J
ameel's mother looked up from her desk in the corner of the family room, where she was paying bills, and lifted one eyebrow.
“Well, Beta,” she said with a half smile, “to what do we owe the honor?”
Beta
was the Urdu word for “son,” and Jameel didn't like her to call him that. His mother was not like some Pakistani mothers, who could not see beyond the way things were done in Pakistan. But Jameel wanted to fit in, and when she called him Beta it reminded him of how different he was from the guys at Pier 7.
She usually called him Beta these days only when she was teasing. It was her way of asking what he was doing back so early from skateboarding. He sank down in the plaid easy chair nearest the desk.
“I have some things I need to do,” he said.
“On your backside?” his mother asked. “In the easy chair?” He smiled despite a restlessness that made it difficult
to keep from jiggling his feet. A moment later he stood and went to the kitchen and made a sandwich to take upstairs, where he sat at his own desk in the corner of his bedroom.
“Dear Muti,” he wrote.
Jameel had lived in San Francisco his entire life. Every summer he and his parents went to Lahore. His father stayed two weeks, then came back to San Francisco to look after his medical practice. He didn't return until the last two weeks of the summer, after a quick stop in Karachi to see his parents. Jameel and his mother settled into the big, bustling household at Number 5 Anwar Road, where Jameel spent long days swimming with Muti and playing cricket with his cousin Jaffar. Sometimes Muti had played with them, but this year Auntie Leyla had made her stop. Often Baba took Muti, Jaffar, and Jameel to the farm at Okurabad, where they rode horses, swam in the irrigation canal that ran beside the garden gate, and toured the farmlands, which extended more than a day's drive by Pajero in every direction. Each evening they came back happy and covered in dust.
Muti was his closest friend in the world, and he wanted to tell her about almost kissing Chloe. It was too personal for an e-mail. And after the weirdness of Auntie Leyla watching every move they made and treating Muti like a servant, he didn't want to risk getting her into trouble. He missed Mutiâhe'd write her a letter and send it to Fariel so that Leyla wouldn't find it. But apart from “Dear Muti,” he couldn't think what to say. Nothing had happened. He was stuck.
He stood and paced the room. He sat again and began on the body of the letter.
I wish you were here, MutiâI need help!!! I told you that I was falling for Chloeâthat she's a good skateboarder, and that she's beautiful, which she is. Today she and I were the only ones at the pier. I almost kissed her. Butâyou won't believe thisâI had this weird feeling, and all I could think of was my mother watching me!
He dropped the pen beside the pad of pale blue vellum and ripped off the top sheet, wadded it into a ball, and stuffed it into his pocket. Muti might think him stupid for imagining his mother watching.
Jameel spent the rest of the afternoon helping his mother empty the concrete planters along the driveway and replant them with mums and other autumn-colored flowers, ivy, and pale leafy things he couldn't identify.
As he worked, Jameel began to think of how stupid he'd been. It hadn't occurred to him that kissing Chloe would be so easyâso naturalâbut then, he'd never actually thought about kissing her before. At least, he didn't think he'd thought about it. But he could haveâand why not? Would his mother and father really disapprove? And so whatâwhose parents wanted to see their son getting physical with a girl for the first time? And it was not as if they'd really seen him. He must be the only fifteen-year-old male in the world who'd ever stopped himself from kissing a girl because he imagined his mother was watching.
Just thinking what the guys at the pier would say made the tips of his ears glow. They'd never understand what being Pakistani was likeâhow much more protective his parents were than any of theirs. As for the idea of his falling for a blond chick who lived in the Tenderloinâhe could just hear his parents scolding that she wasn't Muslim, that her background was too different, what would his grandfather think, and so on.
Jameel talked Asma into giving him an early dinner. She complained all the while she was setting the table. He sat at the kitchen bar and watched, only half listening as Asma rattled on about how one day he wouldn't eat anything, and the next day he wanted six meals. As Jameel's ayah, Asma saw herself as representing his parents when they weren't there. Asma had looked after him since he was a babyâshe'd come with his parents to America before he was born. Jameel loved her almost as if she were his mother, but he bridled at her fussing over him. She, too, was a reminder of how different he was from his friends.
“Why don't you just let me eat here at the kitchen bar?” he asked, interrupting.
“You should eat at the table and behave properly,” Asma scolded. She was a small, compact woman who wore a yellow cotton shalwar kameez. Her hair fell in a long braid, straight down her spine almost to her waist.
His mother and father were going out to the Indian Consul-General's house for dinner and the rest of the evening, which was the reason Jameel was eating alone. He waited until they were gone, and Asma was busy cleaning up
the kitchen, before slipping out the back gate just as he had done that morning. This time he was not going to chicken out.
He loved dusk in San Francisco. The air was cool and clear and the lights came on one at a time, just the same way the stars came out, until the darkness was alive and shining.
Jameel arrived at the park to find all of the guys were there. “Hey, Osama!” shouted Cat. Jameel waved and dropped his board to the pavement. Dog Man and Slew Foot were demonstrating sequences of ollies, kick flips, and sex changes, their boards flipping, their bodies twisting, landing on their decks in fluid, feline movements. They kept it up until some of the guys got impatient and called them snakers for hogging the ramps.
On the other side of the ramps Chloe sat on her board, her back against the fence, watching. Jameel made his way over to sit beside her, and there were a few catcalls. “Who knew, Blue?” someone shouted. Chloe never gave any of these guys the time of day, so they had to make a big fuss when she let someone sit next to her, Jameel thought. She grinned up at him and scooted over to make room. Even in the klieg-lit glow around the park her eyes and hair were luminous. Jameel knew he'd been right to come back, and a thrill of well-being warmed him all over.
It was fun, hanging out with the guys, standing or sitting beside Chloe while they talked about who was going to the Radlands in England for the comp trials, and bragging about their moves, slams and all. It amused Jameel that Chloe never said a word or gave any indication she could out-maneuver
all of them. She praised them and made them feel good. He wondered whether it was modestyâor perhaps that she didn't know how good she was.
When Jameel realized it was almost ten o'clock, he was anxious all over again. It was early to the skateboarders, but Jameel's parents would be worried if they got home and he wasn't there. He didn't want to just slip away, because he wanted Chloe to walk him out to the gate. He needn't have worried. When she saw him look at his watch, she tilted her head toward Embarcadero and said, “Come on, I'll walk you out. I need to get home early.”
A few more catcalls followed them as they walked, and Chloe hooked her finger into the back pocket of Jameel's jeans. All of his consciousness seemed centered on the light pressure where her finger rested.
She was grinning broadly when they stopped at the traffic light on Broadway and Davis Street. When the light changed, Jameel slipped his arm around Chloe's shoulder, which fit neatly under his armpit as if they were built to fit together. They walked that way to the other side of the intersection. Jameel dropped his board on the sidewalk and held it there with one foot. With his other arm still around Chloe's shoulders, he pulled her closer and leaned toward her. He was startled at how soft her lips were and even more startled when he opened his eyes and saw she was watching him kiss her. He'd never in his life felt anything like that hot emptiness at the top of his stomach.
M
uti made her way to the Old City by bus, jostling among merchants carrying rugs and bolts of cloth on their shoulders, darzis carrying sewing machines, children carrying bags of books, women with their shopping bags, all crushed together in the heat and murky humidity of a monsoon day. She got down from the bus at Circular Road, a thoroughfare that ringed the walled city with honking and clattering throngs of donkeys, buses, automobiles, handcarts, and brightly painted motor rickshaws. So far the rain had held offâbut blue-gray clouds boiled across the sky, and Muti hoped she'd make it to the haveli before they poured their contents over the city.
Sweat trickled down her neck and back under the chador draped around her from her head to her feet.
Muti's mind was as jumbled as the streets. She thought of her last glimpse of Jag as she left through the tent flap beside the tennis courts at the Lahore Club. He stood very still, a
damp towel hanging from his hand. His eyebrows were raised and his lips were parted as if he wanted to say something. He looked as sad as Muti felt. She had skipped her next tennis lesson. But she knew she must see him again before he returned to Delhi for the next school term. Her goodbye had been almost a promise to come again.
Baba's health also worried her. At times he seemed his old self, but his color was sometimes a grayish, lifeless hue that was very unlike his usual pink cheeks. He lapsed into periods in which he seemed barely to recognize anyone. His eyes were often uncharacteristically dull. Then he'd come to dinner alight with his normal good humor, roaring that he wanted ice cream for dessert.
And Muti hadn't heard a word from Jameel since he returned to San Francisco. Usually they wrote each other at least once a week. She told herself it wasn't jealousy exactly that pricked at her heart. She just didn't want this Chloe person to make Jameel forget about her and his family in Lahore.
And there was something about Auntie Selma's telephone call yesterdayâit was very unlike the composed, straightforward Selma. Auntie had invited her for lunch, being peculiarly precise about the time. “You must be here by twelve sharp,” Selma had said.
“For lunch?” Muti asked.
“Last I heard, that was the meal eaten in the middle of the day,” Selma said. Muti laughed, but Selma didn't.
“Yes, Auntie,” Muti said. “I'll be exactly on time, at twelve.” Muti had wanted an invitation all these years that
she'd lived at Number 5 Anwar Road. Why was now the right time? Odd or not, Muti looked forward to seeing her father's sister. She had happy memories of times at the haveli with her mother, going to the classroom in the old nursery on the second floor, where Samiya awaited them with books and blackboard, chalk and pointer, with reading lessons and discussions of so many things.
And Muti remembered playing hide-and-seek in the haveli with her little fawn, Choti. She was free to run with other children in the alleys of the old walled city, playing kickball and hiding games and eating mangoes in the hot weather, sitting with her cousins on the steps that led into the stone courtyard. She thought of the stories told by Auntie Selma of the days when she and her brothers Rahim, Mahsood, and Nazir walked to school together, and they scared her with stories about the djinn that lived in the house in Gulberg. Muti remembered flying kites from the rooftop of the haveli in celebration of Basant, the spring festival, children and grownups alike coating their kite strings with resin and glass and cutting down each other's prized paper kites, snagging them with tree branches and holding them hostage to fly another day. Muti and her mother watched the brilliantly colored paper battle in bright sunlight from the rooftop of the haveli.
Her stomach tightened when she remembered going to the Anarkali Bazaar with her mother to find fabric for her shalwar kameez when her mother decided she was old enough to wear pretty clothes. How she'd loved the eyelet shalwar
kameez, and the lawn shifts the darzi had made from the fabrics she'd chosen.
Muti made her way to Akbari Gate, where the traffic condensed to a thick clot of bodies, and from there she followed a maze of ever-narrower lanes toward the great onion domes of the Badshahi Mosque. The rain came then, and the traffic neither slowed nor thinned, the vehicles slogging through what seemed like instant mud in the streets. Umbrellas went up, people put newspapers over their heads, but kept on, seeming barely to notice the sheets of water in the air.
Although she hadn't been to the haveli since she was five, Muti remembered exactly how to get there. She walked quickly down the familiar narrow lanes lined with small wooden houses with their doors open to let in air. She passed a woman washing a toddler in a plastic dishpan, and another braiding the hair of a bright-eyed little girl. Inside another doorway a woman was grinding spices with mortar and pestle. Muti paused before the haveli's ancient gates of unpainted wood and lifted the heavy metal ring to knock. A delicate, birdlike woman answered the door within a few seconds, and Muti recognized Samiya.
“Ah-salaam-aleikum!” said Samiya. “Can I help you?”
“Samiya!” she blurted. “It's meâMumtaz!” Samiya stared at her for a few seconds, and a look of surprise passed over her face.
“You've grown intoâa beautiful young woman!” Samiya stammered. “I would never have known you were that same knobbly-kneed little girl chasing after her pet fawn!” Muti
laughed and they hugged each other. Samiya broke free and held Muti at arm's length, looking at her in wonder.
“Come in! Madame Akhtar told me you were comingâand still I didn't recognize you!” Muti followed Samiya into the foyer, with its marble floors and high ceilings, bits of carnelian and lapis cut into patterns of flowers set into the white plaster wall panels. Samiya led her straight ahead to the durbar, where her father had met with his constituents until late at night. Samiya left Muti there while she fetched Selma.
It seemed a long time before Selma appeared, an imposing figure in white, tucking thick strands of gray hair behind her ear as she came into the room. She held her arms wide for Muti, as she'd done when Muti was that knobbly-kneed child.
“Mumtaz,” the older woman said softly as she stroked Muti's hair. “I feel as if it's been a century since I've seen youâa lifetime at least.” Mumtaz pulled back and looked at her father's sister's face.
“But, Auntie,” said Muti, “I just saw you two weeks ago! And we've lived nearly ten years in the same city and you've never invited me to visit you. I almost came on my own several times.”
“And it's good you didn't,” said Selma. “As I've told you, child, there has been a reason. A very important reason. But now the time is right, and I've got a huge surprise for you. More than a surprise, really ⦔ Selma looked graveânot happy, as Muti imagined she should look if she was offering a surprise.
Muti felt a strange prickle skip across the back of her neck, like the sharp-clawed scratching of little mice. Selma took her by the hand and led her through the durbar, past the main hallway that led to the dining room, through the kitchen, and into a back hallway, where a heavy wooden door opened onto a wooden platform with a dark stairway rising above it in a musty, narrow passage. Muti hesitated and Selma squeezed her hand.
“I'll go first,” said Selma. “There's nothing to worry about. I don't put a light in here because I don't want people to use this stairway. My own feet know every tread and every riser.” Muti followed her, and the feeling of anxiety grew into a heavy pressure in her throat.
At the top of the stairs they came out into a courtyard that Muti remembered as being filled with tarpaulin-covered piles of buckets, discarded tools, and the debris of long-forgotten construction projects. The courtyard had been surrounded by rooms piled high with old furniture shrouded under dustcovers like ghosts from the past. Now the courtyard was swept clean and the junk piles were replaced by huge china pots filled with palms, canna lilies, anthurium, and fragrant ginger and gardenias. The rain still pelted down, but the sun was breaking through the clouds, so that Muti had to squint against the misty light. She put up her umbrella and the two of them hunched under it to cross the open space, which was covered with stone pavers. Clouds of steam rose and swirled around their feet.
Selma led her to the doorway of the beautiful hand-carved marble summer pavilion that stood in the center of the
courtyard, and ducked through the entry first. Muti followed, and again her eyes had to adjust. A small figure stood in the middle of the spacious pavilion lit by the sun filtered through the intricate latticework of the screens that formed the walls. Muti took two steps forward.
“My Mumtaz,” said Shabanu and held her arms open. Muti turned her head toward Selma, not quite believing her eyes and ears.
“Is it my mother?” she asked Selma, who nodded, her face opening in an encouraging smile. Muti looked back at her mother in disbelief, unable to move. For a moment she just stared.
“I've waited so long to see you,” said Shabanu, moving toward her daughter. “I couldn't tell you I was here, and all the while I was living just to see you again.” Muti couldn't find her voice and her feet felt planted in the stone floor. Shabanu approached her slowly and put her arms around Muti. “I've dreamed of holding you every minute since the last time,” Shabanu said.
“I don't understand!” Muti said, unaware that tears streamed down her face. She stood rigidly and Shabanu continued to hold her. “You've been here all this time?” Muti asked. “And you let me believe you were dead?” She turned her head to look at Selma again. “Is this why the time was never right for me to come here?”
“We had to wait until you were old enough to understand,” Selma said. “It was to protect both of youâbut especially you, Mumtaz.” Selma moved to an arrangement of
low chairs and bolsters that were clustered around a red carpet handwoven in an intricate pattern. “Come. Sit. Samiya's bringing lunch here.”
Muti hesitated, then moved to sit on one of the low Swati chairs without speaking. Selma lowered herself to the floor and leaned against a bolster. Shabanu took a chair facing both of them.
“I know this is difficult,” Shabanu began. “But you must listen carefully and try to understand. It was out of absolute necessity that I've had to hide here all these years. I've wanted nothing more than to see you, but keeping you safe was more important.” Muti nodded, and her mother went on.
“Do you remember when I left you with the old ayah Zenat? I went to see Auntie Zabo, and I told you I'd be back that same day?” Muti nodded. “That was the last time I saw you. That day Uncle Nazir kidnapped Auntie Zabo and me.” She told Muti how Nazir had tried to force her to marry him, and how she and Zabo had escaped to Cholistan, where they were to live with Shabanu's Auntie Sharma.
“I planned to send for you, and we would all live together in the desert, and you would grow up as I did, loving the animals and your freedom.”
She told of Zabo's death and how the keeper of the tombs at Derawar and his sister had helped her.
“Somehow the news reached Lahore that I had been killed. By then I realized I had to let everyone believe I was dead so that Nazir would not try to take revenge on me by
harming you. If I still refused to marry him I believe he would have killed me,” said Shabanu. “And I shudder to think of the ways he could hurt you, Mumtaz.”
“Nazir lives like a hermit now,” said Selma. “I don't know whether he's defeated, or perhaps just watching and waiting for a chance to take his revenge on your mother.” Muti listened quietly as her mother spoke of the years locked away on the rooftop, and the importance now of Muti's keeping the secret as long as Nazir lived.
Samiya came and served them lunch, which sat untouched on the table in front of them. Muti had difficulty understanding what her mother said. Each sentence evoked a memory of the pain of losing her. It was hard to reconcile the mother she'd loved and mourned with this woman who told the story of fabricating her own death.
Muti felt as if the familiar pieces of her life were breaking apart and trying to rearrange themselves like a jigsaw puzzle that no longer fit together. When her mother finished speaking, Muti had so many questions to ask, but no voice to ask them with.
“Will you come with me to Cholistan, Mumtaz?” Shabanu asked. But Muti was lost in the swirling mists of her own thoughts and didn't hear her mother's question. “To visit my mother and father?” Shabanu explained that she'd sent a message by pigeon and that she hoped to go soon. “It will be a good way for us to get to know each other again,” Shabanu said.
Selma had been sitting quietly, listening. “I will ask Baba's permission to take you to visit your mother's family,” she
said. “Your mother will go ahead of us to spend time with them alone first. Traveling with me will be perfectly safe, and I'm sure Baba will agree.”
“When?” asked Mumtaz. “School starts soon ⦔
“We'll arrange it with Ibne,” Selma said. “I am sending another pigeon to see if it's safe to talk by telephone.”