The World We Found (34 page)

“Okay, Dad, easy,” Farhad muttered uncomfortably. “Did Mom leave?”

He looked at his watch. “They will be boarding soon.”

“So everything went fine? No problems with the bags?” And before Adish could answer, Farhad added, “I liked Nishta auntie. She’s sweet.”

“Isn’t she?” he said distractedly. Maybe they could visit Nishta in America next year, he was thinking. Richard had said something about contacting an attorney to figure out how to keep her in the country permanently. What was that expression? Once you save a life, you are responsible for it. He just hoped that they had indeed saved Nishta’s life, that he wasn’t deluding himself into thinking so.

“Want me to get the car? I had to park pretty far away.”

Adish put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “No,” he said. “I want to walk. Let’s walk together.”

Chapter 27

L
aleh chewed on her lower lip as she hung up from the phone call with Adish, not liking the rote, hollow way in which he had answered her questions about Iqbal’s unexpected appearance and his sudden disappearance. Something unpleasant must’ve happened with Iqbal—he hadn’t left the airport simply because Adish had said please, she thought wryly. She would find out more when they next talked on the phone. The more pressing task was to calm Nishta down.

“I can’t believe he was here,” Nishta kept saying. “And that he left? Without me? I know Iqbal—he’ll make sure I don’t board this plane.”

“Nishta,” Kavita said, snapping her fingers. “Look at me. We’ll preboard, okay, if that makes you feel better? Nobody’s going to keep you back now. Do you think Adish would let him hurt you?”

“I don’t understand,” Nishta said, shaking her head. “How he found out.”

Kavita sighed. “Look. His meeting probably ended early and he saw your note. We lost so much time in the damn traffic at the airport, remember?”

Nishta looked wild-eyed. “But what about Mumtaz? Do you think he . . . ?”

“I don’t understand,” Nishta said, shaking her head. “He must’ve gone home early. But why? Why didn’t he go to his meeting?”

“What does it matter?” Kavita said. “Maybe the meeting was short. We lost so much time in the damn traffic at the airport. If it hadn’t been for that, he wouldn’t have even—”

“I didn’t tell you this,” Nishta interrupted. “I did something really stupid. I left Iqbal a note.”

“You did what?” Laleh said.

Nishta looked miserable. “I wrote him a note this morning. Telling him I wasn’t coming back. I felt like I owed him that much, you know?”

“You told him you weren’t returning? Forever?” Laleh couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice. “After all the elaborate planning we did?”

“I did. I’m so sorry, Laleh. I really wasn’t thinking.”

Laleh bit down on her tongue. She could see that Nishta was on the verge of hysteria. Nothing to be gained by chastising her now. She would have to squeeze in a call to Adish before they took off, alerting him to what had happened. “It’s okay,” she said. “No use crying over—”

“But what about Mumtaz?” Nishta looked wild-eyed. “Do you think he . . .”

“Mumtaz is fine,” Laleh said in a pacifying tone. “She’s okay.”

“I want to phone her. To make sure.”

Laleh took a deep breath. “Adish said Mumtaz is safe,” she lied. “She left before Iqbal got home and saw your note.”

She watched as disbelief wrestled with hope on Nishta’s face. “Really?” she said finally. “Adish said that?”

Laleh forced herself to look Nishta in the eye. “Yes.”

“Thank God. Thank God.”

Kavita put her arm around Nishta’s shoulders and the two women wandered around the lounge, Kavita speaking quietly but firmly. After a few minutes, she managed to coax a wan smile out of Nishta.

Laleh moved to a corner of the large room and dialed Adish’s number. The phone rang several times before it went into voicemail. “Hey,” she said, raising her voice so that she could be heard over the din. “Got some bad news, I’m afraid. Turns out Nishta left a note for Iqbal in which she told him she’s not returning to India. Pretty crazy, huh? Anyway, that’s probably why he came to the airport. I just want you to be careful, okay, janu? Alert the kids, also. No telling what he might do. . . .” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the other two headed toward her. “Okay, ’bye for now. I love you.”

She hung up and watched as Nishta and Kavita walked across the room. She felt a spurt of anger at Nishta for having endangered her family with a stupid, impulsive gesture, but shook it off. She would not start the trip by being resentful of her friend. Besides, it was hard to stay angry with someone as broken and hurt as Nishta. She had changed, perhaps forever, Laleh realized. There was a nervousness, a skittishness about her that was new. Well, new to me, she corrected herself. The poor girl has probably lived like this for years now. Laleh felt a pang of sadness at the thought of leaving Nishta behind when they left America in three weeks. How in the world would she manage? And with Richard preoccupied with taking care of Armaiti, how much could they expect him to do for her? She knew that Nishta was planning on helping with Armaiti’s care, that she would temporarily live with her. But later . . . after Armaiti . . . Lal shook her head. They would simply have to stay involved in her life. Nishta would be fine. Look at what she’d already achieved. Despite all his faults, Laleh knew that leaving Iqbal hadn’t been easy for Nishta. But she’d done it. Don’t be fooled by the nervous tics and the abrupt manner, Laleh told herself. She remembered that in college Nishta had had more stamina, more physical strength, than any of them. She recalled the set of her mouth the morning she’d come to college and announced that her mother had threatened to commit suicide if she married a Muslim. “What did you say?” they had asked breathlessly. And Nishta had looked at the three of them with cold, clear eyes and said, “I told her her life was her own business. Just like my life was my own. And I am going to marry Iqbal.”

Remembering that long-ago incident now, Laleh felt a sour feeling in her stomach. What kind of a mother says such an awful thing to her child? she wondered. But the memory also kindled hope in her. What kind of a daughter—especially an Indian daughter, brought up to respect her parents, to believe that duty came before love, to be self-sacrificing, selfless, to always put the needs of others ahead of her own, could have given such an answer? Only one who was tough as nails, who knew the dictates of her heart as clearly as Nishta obviously did. She’ll be fine, Laleh thought. She’ll not just survive, she’ll thrive.

She smiled as Nishta and Kavita reached her. “Seems like I’m destined to lose all my friends to America,” she grumbled good-naturedly. “First Armaiti, now you.”

Nishta took Laleh’s hand and, in a completely unselfconscious gesture, held it up to her mouth and kissed it. “You’ll always have me, my Lal,” she said. She held on to Laleh for another moment before letting her go. “I need to go to the loo,” she said. “Don’t leave without me, accha?”

Kavita grinned. “Yeah, right. After what we’ve been through.”

They watched as Nishta crossed the lounge and disappeared into the bathroom. Laleh said, “Let’s sit. I’m exhausted.”

Kavita nodded. “You look awful.”

Laleh grimaced. “Thanks, Ka. You’re so good for my morale.”

“You know what I mean, yaar.”

Laleh sighed. “This business with Iqbal has wiped me out. Adish was really vague on the phone, but I know something happened between him and Iqbal.” She shifted in her seat so that she could look at Kavita. “Tell me we did the right thing. With Nishta, I mean.”

Kavita stared straight ahead. “I think we did the only thing we could,” she said after a while. “I mean, leaving Nishta to her fate would’ve been a betrayal of . . . everything.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. But I must say, seeing Iqbal at the airport freaked me out.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then, “Ka,” Laleh said, not bothering to disguise the ache in her voice. “What happened? I mean, to Iqbal? To us? How did we end up on opposite sides?”

Kavita smiled, and there was a world of sadness and hard-won wisdom in that smile. “What’s the clarifying principle here, you mean? Remember how we used to try and solve all political arguments by asking that question, Lal? It’s amazing how we were ever stupid enough to think there was a single answer. Because there isn’t one. What happened to Iqbal? Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures, and delights. Life happened.”

Laleh opened her mouth to argue, to protest that Kavita’s answer was too easy, not sufficiently critical of the social forces that ground human beings into the dust, when a figure moving toward them caught her eye.

T
he shaking started as soon as Nishta went into the bathroom. She bunched up her robe and lowered herself on the commode, waiting for the sensation to pass, but her hands fluttered like butterfly wings and her bones felt as cold as the moon. It was as though her very skeleton was rattling. Seeing Iqbal appear at the airport and then disappear had unnerved her. Even now, she could not believe that she was actually free, that she was getting away with this. Surely something will still go wrong, she thought. Surely, at this very moment, he is talking to the police, convincing them to come looking for her. But then she remembered that Adish was at the airport, too, and she felt a little better. Besides, if something were to happen, if Iqbal were to create a scene, surely it would’ve happened by now.

Why had she been stupid enough to leave Iqbal a note? A dangerous pity had made her do so, the thought of him coming to an empty house and no explanation too bleak for her to bear. When she’d spotted Iqbal at the airport, her first thought was that Mumtaz had betrayed her after all. But already she knew better. Sweet, guileless Mumtaz. How could she have been suspicious of Mumtaz, of all people? If anything, she had betrayed Mumtaz. Would she ever understand? How would she react when she found out that her sister-in-law had flown forever, that she was never returning to her cage? She hoped Mumtaz would heed her advice and never confess her role to Iqbal.

Nishta looked down at her hands and for an instant imagined that she saw claws instead of fingers. Was she really this strong? This tough? To deceive not just her husband, but the woman who had been a younger sister to her, who had risked her relations with her entire family, to help her? To use Armaiti’s illness as a ladder with which to climb out of the dark pit her life had become? Could a woman, a human being, turn her back on so much, give up everything that once belonged to her and that she once belonged to—husband, parents, in-laws, home, city, country—and still be called human? Or was there another category for people like her, would she suddenly sprout fangs and horns, would she be consigned to a new category of beast, another species—rudderless, rootless, homeless, stateless? How many metamorphoses must she still go through? First Nishta, then Zoha, and still it wasn’t enough? Was her evolution still unfinished? Who else must she become? Who else would she become?

She shivered again. But just once. She realized she had been holding her bladder and now she let go and peed. And as she peed, she felt warmth seep back into her body. As the shaking stopped, it felt as if her body, its true shape, was being returned to her. This is the last time I’ll be peeing on Indian soil, she thought, suddenly, implausibly, and the realization was accompanied by a sadness sharp as glass and an excitement bright as a diamond. Yes, it would be hard, building a new life in a new place. Who knew if she would succeed, who knew whether she would ultimately regret what she was throwing away? But one thing she knew for certain: it would be her life. The failures, the regrets, the successes, the joys—they would be her own. It would be her name on her life, from now on.

She flushed the toilet and came out and rubbed her hands vigorously at the cracked porcelain sink. She had her hand on the outer door of the restroom, ready to rejoin Kavita and Laleh, when she remembered something. She turned around and went back in toward the stalls.

“L
ife happened,” Kavita concluded and Laleh opened her mouth to argue, to protest that Kavita’s answer was too easy, not sufficiently critical of the social forces that ground human beings into the dust, when a figure moving toward them caught her eye.

It was Nishta. She was wearing a red T-shirt and blue denim pants. The outfit was poorly tailored and Laleh noticed that Nishta’s soft belly jiggled through the thin cloth of the T-shirt as she moved. But what took Laleh’s breath away was Nishta’s hair. It fell like a thick, dark waterfall down her face until it stopped, at her upper back. Even as she watched, Nishta was reaching up to gather her hair into a ponytail. There was something unfamiliar—and heartbreakingly familiar—about the gesture.

Beside her, she heard Kavita breathe a soft “Oh my.”

Both of them rose involuntarily as Nishta reached them. Laleh cocked her head, a bemused look on her face. “No more burkha?” she said.

“No more burkha,” Nishta answered. Her voice was expressionless but her face looked as if it were made of liquid wax, melting and freezing and melting again from multiple, contradictory emotions.

“How do you feel?”

Nishta thought for a moment. “Naked . . . exposed . . . scared. And free.”