabbat”; and Momin Khan Momin’s “Wo Jo Hum Mein Tum Mein Qaraar Tha.”
I owe a debt of gratitude to my agent, Anjali Singh, and my editor, Dan Smetanka. I couldn’t have asked for better guides and champions. Many thanks, too, to all the teams at Counterpoint Press for their amazing work in bringing this book to life. I started the novel more than ten years ago, at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, University of Michigan; the faculty and my cohort there are still among the first I turn to for counsel and support. I’m also grateful to the residencies—MacDowell, VCCA, Yaddo, Djerassi—and the organizations—Kundiman, Lambda Literary—that have provided much-needed encour
agement and community along the way.
Many friends have read various drafts and given valuable feedback. Many more have sustained me with their companionship. My family has always cheered me on; my partner has never failed to cheer me up. To you all, my abounding love. This book wouldn’t have been possible without you.
NAWAAZ AHMED was born in Tamil Nadu, India. Before turning to writing, he was a computer scientist, researching search algorithms for Yahoo. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and is the winner of several Hopwood Awards. He is the recipient of residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Djerassi, and VCCA. He’s also a Kundiman and Lambda Literary Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn. Find out more at nawaazahmed.com.
Radiant Fugitives
Copyright © 2021 by Nawaaz Ahmed
First hardcover edition: 2021
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ahmed, Nawaaz, author.
Title: Radiant fugitives : a novel / Nawaaz Ahmed.
Description: First hardcover edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020048936 | ISBN 9781640094048 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781640094055 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: East Indians—United States—Fiction. | Muslim families—Fiction. | Estranged families—Fiction. | Newborn infants—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3601.H577 R33 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048936
Jacket design by Jaya Miceli
Book design by Jordan Koluch
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