The First Feeling. (part eight)

He was apologetic. Not in the way I would have wanted him to be but he was. He kept sweating at the brow even though it was very cold. He kept asking for water even though he’d had plenty. He wasn’t thirsty or hot. He was just guilty. And guilt makes you do and feel things that are physically impossible. If I hadn’t known medical science any better, guilt and adrenaline were probably brother and sister. It’s also fun making the most out of someone’s terrible mistake. I found it fun because I no longer found it humiliating and as an attack on my self-esteem. This is where I differed from most American women. I didn’t have to bow down to my own weakness. I had a father who would listen to me if I asked him that I wanted a divorce from my husband. He wouldn’t be happy of course, and Amma would throw a fit again and there would be hysterics, theatrics, all the part and parcel of the ‘d-word’ and if that did indeed happen I was calmly watching from a distance.

This distance is the strength I felt that kept me going and kept me from taking a feeble ‘Come on, let’s just go home’ from Zohaib. I refused to let him come near me, I refused to let him intimidate me with his stories of how Huma Aunty’s blood pressure had spiked and how Mamu Zubair was alone with her and how everyone was exchanging gossip-laden phone calls all day long. What a tamasha it had all become. I refused to fall into that vortex of blackmail and didn’t say a word throughout the hour.

He came and sat next to me and I felt a surge of puke making its way again. Suddenly his cell phone began to buzz. Before he could do or say anything I silkily took it from his hands and snapped it open.

There were three texts messages from “G”.

Zohaib lunged at the cell phone but I was too quick. For a fat duck, I was quick, I was glad. I opened the text messages and saw conversations that went way beyond the night we all went out for coffee. And I knew nothing about this.

Absolutely nothing.

I handed him back his cell phone and didn’t hear a word, didn’t need to listen. The cell phone had been in my hands for less than 30 seconds and it made me understand that I knew less about this man I had known for 3 years. I didn’t need to read anything contained in those messages because I didn’t want to go through the sleaze that had now smeared itself all over my first, my very pure love, affectation, infatuation what have you.

Amma and Abba were outside the room. Baray Taya was sitting nearby. I addressed him directly, “I want to speak to your daughter. In person. Please call her.” Bari Tayee was there too and came forward.

“What madness is this, Sum, child, what is all this madness that you kids have been concocting!” her eyes were filled with tears. Apparently she had no idea her daughter would ever be a central character in someone else’s nightmare. Zohaib came flying in, coming undone, out of breath, out of things to say. He looked, panicked, at all the faces in the room. He was probably wondering if I had told anyone yet that this ghastly scene was not limited to the one night I had caught him having his secret guilty pleasure.

“Sum, please come back, we need to sort out…”

“Please go back to Lahore, Zohaib. Ghania and I will talk and I will call you when I am done talking to her. Good bye.” I left everyone gaping and went back to my room. Switched on the plasma and slipped in an old dvd of an old favorite film from the last decade. There was a knock and the cook brought in my favorite food, fried fish and steamed pulao and quietly dug in; quietly but with a satisfied expression that only comes if food has succeeded in comforting you when you are at your lowest, most abject of moments. I fell asleep after lunch and I remember the last thought before I slipped into a food-induced slumber. It was amazing that none of my family members had come up to talk to me or ask me what had happened. How very American of them: giving space.

This time I was walking on water. There are gazes that fixed on my feet, I can feel it. I can feel I am the center of attention. I suddenly slip and yell out Zohaib’s name but it makes no difference, he’s nowhere to be found. I yell his name again. I’m slipping and I can’t swim, but I know for a fact that Zohaib can. So I keep yelling that I can’t swim. I can’t swim, I can’t swim. He suddenly grabs me from out of nowhere but his mien is changed. He keeps grumbling he hates water. He hates it and hates getting his clothes soaked. He’s pulling me by a pinkie finger. I wake up.

Amma is at the door, I think stupidly. “Who is it?”

“Ghania Bibi is here to see you, Sumera Bibi. She’s waiting for you in the sitting room.”

They were sending servants to talk to me. So was I in a state of exile or in that glorified sanctum of aforementioned space?

She was wearing thin pajamas and a long lacy qameez made out of the best chiffon I’d seen in years. Her hair was open and loosely flung around her shoulders. Her eyes were rimmed with that classic kohl and she smelled of a designer perfume that lurked in my mind like the scent of evil. I, on the other hand, smelled like desi ghee and nap-drool. I stopped my train of thought. I suddenly asked myself a question that was eating at my soul like a mouse picking at a huge slab of cheese very very quietly: was I turning this girl into everything that was wrong in my life?

She was nervous even though her physical appearance denied it. She seemed calm and in control but when you have known someone all your life, you can see past the coats of makeup and layers of clothes. In their emotional juggernauts they are naked and nothing can take that away from the equation.

“How are you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Sumera, sit down, please, oh God …”

“How are you, Ghania? Doing well in Lahore nowadays?”

“Are you crazy? Come on, sit here, sit next to me, here.”

I sat down opposite of her chair and began unbraiding my hair and braiding them again. “How long have you and Zohaib been talking, Ghania? Since the day I got engaged? Or before? Why didn’t you marry him if you liked him? Why now?” I spoke at a glacial pace, in a glacial tone. My anger and humiliation were nothing compared to the closure I needed now.

Closure is a simpler way of explaining my stability. I wish I was a sociopath so I could have easily called it being unaffected. I was affected. I just wasn’t going into hysterics because somehow I didn’t feel that sense of loss or betrayal. I just felt a cold, hard disappointment. The kind you feel when you knew you had no chance of winning a lottery but you still scratch the numbers, you still wait for the result day and you feel sad that you didn’t win a brand new Alto.

“It wasn’t an affair,” she blurted out. “We didn’t – it wasn’t – I never – he never cheated on you!”

“Oh, I know. I’m not that ugly.” I smiled. She cringed. Perfect.

“I didn’t say you were. I just – I just want to tell you that I just kept asking advice at first. I got his number from Baba’s cell phone one day, he had smsed Baba about something and I replied as my  name – I didn’t lie! And then I took it to my cell phone and began talking to him from there, and he kept replying – it isn’t his fault, Sumera, it’s no one’s fault.”

“You know that isn’t true.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But why? Why hide it from me, Ghania?” I asked smoothly. I began playing with her dupatta. What exquisite lace she had tacked on this exquisite chiffon. “Why hide from me that you are talking to my husband? You were my cousin. I never liked you very much but you could have been honest – “ I laughed. “Hell, HE could have been honest!”

“BECAUSE. He was really sweet. And you were – always so – sharp.”

I stood up. “Alright. That’s all I needed to know. I’m going now. Good bye.”

“NO, wait! Sumera, he loves you! He’s told me that! So many times!”

“Yes, but he still talked to you and hid it from me and even said he loved Ghania – oh no wait, he loved Sumera. Zohaib wasn’t a reject for me, neither was I to him. But you turned the whole thing into about you – like always. From day one, everything has been about you. You’re like a sibling but worse. It’s worse because I could never fight you. Baray Taya’s daughter – who can fight Baray Taya’s daughter without being slapped around themselves. You were spoilt and it was easier to hate you when you were fat. But then you became thin. And got these city attitudes and began courting my husband. Oh I know it was never physical. I know you probably never even saw each other apart from that one time in that coffee shop when I was there with you. I know all of that. But the way that stolen sms comes when your wife is sleeping next to you. The thrill of the idea that someone else’s husband is finding you more attractive than he does his wife. The whole charm of the uncaught, the taste of the forbidden – that’s what I can’t forgive. I can’t forgive what you have done to me. What you have ruined for me. What you have ruined for yourself. For Zohaib. You have ruined the first love I had, the first feeling of hope I had for a relationship that wasn’t going to end in slaps and taunts. And I hope you never forgive yourself. I do, though. I don’t want your shadow in my life. I don’t want you to think or talk about what a bitch I was to you, you asked for forgiveness and I said no. Oh na baba, I’m not one to take favors from anyone. I don’t want the title of the villain in your stories. So go ahead. Do what you have to do. Still want to talk to Zohaib? Fine. I hope he tells you he likes his tea the way his mother makes it. There is no finer insult for someone than that.”

(end of part eight)

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