The Writing on My Forehead (18 page)

“Hmmph.”

THE NEXT DAY,
I snuck out early to meet up with Mohsin. Another pilgrimage to Speakers’ Corner. I sat alone for a long time, the way I had wanted to five years ago. When Mohsin came, I stood up to give him a hug. His hair was short and neat, lacking any of the colors of the rainbow.

“You look different. All grown up. Good.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” He pointed to the bench where I had been sitting, indicating that I should sit back down. “Don’t be cross, Saira.”

“Cross?”

“About what I’m going to tell you.” He had a magazine in his hand.

“Are some of your pictures in there?”

“Yup. My pictures of Magda.”

“That’s wonderful, Mohsin!” He had been making a modest name for himself, getting published in fund-raising brochures mostly, for human rights organizations, hunger campaigns, and homeless shelters. “Why would I be mad?”

“Because I submitted the photographs with your piece.”

“My piece?
Magda?
” I had written a few incoherent pages, pure speculation on the life and death of the old woman based on what I remembered of her, the photographs that Mohsin had taken, and all of the questions I had wished I had asked.

“I should have asked you, I know. But I loved it. And I met the publisher of this magazine and we got to talking. I told him about what you’d written, about the pictures I’d taken years ago. He published it.”

“But—it wasn’t—there was nothing in it. Just a bunch of what-ifs. And imaginary answers she might have given.”

“They published it. With an introduction to explain that the pictures were of a real woman. Deceased.”

It hit me then. “They published it?! In this?” I had already grabbed the magazine out of his hand, was rustling through it to find it—my name, under the title. Published! “I—I don’t know what to say.”

“You’re not angry?”

“I—no! I’m thrilled.”

He smiled. “I thought you might be.” He stopped talking, giving me a chance to reread the story I’d written and sent him several months before. Then I bombarded him with questions. About the magazine, about him and what he’d been doing.

The last questions in my interrogation were about his family. “So you’re really cut off? No contact. Except with Mehnaz, of course.”

“Yeah. Mehnaz. I call my mum occasionally. Just to let her know I’m all right.”

“But your dad—?”

“He said not to call him until I stopped being queer.” I waited for him to laugh before I did.

“And—you’re happy?”

“Never more. Work is great. But—I think it’ll get even better in a couple of years. You still studying history?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what you want to be when you grow up yet?”

Bitterly, I said, “I know what I don’t want to be.”

“That’s a start. You can’t do your bachelor’s in journalism at Berkeley, can you?”

“No. J-school is grad school only.”

“Saira. I have an idea for you to think about. It came to me after you sent me that story. I’m a photographer—but not the artsy kind. I try to tell stories with my pictures. And—there are details behind those pictures that need to be told. I’ve worked with a few journalists already. And—I think you have what it takes to do the same. To write. Be a journalist. I thought, when you’re done with school—that’s in, what? Two, three years?”

“Yeah?”

“If you’re interested, we could work together. Go out there and do it. Bear witness. I’ll keep trying to make the contacts. And when you’re done with your studies—you come join me.”

“Oh, Mohsin! That—that would be fantastic!”

“I hoped you’d think so.”

“I do! I do!”

“Your parents might not like it.”

“No. They won’t.”

A
FTER LONDON, EVERY
moment with my parents on that trip was hell. On the plane, on the way to Karachi, my mother bombarded me with tales of marital bliss and fulfillment as part of a campaign which she rather pathetically imagined might make me more receptive to the many mothers and sons I was beginning to suspect she had lined up for us to meet. She alternated these stories with expressions of hope and faith that I had trouble digesting.

“In the end, Saira, it will not be about how you plan your life or how I plan it. It is
kismat
that will determine the outcome. And I tell you, believe me or not, I have a feeling that you are going to meet your
kismat
very soon. Mother’s intuition and faith tell me this—because I have prayed so hard for you to meet the man of your dreams, the man who will convince you that marriage is what you want, I know we will find him very soon. Or he will find us.” We. Us.

The first thing I did when we arrived in Karachi was to visit Big Nanima, who had moved into the flat she had kept for her retirement. She looked terribly old and frail, so much that I was afraid of hurting her as I held her to me, resisting the urge to squeeze her tightly, overcome, suddenly, by how much I had missed her. She asked about my studies, delving into the details of the curriculum of my classes like no one else had. She was disappointed by some of the things I had not read, recommending texts and literature I had never heard of, and delighted by others, writing down titles with which she was not familiar. She was retired from teaching at the college, but was still translating and adapting English literature for Pakistani television.

“Not that anyone watches our own Urdu dramas any longer. We have no culture of our own left—all everyone does is rent videos of Indian movies and American television shows. The young people here—I’m talking about the well-off children—are all hypnotized by what they think life is like everywhere else.

“No one is bothered by the fact that fewer and fewer of our children have food, shelter, education! I have spent my life in education—thinking that access to it would gradually broaden to include everyone. Hah! Instead, those with means only think about how to grab more for themselves and they do it without a second thought for all of the rest of our people—as if they are blind to their misery. We are not a country anymore—just a hellhole where tyranny and greed prevail. And all of those promises that have been broken—democracy, the constitution—how many times can such things be trampled in the mud before they become just forgotten words written on paper, which no one here even knows how to read, let alone implement? How much will our people suffer before they find something to fill the void of those promises? I don’t know how it can ever be made right. Frankly, I’m too old and tired to even worry about it. Listen to me! Rambling on and on about things that don’t concern you. Oh! It is so good to see you,
beti
! Tell me, how is Ameena? Is she happy?”

“Very. Shuja’s a good guy. That’s all that matters—in Mummy’s view of the world.”

Big Nanima tilted her head. “It is no small thing. To have a good husband.”

I thought of what Mummy and Ameena had said about Big Nanima. “Would you—would you have given everything up—all of your accomplishments, your life—to have had a husband and a family?”

“Oh, my! What a big question you have begun with.” Big Nanima was quiet for a moment, her hand on her cheek, giving my question serious thought. “I can’t say there haven’t been moments—long ago—when I wouldn’t have done what you say. But—with the whole spectrum of my life behind me, I don’t think I have any regrets.”

I nodded happily.

Big Nanima moved her hand from her cheek to mine. “You liked my answer, eh?”

“Very much.” I took hold of her hand for a long moment. And then remembered to say, “Mummy and Daddy said to give their
salaam
s. They’ll be here in an hour, to pick me up, and they said they’ll come in to visit then. But I couldn’t wait that long.”

“Bless you! I have been beside myself with excitement at the thought of seeing you—who knows when I’ll see you next, whether I will ever see you again in this life? You see, don’t you, how old I am getting? Too old! I should have been gone years ago. Every day I pray to God to take me soon, with my dignity still intact.”

“Lubna Khala was complaining. That she wants you to move in with her and you keep refusing.”

“Lubna is a dear, dear child. But as long as I have a choice, as long as I am able, I will cling to these walls. I am happy—she comes to visit every week and she sends the children to see me, too.” She laughed. “I know they come because she tells them to. Even the new daughter-in-law. What do you think of your cousin’s bride?”

“She’s very pretty. And young.” A year younger than me and married already.

“And completely cowered over by Lubna.” Big Nanima shook her head as she laughed. “You would think, after what your
khala
went through with
her
mother-in-law, that she might have a more sympathetic hand over the poor girl. But none of us ever learn.”

I agreed, having already noted how much Lubna Khala’s household resembled the way things used to be when she was a younger woman, not yet the mistress of her own household—not while her mother-in-law lived and maintained control. Even Mummy had wondered over “why on Earth” her sister had chosen to get her son married and settled under her own roof.

“And—you’re well, Big Nanima?”

“Oh yes. I am very well and very busy,
Mashallah
. Working on a new drama—an adaptation of
Wuthering Heights
. And I am in touch with many of my old students, too. Every week one of them stops by to see me. Some of them are doctors, lawyers, writers. Some of them visit when they come home from England or America, where they have settled, like your parents. It is wonderful to see them, even if it reminds me of how time has passed—to see those young girls all grown. Some of them are even grandmothers! Imagine!”

“Ameena sent this for you with her love.” I handed her the box of handkerchiefs that Ameena had given me to pass on to our great-aunt.

“Oh, that naughty girl! Taking time to think of me! You tell her I love them. It’s been too long since I have seen her—last when she and your mother came just before she was married. I want to see her before I die—tell her to forget about that old fan incident. That I love her as well as I love you.” One of Big Nanima’s wrinkled eyelids flashed shut in a slow but clear wink. “And what about you, Saira? You’ve told me about your studies. Do you know what you will do when you are finished?”

“I didn’t. Until very recently. I want to write. To be a journalist.”

“A journalist? Not fiction?”

I shook my head. “Maybe later. I want to show you something.” I pulled out the copy of the magazine that Mohsin had given me, opened it, and handed it to her. Without saying anything, she read the story and studied the pictures with all the solemnity I had expected of her. When she was done, she looked at me for such a long moment and with such profound silence that I squirmed and said, apologetically, “It’s really just a bunch of words to accompany the photographs that my cousin Mohsin took.”

“Certainly—but the pictures themselves wouldn’t have meant half as much without your words. I am very impressed, Saira. Your cousin Mohsin? Ahmed’s son?”

I nodded.

“Ah. You are close?”

“Yes.” Big Nanima’s eyebrows lifted. “No, no, Big Nanima. Nothing like that. He—uh—he doesn’t like girls.”

“Yes. I’d heard.”

I nodded toward the magazine she still held. “I haven’t shown that to my parents.”

“No? You think they won’t approve?”

I shrugged.

“And are you happy with all of your mother’s plans?”

“Her plans?”

“To find
you
a good husband.”

“What did she do? Put out an ad in
Dawn
?”

“It’s a big family, Saira. A huge network, which relays news from around the world, almost every continent. She’s taken advantage of that network—to advertise your availability.”

“So I’ve gathered. It’s humiliating, Big Nanima.”

“She wants you to be happy and well-settled.”

“I want to be happy, too. But I can’t do this.”

“I thought as much.” Big Nanima sighed and said, “Your mother is worried—you have so many choices, so many options. Those are choices she cannot relate to and it is always difficult to see those we love choose differently than we have chosen, to live differently and be different. Difficult from both sides. I suspect that your cousin Mohsin knows something of this—that you do as well, even if your mother doesn’t realize this.”

My eyes widened.

“I’m not asking for any confessions, Saira. But it is natural. You are a young woman from a different time and place. You have to decide what you want for your life. But don’t be too quick to throw away all of the old to embrace the new. Make room for both, Saira. This old family network—it is with us when we are born, when we marry—as your mother is using it now—and when we die. It is not always a bad thing. Here people don’t die alone in their apartments, unmissed and unnoticed for weeks, as I have heard happens in America. In our culture, you are defined by who you are to other people—someone’s daughter, wife, mother, sister, aunt. I, who have
not
been all of those things, cling even more strongly to those I
have
had the fortune of being. With these bonds, there are expectations, yes. The price you pay. But there—where it seems people define themselves on their own terms, where there is no price to pay, no expectations that you are required to meet—there is also less chance of reward. Of being needed, wanted. Obligations. Duty. That is the price you pay. But you are paying for
something
. Something of value that it would be a shame to lose completely. I don’t envy you, Saira. You have to decide exactly how many of these things you want to keep and bear the burden of. Don’t alienate your mother. Your values might someday be closer to hers. All she wants is your happiness.”

“Yeah. But she wants me to follow a script I can’t follow, Big Nanima. You didn’t follow that script.”

“Not out of choice, Saira.”

“But you’ve had a good life!”

“Never doubt it. But—what am I trying to say?” Big Nanima closed her eyes for a while. “I’ve had a good life. But the path I chose—whatever path anyone chooses—there will be times when life is not in our hands, Saira. At those times, we all need a—what did you call it? a script?—we all need a script to follow. If you have thrown the old script out completely, you will have to spend a lot of time writing a new script at that time—that would be a very difficult thing to do. Editing—that’s something I can understand. But to reinvent the wheel? Why? What need is there of that? Marriage is only part of that script, Saira.”

“Well, that’s the only part I’m concerned with right now.”

“Of course. But don’t be too hasty about throwing the whole thing out, eh? Not without even knowing what the rest of it is about.”

Big Nanima’s words calmed me down enough so that I managed to muddle through all of the matchmaking efforts that Mummy subjected me to in the next few weeks. I watched them from afar, from a detached position in the room as part of the audience rather than a player in the performances that unfolded before me. So it was another Saira who talked to those mothers of eligible sons. Another Saira who sized up the guys themselves, most of them home for the summer from colleges they attended in Europe or America—
desi
versions of the college boys I knew and regarded less than highly. Two proposals came, carefully executed through respectable third parties. Two proposals from strangers whose faces I could not recall when their emissaries came to talk to my parents. I had to meet them before I said no—in my aunt’s living room in a haze of awkward silence broken only by throat-clearing stammers from them and blank-faced stares from me. My mother railed against my indifference, but no stories of hers could change my mind.

In the last week of our stay in Karachi, Lubna Khala took us all out to lunch at Gymkhana, inviting Big Nanima, too. The lush, green grounds of the Gymkhana garden, where bow-tied bearers served the rich and privileged at tables set on the lawn, or in the open-walled pavilion that still housed heavy, dark, cane-backed chairs reminiscent of the days when this was a private club for the British, were a jarring contrast to the traffic and noise beyond the walls that contained them. Lubna Khala directed us to a square, clothed table near the steps of the pavilion. There were children there, shuttling back and forth between immaculately groomed, tastefully bejeweled mothers and shabbily dressed, gap-toothed
ayah
s that hovered at the perimeter and near the playground. The snippets of conversation that drifted from one end of the garden to the other were fascinating: talk of corruption and politics (apparently interchangeable terms), white money and black, export quotas, bridge, cricket, travel, and shopping hummed and hovered over us on our way to the table. Before we reached it, Mummy and Lubna Khala were stopped by an auntie they called Bunny, an old friend from Bombay, who greeted my mother with squeals and shrieks. My father was similarly waylaid by a childhood friend. Big Nanima and I seated ourselves and studied the menus that one of the waiters brought for us to peruse.

Having decided on our order—tomato soup, cheese toast, fish
pakora
s, chicken sandwiches, and tea—Big Nanima excused herself to use the washroom and I sat alone at the table to wait for everyone’s return. I looked around to survey the familiar scene. Lubna Khala’s treat at Gymkhana was something of a tradition on trips to Karachi. For her, it had always been a place to socialize away from home—a much-needed escape from her mother-in-law in years past. For us—Ameena and me—the large pool had been the attraction, a much-favored escape from the heat. As I’d gotten older, I had come to understand what it represented—an aristocratic refuge from the rabble, the status of membership there enhanced by the mystique of its past, when the only
desi
s allowed in were there to wait on tables and serve. There were other clubs like it in Karachi, some of higher status than others, but all of them with this foundation in common. They were the residue of an empire that had not been replaced with much success, as Big Nanima regretfully lamented.