Saffron Dreams E-Book

Shaila Abdullah

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Reflections of America
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Seitenzahl: 366

Beschreibung

Saffron Dreams is a tale of love, tragedy, and redemption from the award-winning author of Beyond the Cayenne Wall...
You don't know you're a misfit until you are marked as an outcast.
From the darkest hour of American history emerges a mesmerizing tale of tender love, a life interrupted, and faith recovered. Arissa Illahi, a Muslim artist and writer, discovers in a single moment that no matter how carefully you map your life, it is life itself that chooses your destiny. After her husband's death in the collapse of the World Trade Center, the discovery of his manuscript marks Arissa's reconnection to life. Her unborn son and the unfinished novel fuse in her mind into one life-defining project that becomes, at once, the struggle for her emotional survival and the redemption of her race. Saffron Dreams is a novel about our ever evolving identities and the events and places that shape them. It reminds us that in the midst of tragedy, our dreams can become a lasting legacy.
Praise for Saffron Dreams
"Eloquently written, a must-read for any one interested in exploring the lived experiences of Muslim women in the United States."
--Ali Asani, PhD, Professor of the Practice of Indo-Muslim Languages and Cultures, Harvard University
"Saffron Dreams is an unflinching look at the societal pressures of widowhood, the role that art can play in the healing process, and the impact of media bias and stereotyping on the Muslim American community in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks."
--Sandhya Nankani, Literary Safari
"Following Arissa's story makes the reader realize how little most of us know and understand the world of Muslims, and how incredibly wrong so many of our perceptions are."
--Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson, Reader Views
"Shaila Abdullah's Saffron Dreams is a fascinating look at how events can quickly change a life forever. The thread of Muslim beliefs in a modern world, and especially how women balance ancient and modern traditions, is a fresh and different viewpoint."
--Sandie Kirkland, Rebecca's Reads
About the Author
Shaila Abdullah is a Pakistani-American author and designer based in Austin, Texas. Her first book, Beyond the Cayenne Wall, is an award-winning collection of stories about Pakistani women struggling to find their individualities despite the barriers imposed by society. For more information, please visit Saffron Dreams is Book #5 of the Reflections of America Series

Leseprobe

Saffron Dreams, A Novel

By Shaila Abdullah

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

About The Author

ONE

November 2001New York

I decided to carry out the first task on my list when fall was about to lose its hue.

All around me were walls of fog; it was just as well. This year the trees of the mid-Hudson Valley were reluctant to shed their leaves. A few fallen ones—the glowing golds, the bloodlike reds, the brazen browns, and the somber yellows—crackled under my feet, crisp and lifeless but not without a voice. There is an old saying that it will be a bad winter if the trees decide to hold on to their leaves.

I wanted to take this journey myself. Unseen. Unchallenged. The air outside was thick, buttressed by my decision, sparse in joy but swollen with complexities. It comforted me; tingled the soles of my feet. The feeling of heaviness that had been lingering for days was gone. I would have danced had I not been on a mission. I delighted in how clean my insides felt, like they had just been laundered and wrung dry, soapy smell suspended in the air. Invisible molecules tickled my nostrils and I sneezed at the thought.

I stopped by a toy store, its shutters down, occupants fast asleep. As I pressed my nose against the window, I marveled at the simple joys of childhood. My breath came in short waves and misted the window, creating tiny smoky bubbles of all sizes and shapes. I imagined being a toy horse, galloping on bound legs, destination firmly defined, thrilled with providence in my naiveté.

The subway ride was a quiet time for reflection with very few early commuters. I got off as if floating on air, tightening my hijab or veil around the back of my head. It had to be hysteria, this feeling within me of floating on air. A sharp change in the jet stream will channel numerous storm systems into the Atlantic, the meteorologist had predicted. One was raging within me as I walked westward from Canal to West Street. I felt a restless quest to outrun my fate, grind it beneath my feet.

Pier 34 was abandoned when I reached its southern tip. I faced it with a welcoming smile.

It had the lure of a mother’s breast for me, the air throbbing in suckling anticipation. I leaned my protruding belly against the barrier that divided me from the deep stillness below. Another step and my body could easily plummet into the murky depths. I was afraid to touch my abdomen; I wanted to leave its resident out of this. He should never feel responsible for what I was about to do. My mind was full of the possibilities of what life would have been if the towers hadn’t crashed.

The wounded skyline in the distance had its edges softened by the early morning fog. Even the air approached the buildings carefully, with reverence. So much was lost. A cool breeze was blowing, providing a hint of the approaching winter. For a brief sickening moment, I debated on which should go––the veil or me.

I slid the hijab from around my neck. The wind felt chilly on my bare head. It was a new sensation. You can do anything you set your mind to, Arissa Illahi, a voice from the past whispered to me.

In a few hours, it would be another normal day. Was there such a thing anymore? I appreciated the predawn quietness and looked down at the river with meditated concentration. They said that a new layer of sediment composed of ash and dust had formed a permanent footprint on the river bed after the towers had collapsed. Undisturbed, it had become a constant geological reminder of the tragedy, now etched in history.

The wind tore the veil from my hand, making my task easier. I grasped the cold railing with one hand and swatted at the fleeting piece of my life with the other as the wind picked up speed. It teasingly brought the veil closer to my face. I could have grabbed it. Instead, I let it sail down toward the depths, its grave.

I did not feel a sense of betrayal as I walked away from the pier, letting the wind dance with my hair for the first time. I pulled a few strands out of my eyes and looked back. The sun had just started to peek at the horizon, bleeding its crimson hue. It was a matter of perspective—to an onlooker I had removed my veil, but from where I stood, I had merely shifted it from my head to my heart.

“Khuda Hafiz,” I breathed.

Who was I bidding farewell to? I wondered: the age-old tradition or the husband I had kept alive in my heart?

TWO

October 2006Houston

A housekeeper’s nightmare.

An artist’s haven.

There was no other way to describe my turpentine-reeking workroom.

For the longest time, I thought my life was like the canvas of a barmy artist who knew when to begin a project but not when to stop.

I looked at the tubes of color around me. They spoke volumes about my house management skills. They were all over the floor, squished, twisted, folded back, some oozing paint, others with rainbow-colored thumb imprints. I plastered the colors all over the canvas with no subject matter in mind, and gradually frenzy overpowered me. The brush in my hand took on a life of its own, and I bent to its whim. The frantic slish-slosh on canvas was deafening in the quiet room; the errant brush had its own mood. I looked at the hopeful blues on the canvas that with repeated strokes had turned the brilliant orange to sad murky brown. In the end, the hodgepodge of colors that dripped off the canvas all bled into one: scorching black, the only color I wanted to forget.

In all fairness, colors define me. Red reminds me of my marriage, the color of the heady, fragrant mehndi or henna, intricately tattooed on my palms in the ways of tradition; the crimson shimmering wedding dress called sharara I wore the day I married Faizan; yellow, the color of ubtan, a paste I applied religiously to my face twenty days before my wedding in the hopes of getting the coveted bridal glow; and orange, the color of saffron, dusty powder that with the right touch added flair to any dish. It was also the color that Faizan dreamed of having on the cover of his unfinished book, a project he thought would make him a famous writer one day.

But black reminds me of all that is sad and wrong in my life. Ironically, in this country, it validates my state of being a widow. It is also the color of my hijab—the dividing line between my life with Faizan and the one without him. How different lives are from continent to continent. White, the bridal color in the West, is the color a widow is expected to wear in the East, the color the body is shrouded in before being buried in the earth.

The brush fell from my guilty hands, landing on the floor with a tired thud. I stepped back as if struck and looked at the picture in mad fixation. Staring back at me from the canvas, behind the dull last strokes that failed to hide the subject, were entwined towers engulfed in reddish blue smoke. And in the midst of the smoldering slivers was the face of a forlorn and lost child.

My journey spans half a decade, from the biggest loss of my life to where I am now. It is a tale of grief and happiness, of control and losing control, of barriers and openings, of prejudices and acceptance, of holding on and letting go. It is about turning my heart inside out, mending it, and putting it right back in as it is about looking at life from the perspective of someone trapped in time. Finally, it’s about filling shoes bigger than mine—and filling two with only one leg to stand on. This is the leg that over and over again will weaken with the weight it’s expected to carry, falter, but eventually mend and march over the terrains of time.

I got home and put the groceries on the counter. I always have a list of tasks mapped out in perfect order for the evening. Start a Soup. I put a pot of water on the stove to start a vegetable soup for Raian. Change. I rescued a turnip that had rolled off the counter, and then slipped off my shoes, not bothering to untie them. The wide boots had grown used to being put on and taken off that way, their contours neatly shaped for a comfortable fit. I decided to change later. Fix Tea. I threw a teabag in a cup and put it in the microwave. Raian disappeared into the living room, and the different-colored lights emitting from the room confirmed that he had turned on the TV. He didn’t turn up the volume; sound was useless to him. He coughed, and with an easy maternal instinct, I made a mental note to give him some medicine before bed.

There were three messages on the answering machine and I intuitively knew who they were from. I deleted all three in quick succession without hearing them—Ami, Zaki, Ami.

The kitchen felt a little cold as I walked back in to dice some shallots, turnips, and zucchini. I scooped them up and added them to the boiling pot. A crushed clove of garlic went in next, and I took slow sips of my tea as I studied the vegetables squirming inside the pot. Start your dinner. That one didn’t matter much. Since Ma and Baba—my parents-in-law—had left, even Rice-A-Roni worked. I decided on some Chicken Helper. The freezer door pulled open with a sigh, and in the humming of the interior, I forgot why I had opened it in the first place. The rumbling in my stomach alerted me to the basic needs of survival as a small Ziploc bag at the far end of the shelf caught my eye. It contained shish kabobs that Ma had frozen before leaving. Would they still be edible after six months? I decided to take my chances. I tossed the kabobs in the microwave, watching the turntable swirl the plate. I missed my mother-in-law’s elaborate home-cooked meals. In the five years that she and Baba had lived with us, there was a soothing discipline to dinner. Plenty of thought and planning went into what was presented on the table. A full meal consisted of a curry or stew, rice, and piping hot flour chappatis. Sometimes Ma had the fresh yogurt drink, lassi, on the side, or round fritters dipped in a yogurt and chili dip that transported me back home. Onion and cucumber salad garnished with cilantro was a must. Ma’s pickled mangoes were a feast for the senses, and although her stuffed flour chilies with cumin powder burned your mouth, they were a great combination with the lentil curry. And her saffron-flavored rice pudding could shame even the old cook back home.

Saffron. It reminded me of an unfinished project that was much closer to completion than it was a year ago. I left my culinary project bubbling and walked into the den to turn on the computer. I lost the minutes and then the hours as I swam in a sea of words, oblivious to the world around me. The squeal of the smoke detector jolted me into action. I raced past my son, who had neither the sensory cues of smell nor sound to be alarmed by the commotion. He had missed his dinnertime but had not felt the pangs of hunger.

In that moment, I felt terrified for him and for the rest of his life.

The water in the soup had disappeared and the pot was burning with the shriveled turnips and zucchini stuck to its bottom. The shish kabobs in the microwave were hard as rocks. I poured the contents of the pot into the sink and slid the kabobs in the trash can. When I put a fresh pot of water on the stove, I decided to set an egg timer. It was time to check on Raian.

He was sprawled across the floor, the eye patch covering his left eye making him look like a pirate, one of the many gifts of his syndrome. Every day for a few hours, we put a patch over his good eye to exercise his lazy eye. Oblivious to the TV running in the background, he was studying an arc of rainbow colors draped across his arm—a direct result of sunlight filtering through the window. He swatted at it with his other hand and then crawled around in a circle trying to escape from it. I watched his captivating dance in fascination; he immersed himself in the light one instant and tore away from it the next—the dance that life played with him on a daily basis that he had by now orchestrated to perfection. The light was his to tango, not his to hold; illumination, he had learned, wasn’t the victory.

I looked at him with love-stricken eyes. How flawed he was to the rest of the world, but how very perfect to me.

Saffron, crocus veil, the flower with the three red stigmas.

It was 1 a.m., and I had been unsuccessful in shutting my brain off to get some sleep. Some images refused to let me be. They wanted to be released and live on paper. I approached the canvas in that state of mind.

I folded back the sleeve of my olive shirt kameez and laid some strands of saffron on the back of my left hand. Like eager devotees, they molded to its contour. For three thousand years, the purple saffron or zafaran flower, had sprouted in the dry summer across the Himalayan valley, the monsoons nourishing the crop. The plant is said to be named after the mythological Crocus, who after being rebuffed by his beloved was transformed into this flower, weeping blood red tears for ages to come. It was said that Cleopatra used saffron in her baths so that lovemaking would be more pleasurable. I imagined the strands to be a lover’s fingers, and my hand shook a little. I dipped a long brush in some water and sprinkled it on the unruly strands with my free hand. Slowly they started to bleed orange tears that dripped off both sides of my hand. They say if rain arrives after it has flowered, the saffron flower dies suddenly. I watched the colors on my hand and with renewed determination turned to the canvas and started painting. I mixed a few tubes––red, yellow, and a touch of black—and referenced the orange on the back of my hand a few times as I tried to match the color. I painted in layers following the traditional rule of oil painting. Starting lean, I applied fatter coats by adding more medium as I went. The paint is less likely to crack as it dries with that method. I couldn’t let a dream crack, not an important one anyway. I worked diligently and furiously as the hours ticked away. Around four in the morning, I stepped back in satisfaction and studied the orange sky on the canvas—the color of saffron, just how Faizan had wanted it.

I went to the bureau and kissed a folded veil that lay on top, a reminder of my past and a symbol of what I had given up. Faizan had harbored a reverence for the veil—to him it defined a woman. I always felt a twinge of guilt when I looked at that piece of cloth. Shaking that thought, I crashed on the bed, surprisingly exhausted from the night’s work. Dreams are never easy to create; they take a lot out of you. Tomorrow I will paint in the two boys, the stigmas of saffron, I decided. That would be the cover of Soul Searcher.

I felt lightheaded in a fulfilled kind of way, tracing a shape on the other side of the bed. I still slept on one side of it, a curious habit that never left me, considering that I had been the only occupant for the past five years.

Sweet dreams, I whispered to the night air.

The curtains on the window rustled in response. I rolled over onto my side and hugged my pillow. The gentle hands of predawn passed over me, pressing my eyelids shut. I obeyed and let myself be led into the world of dreams.

THREE

May 1989 Karachi

Early evening cast its long shadows as I came out of my room, almost tumbling over Mai Jan. She was mopping the floor on her haunches with an agitated expression, her sari pallu tucked in her waist.

“Choti Bibi, watch where you are going!” Mai Jan’s voice was a little harsh for her stature, and I glared at her without answering. At fourteen, I didn’t think I needed instruction on how to go about my own house.

For years, I had seen Mai Jan come to our house daily at the first light of dawn to do what we deemed beneath our stature to do—clean up after us, launder our soiled clothes, wash our dirty dishes, and cook for us. The days she didn’t show up, the dishes piled high, and we ran around dirty, unwashed, with stinky knickers, sweaty undershirts, food stains and the day’s grime coloring our shirtfronts, hair unruly and uncombed. Ami pretended not to notice. On such mornings, she sat in her room, painting her toenails, Lata Mangeshkar blaring out of the radio, curtains drawn. Us Basti Ko Jaane Waale, Leta Ja Paigaam Mera. O Traveler, take my message to the village.

We were chased away when we tried to peek in Ami’s room. She almost always had a headache that she was nursing and didn’t want to be bothered. Usually when Azad Baba, our old driver, came back after dropping Abu off to the office, he came inside the kitchen to fix us parathas for breakfast—square, fat pieces of dough powdered heavily with flour so they wouldn’t stick to the pan. He deep-fried them in canola to mouth-watering perfection and then slid the oily, slithering masses straight from the pan onto our plates, the steam partially hiding us from each other’s view. The first mouthful would always burn and numb our tongues. Azad Baba always cautioned us. We never listened.

Where is Ami? I wondered. I was having my period and there were no sanitary pads in the house. As usual she had probably used the last one up and not bothered to restock. I headed to her room in a huff.

I didn’t know about periods when they first started a year ago, not until I woke up one morning and my bed sheet had bright red spots that matched those in my underwear. I ran to Mai Jan sobbing, since Ami was not around. The old maid could not believe that Ami had kept such an important fact of life from me; God knew awkwardness could not have been the reason. In a dark corner of the kitchen, Mai Jan showed me how to loop the old fashioned bulky pad and wear it with woven string that we used to secure our loose trousers. Shaken and traumatized, I took the instructions but could not believe that I had to do that the rest of my life. I was certain my duck-like posterior hid nothing from others. I was certain people whispered behind my back, she’s menstruating, she’s unclean. Later when I washed my soiled linens under running water, I was so disturbed I wanted to injure somebody. But I didn’t. I had read somewhere that you can’t pray when you are having your monthly “problems.” That wasn’t an issue in our household. No one prayed there except Azad Baba.

“Bibi,” Mai Jan called out to me as I headed in the direction of Ami’s room. Her voice had an urgency to it. “Don’t go in there.”

“And why not?” I said rudely. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Mai Jan wiped her nose with her pallu and sulked, tucking the cloth back around her waist. She was sweating profusely, her hair bunched in a damp, untidy coil on top of her head. The mole at the tip of her nose seemed gigantic today. She was looking at me blankly. I could tell she was fishing for a good reason.

“Woh ji, I just cleaned that area. It’s still wet,” she offered lamely.

“So what? I’ll be careful.” I got on my tiptoes and moved forward so as not to leave smudges.

“Choti Bibi, no.” Her mole mocked me but I refused to be distracted.

Ami’s door was half ajar, and I could hear a conversation within. Oh, Abu is home, too, I thought to myself. Maybe the discussion about pads would need to wait.

I glanced inside, opening my mouth to call out to Ami, and then stopped and swallowed hard. The man sitting on the bed with his back toward me wasn’t Abu. He was leaner and taller, not balding like Abu. A plume of thick white smoke emerged over his shirtless back and like a halo circled his head before disappearing into the whirling ceiling fan above. He turned around and smiled. Eyes glazed and eyebrows furrowed together, he had the satisfied look of a cat that had eaten its catch; it was Uncle Jalal, Abu’s chess buddy.

I heard the angry rustle of Ami’s nightgown as she came toward the door and wordlessly shut it in my face. The draft from it sailed into my heart. I stood frozen, unable to move.

“I told you not to go in there,” Mai Jan said from the other end of the room, a slight mirth in her voice at the treatment meted out to me by my own mother.

This is how a family unravels in a matter of minutes: through careless acts of meaningless alliance.

I often wondered if Abu knew about Ami’s relationship with Uncle Jalal. There was no threat of the laws of the land among the elite class, although such an alliance anywhere else in the country was punishable by law. I had seen Uncle Jalal a couple of times after that event but never again in a compromised setting. He would be on his way out when I arrived from school with my siblings, Zoha and Sian. My brother always sulked around him and moved away when Uncle Jalal wanted to tousle his hair, averting his droopy and bloodshot eyes. I was never sure what Ami saw in Uncle Jalal, notorious in society for his drinking and occasional drug habits. He wasn’t handsome; of course, I thought Abu was the best thing that had happened to mankind. I was a bit skewed in my analysis of my father.

The thing with Uncle Jalal, Ami told me years later, was never real or substantial to her. He was a necessary distraction she needed at the time.

When I was little and still thought the world of Ami, I would sneak into her room when she was taking a nap and pull out her sarees and try them on. My favorite was an orange organza saree with a red-sequined border. I remembered draping it around my waist and slipping on her high-heeled gold sandals on many restless afternoons. I enjoyed parading around the room like Ami and puckered my face at the mirror like I had seen her do when she applied lipstick. Later, I would fold the saree and stomp on it to get the poofiness out, watching as it deflated sadly before I put it back on the rack. Years later, I looked on in horror as she cut that saree to make a shirt that she then decided looked awful on her. I never saw it again.

Ami watched us closely when we left the house or accompanied her on her shopping expeditions and admonished us if we strayed too far. She said there were bad people around, people who carried you away and did unspeakable things to you if you were not careful or vigilant. She never answered me when I asked what those things were. In the society we lived in, knowledge comes from unspoken sources: snatches of news clippings, books no one expects us to discover, whispered grown-up conversations. Sex, I would say to myself when no one was around. It had a husky and penetrating sound to it. It made me feel unclean inside when I said it, but it also gave me a rush. It was the foreign literature that taught me the intricacies of sex and defined the unspoken, unwanted word called rape.

I could never understand what made people bad. Leaders, a childhood friend told me once, make society rotten and unsafe. Bad people were mostly poor, I learned later from overheard conversations. Middle-class folks were mostly okay. Many rich people were corrupt. We were an exception, Ami informed us, an unseen crown on our heads that rendered us superior. Uncle Jalal was an exception as well, Ami explained to me. We grew up with stereotypes fed into our brains, dictating the way we operated in our daily lives. When I walked in the market with Ami, I always eyed poor men with grimy clothing suspiciously, certain they would reach out to cup my breast or touch my behind. I walked with a crooked elbow jutting out to shield my body, my purse.

Eventually, I discovered, it is our own who harm us the most.

What can I say about the mother who abandoned us four times over a period of two decades? Abu had checked out long ago from his marriage. I saw it in his eyes, in the smiles that he did not give to his wife, in the questions that he did not answer for her. Instead, the air filled quickly with thick hurtful breathing when they were together, the unanswered questions conveying more than words could: bitterness, disappointments, and a drawn-out sadness. Like a dismal cloak, those emotions landed on us. I tried to gather most of it toward me, wishing to spare my siblings the worst.

“Your mother never learned to love. It took me years to understand that,” Abu said to me years later. “Even on the day of our wedding, I had a sinking feeling that I had captured a koyal bird in a cage, bound her in a relationship that her heart had not accepted. She was born to be a free spirit. You cannot assign roles to such a person.”

Abu had accepted that fact and moved on. I never did, not until I lost Faizan and understood what a free spirit really meant. Not until I met another mother who nurtured my wounded soul and allowed me to forgive myself. Forgive Ami. Forgive the world.

FOUR

May 1993

Ami’s backless choli was an instant hit at Sabeen and Sarfaraz Khans’ wedding anniversary party the year I turned eighteen. She was back in our lives for a short while and I watched Abu painstakingly try to cater to her every mood in an effort to get her to stay.

Ami emerged from her room, the pallu of her black crushed silk saree draped around her body. As soon as she turned, Abu frowned in disapproval at the exposed skin but said nothing. I felt a bit ridiculous in my own sage green low-necked salwar kameez with beaded edges that Ami had insisted I wear. I kept my exposed cleavage covered with the dark long-trimmed dupatta. We all knew why I was invited. Parties were a great place to arrange matches. While the singles roamed around, adults fitted them like puzzles and decided the course of their lives. It disgusted me. I was too independent-minded to succumb to such matches, or so I believed then. It was useless to argue with Ami; if things didn’t go her way, she pouted for days. I had agreed to wear lipstick at Ami’s persistence. After repeated strokes, almost bruising my lips with the plum-colored lipstick, she then proceeded to powder my cheeks when I decided I was done.

“That’s enough, Ami.” I eased out of the chair. I knew Abu didn’t care much for makeup.

Ami shrugged and examined her own reflection in the mirror. She fluffed her hair and smiled in satisfaction.

The Khans’ mansion was filled to the brim with the elite of society: glittering and heavily made-up women wearing dazzling jewelry, sporting the latest fashions, trying out fancy English accents when they had not yet perfected the grammar, while men huddled together in circles, comparing sales figures, watches and cars. An ever-growing mass of unrelated and indifferent uncles and aunts, titles imposed on them by society, approached me at intervals to peck me on my cheek. I looked around for Abu and found him sitting on a couch at the end of the hall. Earlier he had been in an animated discussion with some of his friends about politics, a subject he could discuss for hours on end. There was a general uneasiness among the public since the new prime minister had been ousted within months of coming to power. That year had been a political disaster for Pakistan. Both the prime minister and the president resigned from their offices citing serious differences. Even the central and provincial assemblies were dissolved. Abu had great faith in the interim Prime Minister, Moin Qureshi, and was impressed by his determination to check the plague of corruption that had been growing in the governing bodies. Abu’s hope of such a person taking over the country and turning it around was futile; Qureshi’s tenure lasted only 90 days.

“Politics today has gone to the dogs, Tehsin Saheb,” Uncle Athar was telling Abu, taking a slow drag off the cigar in his hand. He was a pediatric surgeon at the hospital where Abu worked. “The governing bodies have wiped the country clean. Totally absorbed in their own personal gain. How can a nation grow in such a climate?”

“The whole country is rooted in bureaucracy,” Abu observed, shaking his head. “Until that’s taken care of, our progress is questionable. You can’t even get a simple identity card without bribing someone.”

“I waited twenty months to get a new phone line,” offered Uncle Zahoor, a mutual friend whose profession I could never remember. “Twenty months, can you believe it? Even a baby is born quicker.”

“Can’t match that even if you count from the actual conception,” Uncle Waqar interjected. He had thick, tightly permed hair that made him look like a hedgehog. “You might have better luck in that time period, Zahoor. Maybe you could end up with a son that you always wanted.”

The men guffawed at that comment, and Uncle Zahoor looked mildly offended. He had four daughters and each year tried his luck at having a son and failed. So far his wife had been pregnant four of the five years they had been married.

I started to lose interest in the discussion and looked around. The single young women at the party looked like they were straight off the runway and paid to parade at the party. Like moths, they flocked together with no room for expansion and eyed me with disdain. Suddenly my 4,000-rupees suit lost its class. I had not seen many eligible bachelors that night, and I didn’t see the sense of being dragged to a party where the primary purpose of my attendance was not being fulfilled. The only young men I saw were already with women or pretended to be.

“Are Saheb, corruption breeds corruption,” said Uncle Waqar, “What can the public do when they can’t even get basic necessities? It is simple. Without bribing, you will be in a hell hole and who wants to be there?”

“Did you look at the list Qureshi published of the defaulters of tax and bank loans?” Abu responded. “They say Rana and Jabbar are on it, too.”

The men in the group exchanged uneasy looks.

“He’s trying to expose the scams of the old governments,” Abu continued. “I am not surprised that there are many affluent people on that list. Some that we even see here at this gathering today.”

At that, a few disentangled themselves from the group and walked away to seek other, more uplifting conversations, far removed from actual reality. A handful of others simply slipped away.

“I think his idea of making the State Bank of Pakistan an autonomous body will go a long way,” Abu said to Uncle Athar, his only audience by then, who nodded and was relieved when his wife called out to him. He hurriedly excused himself and left Abu’s side.

Meanwhile, Ami flitted around from one group to another like a winged creature, creating a stir wherever she moved, oblivious to Abu’s incisive conversation. Men ogled her choli, swooned over her, and even made suggestive jokes in groups. She seemed to enjoy it all until a hand swung her around and planted a kiss on her cheek in the ways of high-society—Uncle Jalal. Fantastic, I thought, and rolled my eyes. I sat down beside Abu, and he smiled at me, setting down his Coke on the side table—the womanlike contours of the bottle making it seem like a woman abandoned.

“Having fun?” he asked.

“Oh, is that what this is supposed to be?” I feigned surprise, and he laughed, hugging me close. That was the exact response he was looking for. I glanced briefly at Ami, now working the floor escorted by Uncle Jalal, who had his hand on her bare back. Every so often I saw that hand travel a little too low, and she seemed not to mind. I was surprised by how well they fitted together. They were both social butterflies, eager to be admired, thriving on attention. Abu probably just dampened Ami’s style with his political talk.

“Come, let me show you something,” Abu said after awhile, following my gaze and briefly looking at Ami and her beau. I wished his embarrassment was a tangible stain that I could scrub away. He stood up, taking my hand. I followed him to the Khans’ library and almost forgot to breathe. It was no less than a museum of books. Two corners of the large ballroom-sized room were filled with bookshelves up to the ceiling, sections devoted to various subjects, even a music library at the far corner with headsets and a large collection of old records. There were three large mahogany tables with leather-backed chairs around each and a giant spinning globe in the very center of the room on an ivory bureau, an intricately hand-spun Afghan rug underneath. But the thing that caught my eye was a woodcut engraving on the adjacent wall. I inched in closer. It was an interesting composition of a city being trampled by a devil.

“It’s New York,” Abu commented, taking off his glasses and scratching behind his ear. “See the signature? It was created by Albert Abramovitz, the greatest engraver of all times.”

There were more details below the artist’s signature.

Mefisto, New York. 1932.

“Virtually all of the work Abramovitz created was socially and politically oriented,” Abu explained.

I was mesmerized by the composition and its subtle details. There he was, Satan in a loincloth with a menacing expression on his face, crouching on a tall building and balancing his other foot on a smaller one. He had an arm raised in the air, watching, waiting to strike. I felt a chill run down my spine. The scene was of night, a clueless, unaware city lit up for its final destruction. Somehow I couldn’t pull myself away.

Abu motioned me to follow as he walked over to a bureau and bent down to open the last drawer in a familiar manner. I realized with an ache that that room had probably been his refuge at many Khan parties when Ami was busy charming the crowd. Abu drew out a scroll map and laid it out on one of the tables, his forehead lined in concentration.

We stood with our heads bowed low over the map of the world in front of us. My eyes went over to the West, scanning it for New York. What had motivated Abramovitz to do a rendering of a city’s destruction? I couldn’t shake the thought. Abu’s words brought me back to our side of the world.

“This is where your grandfather was born.” He pointed to a tiny speck north of Karachi. “Khairpur.”

The two ends of the map rolled down on both sides of the table and curled up. We studied the map, totally absorbed. “See how Pakistan looks,” Abu pointed out. “Like a mango squeezed of its pulp, misshaped and misproportioned. Elongated and lost. Our poor country.”

I peered closely and couldn’t help agreeing. The marked lines defining the contours of the land looked like a piece of gum stretched in one direction to its maximum length. Pakistan was a shy, squirming bride next to India, which spread its corners all around, looking for opportunities to advance, captivate and mesmerize. Bangladesh, a teardrop of India, was caught in years of natural disasters, as if paying for the price of some transgression almost in a karmic way. It wasn’t apparent looking at history what it was paying for, but someone knew.

We heard a laugh; it sounded like the tinkling of ice cubes in a glass. Ami’s voice. We both looked up. Ami and Uncle Jalal had wandered inside the library, not knowing we were there. Uncle Jalal had his arms around her and had pushed her against the wall. He looked like he was about to kiss her.

“Hello, Jalal.” Abu’s voice thundered inside the library with choked-back anger. “Amazing how you stand out wherever you go, isn’t it?”

Ami jumped and slipped out of Uncle Jalal’s embrace.

“Did it occur to you that you might have gone too far?” Abu’s question seemed to be directed toward both of them.

Uncle Jalal rested his elbow on the wall and turned around with a smile, not bothering to answer. It was almost as if he was unperturbed by Abu’s presence. Could it be too much alcohol in his system?

“How are you, Tehsin? Arissa?” he acknowledged. “Reading as usual, I see.”

Abu didn’t reply and turned to Ami instead. She looked at him scared, tongue-tied. There was a deadly look on Abu’s face, and it seemed that it took all of his willpower not to physically harm her.

“Arissa and I are going home,” he said to her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, his tone definitive. I was certain Ami knew that she had pushed his very last button, and there was no turning back. “Seems like you are enjoying this party, so I won’t inconvenience you. I am certain Jalal would be happy to drop you home.”

With that Abu turned and escorted me out, his hand firmly holding my forearm. There was a tiny bruise on my arm when I sat down beside him in the car. We didn’t talk the entire ride back, but I knew that that night would radically change our lives. I concentrated on the graffiti I saw along the way, starkly eerie in the dark, blocking out the apprehension for our future. DEATH TO NONBELIEVERS, one read. JIYE BHUTTO, read another. The final one, on a brick wall in the area we had nicknamed Khuda Ki Basti, or the village of God, where teeming masses of squatted and illegal dwellings sat right before we turned the lane into our picturesque neighborhood, admonished DO NOT URINATE. Below it ran a mocking tell-tale trail left by a brave soul.

“Your mother has left.”

The unnerving words echoed across the dining room and like a leech drained the surroundings of all air. The ear-piercing silence that followed became an incessant buzzing that wouldn’t go away. Like a bone, the joke we were laughing at minutes earlier got caught in our throats. Zoha’s hand, which had just lifted a spoon to bring it to her mouth, came to halt midair, and I saw her lower lip tremble. It could only mean one thing. I curled my fingers over her arm and gently but firmly guided the spoon into her mouth. She began to chew her cornflakes slowly as tears ran down her cheeks. Sian, 14 at the time, laid his spoon on the table on the side of his plate, wiped his face clean with a napkin, and escaped to his room without a word.

I glanced over at Abu, who had just delivered the hurtful news, and our gazes locked. There was a plea in his voice meant for me, and I understood it in more ways than I cared to. You perfect that art of deciphering the unspoken words when you live in the Amaan household and confront a situation over and over again.

That morning, Abu’s glance meant that I was to dutifully assume Ami’s duties and become emotionally present for my siblings. It also meant that I should take charge of the help in the house, the driver, the gardener, Mai Jan, etc. It wouldn’t be that hard. Ami had perfected the role of a lazy commander. Out in the real world of working folks, the help were almost always on their own since Ami was never good at supervising. Even when one of the newly hired help, Shama, the maid assigned to do laundry in the house, started stealing, Ami was oblivious to the entire thing. I was the one who caught her red-handed, fingers deep in Ami’s bedside drawer, drawing out a wad of cash that Ami had carelessly left there.

“She hates us, doesn’t she?” Zoha asked me once.

“No, she doesn’t.” I carefully weighed my words. “She just doesn’t know how to love us.”

Hate. Such a strong word, but it was also a mother’s final parting gift to us, the knowledge that she despised us, me most of all.

“I wish I never had you, Arissa!” Ami had said, tears streaming down her face as she dragged her suitcase out the door. “It’s because of you that your Abu and I were never happy together!”

And there it was: my baggage for many years.

FIVE

June 1996

The mango season arrives in Karachi with an explosion of the senses. The summer that Zoha got married, it had an enormous appeal for all of us.

The scent of its arrival permeated the four walls of the house, and a waft of it found its way to the upper floor. The entire house was alive with the aroma of Sindri, the plump yellow mango with a soft, luscious interior and an unforgiving center. Azad Baba got only the export quality for us. Not a scar or mark appeared on the coat of these mangoes. The ones that got squished or marred were separated and distributed among the help in the house. Only the perfect ones were reserved for us, and we didn’t even feel like royalty most days. Azad Baba brought the mangoes in the house in wooden crates with lids, nails sticking out on all sides. In our hurry to get to them, we often nicked ourselves on those nails.