The Writing on My Forehead (12 page)

He said, “From what I could figure, looking through the dates, Gulshan was already dead by the time Dada got this. It was meningitis—a secondary infection from the measles.” Mohsin put the telegram away, as carefully as he had the first. He paused for a moment, noting the moisture collecting in my eyes. Then he turned the pages again, putting the journal down on the table in front of us. “Um. Six or seven—maybe eight years—after Fauzia died, Dada married again. Her name was Shaheena. He had one son with her. My dad. She died of typhoid a few months after he was born. Dada was there for her death. He describes it in the journal. ‘I arrived home last week after a month’s absence to find Shaheena lying motionless, eyes half-open, weak with fever. I knew the truth immediately, that Shaheena was on her deathbed, recognizing the symptoms too well, those insidious signs, the final stages of typhoid. She was a wonderful wife, a partner, supportive of all of my efforts for the poor. Daily, she made the trip to the
jhugee
s down the road, carrying baskets of food and clothes to distribute to those in desperate need. She befriended the humble occupants of those hovels, laying aside the class hierarchies that divided them from her. It was what killed her, in the end. As a guest in the tin-roofed, straw and mud huts she visited, she never refused the refreshments they offered her, loath to give offense. Refreshments made of water, the disease-ridden, infested water that comes with poverty. I mourn her loss, remembering her cheerful good-byes, so frequent as the nature of my work took me away from her so often. My work—seeking to eradicate the conditions that killed Shaheena, the poverty, the class divide, the horrible discrimination of caste. Her death strengthens my determination, because too many suffer the same.’

“Dawood Chacha must have been twenty-one—older than his stepmother was. Then, only a few weeks after my dad’s mum passed away, Dada’s mother sent a marriage proposal on his behalf to Shaheena’s family. She decided that this time, the baby—Ahmed—would have a mother. Not like Gulshan. So, she arranged her son’s marriage to his sister-in-law. Amna. Your grandmother. My dad’s aunt.”

“That’s—that must have been weird.”

Mohsin tilted his head. “Not really. It made sense. Your grandmother, Amna—Dadi—well, she was getting on a bit in years. In her mid-twenties already. What would have been considered an old maid. And Dada’s mum probably figured it was the best thing for everyone.”

“Have—has your dad ever talked about it? About being raised by a stepmother? Who was also his aunt?”

“Never. I never even knew until I read Dada’s journal. So it must have all worked out for the best.”

“I guess.” I shrugged off my doubt and fixed my eyes back on Mohsin, expectantly.

“Right. Well—” Mohsin’s voice trailed off into a moment of silence. And then became suddenly certain again as he resumed his narrative on a different note, less personal than the trajectory we’d followed until now. “The day did finally come—the day Dada and Gandhi and the whole Independence movement had been struggling for—for so many years. But the way it happened took them all by surprise. The way the negotiations ended, no one was prepared really, not least the British themselves. They withdrew in a pretty nasty kind of way—like parents who’ve given in to a tantrum. They clicked their tongues, washed their hands of the whole Subcontinent, and left it all cut up in pieces, giving it up in a way that was designed for failure, handing power over in bits. And the Indians responded in kind, acting like children, fighting furiously over those bits and pieces.

“Gandhi—the Great Soul of India’s independence—greeted the day with fasting and prayers, mourning all the riots and bloodshed, begging the people to stop. It wasn’t a time for celebration. India was divided—in heart, in mind, in soul, and in blood. That’s not what all those great men had worked for. Muslims in the middle, like Hindus and Sikhs in the west and east, they all had decisions to make. For Dada, there was never a question.”

Mohsin picked up the journal, rustled forward through the pages, and then set it back down on the table, between us, his finger tracing the words he then read aloud: “‘It is wrong, horribly wrong, to support the creation of a nation founded on the religious identity of its majority. My brother, who has decided to leave India, to migrate to Pakistan with my mother, his wife, and his children, believes this is a time to be pragmatic. That what is right and wrong is less important than what is safe and practical. To no avail, I have tried to persuade him that what is right and wrong is always of paramount importance. To stray from principle in the interest of expedience is the road to disaster. The struggle to know what is right, to condemn what is wrong, to fight for the former and against the latter, has been the whole purpose of my life. For me, there is no point in being safe if one is wrong. This nation is founded on a sense of unity and brotherhood that transcends ethnic and religious affiliation. His, the nation he chooses, has sealed the pact of discrimination and separatism in a way that will set precedents for the future that I tremble to contemplate. He is afraid for his children, that in India they may become an oppressed minority. Whereas I would wish, a thousand times more, that my children wear the yoke of oppression, striving bravely against it, than to join the ranks of the oppressors. A thousand times!’” Mohsin’s eyes, when he looked up, were shining. “Isn’t that amazing? To think that
our
grandfather wrote those words? Every time I read them, I—I’m in awe. The bloody irony of it! Of what he wrote and how things ended up with his sons! You—you see what I mean, don’t you, Saira?”

“No—they—? What do you mean?”

“I mean my dad. And yours. They did just the opposite of what Dada wished for, didn’t they? They turned their backs on their country, the country he helped to liberate—both of them chasing after the oppressors—the Empire—that Dada worked to get out from under for so long. Instead of sticking around and doing what needed to be done. Like their brother did.”

I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t, in anticipation of the answer I knew was coming to my next question. “What happened to Dawood Chacha?”

“He—he became a journalist.”

I took a deep breath and held it.

Mohsin nodded. “He died—was killed. Murdered by an angry mob while reporting on the riots in Calcutta in 1947. My dad was eight then, yours only three.”

I wanted to say something, opened my mouth to begin, but no words came.

Mohsin cleared his throat and read again from our grandfather’s journal: “‘Dawood’s death was the sharpest blow in a series of them. Amna, who was more of a sister to him than a mother, wept bitterly when we were given the news. Ahmed and Nadeem, both of them so young, met their first conscious experience with death bravely as I myself have learned to do over the course of my life. I am mourning, like all of India mourns, for its sons and brothers, daughters and sisters. Yet there is consolation in knowing that Dawood’s life was a worthy one, that the loss of it can be tallied in the column of other sacrifices for the cause of justice. He was an optimist whose hope for the future was ever eternal, a light shining brightly in the darkness of the barbarous violence that rages on throughout our nation. To the children, to Amna, it falls to me to explain that to honour Dawood’s memory and the memory of all those who suffer still, we must fight on, never wavering before the forces of injustice.’ He goes on a bit here. And then, ‘Curiously, when I think of Dawood, alone and beaten in that crowd of degenerated humanity, I think of his sister, my little Gulshan, and their mother.’” Mohsin pulled out a flimsy piece of newsprint. “This is one of a couple of clippings that Dada must have cut out and saved.”

I took it from him. And skimmed through the words without reading them. I can’t even remember the headline, my eyes caught and held by the small letters of the byline. Dawood Qader.

Mohsin spoke on. “Four months later, Dada wrote, ‘I have borne many losses in my lifetime—two children, two wives, so many comrades. Never have I faced a moment so bleak, never have I shuddered with such convulsions of despair. After so many little victories, mixed in outcome, to be sure, it seems that all is lost, that the forces of injustice have finally won.’”

“What was he talking about?”

“Gandhi’s assassination. But Dada followed his own advice. He didn’t waver from his purpose.” Mohsin paused and then licked his finger, using it to turn more pages as he said, “Over the next ten or twelve years, Dada had his finger in all kinds of projects—women’s literacy programs, workers’ rights bills, child labor laws, health clinics, housing development.

“My dad grew up. He went into law. Dada was very proud of him, when he graduated. First class, first. He went to work at a law firm—the senior partner was an old friend of Dada’s. He started out doing research and writing briefs for the senior barristers. And then he tried his first case. From what I gather”—Mohsin was still thumbing through the pages of Dada’s journal—“he didn’t do too well.” There was an unsympathetic note of humor in his voice—one that came at my uncle’s expense. Mohsin stopped turning pages. “Dada wrote, ‘The boy is more like his father than he would care to admit. Ahmed’s courtroom delivery lacks fire. My own lack of oratory skill kept me happily occupied behind the scenes for all of my life, a foot soldier in all of the projects I involved myself with. Yet Ahmed cannot reconcile himself to the lack of glory that such a role might entail. He has taken it to heart and is dejected, despite all of my efforts at consolation.’ Eventually, my dad found his niche. In an area that Dada did not approve of. Tax law. Specifically, loophole-hunting. ‘Ahmed has become a first-class lackey, finding ways to enrich the very robber barons I have worked against all of these years, helping them to hold on to their ill-gotten gains, to increase their excesses, instead of sharing with the sweat and blood that earns it for them.’

“My father became indispensable at the firm, generating huge amounts of money from rich, corrupt clients. They must have fought about it. A lot. Until, finally, my father ran away to England. Where he’d been offered a job at a bank, Saif Bank, owned by one of the robber barons Dada had no respect for. A Pakistani banker.” The corners of Mohsin’s mouth curved up. “My other grandfather. Dada and Dad broke off all communication.” Mohsin bent his head again. “‘With disgust, I wash my hands of the boy. In vain have I reminded him of his duties and obligations. He has been seduced by power and wealth and has turned his back on all that matters.’ Dad married the boss’s daughter—my mum—a year later. There’s a letter here, from my dad. Informing Dada of his engagement, inviting Dada and Dadi to a reception that was to be held in Bombay. The main wedding was in Pakistan.
Your
parents met each other at the reception in Bombay.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“And Dada must have attended, too. Because my dad sent him this really angry letter afterward.” Mohsin had pulled out another piece of paper. “Let me read you a bit.” Mohsin took a second to scan down the page. “This is the line that gets me—‘Given an opportunity to make peace, to let bygones be bygones, you, sir, chose to make a mockery of yourself and our family by turning up at the wedding in rags.’” Mohsin was chuckling as he folded up the letter from his father and put it back into the pages of the journal. “Can you imagine? Showing up in rags?” He shook his head. “God! My dad must have blown a bloody fuse!”

Then the smile faded from Mohsin’s face. “Within a year or two, your mum and dad were married. And they went off to America.”

“My dad came to America to study medicine—to make a better life for himself and my mom—!” I spit the words out, trite as they were, the product of years of public school social studies indoctrination about the strength of a nation built on immigrant stories like my parents’. But I was struck, for the first time, by the implication of what they meant from another perspective, from that of my grandfather and Mohsin.

“They had medical schools in India.”

“But—he wanted to specialize—the opportunities—he—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guess there were no sick people in India? And that’s why he never came back? Like he promised his dad he would?”

“He—? How do you know—?”

“It’s all right here. In this letter Nadeem Chacha wrote to Dada. From America, shortly after your sister was born.” Mohsin pulled a blue airmail envelope out from near the back of the journal. He handed it to me.

I held it, noting my father’s handwriting on the outside, the return address in Los Angeles. After a long pause, I pulled out the tissue-paper letter it contained and read the letter.

September 14, 1969

My dear Papa,

I hope this letter finds you in good health and bright spirits. I apologize for the infrequency of my correspondence and know that you will be wondering at my reasons for writing now.

Shabana and the baby are well. You will have heard of the continuing scandal in Shabana’s family. Her father remains in England. Her mother has shifted to Pakistan permanently. The situation is awkward, to say the very least.

I am nearly finished with my residency, which is progressing well. I have decided to follow up my residency training with more practical experience. I feel that the opportunities here, the chance to work with the very latest techniques and technologies, under the supervision of some of the best doctors in the world, will be invaluable and unavailable back home.

I want to reemphasize my commitment to return to India, to carry on the legacy of service that you have inspired. Employment here will only enhance my ability to do so. In addition, I will be earning a significant salary, when compared to what I will be able to earn back home. Such savings will be especially important for us when Shabana and I return home to establish our household now that we have begun our family.

I know that you might not agree with my plans, but I hope at least that you understand and believe that my motivations are not based solely on monetary consideration. With this in mind, I have accepted an offer of employment, to begin upon graduation, at a highly reputable hospital and in practice with a first-class medical team, which will afford me a wide range of experience and help to maximize the further development of my skills. Shabana and I have set a limit of five years for our time here. I hope you understand this decision. It has not been made lightly.

Shabana sends you her salaams.

Affectionately,
Nadeem