The Writing on My Forehead (22 page)

Of course, I had seen him a few times over the past years, the first of which had been mildly awkward—he had been a perfect gentleman, gallant and flirtatious. Less so the second time, taking his cue from my own unaffected manner. Our paths were bound to cross again and again. We were in the same profession, after all. Though our angles were different. Even when we covered the same region or conflict, it was rare that we met.

“Saira. It is so good to see you.” The changes in him were subtle. There was a little more gray and some of the old, fine lines had deepened alongside new ones that had appeared around his eyes. He was as lean and tall as ever. I saw that he was doing a similar inventory of my face, and turned to look at Big Nanima, who was looking back and forth between us both.

“Adeeba Auntie told me about your mother. I am so sorry, Saira, for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“How have you been? Last time I saw you—where was it? Kosovo?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember, Auntie, that it was you who first introduced us, right here in this very place? Back when Saira was still a child—a novice! Now, when we meet, we meet as equals.”

“Hardly.” I glanced at Big Nanima again and, seeing her eyes on me, I realized that I had been searching Majid’s face a little too carefully, looking for something I had not bothered to look for the last time we’d met. “What have you been up to?”

“You think I would tell you? The competition?”

I laughed. “I’m small potatoes. I always will be. You follow the big shots around. My angle is the little people.”

“It’s only a matter of time—you’ll be called to account, too. That’s what success does, Saira. It gives you access.”

“I don’t want access. Not to the game players. I want to report from the pawn’s point of view.”

“Hmm. In any case—I’m not doing any reporting right now. I’m working on a novel.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. No one seems to be interested in what I have to say as a journalist. You know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“Lately, when I try to write a news story, all I can come up with are dire warnings and perilous prophecies.”

“What kind of warnings?” Big Nanima had decided to stop watching us and join the conversation.

Majid shook his head. “It’s all nonsense, I’m sure, Auntie.” Then, he turned to me again and said, still to Big Nanima, “This is the one who needs to be warned. Can’t you stop her from exercising her suicidal tendencies, Auntie? Chechnya, Rwanda—have you never met a massacre you didn’t like, Saira?”

“Her work needs to be done!” Big Nanima, who had often expressed the same doubt and worry as Majid, rode in strong for my defense.

“Yes. Have you seen her book, Auntie?” Big Nanima nodded. “
Collateral Victims.
I bought a copy. Full-price.”

I flushed. “So you’re the one. Not my book, anyway. Mohsin’s book. It was a pictorial essay.”

“With your commentary.”

“The words were superfluous. The pictures spoke for themselves.”

“But you told their stories. You made them come alive. All those grieving women—widows and mothers—and children, orphaned and mutilated. How do you sleep at night?”

“It was wonderful writing.” This, warmly, from Big Nanima.

“No doubt about it. You haven’t done anything personal? Since your first collection of stories?”

“No. Haven’t had the time.”

“And what are you up to now, Saira?”

“We’re heading for Afghanistan.”

“Again? I can’t quite picture you in a burka.”

“The funnier sight is always Mohsin with a beard.”

“I was there a short while ago. Afghanistan. Interviewing Mad Mullah Omar about the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan.” Majid paused. “Be careful, will you?”

Big Nanima cleared her throat, rather loudly, and said, “More warnings? You’ve teased us enough, young man. Whetted our appetites with talk of peril and danger. I insist on hearing these prophecies of yours.”

Majid leaned forward, bracing his weight on his elbows. “I suppose I have nothing clear to say—that’s why I hesitate. The facts are all out there. But there’s a story in progress. A climax is coming.” He leaned back and waved a hand to encompass our location. “This place—look how peaceful it is. How pleasant. Pockets of space like this one dot the landscape. But what is really going on here? Another general is in power in Pakistan. And the whole Muslim world is a pot on a stove, roiling and boiling, about to overflow.”

“So? What’s new?” Big Nanima’s eyes were narrowed. Her question wasn’t a challenge, merely a question.

“I’m uneasy. That’s all. When I am writing a novel, I like to know what the end of my story will be before I begin. That’s not always possible. Even in fiction. In real life, it’s bloody impossible. I know this. I have always been comfortable with uncertainty. But now—there is something different. Too much power on one side. Too much anger on another. Power, by its very nature, is blind to the destruction it causes. And anger is too easily exploited and transformed into hatred—a process that has begun and which we see the results of on one side of the world already. You see? I have nothing concrete to offer you, Auntie. Conjecture, speculation. Nothing of note. Still, I find myself holding my breath—”

It took me a moment to realize that I, too, was holding my breath. I exhaled and laughed. “What kind of a novel are you working on? Suspense?”

He laughed with me, and Big Nanima smiled, too. “A love story, actually.”

“A love story?” Now I was laughing even harder.

“Yes! A classic, historical love story. Set in Mughal India.”

Even Big Nanima was laughing now, shaking her head in disbelief.

“
Et tu,
Auntie?” Majid’s attention was called by a man waving at another table. “Saira. Adeeba Auntie. It has—as always—been a pleasure.” He stood and kissed both Big Nanima’s hand and mine and left.

I stared after him with a smile still on my lips. A smile abruptly ended when Big Nanima asked, “You and Majid Khan? When did that happen?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You silly girl. I can see it. Was it very long ago?”

“Very long ago. Ancient history.”

When we got back to my aunt’s house, Daddy wanted to speak to me. He followed me into the guest room I occupied.

“Saira, I have something I want to tell you. Something awkward, I’m afraid.”

I braced myself—then said, “Asma Mohammed?”

“You—how did you know?”

“A good guess. Have you declared your intentions to her?”

“Yes. By e-mail. Just today. She’s accepted my proposal. I’m going back to Bombay. Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

Daddy nodded.

“She won’t want to move to the U.S.”

“No. I will stay in India with her. We’ll visit Los Angeles regularly, of course.”

“Of course. Daddy?”

He had an unseemly kind of glow on his face. “Yes?”

“You don’t think it’s too soon?”

“To come back? To keep my promise to my father? Not too soon at all.”

“I mean, too soon after Mummy.”

He winced briefly. Then shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. The reason I came with you—I had a crazy idea already in my head. To come back and pick up where I had left off. To do something for someone else. And—”

“You found Asma.”

“Yes. She’s a doctor. She’s already doing what I want to do. She has no one. I have no one.”

“It’s meant to be.” I wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic.

Daddy wasn’t either. “You—you’re upset?”

I sighed. “No. Are you going to call Ameena?”

“Hmm? Yes.” Daddy frowned. “No. You do it. Call her. Would you?”

“You’re afraid of Ameena?”

“Well, this is an awkward conversation to have. Once is enough, I think.”

I frowned. “They should be back from Florida?”

“Yes. Sakina’s school will have started.”

“I’m leaving, too. The day after tomorrow. Won’t you call her? Tell her yourself?”

Daddy shook his head.

I sighed again. “I’ll send her an e-mail.”

D
ADDY’S DEPARTURE FROM
Karachi was so sudden that I was left alone to deal with the leave-taking, gift-bearing relatives that paraded in and out of my aunt’s house the next day, as they usually did whenever I left Karachi. This time, they were hungry for information. Word of my father’s engagement had circulated and the fishing lines were cast so boldly that I lost no time in sending off an e-mail about Daddy and Asma to Ameena, before she could get the news from the likes of some Razia Nani–type relative who might call to commiserate, congratulate, or both.

At some point in the early evening, I wandered into Big Nanima’s room, finding her holding court with the next generation—Lubna Khala’s grandchildren and their cousins. She had them rolling on the floor with poop-and-fart stories, the kind she had entertained me with before I graduated to literature and political science. When she had reached “the end,” she shooed the children out of the room and patted a space on the bed next to her. She put her arm around me, pulling me close, pressed her cheek against mine.

“Don’t feel bad about your father, Saira. He is not being disloyal to your mother. And neither are you if you accept his new wife.”

“I know that. In my head, I know that.”

“But not so much in your heart?” Big Nanima sighed. “Where our parents are concerned, we are always children. Like your mother was about
her
father. It took her more time than it will take for you to accept your father’s happiness. Because his will come at no cost to anyone else. That is the best kind of happiness. The kind few are privileged to have.” She took my chin in her hand and opened her mouth to say something. Before she could, she cocked her head to one side, listening to the sound of voices coming from the hall outside. “Go, Saira. Your Lubna Khala is calling. More guests have arrived.”

I sighed.

“I know it is difficult, but they mean no harm, Saira. Go. Grit your teeth and say good-bye.”

The house was packed at the six o’clock evening hour. The lounge was filled to capacity, the TV blaring at the request of the older, hearing-impaired CNN-junkie uncles present, and I was grateful for the excuse of the volume, which made conversation downright impossible, preparing myself mentally for the risks and dangers that my journey with Mohsin would entail.

Suddenly, the rhythmically calm assertions of the British-accented CNN International newsreaders were interrupted by a note of panic and disbelief. All eyes in the room were glued to the television screen, on the image of a skyscraper in flames. A few moments later, we saw an airplane, the second one, flying into the twin of the first building. The gasps and shouts were loud enough to draw Big Nanima out of her room. Her eyes singled me out in the crowd, making me realize the pose I had assumed, my hand clenching and unclenching, clutching at my abdomen in a universally feminine gesture that I had witnessed and written about many, too many times—this is what women all over the world do when confronted with danger. Mothers, clutching at their wombs, where life is conceived and nurtured, a primordial plea for protection offered whenever life is threatened and attacked.

Big Nanima knew this. She had read everything I had ever written. Her eyes on my abdomen made me still my hand.

She came closer. “Saira? What has happened?”

Mute, I pointed to the image of horror and destruction taking place on the other side of the world. It was September 11, 2001.

D
ESPERATELY, I TRIED,
in those first few hours after the planes hit the Twin Towers, to call Ameena, to make sure she was safe. She and Shuja and Sakina. I knew they had to be back in California after a vacation spent on the East Coast. But I would not rest until I was sure.

“They were—were they going to stop in New York on their way home from Florida? I think they were. Oh, God, I can’t remember!” The room was still full of people, but I was speaking to myself, my eyes fixed on the television. Big Nanima was there, watching me pace the length of Lubna Khala’s lounge with phone in hand.

“Relax, Saira. They must be home. Far away from all of that.” She waved her hand in the direction of the horror on television. “You said yourself that Sakina’s school would have started already.”

“I know, I know. But I just have to be sure. And—who knows? Who knows what will happen next?” The sky was falling. In New York, in Washington, in Pennsylvania.

The rest of the night and the morning that followed, I spent in front of the television, like all the millions of Americans at home and those around the world who did the same. In terror, in grief, I pressed my knuckles into my mouth and, through the aid of the footage that rolled around the clock, tried to put myself there, at Ground Zero, in body and in spirit to feel, in solidarity, the panic of those last moments of the thousands, the frantic worry of those left behind to search, to pick up pieces, to grieve. All against the backdrop of a completely foreign digestion of the same events among people who were not American, who could not really understand the pain of what it was to be an American on that day and on the days that followed it.

Reaction in Lubna Khala’s lounge varied widely as crowds of people seemed to continue to wade in and out of the flickering light of the television screen. It was what people did in Pakistan—in good times, in bad times, and as a part of everyday existence—they gathered to eat together and argue, to live out their lives in the public forum that an extended family provides. The phone rang off the hook as friends and relatives, far more desperately close to Manhattan than me, despite the thousands of miles of ocean and land in between, sought and relayed news back and forth from sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters who worked in the city that was the center of the world.

And then there were the armchair analysts, people like my second cousin’s husband, who said smugly, when the first few hours of muted shock had faded, “Well, then. Now America will know what it feels like. What it feels like to face death and destruction, the kind they deal out every day and everywhere else, the bloody imperialists! Now they will know what it feels like to suffer.”

Or my aunt’s husband, who clicked his tongue, shook his head, and mourned, “Such shame! The shame that these so-called Muslims have brought upon us!”

One of his sons, my first cousin, asked, “What are you going to do now, Saira? You can’t go to Afghanistan. They’ll be dropping bombs there. Masses of them. And you can’t go home, either. You know what they did to the Japanese during World War II, don’t you, Saira? You watch and wait to see how they treat you now.”

“And what about the rest of us, eh? You think we won’t all be painted with the same brush? Wait and see how they punish us, see how they will bomb Muslims everywhere. Bomb us into oblivion,” his father added.

Lubna Khala objected, “Surely not. You heard President Bush. He has said it already. He knows. Islam is peace. Islam is not what these madmen have done. He knows that.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

Finally, almost twenty-four hours later, I made contact.

“Ameena? Thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you for hours! You’re okay?”

Ameena’s voice was small and stretched thin. “Yes. But, Saira, we were just there! In New York. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe what’s happened! It’s unspeakable.”

“Sakina’s all right?”

“She’s fine. She’s in school. I kept her home yesterday. I don’t know why. I—I didn’t want her to be away from me.”

“So—you’re all all right?”

“Yes, Saira. We’re fine.”

“Did you get my e-mail? About Daddy?”

“I did. He’s in India?”

“Yes.” The phone crackled for a few long moments while I tried to think up something else to say.

“And you? You’re off again with Mohsin? To Afghanistan?”

“That’s the plan. I—I was supposed to go yesterday. But—I couldn’t leave without hearing from you. I have to rebook a flight to Peshawar. We go on across the border next week.”

“Is that a good idea, Saira? To go there now?”

“I—it’s what I do, Ameena.”

“Yes. Well, be careful.”

“I will.”

“And keep in touch. Please, Saira. Mummy’s gone. I—I worry about you. Let me know that you’re safe.”

“I will. Give my love to Shuja. And Sakina.”

The phone crackled again, then beeped, signaling the end of time for the call I had booked, before going dead.

When I had put the phone down carefully on its cradle, Big Nanima shuffled into the room and put her hand on my arm. “You’ve spoken to Ameena? They’re all right?”

I nodded.

“Now you can rest. You haven’t slept, Saira.”

Two days later, I was still in Karachi, unable to take the steps necessary to get on with the business of my life—telling stories that no one wanted to hear.

Mohsin called several times, urging me to hurry. I said something to him that I had not realized I was feeling. “I—what if you do this story without me, Mohsin?”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking about going home.”

“What are you talking about? You know there’ll be a war here. In Afghanistan. It’s just a matter of time. What’s happened over there—no one’s story is going to be forgotten there, Saira. You know that. It’s what will happen here that has to be covered. You’ve delayed long enough. Waiting to get word from Ameena.”

“You’re right.” I closed my eyes, wondering at where this doubt was coming from. “Of course you’re right.”

Still, I hesitated. There was backlash in America. Snippets of tragedy totally overshadowed by the mass calamity still unfolding. Big Nanima showed me the article in
Dawn
on the day before I had finally determined to leave Karachi to join Mohsin. A Sikh man had been murdered. Mosques had been graffitied and firebombed. There were little attacks all over the country, swallowed up into the back pages of history.

“Saira,” Big Nanima said, “you must call Ameena. You must tell her to take off her
hijab
.”

My eyes widened at the implication of her suggestion. “I—I didn’t even think of it. You’re right. I’ll call her in the morning. Before I leave. But I don’t think she’ll listen.”

“Of course she will. There’s no point in taking risks. The world is full of crazy people. She has a daughter to think of.”

I nodded.

“Come. Let’s go to Gymkhana. I haven’t gone for a walk for days and if I don’t use these old legs, they will stop serving me at all.”

Gymkhana. That was where we were when the call came from California. Lubna Khala called the club. She had us tracked down and brought home.

Shuja had called, Lubna Khala told Big Nanima and me. To say that Ameena had been shot.