The Newlyweds (38 page)

A uniformed guard began to usher them out, giving sharp directions to the exit. Amina followed her parents, aware that they were being observed by the other supplicants. Anyone else’s case was interesting, with potential clues to the success or failure of one’s own. She could remember watching four years ago as a girl her age left this room, near tears, and being ashamed of her own thought—that the girl represented one more visa they had left to give.

In the concrete forecourt of the embassy, Amina asked her father what had happened.

“I couldn’t answer the questions,” he said simply. “They gave me this.” He handed Amina a blue sheet of paper on which she picked out the words “administrative processing.”

She scanned the form, but couldn’t make sense of the official language. “What questions did they ask?”

“Your wedding,” her mother put in. “They asked him what day it was.”

“I was thinking of the Islamic Center and city hall,” her father said. “I didn’t know which he meant.”

“And then they asked him when you left.”

“When I left Bangladesh? But you know that.”

“I know,” her father said. He slapped his hand against his forehead. “I know perfectly well. But the date—” He brushed his fingertips against his forehead.

“The thirteenth of March,” her mother said. “I was thinking they might ask.”

“Why didn’t you say something beforehand?” her father demanded.

“I was thinking
I
would make the mistake. I wasn’t worried about you.”

It was maddening, but she couldn’t be upset with her father. She hadn’t prepared him, and she of all people should’ve known. Americans were fanatical about attaching numbers to days. Soon after she’d arrived in Rochester, she’d bought the first calendar of her life, so that she would be sure not to miss a birthday, holiday, or anniversary.

She turned to her mother. “And what did they ask you?”

“Easy things. About where you were born and where you’d gone to school. What was the name of your neighborhood in Rochester. I told
them where you did your shopping, too, and how they have mangos even in the winter.” Her mother looked pleased with herself. “The officer laughed.”

“But they still didn’t give it to you.”

“They did.” Her mother held out her passport. “But what’s the use, if your father didn’t get it?”

Amina turned the page to check, but her mother hadn’t made a mistake: her information—names and dates, passport, case and registration numbers—were superimposed over a rainbow-colored image of the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Building. Beside Lincoln on his pedestal was her mother’s startled face in blue-and-white relief.

10
She didn’t realize how much she’d counted on the visas until they were in the taxi going to the apartment in Savar. It was bad enough to have to explain things to her aunt and uncle; it hadn’t even occurred to her that Ghaniyah might be back from her trip or that she was as likely to be with her parents as she was with her new husband’s family.

“Munni!” she exclaimed, when she opened the door. “It’s so lucky! We were going to stay another four days, and then Malik had to come back for work. I just got home last night.”

Ghaniyah was wearing an embroidered kameez over a pair of jeans and a great quantity of gold jewelry. The first place she looked was Amina’s left hand.

“What’s your news?” Her uncle came out of the living room, where the new furniture seemed to have just arrived. Amina could see the maid, Borsha, unrolling a large Persian carpet.

Her father shook his head. “Bad news. I wasn’t approved.”

“It’s not final,” Amina said quickly. “We don’t understand the paperwork.”

“What do you mean?” her aunt asked.

“My mother got her visa,” Amina told them. “My father’s needs ‘further processing.’ We have to do some research.”

“I’ve heard of visas being delayed because you have a common name,” her uncle said. “I thought ‘Abdul Mazid,’ but I didn’t want to worry you.”

“But I am Fatima Mazid,” her mother wailed. “If I got it, how could he—”

Her aunt and her cousin exchanged meaningful glances, noting her mother’s agitated mood.

“You are Fatima Areebah Mazid,” Amina soothed her. “You were right to insist on using your full name.”

“Never mind,” said her aunt. “Let’s celebrate my sister’s visa.” She shouted for Borsha and gave orders for snacks. “Maybe we’ll get to keep you here a little longer while you wait for the other one.”

“Don’t say that,” Ghaniyah teased. “Munni will miss her husband too much.” Her cousin took Amina’s hand in hers and pretended to see the ring for the first time. “All Americans have diamond engagement rings—isn’t that right?”

“There’s nothing all Americans do,” Amina said. “Just like there isn’t anything all Deshis do.”

But she might as well have been talking to herself, since her aunt was ushering them all into the new living room. “How have I let you stand so long—come and sit. Most of the furniture is still covered with plastic, but you won’t mind. Borsha will bring the food in here.”

Her mother was complimenting everything while her aunt flushed with pleasure and pretended not to hear. She had begun complaining about Ghaniyah’s mother-in-law.

“Now she’s needling us about Gigi being here so much—but they were gone a month on this trip! Now she has the two of them
and
her younger son, and I have an empty house!”

Ghaniyah grinned at Amina. “You should have heard her talking about her own wedding. How she cried the whole time, and how girls today have gotten so bold. When I told her I was coming to Savar today, she looked as if I’d slapped her.”

“Look at my son,” Moni continued. “Rashid and his wife didn’t stay a day with us—he had to go off and accept a professorship in Chittigong. And did I complain? I said, ‘They’re modern young people, they do what they want.’ But my daughter spends one afternoon shopping with her mother, and she’ll get a scolding. She wants her in the kitchen making samosas, I suppose.”

“Has she tasted Gigi’s samosas?” her uncle said mildly. “That might be the solution.”

Ghaniyah rolled her eyes at Amina. “Let’s go to my room, where we can really talk. I want to hear everything.”

Amina’s father was sitting on the edge of one of the yellow chairs, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else. He’d become silent in the taxi on the way, and she knew he was thinking about what it would be like to face her mother’s family, having failed once again.

“Abba,” she said quietly on their way out, “you ought to call Nasir. Maybe he could do some research about the visa at the office.” She was trying to rescue her father, give him something to do, but she regretted mentioning Nasir a moment later. She could hear her aunt interrogating her mother about his apartment as they left the room.

“Handsome Nasir,” her cousin said, once they were alone. Two red suitcases were open on the floor against the wall; obviously Ghaniyah was planning to keep some of her things at her parents’ house. On the bookshelf was a collection of glass animal figurines that Amina had envied desperately as a child, a couple of high school textbooks, a framed photograph of the family at her brother’s graduation from BRAC University, and a coffee mug that said
LOVE ’EM OR LEAVE ’EM
in neon English script; next to this souvenir was the pressed-tin robin Amina had left for her cousin.

“So tell me—is Nasir still as dreamy as before?”

“He’s kind,” Amina said.

Ghaniyah winked playfully. “And are you still in love with him?”

“Don’t be stupid. Nasir’s been good to my parents—they’ve stayed with him again and again.”

“My mother’s ashamed about that,” Ghaniyah said bluntly. “She thinks she should’ve invited them to live here, after they decided to give up the apartment. She talks about it all the time.” Amina had forgotten this quality in her cousin: she was indiscreet, not only about other people’s lives but about her own family. It made it hard to be angry with her.

“They’re all envious of you,” her cousin continued, “Babli and Iffat and all that gang. They wanted to meet you while you were here, but I said you wouldn’t have time. I wanted you all to myself.”

“I would think they’d be envious of you. That big wedding—and Malik is so successful.”

Ghaniyah shook her head. “But you have the dream life in
America—big house, no mother-in-law, no one pushing you to have a kid right away.”

Amina looked to see whether her cousin was mocking her, but Ghaniyah was perfectly serious: she really seemed to believe that Amina’s choices had been better than her own. Amina had an impulse to correct her, but nothing her cousin had said was untrue. She lived in a three-bedroom house alone with her husband, and no one but her own mother was nagging her about her failure to conceive a child.

“Are they pushing you?”

“They don’t say anything about it directly—it’s not the fashion these days. But I’ll start working at my mother-in-law’s office in a couple of weeks—there’s no getting out of it. She loves talking about all the poor women she’s helping in the villages. Then she’ll take the trip to the big conference in Canada, and I’ll be stuck answering her phone in the office all day with a bunch of chattering old aunties. And Malik works constantly, even at night. Having a kid is the only escape.” Ghaniyah examined her hands, with their slender fingers and perfect French manicure. “I should’ve worked harder in school—like you. Then I’d already have a career.”

“I had to work hard.”

“And is it hard now? I mean, working and going to school and everything? Do you have a lot of housework to do?”

“It’s easier for me there than it was here,” Amina said carefully. “In a lot of ways. Once my parents come—”

“They’ll do everything for you,” Ghaniyah finished. “My mom asked me why you hadn’t had children yet, but I told her of course you were waiting for your mother to get there.”

“Munni! Gigi! Borsha’s brought snacks.”

Ghaniyah shook her head. “You never get five minutes’ peace around here. India was like heaven—we hardly talked to anyone. We went to take our pictures at Ajmer and the Taj, and then we just sat around watching movies in the hotels.”

When they went into the living room, her aunt was describing something that had happened several months ago, soon after they’d moved into the new flat. A bus driver had hit and killed a garment worker in Hemayetpur, and his fellow workers had staged a protest. Omar had been driving himself that day, since Fariq was visiting his
village, and his car had been stopped in the jam at the barricade. He’d gotten out to use his phone, and he was standing on the side of the highway when a group of the striking workers began throwing rocks through the windows of his car. It had taken four hours before the army’s Rapid Action Battalion had gotten the situation under control.

“Any excuse to leave their jobs for rampaging and looting,” her aunt said. “That was why we needed the new car.”

“We were going to get a new car anyway,” her uncle said. “We just did it a little sooner than we thought.”

“Blood,” her aunt whispered. “All over the seats.”

“They’d painted the rocks red,” her uncle said. “It was a small protest, only about a hundred people.”

Her aunt passed a plate of fried cauliflower. “Of course the conditions for these RMG workers are terrible.”

“What’s RMG?” Amina asked.

Her mother looked at her. “Ready-made garments,” she said, as if Amina had asked the meaning of the word “carpet” or “chair.” She thought of a bra she had ordered from the Gap soon after she’d arrived in Rochester—cream-colored lace with a rosette, more ornamented than she would have chosen if it hadn’t been on clearance—noticing only after she’d tried it on that it had been made in Bangladesh. It had made her happy at the time, as if she’d received a friend in the mail.

“They have vandalism in Rochester, too,” Amina said. “Troublemakers bash the mailboxes with baseball bats.”

Her uncle looked confused. “Some postal fraud scheme?”

Amina shook her head. “They’re just—” But she couldn’t think of a Bangla equivalent for “joyriding.”

“They’re drinking alcohol and driving around in their cars.”

“These crimes are committed by people with cars?”

Her aunt gestured to her uncle to stop talking as Borsha entered the room. “Her husband belongs to one of those factories,” she said in English.

“And anyway, we have to stop talking about depressing things, or they’ll never agree to come to us.” She turned to Amina, as if she were the decision maker in the family. “The guest room is all set up now, and you can sleep in there with Gigi. If we tell her in-laws you’re staying, they won’t make her go back yet.”

“Please,” her cousin encouraged her.

Her mother blinked uncomfortably, under pressure from her elder sister. “Nasir will be insulted,” her mother said. “He’ll think his hospitality isn’t good enough for us.”

“Oh,” her aunt said, changing her tone. “It’s too inconvenient for you. I understand—we never should’ve moved out of the city. And now we’re so far from Gigi, too. I had a terrible feeling when we bought this place.”

“This place is wonderful,” her mother said. “Only perhaps dangerous for us.”

Her aunt glanced at her husband and then gave her sister a meaningful look that Amina’s mother didn’t catch. “Munni thinks there’s nothing to worry about, but I remember what Salim did the last time.”

“I remember it, too,” Amina said. “He scared us, and that’s all.”

“He did more than just scare that poor girl—
that
was before you were born.”

Ghaniyah looked at her mother. “Who’s Salim?”

Her mother flushed and began to apologize: “I didn’t realize—”

“Some badmash from Kajalnagar.” Her uncle waved his hand dismissively. “Not quite right in the head.”

“But what does that have to do with us?” Ghaniyah asked.

“He’s my cousin,” Amina’s father said. She always marveled at the readiness with which her father disclosed damaging or embarrassing information. She and her mother were proud, but her father didn’t suffer from that fault at all; even when he was telling stories from the war, he gave the impression that what he relished was his participation in a just and victorious mission, rather than his personal achievements as a soldier.