Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (42 page)

BOOK: Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel

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My passport and money, some jewels Amme had passed on to me, I slid inside the handbag. Then I dumped them out and grabbed the canvas bag he used to take to and from tutoring every day, strapped to his back on the motorcycle, stuffed with engineering books, and once, with Nate’s letters. I put my things inside along with a change of clothes. I dressed in black, and by the time I had on my chador, Zeba came striding through the front gates. From the open window, I could hear her calling out for me even before she had unlatched the door.

I took a final glance about the room, the extravagant bed shaped into a peacock that Ibrahim and Zeba would now undoubtedly share, lying on top of velvet pillow covers Nafiza had sewn by hand; the
almari
filled with the silk saris and jewelry of my dowry, and the jewels passed on to me by Sameer’s mother; and before the dresser in which Henna had slid Nate’s letters, the velvet stool on which my new husband had sat on our wedding night, my kurta clenched between his fists, agonizing about Nate, what he must have known then he could never do himself. Then I saw it, right at the center of the bed, where he and I had been sleeping so tightly, splotches of red.

Menstruation blood, not of death, but of life.

IN THE CYCLE-RICKSHAW, we rolled up from the dead-end road, heading for the main highway, and I closed my eyes, letting some other rhythm carry me.

As we neared the bottom of the hill that would take me out of
Vijayanagar Colony, out of all that had been part of me, the driver began to slow, readying himself to dismount and push the rickshaw up, and the sky tore with the blasting of drums and music, frightening away the birds nested in the woods. Enormous, powerful Ganesh, the one who had been presiding near Abu Uncle’s house, had been lifted and was being carried in the back of a lorry, his head held high under the weight of fresh flowers. Surrounding him, in the open back, were young men in wild flourishes of festive-colored clothes.

Following Ganesh was a caravan of cars and auto-rickshaws moving not much faster than our cycle-rickshaw, trucks on which loudspeakers were strapped to roofs, one song quickly folding into another, folding into a Telugu or Sanskrit prayer. From car windows, dark arms were flung out, jiggling in dance, some gripping sizzling sparklers, the flares like live wires under the gray sky. A sign of things that could erupt.

Groups of men strolled alongside the vehicles, dressed mostly in yellows and reds. They were drinking something from a bottle, they were passing it to one another, they were stumbling. Some had played earlier with colored dyes, and their faces and arms and shirts were patches of forbidden colors. The children who accompanied them were waving balloons that drooped on long sticks. While a few of the younger boys scampered along with their fathers, the older ones paused here and there alongside the road to light firecrackers. The sound like death.

I kept expecting someone to break a bottle. To come at Zeba and me, to stain our mournful blacks with the auspicious red of our own flesh. But no one did. Some eyed us with hatred and suspicion. Some turned the other way. Some didn’t notice. And one old man with horizontal stripes across his forehead nodded at us, once, as a way of greeting, as a way of letting us know he had seen us in our sorrow, even from his joyful eyes, and we nodded back.

At the crossroads, the rickshaw took a right turn and headed toward the Old City, while the parade continued straight ahead, on its
way to Tank Bund, the bridge joining the stray moments of our fleeting lives.

SHE TOOK ME to the flat roof of a building at the heart of the Old City, near the shrine the Qutb Shahi kings had built in the sixteenth century, the Badshashi Ashur Khana. The men’s procession of self-flagellators was weaving its way through narrow back alleys, headed here to rest, and from the roof, we would be able to witness these final gestures of grief commemorating our martyred saints. All that had come before, all that was yet to come, carried in these very moments.

Around me, women were lined up along the two sides of the roof that overlooked the street the procession would take, the
durga
off to the corner. So many had come to marvel at this show of courage and sorrow that bodies were lined up one behind the other, an ever-moving mass jockeying to get in front, next to the cement railing, for a better view. And the ones lucky enough to be at the railing were flattened against it, torsos leaning over from the pressure of all that was behind. Up and down the block, for as far as I could see, women in black were crowded on roofs. I could have been looking at us.

In the distance, a rhythmic beating that, at first, I mistook for the drums I’d been hearing all these days. Then I realized it was the men’s self-flagellation.

“
Hai
Allah! They’ve arrived,” someone cried.

Zeba had been gripping my wrist to keep from losing me in this crowd, and she now shoved us forward, closer to the edge. She began yelling, “I have an American girl who must see these processions, please, Allah will reward you, let us though.”

The women slowly parted and let me have a coveted spot. Then they closed in behind me, pressing me hard against the cement railing, the weight of their soft bodies a wall holding me up. I was captivated by what lay before me. The world, unobstructed and clear.

“Look! Look!” someone shouted, and a hand shot forward, pointing.

Across the way, just beyond a building, was the beginning of the procession. The men were making their way down the last bend of a narrow alley, their lengthy, circuitous journey through the Old City finally coming to an end. The women became quiet, and in the silence, the cry of a child. The mother tried to soothe him by smothering him to her flesh and, when that didn’t work, she pulled out a breast and standing, watching the oncoming procession, let him suckle.

The men were reciting a prayer as they marched forth, and I now saw just how long the procession actually was. There were different groups, each group made of twenty or so men, in four or five rows each. The rows were far enough apart so that when the men self-flagellated, their weapons didn’t strike those around them. Ten or fifteen yards behind the first group, another began. And it went on like this for twelve or fourteen groups. As long as a mile.

The first group now marched in and stopped in the middle of the road. The crowd that had amassed there, awaiting the procession, parted on either side of the men, a rippling of black. The leader called out, “Allah
ho Akbar,”
and his group halted. The prayers stopped. In the silence, the self-flagellation began. Some men bent forward and struck themselves with chains or swords or whips made of five blades, others straightened and tore their shoulders with machetes; razors cleanly sliced chests, knives carved into foreheads. And just when I thought none was left, fresh blood spurted and dripped down faces and chests and shoulders and backs and onto pant cuffs, bare feet, the shuddering earth.

Finally the leader shouted out again, and the weapons came to rest, hanging loosely from arms, and as they marched on, the men’s chorus began once more to rise under the gray sky. The street behind them stained as though bleeding itself.

The next leader brought on his group. They, too, stopped in the middle of the road and stepped neatly into the blood puddles left by the men before. They were heavier set than the first, their skin fair.

“Iranians, Iranians,” the whisper went through the crowd.

I turned away and tried to catch a last glimpse of Amme’s rambling
house in the old walled city. But it was indiscernible from any other home. Just as we up here, in our black chadors, were indiscernible from one another. Sameer was right. I was invisible.

In the snuffle of the crowd, I released my hand from Zeba’s, and slowly, moving with the rhythm of others’ bodies, the thumping chests, the women’s eyes gazing downward at the men, the men’s eyes gazing upward, at Allah, I pressed back into the crowd. Another figure in black quickly took my spot next to Zeba, and for a moment, I stopped, silently wishing her farewell.

At the door to the roof, just as I was about to bound downstairs, I glimpsed Sabana standing alone at the center, the chador draped loosely about her, exposing her full face, the hair cut fashionably to her shoulders. Though it was not allowed, she was wearing makeup, her lashes thick with mascara, lips a pale pink. Still caught in some vision that had been projected onto the big screen, roles she’d taken up, hidden to herself Her belly was as wide and round as Henna’s had been the last time I had seen her, standing among what now seemed our own ruins. It didn’t matter to me anymore, what Dad had done that night, choosing one, abandoning another. Indeed, if I was going to carry him now, inside me, inside any dreams, it would be the image of him boarding the plane, not leaving it all behind, but finally taking possession of his destiny.

I turned and rushed down the winding steps and pushed out into the narrow alleyways, making my way through the aching crowd, the rhythmic pounding of flesh like thunder under the gray monsoon skies. It was the sound of a heart breaking, coming back to life, surrender and union. I walked, I did not run. I walked through the winding alleys, listening to my sandals clicking on the cobblestone, the intake of breath. The canvas bag against my flat belly, holding a different life. Where would these streets lead me?

The wind rose, lifting up my veil like ravens’ wings. Layla. Darkness. So I was. My body hidden and safe under the chador, belonging only to me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WILL ALWAYS BE INDEBTED to the teachers at the University of Oregon, especially to James D. Houston for revealing the invisible, Ehud Havazelet for proving that “all shall be well,” and Garrett Hongo and Chang-rae Lee for teaching me how to dance on the page. Three people who deserve special credit: David Mura, for helping me to embark on this journey, then undertaking the more difficult task of keeping me true to it; Alan Cheuse, on whose wings I took flight; and Bharati Mukherjee, a guide, a light, a master—how could I have been so lucky? Dr. Wade Smith of the NeuroICU at UCSF, thank you for helping to give me a second life. And thank you, Rona Jaffe Foundation, for enabling me to weave a narrative in that new life. I am also grateful to Mihail, who appeared like magic, then spun magic. My editor, Ayesha Pande, for her vision and unrelenting enthusiasm and support and giggles—I couldn’t have done it without you! My agent, Eric Simonoff, patient friend whose faith never ebbed, taking me from there to here. Caring, generous Scotty, for his steadfast hand. Family and friends on both sides of the Atlantic for their prayers. Tim, without whose support this book would not be what it is. My two brothers, Zulfe and Jafer, who are my bookends. Naomi, noble friend. And my son, Ishmael, who shows me the miracle of each day.

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