The Writing on My Forehead (9 page)

“I reckon he thought we’d crossed a line or something. Of intimacy, I suppose. Because, next thing I knew, he was introducing himself to me. And off we went to tea. We talked—about everything under the sun. And I saw that I’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t prim and proper at all. He was charming, full of life and laughter. Interested in everything I had to say—staring at me, open-mouthed, for half the hour, as if I were a creature from another planet.”

“Did he tell you he was married?” I knew it was a rude thing to ask, but I couldn’t help myself, and—I suppose—I wasn’t afraid of Belle’s opinion of me the way I had been of Razia Nani’s.

Belle gave me a long look. And I knew, somehow, that she wasn’t angry. “Yes. Almost as soon as we sat down in the tea shop, actually.”

My face burning, I said, “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

Belle took my hand. Gave it a squeeze. And then let it go, perhaps this time sensing my discomfort. “No, love. You have nothing to be sorry about. It’s—it’s not easy to understand what happened—and I’m not sure how to explain it without muddling it all up. That day—over tea—well, it was very clear that there was something there. Between us. In the end—I don’t know why I did—but I gave him my number. Told him to give me a ring. Knowing that he wouldn’t, of course. It’s not something I’d ever done before. Chatting up married men—especially older married men—was just not in my book. Not normally.

“Your granddad told me what happened when he went home that afternoon—that your aunt had begun labor and she and your grandmum were already at hospital. Zehra popped out later on that night. He was ecstatic. Hung around the next morning at hospital, showering cash all over the staff, handing out jewelry to his daughter. But he was getting in the way there, hushed out of the room whenever the sisters brought the baby in to be nursed, or the doctor came to check stitches in places he didn’t want to think about. He decided to go for a walk. And ended up at the Corner—where I was mooning about, hoping to see him, without admitting it to myself, of course.

“I saw him before he saw me. I came up to him from behind, put my hand on his shoulder. He turned. Our eyes locked. Without a word, we went back to my place. And—well—things happened. He told me he was a granddad now. Asked me why I was with him. I told him I’d answer that when
he
did. And there we were. In the middle of something totally unexpected. Nothing was the same for either of us. Nothing could be.

“When Kasim went home that night—after spending the rest of the evening at hospital, holding Zehra in his arms—your grandmum found a button on his shirt missing. He thought for sure he’d caught it now. But she just sewed a new button on, like the good wife that he’d always taken for granted. He told me that he felt sorry for her. Isn’t that awful? I almost cried when he told me, I felt so dreadful for her. He did, too, for what it was worth. He knew, you see. What his own role was in the life she led. She was his wife. He’d been her husband. They were married before they’d ever gotten to know each other—or even to know themselves. And that was fine. Before. But it wasn’t anymore. He knew that it was over. You see, for Kasim—for your
nana
—there was never any choice in the matter. It was the same for me. And because
he
had changed—had been reborn—the people who depended on him, who were
what
they were,
who
they were, because of him, would also have to be reborn—to recreate themselves. And while he felt badly about his part in their past, he could no longer be responsible for their futures.” Belle stopped talking to take stock of what I was thinking. I don’t know what she saw on my face. But her next words made me jump. “Have you ever heard ‘Getting Better’? By the Beatles?”

Very slowly, I nodded.

Belle started to sing, softly, under her breath. And then said, “That song was playing on the radio in those days. When your granddad and I met. In it, the man says he’s changing his scene. That’s what your granddad did. He changed his scene. He
had
to.” There was a long silence that I didn’t know how to end. “What bothered him most was losing touch with his family. We had Jamila, of course”—she said Jamila Khala’s name with an
er
at the end of it—“and her children. But he longed to see your mum and Lubna. And all their children. Especially when we started to have children of our own.”

Reminded of my mother, who had slipped my mind toward the end of Belle’s story, a question popped out of my mouth before I could even acknowledge it in my head: “Did you—did he take you dancing?”

Belle lit up. “All the time! He taught me—ballroom dancing, I mean. Speaking of dancing!”

Someone had put on some music and I jumped out of my seat, seeing my cousins starting to collect again for another performance, wanting to get away from Belle before anyone noticed us tucked away so intimately in that corner of the garden. I turned to her and stared down at her shoes for a moment, unable to think of what to say. Finally, I mumbled, “It was—uh—nice—talking to you.”

“It was lovely! Now away with you. The girls are lining up already!” She was laughing at me.

I carried a lump of guilt around in my throat for the next hour after dinner, when the dancing resumed. The choreographed numbers shifted into free-form. Jamila Khala danced with Zehra. Lubna Khala danced for what looked like the first time. Belle’s daughters got up and moved in time to the music, joining in with the rest of us, their nieces. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Belle approach Big Nanima, the only close relative still seated, and pull her up out of the chair she was sitting in. Big Nanima shook her head at first, sternly. Then she smiled a little, then laughed at something Belle said to her as she pushed her up into the center of our circle and danced with her until we were all breathless from dancing and giggling at the strange sight of them together.

When the music stopped, I heard them laughing together, Belle saying, “You’re a terrific dancer, Adeeba!”

I heard Big Nanima’s answer, too, a little breathless: “Well, don’t tell anyone, but I used to go dancing a lot. In London, when I lived there many years ago.”

R
AZIA NANI AND
I left Karachi—the image of Belle and Big Nanima dancing together still vivid in my mind. Razia Nani, dissecting the details of Zehra’s wedding, took great pleasure in calculating the value of the jewelry and gifts that had been exchanged between the bride’s family and the groom’s. As we got closer to landing, I prodded her attention away from the wedding that had just taken place and to my father’s family, with whom I would stay in London.

“He’s a big shot, your Ahmed Chacha. Very rich and important.”

I listened closely, because I didn’t know Ahmed Chacha as well as I knew my mother’s family. On past visits to London, I usually stayed with Jamila Khala. But she was still in Karachi, basking in the afterglow of success that a daughter’s wedding affords.

Razia Nani was still talking. “He married well, your Ahmed Chacha. A banker’s daughter. Nasreen. A very nice woman. Though their children are another story!
Oof!
Rude and disobedient. They never greet their elders properly and wear outrageous clothes.”

My twin cousins, Mohsin and Mehnaz, were assigned the task of retrieving me at the airport. As I emerged from customs with Razia Nani, my eyes searched the faces in the crowd gathered, waiting to greet arriving passengers. The air felt crisp and impersonal—not like the cloying, humid breath of hot air that wrapped around me like a sheet of plastic as soon as I had disembarked in Karachi. But the view, in some ways, was not all that different. The skin color, the facial features, and the languages I heard spoken among the majority of the people lined up before me were all familiar. Brown.
Desi
—though most were dressed in Western clothes and many spoke English with British accents. The British, after all, were not the only ones who left India after Independence.

I found my cousins in a hazy waft of smoke. Mehnaz was leaning, one foot up, against a pillar outside of the terminal building. Mohsin’s face was hidden behind a camera, its focus trained on one of the Sikh women who worked at Heathrow, comprising the whole custodial staff, whose uniform was
desi
—a
shalwar kameez,
complete with
dupatta
. A cigarette dangled, defying gravity, from his lower lip. Mehnaz saw me first and lifted a finger to point, mumbling something under her breath, something apparently amusing, which made Mohsin’s lips lift, nearly relinquishing their hold on the cigarette. He clicked his picture and lowered the camera as they both took steps forward to meet me.

“Well. ’Ere you are, then!” said Mehnaz cheerfully, as she stubbed her cigarette out under a heel that looked like a lethal weapon. “’Ow are you doing? ’Ad a good flight, did ya?”

The only way, as an ignorant American, oblivious to the subtle differences and nuances among working-class English accents (yes, I knew they existed; I had, after all, seen
My Fair Lady
at least a dozen times), that I could describe Mehnaz’s accent would be as “cockney.” Years later, I felt an acute sense of betrayal to discover that she, and Mohsin, too, for that matter, had attended very upper-crust schools in London…the kind that made class (and, in desperate times, money) an entry requirement and accent an exit one. The kind that meant that her accent was about as authentic as Audrey Hepburn’s. But I have to admit, I admire the effort that dropping all of those
h
s must have required.

I turned to say good-bye to Razia Nani again. Another of her sons was standing to the side, head lowered in shame from the scolding his mother had given him for being late to pick her up. She gave each of my cousins a disapproving once-over before asking, doubtfully, “Are you sure you will not come and stay with me, Saira? I’m not sure if I should let you go home with these—uh—children.” Mohsin had his camera up again, pointing it at Razia Nani, playing with the huge lens as if he were focusing a slide under a microscope.

I said, “No, thank you, Razia Nani.”

With one more suspicious look at Mohsin and Mehnaz, Razia Nani nodded and left.

Mohsin, who had not yet said anything to me, cradled his camera to his chest with one hand and picked up the bigger of my two bags, shoving it onto his back with the other hand, like the porters that I had seen so many of at the airport in Karachi. Except that this porter had purple streaks of color in his longish hair, through which I could see a silver peace sign hanging from one ear. He wore black, drain-pipe jeans. And thick, clunky combat boots.

When we got to the car, Mohsin packed and smashed my things into the “boot” and handed the keys back over to his sister.

“Bollocks! I drove ’ere! You drive this time, Mo!”

Mohsin’s hand did not retract, fearfully, as mine would have at Mehnaz’s forceful tone. He merely shook his head, still mute, and jingled the keys even closer to her face.

“Bloody ’ell! Stupid, bleedin’ ’art joey! The air’ll be just as polluted whether I drive or you do!” Mehnaz turned to me, her words still punctuated by exclamation points, to explain, “Mo ’ere is going to save the whole bloody world! By not driving! ’E doesn’t mind if I do, though! Bloody fuckin’ ’ypocrite!”

“I can’t help being a passive participant in the desecration of our planet. But at least I’m not an active one.” Mohsin’s words were delivered in a carefully neutral monotone, as if to make up for the distinctive language of his sister.

Mehnaz snorted in reply.

The miles from Heathrow into the posh London suburb where my uncle lived whirred by as Mehnaz drove, maybe to punish her brother and maybe by habit, like a crazy woman convinced of her own lone sanity. The horn was sounded every few miles or so, accompanied by colorful—and I mean that literally—commentary about the other drivers she encountered.

“Bloody dirt-colored Paki! Go back where you bloody came from!

“Did you see that bloody yellow Chinker?! Oy! Lady! Open your bloody eyes, would you?!

“Hey, white boy! Watch what you’re fuckin’ doing! Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you and your whole bloody fuckin’ racist country!”

I shrank back in the tiny space of the back seat, in horror, grateful that the windows were rolled up and hoping that no one could actually hear her. Once, when I must have moaned out loud, Mohsin looked back at me, white-knuckled and knock-kneed. He nodded his head in the direction of his sister and rolled his eyes, then held his camera up and shot a picture of me. I tried to smile, but it was too late. He laughed, silently, and turned his head back again to look straight ahead.

He took a few more pictures from the passenger seat of the car on our way home.

I asked, “Do you always carry your camera around? Everywhere?”

Mohsin nodded. “I have to, don’t I?”

“You have to?”

“To bear witness.”

I shook my head, thinking I’d misheard him—his accent was clearer than his sister’s, but it was an accent, still, to my ears.

When we finally turned into the driveway of my uncle’s house, my aunt came out of the house to greet us, no doubt alerted to our arrival by the screech of brakes in the driveway. She embraced me, told me how nice it was to see me and how happy she was to spend some time with me. Mehnaz, mumbling something about a phone call she had to make, disappeared into the house. My aunt was just beginning to list all of the places she wanted me to see when Mohsin interrupted.

“Why don’t you ask Saira what
she’d
like to see, Mum? She’s a big girl, you know. She might have some ideas of her own.”

I looked up sharply, searching his face for any trace of sarcasm. Not finding any, I bit my lip, thinking. The obvious light bulb came on, “Well, I
would
like to see Hyde Park. I mean, I’ve heard about Speakers’ Corner, you know? But I’ve never been there.”

Mohsin gave me a measuring look.

His mother said, “Hyde Park? Yes, we can go there. We can go there tomorrow, after Madame Tussaud’s. It’s a wax museum. You’ll see all the famous people there. The Chamber of Horrors also. Very scary. Just what you youngsters enjoy. The next day, we’ll go to Bekonscot. It’s a miniature English village. Small, small houses. Small, small gardens. Small, small trains. They move, also, from station to station. So cute. You’ll love it!” She clapped her hands together in excitement.

“Oh, yeah. I remember that place. Jamila Khala took us there. A long time ago. When I was little,” I added, hoping to get out of the childish excursion.

“Oh? You’ve been there already?” The disappointment in her voice was clear.

“But I’d love to go again, Nasreen Chachi,” I said, trying to be polite, hoping she would notice the lack of enthusiasm in my voice.

Mohsin heaved one of my bags up onto his back.

“
Beta!
Don’t carry that like a
junglee
! You’ll hurt your back! Come, why are we standing outside? Come into the house and I’ll get you something to eat. Come, come, you must be hungry. I bought some nice shepherd’s pie, frozen, from Sainsbury’s. I’ll just pop it into the micro. And chocolates. Lots of chocolates. Everybody loves English chocolates.”

I followed my aunt into the house and paused, for a second, at the entrance to the living room. There it was—Ahmed Chacha’s bar, well stocked with an assortment of bottles that held fascination for Ameena and me, raised in a house where alcohol was strictly forbidden. We had asked Mummy about it on past visits. She had pursed her lips and shaken her head, her disapproval too strong for words. Ameena and I had marveled at how two brothers, our father and Ahmed Chacha, could be so very, very different from each other.

Controversy erupted a half-hour and two servings of readymade shepherd’s pie later. Mehnaz came into the kitchen, wearing a leather miniskirt that would have made my mother faint. Her heels were even higher and deadlier than before. She had on more makeup than seemed possible. I saw my aunt’s face as her eyes fell on her daughter, and slid out of my seat to sidle over to the other side of the cavernous kitchen, where I tried to look busy and involved with the task of washing my plate.

“Mehnaz! What do you think—?!” My aunt paused, remembering, perhaps, that I was still in the kitchen. Her voice was a notch more controlled as she continued, “What are you wearing, Mehnaz? Are you going somewhere? Because I wanted us all to be together tonight. We’re going out for dinner. Taking your cousin to a restaurant. As soon as your father comes home.” Her tightly held composure slipped, just a little, when she said, “Which will be any minute. Please go up and change your clothes.”

“Oh, sorry Mum. Can’t. Going out tonight. I’ll be ’ome late. Don’t wait up for me.” Mehnaz’s voice was cool, casual.

“Mehnaz, no! We’re all going out together!”

“Sorry, Mum, I told you. I’ve got bloody plans, don’t I? And I can’t bloody well change ’em!”

“Plans? Cancel them, I’m telling you. Now! Before your father—” she was interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming.

“Sorry, Mum. Got to run.” Mehnaz slipped out the back door before her mother could answer and just barely before my uncle came into the kitchen.

He walked in, put his briefcase down on the table, and came toward me, hand extended for a handshake. “Hullo, hullo, Saira. Welcome, welcome. So nice that we’ll get some time with you. How was the wedding?”

“Very nice, Ahmed Chacha. Everyone in Karachi sent you their
salaam
s.” My voice strained with the effort to conceal my part, as witness, in the scene that had just taken place.

“Good, good. Well, your aunt and I—and your cousins, of course—have been looking forward to your visit. Isn’t that so, Nasreen?”

“Oh, yes! We were just talking about where we should go to eat dinner.” I could hear the same strain in my aunt’s voice.

“Well, Saira? What are you in the mood for? Pakistani food? You’ve probably had your fill these past weeks, eh? Chinese? Italian? There’s a lovely little French place close by. Whatever you like, okay?” My uncle clapped his hands and rubbed them together, as if to indicate his readiness for anything. “Nasreen? Where are the children?”

“Uh—” My aunt was interrupted by the arrival of one of them, Mohsin, who had earlier disappeared. “Here’s Mohsin. And Mehnaz is—has gone out. She had plans.”

I saw my uncle’s lips purse and then curl into a miserable attempt at a smile, something that came out looking more like a sneer. “Plans?” He gave me a quick look and said, “Oh, well. We’ll just go without her, shall we? In”—he glanced down at his watch—“a half an hour?” He looked up at each of us for confirmation.

My aunt said, “Yes. That’s perfect.”

Mohsin didn’t say anything.

And I, ignoring the weight of the convenience food I’d just consumed, nodded my agreement. “Ummm—can I—uh—just freshen up a little?”

Nasreen Chachi said, “Of course! Let me show you up to your room.”

The house was huge. I started to wonder, for the first time, about how little I knew about this uncle and his family. The wealth on display, like art in a frame, was not inherited. At least not by my uncle, because what wealth would have passed to him from his parents, presumably, would have also passed on to my own father. I knew, from hearing my father and mother talk, that Ahmed Chacha had a very good position at a local, Pakistani-owned bank. A bank, I had learned from Razia Nani, that was founded by his wife’s father. His reputation, Razia Nani had informed me, as a hardworking man of integrity is what had earned him the attention and sponsorship—and eventually the daughter—of the rich, self-made man he considered his mentor.

Nasreen Chachi left me at the door to the guest room, where my bags—thanks to Mohsin—were already propped up against the wall. I went into the private, attached bathroom that Nasreen Chachi had pointed out and stopped to stare, for a moment, at the bidet sitting next to the toilet, wondering what and how the use of what was basically a seatless potty could be. I shrugged and contented myself with the use of the equipment I was familiar with. The fixtures in the bathroom were crystal and gold. Gaudy, but faithful in the fulfillment of their purpose—function and the demonstration of immense wealth.