The World We Found (22 page)

But the next second, the panic hit. She felt as if she were in an underwater cave, drowning, crying for help but unable to make her voice heard. Her face broke out in sweat brought on by the unimaginable heat under the hood and a heart-pounding fear that was existential. It felt like death—a slipping away, a disappearance, an obliteration—except that instead of being in bed surrounded by weeping relatives, she was standing in the street under a noonday sun surrounded by thousands of strangers. She felt a screaming begin in her ears, a deafening screech, as if there were an airplane stuck inside the burkha with her.

“I can’t,” she said to Iqbal, “I’m sorry, I can’t.” But he was looking straight ahead, a peculiar smile on his face, and she realized that she had to speak louder to be heard from under this polyester coffin that she was wearing. The fact of being unheard simply added to the feeling of death, of not existing, and her panic must’ve registered in the force with which she squeezed his hand because he turned to her and said, “What?”

“Home,” she gasped, and when she saw him cock his head in incomprehension she said, more loudly, “I want to go home. I’m sick.”

They turned around immediately and ten minutes later she was lying on their bed, the ceiling fan turned on high, a glass of water by her side. She had torn off the hood as soon as they’d entered the house and Iqbal had helped her remove the rest of the garment. When she could finally speak, she turned to him and said, “That was horrible. I felt like I was drowning.” He nodded gravely, not responding.

Three days later he came home from work and suggested they go to the seaside. She readily agreed, but when she came into the living room wearing her regular pants and blouse, he raised an eyebrow. “Where’s your niqab?”

She stared at him, and as he met her gaze a lump formed in her throat. “After what happened to me, you still want me to . . . ?” Her voice trailed off, disappointment and disbelief mixing together.

He smiled his new smile—the patient, serene, paternal smile that he often cast her way these days. “That was your first time, Zoha. Of course it was hard. Remember the first time you wore a sari? You must’ve tripped a few times, na? So we just have to practice.”

“We? We have to practice?” She rushed into the bedroom, bundled up the dreaded object, came back to where he was sitting on the sofa and threw it at him. “Here. You wear it. You practice.”

He shook his head sadly. “You are so childish.” He rose from the sofa. “Fine. If I can’t get my wife to go to the seaside with me I’ll go alone.” He got to the front door and then turned around. “Have you seen how the brothers in this neighborhood look at you, with lust in their eyes? Don’t you care about—”

“Then they’re the ones who should wear the burkha,” she interrupted fiercely. “On their dicks.”

His face flushed with anger. “I will not have you talk like this in my house. You have a filthy mouth, Zoha.” She watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed a few times as he struggled to control his temper, and then he spun around and pushed open the front door.

That was fifteen years ago, Nishta now thought with wonder as she deftly wound her way around the marketplace. She stopped for a moment to set down the plastic bag and pushed up the sleeve to read her watch: 9:58 a.m. She had two minutes to reach Yasmina, the young vegetable vendor who sold her wares on the east side of the market. Habit made her turn around and glance up at the fifth floor of her apartment building. Almost immediately her mother-in-law, sitting on the balcony as she did every day of her life, waved to her. Nishta marveled at the fact that even at this distance, Ammi could spot her among all the other clad women. The old woman knew the comings and goings of everyone below her and Nishta felt her hawk eyes on her as she picked up the bag again and moved farther away. Another few steps and she would be out of Ammi’s range. She made a sharp turn onto the main road, dodging the crowds and huffing a bit as she hurried. She listened with distaste to her breathing, amplified under the dark shroud she was wearing. You need to lose at least ten kilos, she chided herself. She knew she was eating too much, eating carelessly, out of boredom. And who could exercise while wearing a sack?

Maybe in America she could . . . But she couldn’t complete the thought because she had found Yasmina’s stall. The vendor was bickering with an old man over the price of two cabbages, and Nishta waited impatiently for them to get done. She resisted the temptation to offer the few coins that were standing between the customer and his purchase. She must do nothing that would draw attention to herself. For years she had railed against the anonymity that the burkha imposed on her. Now she would make it work in her favor.

She checked her watch again, saw that it was ten o’clock, and just then Yasmina’s mobile phone rang. Yasmina picked it up and answered, looking up at Nishta and smiling with her eyes. And then, as arranged by Mumtaz two days ago, she handed the phone to Nishta.

It took her a moment to maneuver the phone under the hood of the hijab. In that moment, Nishta died a million deaths. Please don’t let them hang up, she prayed. “Hello?” she said finally.

“Nishta?” It was Kavita’s voice, crisp and clear. “How are you, darling?”

“I’m fine. Fine.” She struggled to control the shaking of her hands. “But I shouldn’t talk for long.”

“Understood. Okay, listen. The appointment is for eleven on Friday. We don’t really have a choice on dates. So, I hope it will work for you?”

She had no idea if it would. Or how she would get out of the house. But she nodded. “Yes. It’s okay.”

“Great. Let’s meet at ten-thirty. You know where to come? Tirupathi Apartments. Can you remember that? It’s across from Mahalaxmi temple. You have to check in there, and then they’ll take you by bus to the embassy.”

“Yes. Okay.” The shaking had spread through her whole body. Was she sick, she wondered? She forced herself to concentrate on the conversation. “Kavita. One other thing. Can you phone Mumtaz? Tell her the date and time and ask if she can pick me up. I’ll tell—I’ll say we’re going shopping.”

“I can do that.” Kavita’s voice sounded so calm and competent, so close, Nishta thought she would cry. “How will she confirm with you, though?”

She thought quickly. “Call her now. And call me back at this number. Can you?”

“Five minutes,” Kavita said and then there was silence.

“T
hank you,” Nishta said after she handed the phone back to Yasmina a second time. She dug into her purse and took out a five-rupee note.

“No need, miss,” Yasmina said. “The other lady already paid.”

Nishta smiled. Mumtaz must’ve paid Yasmina a handsome amount for the use of her phone for her to refuse a tip. “My phone is still in the repair shop,” she said. “May need to trouble you again.”

Yasmina appeared to reconsider. “Your wish,” she said, accepting the note. “Just to make you happy.”

Oh, you’ve made me happy all right, Nishta thought as she walked away. She marveled at how quickly things had changed because of Mumtaz’s fortuitous visit. Thank God for Iqbal’s slap, she thought. If Mumtaz had not noticed the swelling, they would have never discussed her marriage. And Mumtaz might not have been so willing to help. Even now, it made Nishta a little suspicious that her sister-in-law would so readily align herself with her, and against her own brother. It all seemed too easy—Mumtaz’s sudden appearance, her willingness to believe her story, her insistence on her visiting Armaiti, her pledge to help even if it meant deceiving her brother. None of it made sense.

She shook her head. She had stayed up late last night watching
The Bourne Identity
, and that’s why she was like this today, suspicious of everything, even of Mumtaz, who had been a little sister to her ever since they first met. And she, who had always believed in women helping each other, who had read
Sisterhood Is Powerful
when she was sixteen, who, in Kavita, Armaiti, and Laleh had known the true bonds of sisterhood, she should know better than to doubt Mumtaz’s sincerity.

As she walked, Nishta heard an unfamiliar sound, and for a second she thought it was an insect trapped under the hood of her burkha. And then she recognized it. She was humming.

Chapter 19

F
lorida in July was not Armaiti’s idea of a good time, but Richard had asked her to go with him, and, except for that one time when he’d begged her not to divorce him, she had never been able to refuse him anything. So here they were, the three of them, at the vacation home of one of Richard’s clients, a seven-bedroom villa on the beach in Ponte Vedra. And although it had been a short flight and they had flown in on the client’s private plane, Armaiti was stunned by how exhausted and drained she felt.

They had just finished a tour of the house, Armaiti doing her best to hide her shudders at the gaudy furnishings, when Richard turned a critical eye upon her. “You look awful,” he said. “Why don’t we order in tonight? And maybe you can take a short nap until the food arrives?”

A wave of irritation rose in her, unbeckoned. “Thanks,” she said. “You have such a wonderful way with words.”

To her chagrin, Richard laughed. And slapped her playfully on her rump. “Go take a nap,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”

She was about to argue when she saw that Diane was nodding her head in agreement, and all the fight went out of her. Besides, the thought of shutting her eyes for a few minutes suddenly felt welcome.

But once she slipped under the top sheet and stretched out on the soft bed, she became even more aware of how deeply, inconceivably tired she truly was. The realization made her heart pound. It was a new kind of fatigue, this. Not the wet-noodle fatigue she would feel after swimming nine laps in the pool. Not the tiredness she used to feel in grad school after pulling an all-nighter, or the limp, hungover feeling after returning home from a party at four in the morning. Not even the exhaustion she’d felt when Diane was young and she would collapse in bed at the end of the day and fall asleep before Richard could turn off his night light. There had been something life-affirming and joyous about that kind of tiredness. What she felt now was different—a darkness shading the edges of her fatigue, a feeling that was almost pain, not the muscle-burning fatigue of yore but something that seeped from her very bones. Despite the air conditioning in the room, a film of perspiration formed on Armaiti’s face. She knew that the two people she loved most in the world were in the next room, only a yell away, that they would burst in at the slightest cry for help. But still, she felt irreducibly alone. For the first time since the diagnosis, she had an intimation of what death would be like. She would die alone. And not in twenty or thirty years, either. She would die alone, and soon. Even if Richard and Diane were by her bedside, as they undoubtedly would be, she would die alone. She felt dizzy with panic at the thought and kicked off the top sheet, not wanting to be by herself for another second. But it required energy to leap out of bed, to drive her toes into her slippers, and hurry out of the room and rejoin the living. And Armaiti found that she didn’t have it in her. A sob expanded like a balloon in the back of her throat.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to start the radiation. Richard and Diane had been right all along—she had been a stupid, stubborn fool for refusing treatment. No wonder her daughter sometimes looked at her like she was some kind of a monster. Because only monsters chose death. Giving in to death without a fight was unnatural, irresponsible, an abdication of sorts. The desire to live was cross-stitched into every living thing. Why had she thought she was any different? Every organism on earth, every bug and plant, scuttled, strained, grew, or flew toward life. Maybe that was what the soul that dear Mamma used to talk about really was—that hollow cup of fire, that straining toward the sun, that instinct that was buried deep inside every breathing thing. How clear this seemed to her right now, in this silent room.

Inviting Laleh and the others to join her had been another mistake, Armaiti thought. What the hell were they coming all this distance for? To see her corpse? Because that’s what her body felt like, heavy, weighed down with sandbags. Planning for their visit had been a great diversion, but it had also prevented her from taking her daughter’s entreaties seriously. How easily she had pivoted from the graveness of her diagnosis to the excitement about their coming. As if she were planning a regular college reunion, for God’s sake. When the truth was, she could barely lift her head from the pillow.

“I can’t. I can’t lift my head from the pillow,” she heard herself say groggily when Richard shook her awake a half hour later.

“Sorry. You can sleep again after you eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten all day. Come on, now.”

“First you force me to sleep. Then you force me to wake up,” she grumbled, even as she rolled out of bed.

“Sorry,” he said again.

She smiled thinly. “I’ll be there in a sec. Let me tidy up a bit.”

In the bathroom, she studied herself in a mirror whose edges were studded with seashells. How thrilled Richard and Diane would be if she announced that she would start the radiation as soon as they returned, that she had come to her senses, that they had been right all along. But could she give them this? “Mummy,” Armaiti whispered. “Help me. What should I do?” As if in response, she saw her mother’s gaunt, haggard face as she lay dying. Her mother, Jerbanu, a timid, diffident woman, had always done the right thing, had always played by the rules, had treated her doctors as if they were gods and their advice as if it were gospel, and still she had died a slow, miserable death. This is what you didn’t factor in earlier, Armaiti told herself, when you were thinking of immortal souls and unnatural behavior. The fact that the math doesn’t add up, that the odds are awful, regardless. If only it were a choice between living and dying. If only. But it isn’t. It’s between dying on your own terms and dying on someone else’s.