Tanya Tania (26 page)

I hate watching her sleep with whatever my parents gave her. She looks dead. But I'm even more scared of what will happen when she wakes up.

God please take care of Nusrat God please take care of Nusrat. Tanya you pray too. You pray Muslim prayers. Who knows who is listening. Tell Chhoti Bibi too.

Love,

Tania

December 9, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

I am writing this letter to you so that you know everything.

Nusrat left. We woke up in the morning and she wasn't there, the shorts and t-shirt she had borrowed from me were folded neatly on the mattress on my floor. Her school uniform is gone.

My parents have called the police and given them a description but there are so many missing people right now. Missing women missing men missing children. I don't think the police are even going to look even though my mom took the phone from my dad and said a lot of stuff about who she knows and how much influence she has.

The police are not going to do anything.

I haven't told my parents this but Nusrat left a note in my wallet. It says:

Dear Tania,

I have taken five hundred rupees. I'm sorry I thought we were best friends. I can see now that you were just being kind. I will always love you. Always have. Always will.

Yours always, Nusrat.

I don't understand. What is she talking about? We are best friends. Why does it sound like a farewell letter? Is she trying to break up with me? Why does everyone keep breaking up with me?

It is the middle of the afternoon and my mother is taking a nap. My father has fallen asleep in front of the TV. The news is on.

Tanya, I am going to go look for Nusrat. I have to.

I don't know whether you knew this was going to happen and if that is why your last letter was like a farewell letter. I mean it would be damn weird if you knew because no one knew the riots were going to happen although many people on TV are saying the government knew but that doesn't make sense because what government would want their richest city to burn like this day after day?

I can't not go Tanya. The smoke from the window is now from all directions and even if I go to the other window and look at the sea, I can't forget, not even for a minute.

So I have to go.

I hope you understand. I hope you're okay. I will call you when I come back.

Love,

Tania

12

May 29, 1996

Columbia, MA

Dear Tania,

Graduation was yesterday. It went well. I got a prize established by an old, dead Indian alumnus for the student from South Asia with the highest GPA. You know, if my father hadn't changed my passport from American to Pakistani so many years ago, I wouldn't have been able to get the award. I graduated summa cum laude. Less than 5% of a class of 1300.

I'm graduating from college at the top of my class and I have a job at the world's biggest investment banking firm with a salary I cannot even imagine being able to spend. I have friends. Real friends. They know me and have stayed friends. Actually we've grown closer since freshman year. Some of them are moving to the city with me. I've had two boyfriends in the last four years and several flings. I still haven't enjoyed sex but I plan to. I've been going to a psychiatrist for four years and each year they held the payment of my scholarship until she certified that I am not a suicide risk.

I have written you thirteen letters. This is my last letter to you.

You must know by now everything that happened. I know you know. But somehow, since this is the last letter, I want to say it to you, face to face, it was me. Of course it was me. I wrote Nusrat that letter. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I know I have no excuse. And you know I'm sorry. I know you know. I also know it's not enough. I know it will never, ever be enough. Nothing will.

In my last letter to you from Karachi, I had said that you couldn't understand. You didn't understand, Tania, that part was true. You with your volatile, passionate family, your mother who stood up to your bully of a boyfriend, your father who was soft and sweet. And Nusrat with you by the sea, her hand in yours. Always there.

But what I have learnt is that maybe you could have learned to understand. Maybe I was in no position to explain but just because you didn't understand didn't mean you couldn't understand. I've realized that. Look at me. I am not even from Bombay, I wasn't there in December 1992 and yet, it did happen to me. Because of you, it happened to me. Maybe you would have understood, then, how completely alone in the world I felt in those terrible days when my parents were splitting up and Navi couldn't come home and no one had even thought to ask what would happen to me. No one asked, Tania. Not even my mother. I never came first with anyone. But in those terrible days, I became invisible.

I don't know why I never said anything. No amount of therapy will ever explain to me why I never asked my mother when she decided to go to America, what about me? Will you leave me behind if I don't get a scholarship to a college in America? I never asked her that. I also never asked my father about a fixed deposit I found in his office with a note tacked on it that said ‘Navi college fees'. I never asked him, where's Tanya's? Where IS Tanya? I never asked. I have always been mute with my family.

I've bought the tickets for my mother and me to go to India this summer. Right before I start work. I'm going to go on my way to Pakistan. Yes, that's right. I'm going to go back to Pakistan for the first time since I left. My father asked me to come.

Yes, imagine that.

He was here for graduation. I'm sure Navi forced him to come. He looked so much older, so much thinner, he reminded me instantly of my mother. He looked ill at ease and kept complaining about America. The weather is too cold, the people are too fat, the food is too bland. I think the only time he was silent was when I took them to our library. I should say one of our libraries because Columbia has several. But I took him to the one that I use, the one I study at, the one I've worked at throughout my four years here. My father sat down suddenly on a bench and was silent. I sat down next to him and said nothing.

‘You went to college here,' he said. I nodded.

‘I had forgotten that it is like this over here. In America.'

He sounded sorrowful.

‘You will never come back home.'

I wanted to ask him if he wanted me to come back to Pakistan. I said nothing. It was the first time in many years that I had sat with my father at all.

He talked about his life in Karachi. The hospital which was now functional in two wings. He had started a clinic in a slum.

‘Chhoti Bibi started me on it.'

Chhoti Bibi now runs my father's house. I guess she made her dream come true.

Then he said it had been four years since I had come back to Pakistan. That it was time I came home. I wanted to tell him that it wasn't home for me anymore, hadn't been since he had let me go without a word. But I am not you. I am still not you.

I will never be you. Did you even realize how much I had wanted to? And I still can't fully fathom why. We had no dream in common, no ambition in common and no doubt, we still would not. You were as insecure as I had been and with as few real relationships. Except for your mother. And father. And Nusrat.

Tania, I want you to know that I didn't get your last few letters until much, much afterwards. I didn't know what was going to happen. How would I know? Do you know when the Karachi newspapers started covering the Bombay riots? Only from December 6. And it was all about Babri Masjid. All about Ram Janmbhoomi. All about Ayodhya. I couldn't have known that what was happening in Ayodhya was going to come to Bombay. I couldn't have known, Tania. And I never got those last letters from you before the riots. I didn't know it was coming. I had no way of knowing.

It is six in the evening, going on seven and there is still light outside, it is as if it's the middle of the day. That's the wonder of this country. One month ago, this bench had snow in it and the tree overhead had no leaves. And now it is warm and the leaves are bursting over each other in baby newness, the lightest of greens, poking everywhere, wildly, ferociously and in complete abandon. I am sitting here writing this to you, the buildings stretching out into the distance, still fulfilling a promise they made me the first time I came here as a freshman. To be here, to always be here.

I must go. A friend is driving me to my new apartment in Battery Park City. I am going to go spend the first night in my brand new apartment. In a sleeping bag but oh the bathroom has marble tiles and the doorman downstairs wears white gloves.

There's my friend again. He has called my name twice now. Tanya. Tania.

I will never stop being sorry. But I am going to live my life now like I know you're living yours. Your mother sent a picture to my mother. The four of you on a beach somewhere with Sammy's Nigerian girlfriend. You are impossibly beautiful. You're looking straight into the camera, straight at me. I cut out the picture and have it with me. I used to look at it every day before going to sleep. I'd like to stop doing that now.

I hope you will always be brave and always call bullshit on everything that doesn't make sense to you. If there is one gift I can give you it is to say that if it gets too big and too painful, you can let it go. You can always let it go because I will never, ever set it down. It is like another heart that I carry, one that never beats but is there next to mine. I will carry it with me till the day I die.

I hope you forgive me one day. But even if you don't, I will always carry it with me. I hope that knowing that, knowing the truth of it, knowing that it happened to both of us, you can set it down sometimes, when it gets too heavy, when it gets too hard. I hope knowing that I will always carry it will bring you just a little bit of peace.

Khuda Hafiz,

Tanya

November 21, 1992

Karachi

Dear Nusrat,

It is strange to write to you as we have never spoken nor written to each other before. However, woman to woman, I owe you this.

Tania just called me. We talked for a long time. Much of what we talked about has nothing to do with you or things that you will understand. But we did spend a little time talking about you and that is why I am now writing to you.

Before I go into the point of this letter, let me tell you why I'm writing it at all. The truth is, Nusrat, I've always felt an affinity with you. Always felt that in a different world, we could have been friends. Real friends, not play-acting in a childish fantasy as you have been with Tania. Real friends. Equal friends.

I really admire your grit, Nusrat. Your tenacity, your obvious intelligence and ambition. I'd like to think we have these qualities in common. Although, of course, I fully recognise that given the adversity you face and will always face, your achievements far outstrip mine, as Tania had once pointed out. She has a lot of admiration for you. You should believe that because it is true.

You seem to me to have a lot of dignity. A lot of self-esteem. I do too. I thought about it for a long time and I think if I had been you, I would have wanted to know.

Nusrat, Tania doesn't think of you the way you think of her. She is fond of you, don't get me wrong. But she is worried that you think more of your friendship than she does. That you have perhaps
misinterpreted
her kindness to you. That time when her mother was angry about her not applying to American colleges and you threw yourself at her. That was embarrassing for her, Nusrat. She feels uncomfortable when you hug her. She doesn't know how to tell you. She's too soft-hearted. You know Tania.

She said she wants you to make more friends of your own so she can spend time with her friends. She has to make new friends now that she's going to college. Friends she can go to real places with. Public places.