The Writing on My Forehead (13 page)

I looked up at Mohsin, a million stray thoughts rushing through my head. It was the first time I had ever considered my father as a whole person. A person who was born and lived and made choices before there was a me, before he was my father or Ameena’s. I thought about other choices he might have made. About what those other choices might have meant for me and my life.

I shook my head to clear it, remembering Big Nanima’s words:
There’s no if. There is only what is. What was. What will be.
“What about Dadi?”

“She was already dead. Right after your parents were married.”

I nodded, having suspected as much already. “How long after this did Dada die?”

“He died a couple of months after receiving that letter from your dad. Just after Mehnaz and I were born.” Mohsin turned the pages of the journal again. And pointed to the date on the page where he stopped. December 15, 1969. “That’s our birthday. Mine and Mehnaz’s. A few weeks before he died. See what he wrote?” He pushed the journal into my hands for the first time, forcing me to read the passage for myself:

On this day was born my grandson, Mohsin. An auspicious birth, he brought with him a sister. It is on your shoulders, my son, that I rest all of my hopes for the future. Do not fail me in your efforts for what is right and what is just. Bear witness to their opposite, to evil and injustice, which are one and the same. Bear witness so that they may not be committed with impunity. Whatever path your journey takes, do not succumb to the seduction of indifference to suffering, which authorizes evil.

 

I looked up, stunned. I muttered, “Bear witness—bear witness. That’s what you meant. Mohsin—this is—this is awesome.”

“It is a bit, isn’t it?” Mohsin cleared his throat.

“He must have been so lonely at the end. After a whole life of sadness and sacrifice.”

“Yeah. Like something out of a tragic play.”

“I see my son is filling your head with nonsense, Saira.” Mohsin and I both started, hearing the voice intrude on us from behind. We turned, hearts racing, to see Ahmed Chacha standing in the doorway to the room, another glass of ice and amber liquid in hand. His eyes rested on the journal I held for a moment, before he entered the room and walked toward the window, parting the curtains to take a look at the driveway in front. “Mehnaz is not in her room. Where is the car? Where is your sister, Mohsin?” His voice was controlled. But there was a steely note to it that made me pity Mehnaz.

“She met up with some friends. Saira and I came home on the tube.”

Ahmed Chacha was still standing at the window, holding the edge of the curtain. “You let her go?” He used his glass to point at the clock on the mantle. I saw that it was past 1:00
AM
. “Is this any time for a young girl to be out on her own?”

“I’m not her keeper.”

“No.” Ahmed Chacha sneered, waving his arm at the letter and journal in my hands. “No. Not hers. You’re much too busy preserving the past, I see, keeping the memory of long-forgotten nonsense alive. Much more important than your living, breathing sister.” Ahmed Chacha turned to me and shook his head, “You see, Saira, what a contradiction my children are? One is obsessed with ancient history, taunting me with irrelevancies of the past—the other bent on flouting the obligations of her culture and heritage with no regard for her own future.”

“Maybe she’d care more about her future if you gave her something to be proud of from the past.” Mohsin had stood up, as if to back up his verbal challenge with a physical one.

“Something to be proud of? You think that your grandfather is something to be proud of? A man who abandoned his own family, time and again, for some useless crusade of justice? What did he ever accomplish? Nothing! I was only a few months old when my mother died—a horrible, untimely death that he was responsible for. What kind of husband sends his wife into the slums to her own death? That is not what makes a man, Mohsin. A man is someone who provides for his family and protects them. It is easy to talk of ideals in the abstract when you are young. When you have nothing to lose. My father was not in this position. His obligation was to his family.”

Mohsin didn’t say anything. But his silence was no concession. I knew I was witness to an argument that had not just begun.

Ahmed Chacha sighed. He took a sip of his drink and shook his head. “Your fixation with impractical notions of justice is all right now. But eventually you must grow up and become a man.”

“A man like you?”

“Don’t you sneer at me! Don’t you hold up that poor excuse of a father as an example of light to your impressionable young cousin! My father was a fool who chased after an imaginary, utopian world. He lived in his head, with a bunch of ideals for company—useless ideals that feed no one and which make the world dangerous. I swore that I would never be like him—that I would work hard. In the real world. To provide. You have never felt the lack of a single thing in your life, you and Mehnaz, you spoiled brats! Yet you would criminalize these things—making wealth a crime instead of the blessing that it is, like some damned communist!”

“First of all, your premise is wrong. Dada lived in the real world, too. He faced up to it. Instead of shrugging his shoulders, hiding his head away in the sand, grabbing what comfort he could for himself.”

“Faced up to it? He wasted his life!”

“Not the way I see it.”

“Tilting at windmills. You think any of these damned fool ideologues ever actually achieved anything?”

“That’s not the point. It’s the journey they took that mattered. The destination is the same for all of us.”

“None of that mumbo-jumbo abstraction, if you please! You think the British ran away because of a little brown man in a loincloth and his friends? The British left because it was in their interest to leave. That is how the world works. That is how change happens. Self-interest. To work against one’s own interest for some imaginary cause of justice is to be a fool.”

Mohsin shook his head. “You tell yourself that. If it helps you to sleep at night. I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to eat the food I’ve snatched out of the hands of others.”

“Then go hungry, you fool!”

I don’t know where the argument would have turned next. The sound of a car on the drive, the flash of headlights through the crack of the curtains shifted my cousin’s attention—and his father’s. A few seconds later, we heard Mehnaz enter the house. Ahmed Chacha left the room to meet her at the door, and another loud argument began. She stomped up the stairs, her father trailing after her, both of them yelling and screaming back and forth.

Mohsin and I stared at each other for a long moment. I looked down, in surprise, to find Dada’s journal still in my hands.

“You said you found this—the trunk—in the attic?”

He nodded. “Last year. It has loads of other stuff in it—Dada’s—that someone had packed up and shipped over to my dad. He never even bothered to open it.” There was quiet outrage in Mohsin’s voice, and disgust. “There’re pictures in there. Pictures of his first wife. Of my grandmother—my real grandmother. And Dadi. Little Gulshan. And Dawood Chacha. Our dads, too, from when they were kids. And letters. From so many people, some of them famous. In India, you know. Letters from my dad. That one you read from yours. And this diary.”

“Can I see them all?” I asked, standing up—yawning and stretching—my body betrayed again by the adverse effects of jet lag.

Mohsin smiled. “I’ll show you the rest tomorrow. You can take some of the pictures with you, if you like. Until then—” He took the diary back from me, thumbing through it again until he found what he was looking for and said, “Here’s a picture of him. Our grandfather. He must have been in his twenties when that one was taken.”

It was small, the size of a passport picture. And black-and-white, of course. Even so, the resemblance was eerie.

I was quiet for a long moment, studying the picture, before saying, “Mohsin? You know you look just like him?”

“I did notice a resemblance.”

“But then, you
are
just like him, aren’t you? I mean in more ways than looks?”

“You think so? Well, there are some very significant differences. Trust me.” He was laughing, amused at something he didn’t share.

I turned back to face the wall of photographs, looking for and finding Magda. Magda in winter, Magda in the rain. Mohsin had taken pictures of her—as he had that evening—from across the street, from an angle close to the ground, at the same level she sat. The legs of passersby were in some of the shots, in motion, on their way here or there. One shot showed someone stopping to drop some money into her lap. Another showed a child, eye-level with Magda, tugged along by the hand of an adult, dragging his heels as his eyes connected with the old woman who smiled at him shyly.

“I wonder where Magda is right now. How she lives. What her story is.”

“Magda. It’s funny, that,” Mohsin said. “I never knew her name until tonight. Until you talked to her. Most people don’t see her at all—not as a person.”

“I wouldn’t have seen her either. If you hadn’t stopped to take her picture.”

“But that’s all I ever did. She was just an image—something I saw from behind the lens of my camera. Now she has a name. You have a way about you, you know. Cousin Saira. A way of drawing people out. You pay attention.”

“But we still don’t know anything about her. None of the details of her life.”

“We know her name. That’s something.”

I
CAME HOME FROM
that summer in Karachi and London—head swimming with the voices of a reconstructed past, full of a self-importance I couldn’t wait to share—only to find that my family had been busy arranging the future in my absence. Ameena’s future, at any rate.

At the airport, after a quick hug, my mother began, “Your sister is engaged! To a doctor! He’s an Indian boy, finishing up his residency in San Francisco. From a very good family in Bombay. We are so excited! We didn’t want to tell you the good news on the phone. So we decided to wait and surprise you. Isn’t it wonderful? It will be a long engagement, of course. Your sister is still very young. Two years at least—though I suppose it all depends on how long we can keep them apart, eh Ameena? Well, Saira, aren’t you going to congratulate your sister?” Mummy was breathless from excitement. I was breathless from shock, looking from one dearly missed face to another for some sign that my mother had developed a rather disconcerting sense of humor in my absence. There was none.

Ameena wouldn’t meet my eyes. But her fair skin was suffused with a flush of pink that I took to mean only one of two things: she was either embarrassed, or she had a fever. I touched her forehead, when she leaned forward for a hug, and drew the obvious conclusion on finding it cool and dry. My father just grinned, punctuating my mother’s continuing monologue with an occasional nod of pride and pleasure.

“It happened only three weeks ago, just after you left town. Can you imagine? Three weeks ago, when we came to drop you at the airport, we didn’t even know the boy…and now? Now, we have a new son-in-law…a new son. Ameena has a fiancé! Don’t worry, Saira. I know you must be dying to meet him. He is coming tonight, flying in from San Francisco for the weekend. In fact, he comes every weekend that he can and stays with his aunt who lives in Diamond Bar. Though he spends the whole of the weekend at our house. His poor aunt—you know her, Saira, she is Nilofer Auntie, she’s the one who introduced Shuja to us—she complains that she hardly sees him when he comes. Of course, it is not
her
that he is coming to see, is it, Ameena? He’s been waiting for you to come home, Saira, is dying to take Ameena out. But I told him they had to wait for you to come back. So that you could play chaperone. Won’t that be fun? You’ll get to eat with them at all the fancy restaurants he wants to take Ameena to, lucky girl. And movies, too. Though I told him, G-rated movies only. I don’t want him to be getting ideas. Ameena is a very good girl, aren’t you, Ameena? And Shuja will only love you all the more because of it.

“Doesn’t your sister look beautiful, Saira? She’s lost some weight, I think. But it only makes her features sharper, more delicate,
nah
? Of course, there’s a lot of work to do. Shuja’s relatives are gathering here next month, coming from all over the States, for the
mungnee
. Nilofer Auntie is here, of course. She is his father’s sister. He also has a
khala
in Florida, a
chacha
in Chicago, and another one in Houston, isn’t that right, Nadeem?” My father nodded, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. “We decided to wait for them before celebrating the official engagement. And for you, of course! Ameena could not have celebrated her engagement without
you,
Saira. Shuja’s parents have both passed away, both when he was still a young child. The poor boy, all alone in the world. He was raised by one of his uncles. But now he has us, eh?

“So you will get to meet your brother-in-law tonight. Let’s see, what will you call him?
Jeejaji?
Or just Shuja Bhai? We should ask him what he prefers. Oh, Ameena, I am so proud of you. I hope you know what a lucky girl you are.”

We suffered in this way the whole long drive home. My mother, I decided, had morphed into some kind of Indo-Pak version of Mrs. Bennet. Ameena was typically quiet. The shy, blushing-bride routine would come naturally to her, I decided, recalling Jane with some bitterness. So, who was I supposed to be? Lizzy?

More like Jo to Ameena’s Meg, I decided later, during dinner. I disliked Shuja on sight. Resented his intrusion on my homecoming. The conversation was carried by my mother and Shuja, and I couldn’t decide who puckered up more at the mutual butt-kissing that was its main ingredient. My mother had taken pains over the meal, one of her second-rung dinner-party menus—I assumed she had already served Shuja her best dishes in the first few weekends of motherly-in-law joy—served on her best china, in the formal dining room. A far cry from the serve-yourselves-from-the-pots-on-the-stove usual.

Just as my resentment peaked at the realization that no one had even asked about my own adventures in Pakistan and London, Shuja flashed a white-toothed, wolfy smile at me and asked, “So, Saira? How was your trip?”

I swallowed the food in my mouth, along with the hostility that rose up in it, to say, in a clipped and teeth-gritted voice, “Fine.”

“You went for your cousin’s wedding? That must have been fun.”

My mother, not liking the flash in my eyes, interjected smoothly, “Not as much fun, I am sure, as Ameena’s and your wedding will be. Saira was so excited when we told her the good news. She couldn’t wait to meet you, Shuja. Which reminds me—we were trying to decide what Saira should call you? Shuja Bhai or—?”

“Oh, I think just Shuja is fine. Anything else would be too formal. Don’t you think so, Saira?”

I gulped, again. And nodded.

Shuja put his linen napkin down beside his plate and pushed himself slightly away from the table as he said, “That was delicious. As usual. Mummy.”

My eyes rounded. And though his use of the word sounded awkward and artificial to me, no one else seemed to think so.

My mother nodded, flushed with pleasure. “I’m glad you liked it, Shuja. You are a pleasure to feed. Always so appreciative. Of course the best is yet to come. Ameena has made some
ras malai
for dessert.”

Shuja smiled with pleasure, shooting goo-goo eyes at my sister, which tickled my esophagus unpleasantly.

Mummy was still gushing on about Ameena’s cooking skills, which I hadn’t known she possessed: “She’s just learned how to make it. It was a very good batch. Don’t forget, Ameena, to give Shuja the
ras malai
that you kept aside for Nilofer Auntie, when he goes.”

While Mummy and I cleared the table of food and debris, my father frowned and fidgeted, a sign that I wishfully interpreted to mean that he was as sick of this phony charade as I was. I saw how impatiently Daddy waited for Shuja to finish the tea that Ameena made for him—I noticed she hadn’t needed to ask how much sugar to add—drumming his fingers on the table in front of him. I realized my mistake as soon as the last sip was supped, when my father whipped out his Scrabble board so fast that I thought he must have had it ready, lying in wait, under the table.

“Oh, Nadeem! Poor Shuja has played with you every time he has come. Leave the poor boy alone!” My mother shook her head and puckered her lips again at the object of her sympathy.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Shuja. If you’d rather not play—?” My father let the question hang, clearly disappointed at the prospect of missing out on a game.

“Are you kidding? I’ve still got to pay you back for that sound beating you gave me last time! No, really. I’d love to play. Dad.”

I watched, sour-mouthed, as my father smiled warmly and began to set up the Scrabble board. Ameena, I noticed with some satisfaction, looked slightly annoyed with both of them. But my spirits waned again when Shuja looked up and smiled into her eyes, mouthing
just one game,
making her blush and smile prettily as she helped me finish clearing off the table and sat down to watch the game with a look of melting adoration that was as hard to miss as it was to swallow.

I trudged around the house for the next hour or so, as repelled by the family scene taking place in the dining room as I was fascinated. Finally, Shuja got up to leave. My parents hovered solicitously in the foyer, declaring how nice an evening it had been, how much they looked forward to seeing him again the next, and how happy we all were as a family to have him be a part of ours.

Then, Ameena cleared her throat and said the first words that I remember her uttering that evening. “Um. I’m going to walk Shuja out to his car.”

“Of course, of course,
beti
. Drive carefully, Shuja.
Khudahafiz. Khudahafiz.
”

“Khudahafiz.”

“
Khudahafiz,
Mummy, Dad. ’Bye, Saira.”

“Uh—’bye.”

The door shut behind them. And my parents were still for a moment. Then, as if tired from the effort of having sustained so much smiling pleasantry all evening, their expressions returned to normal: their teeth faded back inside of their mouths, they slouched forward as they released the stomach muscles they’d been holding in and allowed their backs to assume the natural curve that holding themselves up had forced them to straighten, and their voices, as they began to speak again, lost the polished, musical tone that had been affected for the duration of Shuja’s presence.

Turning back to go finish up in the kitchen, my mother exclaimed, “Oh no! Shuja has forgotten the
ras malai
for Nilofer Auntie. Run, Saira, give him this before he drives off.” I obeyed without thinking, running to catch up. It took me a moment to register what I saw when I did. Shuja had his arms locked around my sister, one of his hands running up her back and then down again, lower and lower. His mouth was on hers, sucking all of the air out of her, it seemed. They must have heard my footsteps, but it was Shuja, not Ameena, who recovered quickly enough to push away before I reached them. He was grinning at me, his teeth flashing by the light of the streetlamp. Ameena looked dazed, her eyes unfocused, her breathing ragged.

Shuja saw the package of dessert in my hand. “Did I forget that? Thank you, Saira. So sweet of you to run out and give it to me. You should go straight to bed. You look tired enough to be seeing things. Jet lag can do that, you know.” He was still grinning.

“Come on, Ameena!” My voice was shrill and scolding. I sounded like she usually did, I realized in surprise. “Mummy and Daddy are waiting.”

Ameena didn’t look at me as she turned back to lean into Shuja. “I’ll be there in a minute, Saira. Go back inside.”

“No. Come with me.” I didn’t recognize myself. Hadn’t recognized anyone since I came home. I blamed Shuja for that, and my voice became even shriller as I repeated, “Come with me, now!”

Shuja gently pushed Ameena in my direction. “You’d better go, sweetheart. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ameena held on to his hand. “Will you call me? Tonight?”

He laughed, indulgently. “I’ll call you. Go now, little one. Go with your sister. ’Bye, Saira.”

“Hmph!”

His laughter, the sound of his rental car door slamming, and the rev of the engine followed us into the house.

I WAS THE
frequent, if unwilling, chaperone for my sister and Shuja during the course of the next year. Shuja flew down every chance he got. Sensing my recalcitrance—it was hard to miss, I’m sure, with all the sulking and sniping that I subjected him to—Shuja expended a great deal of effort on wooing and winning
me
over, something he found totally unnecessary with my besotted sister. I went everywhere with them. Restaurants, movies, amusement parks, shopping malls. I took my role as chaperone very seriously, more for the perverse pleasure that thwarting Shuja’s lustful advances on my sister afforded me than anything else. It was a strange position to be in—the reluctant witness to their Mummy-approved romance. They managed to escape my presence every once in a while—times when I would agree to go off shopping by myself, sit alone in a theater watching an R-rated movie while they sat through non-lust-inducing G-rated ones, or stand in lines for rides that Shuja and Ameena preferred to sit out. I didn’t want to think about what they did then.

My bias against Shuja was so strong that it took me quite some time to see what my sister might have seen in him. That while he was neither tall nor short, he carried himself in such a way as to convey that he was present, occupying space. That the firm features of his face, regular and symmetrical, gave an impression of quiet strength. That the line of his mouth, the frame of his jaw in repose, indicated him as someone who knew enough of pain and loss to be able to recognize it in others with sympathy—a good quality, I suppose, in a doctor.

He had a sense of humor that was impervious to the withering looks of scorn that I threw at him constantly. Strong enough, in fact, to penetrate the most strongly armored of sulks. I laughed often, unable to maintain my defenses against the barrage of one-liners that he threw my way. But it was a reluctant kind of laughter—resentful—earned by extortion, and both he and I knew that it didn’t really count in the battle we were waging.

All of this escaped my notice, so diverted was I by the sight of those fumbling hands, those air-sucking lips, whose assault I’d witnessed on my first night back. It was impossible to believe that Ameena, goody-goody Ameena, who would normally avert her eyes at the steamy sex scenes that daytime soap operas and nighttime dramas were so full of, could actually endure and enjoy such indignity. Ameena, who until now had been more than happy with the more cheesy than sleazy kind of romance, which she consumed voraciously in the form of the Harlequin romances that I found stashed away in the bathroom cabinet and under her bed. Stories about virginally pure heroines, like Ameena, who sat around waiting for knights on white horses, or Porsches, to rescue them. Now, it seemed, she no longer needed those novels. As she was making room for the trousseau of clothing and accessories that she was amassing in preparation for her wedding, I was witness to the day, soon after my return from Pakistan, when Ameena cleaned her room out from top to bottom—tossing the Harlequins into a huge garbage bag the way other newly affianced women might toss out letters and photographs from former lovers.