It’s summer again. My university is ending. I see on Facebook that Ghania is posing everywhere in the United States with Yasin. She’s someone who makes the best of a situation based on overt benefits. And people like her always do well in life, the way they do on social platforms. Oh yes, I’m hip now. I know all about Facebook, about coffee shops, about Grey’s Anatomy. I hang out with my friends every weekend, instead of spending it with Zohaib stuck in his tv lounge listening to Aunty Huma telling me a halwa recipe that clearly couldn’t hold a blithering candle to my own. Oh yes, I’m also angry now. I’m clear about what I want. I came back after a week and enrolled in for a masters’ program. I forgave Zohaib for being an idiot but I felt happy that I didn’t fall at his knees anymore. I loved him perhaps as a companion, as a live-in friend, with whom I attended parties and entertained social functions of friends and family. He became a good friend, because he was always so apologetic. We touched tentatively but I began to realize how much of a big deal sex was to unmarried women – and how much of a boring act it was to us married ones. Especially those of us who didn’t oomph and crave for their spouse’s body the way they show it in those stupid movies. A lot of that is just so much crap, I often laugh at it when we have a movies’ night out with my girlfriends. Girls today walk into a marriage thinking that they can build trusting relationships with the men they marry. Most of the men I see around me are versions of patriarchy and nothing else. There is a man who considers chauvinism a birth right, or the man who thinks he is great because he doesn’t consider it a birth right. Huma Aunty often says that she feels happiness is always produced if you are like a kindergarten child. Draw within the lines and eat your lunch without swiping it off someone else’s. She is speaking from a woman’s point of view and I can’t say that I blame her. Reading a million more books and socializing with people from a sphere much beyond my own has helped me see that I couldn’t have judged the women of our time to bear on their daughters to become more obedient, more subservient. Women today have more power however, to become stronger persons. I rose from the rubble that was my marriage and did something that made me stronger. Our son, little Zahir, is going to be five now. I’ve come a long way. I did what I had to do for myself because I couldn’t sit and take the way things were given to me. I made my compromises and I stood my ground, both at the same time.

Perhaps this is the struggle a woman of our age, of our continent, of our time has to go through. Perhaps she is expected to be everything. The way Zohaib expected and saw Ghania to be a perfect friend and me a perfect wife. Perhaps women don’t understand, quite clearly, what is expected of them in all these different roles that are being produced by society for her. One thing I do know, though. She can choose the role she wants the most and do the most justice to that and that alone. Those two weeks that I spent at my parents, mulling, sleeping, watching tv taught me that I was no one’s slave. I was independent and powerful and capable of individual thought. And I didn’t need my husband’s approval to teach me who or what I was because I had already tried winning him over by marrying him. Apparently that was not enough.

It is evening and Huma Aunty and I are sipping the evening tea, just as we always do. Things haven’t changed, but I have. For that I am glad and grateful.

“Maybe you should now think about another baby, Sumera,” she suddenly says. I think she is trying to throw me off guard.

I smile at her. And sau the first thing that came to my mind.

The first thing that makes total and perfect sense.

“No.”

“But why!” she asks in total surprise.

“Because I don’t want to. Because I can’t bring another child in this world and feel the same thing I did the night I saw Zohaib on the phone with Ghania.”

It has been a while since I took her name.

Huma Aunty doesn’t say anything. She bows her head.

We keep sipping tea.

Maybe I will go out tonight, I think. The dusk is beautiful. So I flip open my phone and start texting.

“So what say, girls. Coffee on the roadside somewhere?”

I haven’t felt this happy in ages.

(THE END

“Ghania will not be talking to Zohaib, Sumera. She will not.”

She suddenly looked up, away from her sobs. “Of course not – of course not, Chachi. I won’t, I won’t!”

Amma sat herself down in the same stately manner. “I will make sure of that.”

Ghania was nodding vehemently but I sensed Amma’s tone. There was something else she meant when she said that. This was no I’m-an-adult-I-can-order-you-around tone. This was something else entirely.

“Ghania will not speak of any of this to anyone and call everyone and tell her that Sumera, you, my child, were mistaken. Ghania will call everyone and tell everyone that she is engaged to Yasin Mohammad and tell them that she is moving to America. She will apologize to Zohaib, she will tell him she was leading him on and she will apologize to Bhai Waleed and she will apologize to her mother for being the worst daughter a mother could ever have.”

A title Ghania won from me that I didn’t regret.

“What are you talking about, Chachi!” Ghania almost snapped. Her eyes were narrowed.

Amma smiled slightly. “Oh curious now, are we.”

I was staring at my mother. My do-the-right-thing mother and never-resort-to-below-the-belt-stuff mother and the woman who believed in strategic tactics to win a battle, not blackmail.

“Ghania, dear, I had no idea you had so much knowledge of a woman’s feelings until I read a short but well-explained exchange between you and a man called … let’s call him N, shall we?

Ghania’s eyes widened. “What- how – how do you know about that?”

I looked at Ghania. Then I laughed. “You’ve been two-timing on a guy who’s already two-timing on someone else?” I kept laughing. Didn’t stop for a long time.

Ghania was, by this time, at my mother’s feet. “Please, Chachi, please don’t tell anyone about Naveed, I love him! He say he will ask his parents to call Abbu and Ammi soon, please don’t tell anyone about him!”

“So this Naveed boy was in your college, huh? Nice boy. From his facebook profile. Remember that day you forgot to log out your account? Well, what do I know, I’m a stupid old woman who knows nothing about these modern day inventions. I don’t know what a wonderful relationship can occur over facebook messages… I had no idea you looked so pretty in a sari, Ghania? How come you’ve never worn a sari at home? But apparently Naveed was very taken with your ‘sexy’ sari pictures. What sari pictures are those, Ghania? Oh I remember! The bright red sari you ‘borrowed’ from me, the one I’d asked a friend of mine in India to give to Sumera on her anniversary! I had no idea such a small blouse would look so good on you, Ghania. I should tell Dadi Farrukh what a slim waist you have ever since you left the village …”

“Chachi, no, please …”

“Amma, stop it.” It was like torturing an alley cat. Pointless.

I pulled Ghania back to her feet. “Get out, go home and don’t come back. Don’t talk to Zohaib. Just go.”

She left, still sobbing. I faced Amma. “How could you? How could you be so – cruel?”

She glared at me. “I swear, child. As much as I love you, sometimes I think you’re honestly made out of goat cheese!”

I felt angrier than I had at Ghania. “You had no right to blackmail her like that!”

“Let me tell you about rights, girl. Right is what you had over Zohaib but he didn’t take that seriously did he?”

I stared. Was this the same woman who was appreciating the sanctity of marriage moments after blackmailing her neice?

“I don’t understand – you did this for – me?”

“Of course, you twit. Why else would I save Ghania’s pictures in a secret folder on the computer!”

My mother knowing about secret folders and Ghania dressed in a sari were all too much for that particular moment. I felt something give way from underneath and the next thing I knew I was back in bed, being fanned over by Amma and Bari Tayee.

“Poor thing, too much for her, that too in this condition!”

“Water, bring water!”

“No, no, bring milk with some nuts! That special milk we make for Dadi! Go, Sidra, go bring that milk!”

I grinned to myself. And everything turned black again.

(end of part nine)

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)

The morning cup of tea was steaming hot, the caffeine in my system was already on a low. My stock of patience ran thinner than it usually did once I’m deprived of my regular tea/coffee.

“You proved me that you are a stupid, stupid daughter.”

I took a sip of the tea before she could say anything else. She hadn’t stopped with her monologue and her speech ended with calling me one of her favorite things. Stupid. I was stupid to think I could learn how to sew my own clothes. When everyone had darzis and darzans I wanted to learn how to sew and crochet. I was stupid to fail that Physics paper which Saima and Sidra passed with flying colors. I was stupid to not learn how important managing appearances were for a woman. So when I wanted to cut my hair to a manageable shoulder-length shape, she threw one of her famous hissy fits which ended in involving Abba and Saima and Sidra and that night everyone went to sleep thinking the world would never be right again.

Usually, I replied. Retorted. Said something that would justify my position. Sometimes even lose my cool and say things I knew were designed specifically yto hurt her. I told her she knew nothing of the modern hairstyles and what would she know about Physics, she never studied it. I kept retorting until she invoked the wrath of Hell on me and told me God didn’t like girls who talked back to their mothers.

Today I didn’t feel the fear of Hell or being called stupid. Today I felt light and disinterested. Maybe the two were connected. Abba felt this change in reaction while Amma found it perfect to continue her monoluge and break all previous records in the history of her one-sided speeches. Today, Abba knew I wasn’t going to go down easy – but wasn’t putting up a fight either, apparently, and this disturbed him more than if I had chosen to call Amma everything I had heard women call their jilted ex-lovers in those adult novels.

Sidra walked in, giggling, oblivious to the odd condition of her sister showing up back home without her husband. “Baji, Mamu Voldemort is here!”

“Sidra!”

“What! Amma! He’s here, isn’t he!”

“Get out of here. Foolish girl. Get out, now.”

I looked at Abba. “Mamu Hassan? What is he doing here?”

“He’s here to settle the family lands. He wants to sell everything.” There was a short and distracted pause. “We all knew this day would come … He never was going to come back.”

Amma’s pose was a perfect example of how she felt about the needless interruption – and also about who she was. She was poised gracefully on the corner chair, her hands tightly folded, her one leg over the other. Her dupatta was primely and serenely around her shoulders, the same way I had seen it to be in all the 22 years of my life. She was picture perfect. Not too fat, not too thin, mother of three grown daughters. Most of whom had not brought her any dishonor except the fat, pregnant , imbecile of a daughter who had walked out in the middle of the night because she caught her husband on the phone with another woman.

Had Amma been any other woman, had she felt more than she calculated about her daughters, she would hug me and hold me and tell me that I was right to feel angry but would convince me lovingly to go back and sort things out. But Amma was Amma and she felt that I had been stupid and selfish to act out and it didn’t matter how much of an idiot Zohaib was, I was automatically, by default, a bigger idiot.

Abba glanced at the clock. “You should come down to breakfast. I’ve already received the frantic phone call from Zohaib and have asked him not to mention anything to Huma Bhabhi. Come down to breakfast, I have somethings to take care of. We will talk about this later.” He stared at his wife. “Later.”

Amma was smart enough to pick her battles. Something I wasn’t very good at. So she left the room behind him and I sat there motionless. I didn’t feel rage or hopelessness or little pieces of my heart breaking and thumping themselves down to my feet. I felt that I had nothing to analyze, nothing to understand, nothing to simplify. I knew quite simply what was staring at me in the face: there was no one in the world who loved the person I was. I was loved for my designation in the world, as a daughter, as a sister and as a friend too, in some obscure cases. But I had honestly begun to think that love was more than a responsibility, when Zohaib and I started talking. Now I was back to square one. I wasn’t heartbroken. Just disappointed. Odd.

I gathered my shawl closer to myself and headed down to the breakfast table. I saw Mamu Hassan already sitting there. He was so much older than I last saw him. Fatter, balder, the fate that arrives on most men who cross the green point of fifty. But his face was fair and his eyes were green and his small smile was the same. There was something incredibly mysterious about this sweet, old uncle and all of us, including the adults, felt out of place and impossibly self-conscious around him.

“Parathas, Hassan Bhai?” Amma asked as soon as she felt me enter the room.

“No, no, have to watch my cholestrol. I’ve got some skimmed milk tea here and I’ll just take it with these – uh – rusks. Thank you, Bhabhi.”

“It’s good you watch out for your health, Mamu. Cholestrol can be a killer.” I spoke unexpectedly. Amma gave me a quick look and I returned her look as if to say, “Come on, I’m not going to start talking about Zohaib’s secret affair on the breakfast table with an uncle I’ve seen after fourteen years, give me SOME credit at least.”

As if on cue, he asked, “So I hear you’re married now, Sumera. How and where is your husband?” he actually glanced around as if he was going to come out of some room with a serious case of bedhead. Amma’s expression tightened. Abba laughed shortly, “Zohaib is a doctor. His work keeps him busy, so he’s still in Lahore. Sumera came to visit us just today.”

I nodded. “Drove all the way from Lahore.” I was speaking unexpectedly again. This was very new. Amma was glaring. That was not.

“That is excellent. I didn’t know you could drive?” he asked kindly. Somehow that felt like an insult.

“I used to drive all the time from here to Pindi since I was 18. Driving from Lahore is a bit tougher but I managed.”

“I think it is great how much freedom girls are getting nowadays. It was very different back in our day. Small towns and villages frowned upon girls getting so much freedom back then. It was one of the many reasons I left.” He was smiling when he said that but it was clear that it was not an emotion considered worthy of being hidden behind social expectations. He didn’t like life here and he made sure that everyone knew it. “And of course,” he added to my mother’s utter horror, “my real mother was no longer here.”

I gave him a small encouraging sort of a smile, a smile that could make him feel that he wasn’t the only one who preferred honesty over decorum. “How are the kids and Laura Aunty?” I took a helping of omelette and paratha and avoided my mother’s gaze. No amount of anger or emotional turmoil could keep me away from a heavy breakfast.

“They’re all fine. They’re all doing very well. The boys are both in college. Shelly is in high school though.”

I avoided the obvious mistake of telling him that I had no idea he had two more kids. And I also didn’t ask him what Shelly stood for. Shehla? Sheila? Shabana? Shahana?

In the afternoon, Amma and Abba descended upon my room again with the news that Zohaib was going to come get me in the evening.

“No,” I shouted. This was the first time I had ever raised my voice to my parents. I just could not find it inside all my reserves of strength and propriety to see his face again. The face I had kissed, the cheekbones that I had wished for my son to have, the severely overpowering smile that made me feel all squiggly inside. The thought of all those things made me want to vomit. Because I kept seeing his face next to Ghania’s and the nausea increased at an alarming pace.

“Sumera!” Amma shouted back. “You will go back with your husband this evening or I will beat some common sense into that thick skull of yours! Don’t you understand how stupid you are? Just one situation and you ran away from it, you foolish foolish girl. Do you think Huma was born yesterday? She won’t ask Zohaib what happened out of sense but you know as well as I do what she is doing RIGHT NOW, as of this minute. She is calling everyone in our family to tell everyone that you left in the middle of the night with your car and couldn’t be reached on your cell phone and now you are at your parents house. She doesn’t care if the rest of the family does or does not know who Zohaib was talking to on the phone. And it doesn’t matter how much of an issue damage control is for me right now, it doesn’t matter to you because you’re too busy being angry, you spoilt, selfish brat!”

I faced Abba. “You tell her she is not the owner of me. You tell her that I am not going anywhere. If she doesn’t want to keep me in this house, tell her this is not her house. Tell her I will go live in a girls’ hostel somewhere in Pindi and you tell her that she can get out of here before I throw something at her face.”

Hostility like that always makes itself known much before words help expressing it. Abba always knew his eldest daughter was always a worm in Amma’s life’s apple. And he always knew I never lashed out because so far the need was never this dire. Today it was dire and Abba’s face paled in its heat.

She grabbed my arms tightly.

“Let go.”

“Go back to Zohaib.”

“Let go, or I will scream my fucking head off.”

She not only let go, she went into hysterics. She knew what the ‘f’ word meant. Sidra had been educating my mother about the two popular ‘efs’ of modern culture: fucking and facebook.

She beat her arms against the wall, she lamented for the Gods to take away her soul. I stood watching her silently with a small, twisted smile. When she was done, I told Abba to not let Zohaib see me or he (Zohaib) will regret it for the rest of his natural life.

“Regret it more than dialing Ghania’s number,” I added. For effect.

There was a knock. Amma suddenly stopped whining like a stray cat.

Mamu Hassan walked in, “What is all this commotion? Bhabhi, what happened, are you okay?” He rushed to pull Amma up from the ground and quickly poured her a glass of water.

“Ajmal Bhai, what is going on?” he stared at all the three people in the room for a couple of seconds each, hoping to find clues to this extra-ordinary situation.

“My husband is having an affair with another woman, Mamu, and I refuse to go back to him.” I said calmly.

Water sputtered out of Amma’s mouth in a manner most undignified. Abba groaned. The whole situation gave me a mad desire to laugh. So I bit my lip.

“Is this true?” he asked Abba disapprovingly.

“I – well, there isn’t an affair, really. He was talking to someone – well it wasn’t just any girl, it was Ghania! You know Ghania! Baray Bhai Waleed’s daughter! She’s having some troubles and Zohaib was just helping her talk through them-“

“At four a.m. in the morning, Abba, you forgot that.”

Abba went quiet. He looked hurt. I suppose I had ruined his attempts at damage control.

Amma sat sobbing and sniffling and Mamu Hassan looked completely thrown off his composure. A moment later though, he grunted and gained his posture back. “I must say, Ajmal Bhai, whatever the situation is, it’s Sumera’s right to do what she wants.”

“Please don’t think that your fancy American values apply here, Hassan Bhai. We are a different world than you.” Amma had stopped snivelling.

“There is nothing American about equality, Bhabhi,” he replied kindly. “Why do you expect your daughter to do something she simply does not want to do?”

“Hassan Bhai, please. Stay out of this.”

“I will, Bhabhi, she is not my daughter, but I wish you would act as if she is yours.” He gave my back a small tap and said, “I am going to Pindi this evening. You can come with me if your parents don’t want you here.”

“Thank you,Mamu. But Amma is right. We live in a different world than you. This world is filled with inconsistencies the American world will not understand. It works on functionality than truth or justice. It works on how well things are going than checking and asking and worrying if this ‘working’ affects human beings and their desires.”

“Shut your mouth, you disobedient little witch. Shut it now.” Then she slapped me.

I had never been slapped before. The humiliation of a slap doesn’t reside in the stinging cheeks, I think. I think it is based in the idea that you get hit in the face by someone’s hand. Something they keep to their sides, comes and hits you smack in the place that you face your world with. A slap is something that is anatomically designed to produce humiliation. It isn’t combat. It isn’t even an attack. It’s just an act of humiliation and shame and that’s it.

It’s funny that I was thinking all of that instead of how mad it was that my own mother had slapped me for talking like a college professor.

Mamu Hassan was shocked. Abba was embarrassed. I was hurt beyond expression. I went past her, shoving her shoulder against mine, resenting the feel of her dupatta against my shawl and went straight to Saima’s room, which was in the farthest corner of the house and shut myself in.

I didn’t emerge from the room until four hours later when my hunger won and my pride lost.

I was thankful that no one had knocked or banged at the door during these four hours. It’s important to get a good uninterrupted dose of sleep after you’ve been slapped for the very first time in your life.

(end of part seven)

I remember walking up to the garden on a brick road and it lead into a house that was a lot like one of those Victorian styled mansions we saw in Bollywood movies that were shot in America. I half-expected Shah Rukh Khan to come jump out of somewhere and burst into a song. Smiling, I walked up and saw a mirror on the door where I could see myself. This nice red shawl, this brilliant red lipstick, big round pearl earrings in each ear. My hair was complimented and auburn and I just had a problem with the roundness of my face cut, the pregnancy of it all.

The door opened, I walked inside and heard voices. I felt deeply curious because the voices were familiar and hushed. My feet scurried and I started to come closer to a room where the voices seemed the closest.

“What if she finds out, what if she finds out…”

Nah. Couldn’t be.

The door swung open. Zohaib and Ghania were less than an inch apart from each other. She was wearing pale blue satin pajamas and he was dressed in his best dress, his valima suit.

The times when you want to speak and no words come out and the times when you want to scream but nothing manifests itself, not even close, are the times that make you feel helpless and scared and completely useless. What is the point of having a voice if it can’t be used, if it can’t be utilized at the proper time?

I had little time to think about the utilitarian purposes of the vocal chords when I woke up and realized that I had been drooling all over the pillowcase. The drool was mixed with the tears from my eyes and I snapped into reality with a very sticky shake of the head.

It didn’t help that Zohaib was missing on his side of the bed.

“Z-Zohaib,” I croaked. The voice was still not helping.

“ZOHAIB!” I shouted, deliberately to check if it was still working.

The lack of response made me worried. For no reason. We were at home, everyone was sound asleep. Chances were that Zohaib was probably downstairs to get a drink of water or to attend an emergency phone call from the hospital.

I didn’t sit in bed for long. Wrapping a kaftan, I went down the stairs to see the kitchen light on. Sure enough, Zohaib was in there, as I hears his indistinct low voice. Goddamn hospitals. Never out of needs.

“I’m trying to make you understand, Ghania, if you’ll let me.”

I stopped. The whole world did. Then it faded into black and white and the only thing I heard or saw in technicolor was the sound and figure of my husband talking to my first cousin, probably the only woman in the world, after my mother, who made me feel like a chimpanzee.

At 4 a.m. Hidden in the kitchen.

When his wife was five months pregnant.

Speaking in a tone that I hadn’t heard from him since the time he had called me right after our engagement.

An earnest, helpful, kind, I’m-trying-make-an-impression-here tone.

I stood still, listening in on the conversation.

“It doesn’t matter what Baray Taya feels about feminism, you have to understand your own placein this society, you know?”

Tears were coming and sticking to my cheeks and then more tears came and washed them away.

“Look, it’s different with me and Sumera. We didn’t choose each other either, see? But I make compromises, I make it work, I do that with Sumera, don’t i? I mean this much you already know and see, don’t you?”

HE compromised? He makes it work? And it was something so obvious that he knew that Ghania would see it too? HE was the one who agreed with everything MY family said or was it I who had to simply accept every way, thought, personality that my mother in law was each day?

The tears suddenly dried up. My head was suddenly burning, instead of my eyes. This emotion I knew well. This was anger, a good friend ofmine who had been hibernating since the day I got engaged. Since the day I felt love and affection and infatuation for a man whom I spoke to in secret, a man whose baby I was carrying and a man whom I had let me touch in every emotional and physical aspect of my life.

The same man who was currently telling another woman that he had made compromises for me and didn’t really choose me as a life partner.

“There are things we all need to settle for. There are many things I could change in Sumera, if I wanted to, but I can’t. So the fact is I love Ghania – no, I mean, Sumera, I love Sumera.”

He paused. Then let out an awkward laugh.

“I meant to say, we all make sacrifices. So listen to Baray Taya and get married to Yasin, he seems like a decent fellow, I’ve met him so many times…”

He was still talking. I left the room. Quietly took the keys to the car and quietly went out through the back door. Quietly entered the garage, unlocked the gate and quietly switched on the ignition. The best thing about living in this house was how quietly everything could happen.

I switched on the radio.

“So all you people whose hearts have been broken, all you women who have had their husbands cheat on you, all you men who thought you’d found your dream woman… this is for you.”

The DJ thought “Pehla nasha, pehla khumar” was the perfect song for these group of people and I somehow agreed even if I couldn’t have agreed to his choice in any other mood. Perhaps the first woman you love, the first man you give your heart to, the first person who makes you feel like you’re on top of the world is the first person who you blame the most. They are the person who has taken the best of you, the worst of you, the most of you.

I kept driving. I threw away the cell phone. The very expensive anniversary-gift cell phone. Broke it in the middle of the road, so that no thug could benefit from the ire that was a part of that cell phone. Filled the tank and drove all the way, all night. Rested my eyes at a roadside restaurant, grabbed an instant coffee mix and began driving again. It was still early morning when I reached home. Instead of honking, which was the usual custom whenever Zohaib and I came to visit Amma and Abba, I got out of the car and knocked on the door. The honk would wake everyone up. I didn’t want that.

“Sumera Bibi! Shall I wake everyone?”

“No, I want to rest now. Don’t wake anyone up. Is anyone up already?”

“No, they’re still asleep. Everyone returned late from a wedding last night.”

“That’s alright. Here park the car. I will be in my room.”

I walked up to the familiar stairs, the stairs I had climbed all the past 22 years and felt as if they were signs of how out of place I was. I don’t belong in this house, they accused. But they somehow belonged to me.

(end of part six.)

Sure, I had been given tons (well, tolas anyway) of gold, a range of furniture, crockery, tapestry and silverware. Sure, the wedding feast was as big as they got in an of the surrounding towns/villages. Sure, the big industrialists from the city came to attend Waleed’s niece’s wedding celebrations. Sure, my dress was as bright as the face of the salesman who sold it to us, but I couldn’t see any of the things that made the wedding a success. I only saw Abba’s worried face, Ghania’s plastic smile, Zohaib’s family members staring pointedly and ocassionally smiling at me, Amma’s clicking heels. Click, click, they needed more soft drinks. Click, click, Mrs. Big Shot had just arrived and must be entertained by the senior-ranking ladies of the family. Click, click, Zohaib had arrived.

It was a June wedding. My mother-in-law suddenly appeared before me and a gust of heat swished at my face as she opened the door to the small room where I sat fidgeting with my huge gold bangles.

“Pretty girl, pretty girl!” Huma Aunty said, squeezing my shoulder against hers. “You will make my son so happy, I know of it.”

For no reason, I felt nervous. It was as if Zohaib had been battling depression and I was assigned to combat it. There was no one else in the room to see that I had been tightly clasping my bangles, a little too tight because I was losing the feeling in my fingers.

“Just remember two things, my darling, and everything will be perfect.”

I let go of the bangles.

“Always remember that your husband is always right. And always remember that I am now your mother. And you will obey me.”

She had a smile on her face when she said those words but her wrinkled, eye-liner-ridden eyes said something else. Something sinister. Oh, the cliché. The cliché that I was going to have a tyrant of a mother in law was coming true and there was nothing I could do to change it.

It all happened pretty fast after that. The movie cameras, the photographs, the arrival of the baraat, the food, the pictures, the photo session. Big, giant, singular blur. People came to me, much after the wedding, and told me that they’d said such and such to me at that and that point and I stare back and say, “I don’t remember, I’m sorry.”

We stayed in the village for one more week and left for Lahore because Zohaib had to go back to work. I was eager to escape, eager to begin a life that wasn’t dotted with questions like, “The night went fine, right?” “Are you pregnant yet?” and the one statement that was the most popular among all the aunties, “Praise be to Allah, such an important responsibility is now done and over with. Now for Sumera to have heirs to Zubair Bhai’s fortune.”

Mamu was super-rich and most people knew that. Zohaib’s career wasn’t a personal choice. Everyone knew that Zohaib was only working to get some experience. He would soon be funded to establish a huge hospital. Mamu had already bought the lands in the city and the architects were already finalized. I could only think of it all as Amma’s triumph. How happy she would be that her nephew/son-in-law was so successful that no one could come close to his achievements in her in-laws. They were all in the family business but here was a boy who was going to be a big name some day.

I suppose all mothers think partially.

Huma Aunty and Mamu Zubair lived in another town, not too far from Rawalpindi. They visited often and I was on my toes from the moment she entered till the time her car swerved out of the driveway.  I had become accustomed to agreeing to her ongoing teachings about food, medicine, relationships, movies, friends. She seemed to know so much more than my village-living mother because she had spent more than half her life in the city. She was a hostelite like Ghania and she kept visiting the city often as well. In some ways, I found it easier to agree with her because I had little energy to fight against the baby heir that was growing in my belly AND his grandmother at the same time. So I chose to nod and agree and laugh and add similar-sounding arguments so I stayed in her favorites’ list consistently. She was a woman who didn’t waste words, she didn’t like disagreements and she didn’t like an opposing opinion that could make her see otherwise. I figured that out soon enough, thankfully, and the only problems I had were discussed with Amma over the phone. She told me to keep quiet and never say more than necessary and never tell Zubair about anything I said to Huma Aunty. I took it as sound advice and didn’t face a lot of trouble.

Ghania came to visit one day. Huma Aunty and I were sipping our evening tea with rusks. She pecked Huma Aunty on the cheek which made me feel like a fool. I had not yet picked up this classy hello and always awkwardly bumped shoulders to cheekbones in all the occasions that I had tried it. I offered her tea and she declined saying that she was on some dairy-free diet that only allowed her green tea.

Zohaib arrived and sat down with us and Ghania suddenly began talking to him about a new coffee shop in the area that had opened up and insisted that he take both of us there. Huma Aunty laughed at the idea when Ghania invited her as well.

“Coffee shops are for young people like you. I will go catch up on the evening tv. And my back’s hurting a bit. Sumera, can you please ask Riffat to send me my dinner upstairs?”

“Yes, Aunty, of course. Do you want a Panadol?”

“No, just dinner. And that halwa you made today. It was very good, my child.”

“Thank you, Aunty, I’ll send that up as well.”

Zohaib and Ghania, in the background, were talking about how crazy movies had suddenly become. They started talking about books after that and music and before I could take part in anything that involved any of my interest, Ghania was suddenly talking about medicine.

“Ghania, when did you become a doctor, hain?”

“Ooh, someone’s feeling left out, Zohaib. Come on. Don’t you watch those medical dramas? They tell you everything you can learn in your first year of medical school. Right, Zohaib?”

He laughed. “Not really, but okay.”

I played with my chocolate cake and Zohaib slid closer to me and held my hand under the table. He squeezed it and I felt my nerves relaxing. I ate some cake.

“I’m gonna go out and take a puff. You ladies keep yourselves company for a bit.”

There was ‘okay-bye’ and ‘be-right-back’ and a moment’s silence. I gave Ghania a long look.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” She knew what I meant.

“Don’t play dumb. Why are you acting like this woman who only talks about everything another woman’s husband talks about?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

I suddenly lurched forward, belly and all, and pinched Ghania hard. “Listen closely and listen good. I know exactly what you’re doing and I don’t like it and I want you to stop. If you don’t, I will tell Bari Tayee you have way too much free time in the city.”

Ghania’s eyes widened with pain and shock and she snatched her fleshy arm away. “Didn’t know you were so insecure.”

“Didn’t know you liked to play these games too.”

Zohaib returned and conversation fell back into chatter. Ghania’s face didn’t betray any signs of a catfight and I began shifting uncomfortably in my seat, a signal that Zohaib always understood as, “Let’s go.”

We dropped Ghania off at Bari Tayee’s sister’s, where Ghania was staying and drove away. Zohaib was still very, very, annoyingly chatty.

“She’s such a bright girl. I hope she finds a good husband.”

“Oh she will.”

“I mean, bright girls like that are hard to find you know? And uff, sometimes they get the worst of husbands.”

“Oh I don’t know. I did fine.”

“Yeah but you always were a little slow.” He was smiling.

“Ghania will marry whoever Baray Taya find her to marry. No question.”

“That Yasin fellow?”

“You remember.” I didn’t like that. “Yes, him.”

“I must say, what she did that night, I – I can’t believe a woman would do that. She was very – brave. To stand up against Baray Taya like that.”

Brave. Zohaib thought Ghania was brave. And his mother thought I’d be happiest if I was always agreeable. What was the missing link that could help me make sense out of the picture?

My heartbeat was increasing. I felt my throat knotting. The kind of feeling they say is the onset of a panic attack. But I couldn’t understand it. I felt it and couldn’t understand it. Why did Zohaib’s opinion of Ghania send me into this knot of responses?

I took a deep breath. “She was stupid to do that.”

“Courage is often misunderstood. I just think they should find someone who is compatible with her.”

I cleared my throat to shake off the little hurricane that was brewing in my innards. “Compatible? Zohaib, arrange marriages don’t take compatibility into account, and neither does Baray Taya.”

We kept talking about Ghania’s marriage prospects for a while and reached home. Zubair kept saying he would prefer Ghania marrying out of the family for various reasons (mostly outlined in Ghania’s personality) and I kept trying to make him understand how all that was impossible. We saw Huma Aunty sitting in the lounge with Mamu Zubair.

“So how was coffee?”

“Lovely. Ghania is such a lively spirit.” Zohaib took a seat and motioned for me to clear the table in front of Huma Aunty.

“Oh she is, she is,” Huma Aunty agreed vehemently. “A perfect balance. She knows so much of the world and yet comes from a good family. She will make some boy very happy some day.”

There were tears forming in my eyes as I bent to pick up Huma Aunty’s tray and I had no idea why.

(end of part five)

The balcony saw straight into the main gate. Who came, who left, whose car turned up the driveway of the house. This was the same driveway that Ghania had arrived in, twenty pounds lighter and bearing gifts for Amma and Abba.

It was a karma I still try to comprehend. Ghania had no prospects of marriage so she went to the city to study. She came back and everyone wanted to marry her slim waist. I had a slim waist from the very beginning so I got engaged when I turned eighteen and never got to study in the city. I got the bachelors externally and began preparing for the wedding. I was extremely happy at the idea of going to live in the big city after the wedding but something about Ghania’s stories about how she and her hostel-mates roamed around Rawalpindi on weekends made me feel I had missed out on something far too substantial to imagine.

“So you will be married soon, Sumera, meri jan!” she cooed as she did a little jump on my bed. “Haye, I’m so excited for you! You’re so lucky.”

I was, I knew it. But the fact that Ghania of two years ago couldn’t possibly have said something so simple so elegantly gnawed at my intestines.

“What about you? What about Baray Taya Jee’s friend’s son, Yasin? That CA from America?”

“You mean that moustached, hairy UNCLE?”

“No, his son.” I was confused. And she giggled. My confusion ended.

“Sumera, meri jan, I am too young to marry that old fatso. He’s 30!”

My brows knitted. “Zohaib is 28. 30 is not that old. And what if Baray Taya tells you to?”

“Then I will say no.”

It was my turn to giggle. Of course, Ghania would never say no. She didn’t say no to anything Baray Taya asked her. It just wasn’t done. Daughters weren’t meant to say no, they weren’t meant to argue, they weren’t meant to ask questions. They had to obey whenever it came to the decision of their lives. The elders knew what was right for them. Just like Amma and Abba knew it was right for me to marry Zohaib. And they were right, I nodded inwardly. Look how good and well-settled he is in Lahore. Look how much money he makes. I will be comfortable, I will have a nice life, we will have nice kids, go out on weekends for dinners at big restaurants and even see movies. Amma and Abba definitely knew my happiness.

It was one of our eid meets. It was very Dil Wale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Amma and Bari Tayee had called their families, there were some friends and Zohaib was there too. He was talking to Yasin when Bari Tayee was smiling indulgently and Ghania was smoldering silently.

“Oh look how nice his moustache looks, Ghania,” I poked. “It will be so much fun when he kisses you.”

Ghania’s hair whipped. Her hoop earrings whipped along with them. “Shut up. I’m not marrying him.” She turned to look at him. “Look at him, the bloody paindoo.”

Yasin caught her eye and gave her something of a smile. That was probably the last straw for her and she would have said something else but Bari Tayee caught Ghania by the arm and said, “Your father is going to solemnize the rishta tonight. Thought I’d tell you.”

She was expecting Ghania to look embarrassed and blush pink and peach and say, “Okay, Ammi.”

Ghania’s eyes turned red with tears and without a word she rushed into her room. She had glared at her mother with those eyes before rushing, so Bari Tayee asked me to go after her.

I caught her in the hallway. “Where are you going! Stop!”

To my surprise, she did. “This isn’t fair. I don’t want to marry him.”

“Don’t talk like that. Where do you think you are, America? This is Pakistan and this is your pind. We marry whatever is presented before us, do you understand? Now YOU shut up and wipe your face with this,” I handed her her duppatta, “and come out before people start asking where you disappeared off to. What a drama you are.”

Ghania gave me the same glare she gave her mother but didn’t run. I could hear her following me and we came back to the courtyard. Her kohl had disappeared but she didn’t seem as though she had been crying a minute ago. In fact, I thought very pleased with my powers of coercion, she was smiling and was headed straight towards Bari Tayee.

Bari Tayee looked at Ghania and after a micro-second of mild interest, she carried on the conversation she was having with Yasin’s mother. The rest of the night passed the same way. Everyone had their food, Yasin was hugged ostentatiously by all members of our family and the younger ones surrounded him as he wished everyone goodbye.

It was just some of our family members left, the clock was nearing 11 pm which was very late for all of our timetables. Zohaib and Mamu Zubair were having a heated discussion with Baray Taya and Abba and the ladies were sharing halwa recipes. When Bari Tayee said, “Ghania’s wedding will be soon after Sumera’s so we won’t have much trouble to be sure about which halwai to choose, you know. Trial and error always works best, you know.”

Baray Taya was sitting close by and overheard the conversation. “Well, of course. Ajmal will find out everything that is best in a hundred mile radius … won’t you, Ajmal?”

“Of course, Bhai.”

“Ah, to know that a daughter will soon be married. What a wonderful feeling it is, isn’t it, Ajmal?”

“Yes, Bhai, it very much is.”

“I won’t marry him.”

It was so sudden and so out of the blue, it took about ten seconds for everyone to grasp Ghania’s words. But Baray Taya Jee had heard and grasped it a good four seconds before everyone else did so he grabbed Ghania by the hand, much more severely than Bari Tayee had, and swung her in front of him.

There were no less than thirty people in that courtyard, including servants. Thirty pairs of eyes were locked at the ten inch distance between Baray Taya’s portruding belly and Ghania’s jutted jaw.

And then, at the eleventh second, he slapped her. Powerfully. Her body could have taken the weight of the slap if she were 20 pounds heavier, but she had become almost like one of those anorexic models, so she buckled and swayed for a moment before regaining her balance.

“Keep your mouth shut.” Bari Tayee said quietly and took her from Baray Taya’s grasp and almost dragged her to the room. I lowered my eyes. I didn’t want to see or hear any more theatrics because it just hurt to see what Ghania had done to her own self-esteem.

But Ghania wasn’t protesting. She walked quietly, without a protest of any kind. I personally thought it was that she took a chance.

When village girls become city girls it becomes hard for them to separate reality from aspirations. The fact that they have come out of those closed, locked atmospheres loaded with tradition and subservience makes them think that they can change things. The same fate fell upon Ghania. She thought she could change the way her father thought just because he let her study in the city. Unlike Kajol finding a Shah Rukh Khan, these girls found their romantic ideas centered in not a man but in the concept of freedom and independence. It wasn’t that Ghania didn’t want to marry Yasin, I knew it, I felt it. She didn’t hate the idea of marrying a man who was rich and successful and lived in America. Her problem was that she wanted to figure out how far she could push her father into getting away with everything. And she had met the wall where Baray Taya had set the limit. He would let her wear short kurtis and let her leave her hair open and allowed Indian movies on weekends and didn’t object to her gallivanting with hostel-friends. But he drew the line, built the wall, at a point where his traditions had built the wall for him.

I was always wise enough to know romance novels were only novels. I knew I didn’t have to take a slap from my father to know that he wasn’t madly in love with my mother to produce three daughters and I won’t have to be madly in love with Zohaib to produce his sons (hopefully). I knew that in movies Simran found Shah Rukh Khan whereas we just all find nice Kuljeets who, as long as aren’t beating us black and blue, are pretty good men after all.

(end of part four.)

Hakeem Abdullah’s wife, Farzana, passed away when Hassan was two years old. Grief was less efficient than trying to figure out what to do with a two-year-old, so marrying again was a simple affair. Isn’t it amazing how simple a second wife or a second marriage was fifty years ago? Hakeem Abdullah married Farrukh Bano, a distant relative, 15 years his junior. Farrukh Bano had no objections to marrying a man 15 years her senior, with a two-year-old boy and Farrukh Bano also had no objections to raising him until he was old enough to go off to boarding school in Lahore. Because Farrukh Bano had always been told she would never get married if she didn’t lose that weight. Her smugness is hereditary, I sometimes think. Her irrational, incomprehensible smugness that always gets the better of her other better traits. I’m half-certain she married Hakeem Abdullah to spite her friends and making a point.

Farzana’s son didn’t take well to the new mother because I’m told he was always found hiding in the garden or sitting alone with his books and toys. When he was old enough, he was baffled by the sight of new brothers and sisters popping up around the house. He tried to remain in Lahore as much as he could, I remember Abba telling Amma.

“Bhai Hassan thought this house was haunted by the ghost of his birth mother.”

I was too young to understand what Abba meant when I had accidentally heard the conversation, but I never tried to walk alone in the house at night or at any other remotely spooky time. What if Dadi Farzana’s white-sari-clad spirit decided to come pay us a visit and see how her husband was getting on with his new family? A woman’s curiosity wasn’t something that could be stopped by something as clandestine as death.

Mamu Hassan lived in Long Island, a place that sounded so mystical that Saima and I once tried to find it in one of our atlases. We couldn’t find Long Island but we sat for many hours admiring America and my growing affection with romance novels made me fall in love with names such as New York and LA even more. Mamu Hassan visited us once, with his American wife and his blue-eyed son. They looked out of place, out of time, out of our gene pool. And they probably thought the same way about us because their entire visit lasted about fifteen minutes.

Hakeem Abdullah made his fortune through an oil mill that didn’t die immediately. Back then, it was enough. It was enough that you weren’t immediately bankrupt and real estate wasn’t really a thing back then. In small towns, small businesses didn’t have to erupt fast to turn into gold, they just had to stick there, long enough. So oil stuck and Hakeem Abdullah became influential enough to get away with naming a house in his wife’s name. Perhaps he was the first feminist of our village.

Time made Hakeem Abdullah only more powerful. Do you note how I talk about him as if he’s a news piece? He seems like that, now that he’s dead. It’s as though I can see him clearly for what he was. A man who made everything based on how clearly he could see others and events and situations. He struck while the iron was hot, he did what he had to, he paid his dues. You could comb through a book of clichés for the average rags-to-riches story and that man would fit in all of them.

His business acumen was something people gave examples of, which is how I know he was a brilliant mathematician, a shrewd financier. He didn’t invest or stick to anything until he was a hundred percent sure of its success. There isn’t a single flower planted in our backyard that fizzled out or couldn’t stand the rain or shine. They were all planted by him, chosen and decided upon after perusal of dozens of books on gardening.

He opened a library in the village and two schools. They were taken care of by Abba, who needless to say, lacked his father’s business vision. He couldn’t see why and how business records were to be kept and assembled meticulously. Abba was more interested in book shipments and new schemes on how to work schools better in the village. Waleed Abdullah (or Baray Taya Jee, if you will, he’s not a news piece yet) took over the oil mills (yes, plural, they grew) and held it strong. Abba took care of some of the lands and the families that his father had provided for. That was Abba’s role in life, he took care of people. At home, his gentle nature was seen as a bit of a deviance but it made me secretly proud of him. I never expressed or agreed to Baray Taya Jee’s criticism of poetry. I always loved Abba’s renditions of John Milton and his favorite quotes from Keats. Abba found his kin in dead old poets more than his very alive brother.

“The passionate will inherit the earth, Sum. The passionate.”

“But, Abba, you are not passionate at all.” I giggle. “It doesn’t take passion to read books.”

Abba laughed. The way he always did whenever I said something that – surprised him.

“It does to understand them.”

The only trouble with Hakeem Abdullah was that he was an insufferable smoker. He smoked everything. Cigars, cigarettes and Abba recalls him smoking something that Hakeem Abdullah told his sons never to try. Ten years ago, when Hakeem Abdullah smoked his last cigarette at the age of 79, Mother Nature was pretty sick of the sick joke Hakeem Abdullah was playing on her. She’d show him. And she did. Waleed Abdullah, also known as Baray Taya Jee took over the industry. And Hakeem Abdullah’s shrine was taken over by Mother Nature.

I remember his funeral. Dadi Farrukh was in hysterics. So were the neighboring women, whose hysterics seemed to be cued exactly on target with Dadi Farrukh’s. It was winter. Sidra was very young and Amma was in pain. Something called mastitis. I remember because I didn’t know what it was until it happened to me much, much later. We were all wrapped in sweaters and coats and shawls and clambered for heat inside our rooms. The hysterics probably kept us all warmer.

Chacha Faraz and Phupo Fauzia had arrived from England immediately. Well. As immediate as a six-to-eight hour flight could bring you. Their children hadn’t come. I remember the shock. How could they not attend their grandfather’s funeral. Surely they would come later?

“Bhabhi Taskeen, you know how it is with uni!”

“With what?” Amma stared.

“Uni – oh you know – university. That is what they call them.”

Phupo Fauzia took a sip of mineral water as I handed Amma a glass of ice cold water from the tap. It was January and the hills were freezing already.

“Children there are not like children here, you know, na, Bhabhi. They have to do all the work. The dishes, the clothes, the studies. They are under too much pressure from everywhere.  I have left them at Faraz Bhai’s house for the time being. Imrana Bhabhi also works you know. Very difficult life.”

“Oooh, I love your ring, Phuppo Fauzia! It’s so beautiful!” Ghania suddenly chirped.

“Thank you, it was my birthday  present. Look, diamonds.”

Chacha Faraz was also a doctor in England and he had found a nice doctor boy for Phuppo Fauzia too. They were living happily ever after in England and came every two years to complain about life in the gora-dais as if it was the worst thing that ever happened to them. But they couldn’t comeback and settle in Pakistan now, you see, their papers were almost done and they were going to be British citizens soon.

No one likes discomfort, I thought placidly as I said my goodbye to Hakeem Abdullah. The proud, strong, Hakeem Abdullah, wrapped in a sheet of white, sent off with nothing but goodbyes that were probably not half as sincere as he might have expected them to be. Goodbye, Hakeem Abdullah. Strong hands heaved him off the floor and began taking him out of the room. Dadi Farrukh’s screams were drowned by screams of many other women I wouldn’t recognize out of a lineup. I quietly walked out of the room before the screams got louder and the din would wake Sidra up and Amma would have to see to her again. I had to go see Sidra again.

I have a memory of Zohaib Bha- I mean, Zohaib there. He stood with a bunch of servants, ordering them about. He looked at me sharply and I don’t know why but they were the first eyes to meet me all day and suddenly they were stinging.

By the time I closed the door to Sidra’s room, I realized, to my utter surprise, that my face was stained with tears that were long and fat and, in the wake of Hakeem Abdullah, really quite decidedly stubborn.

(end of part three)

“Naughty girls go to hell, you know.”

I had immediately stopped crying. I remember looking up at him, scared of his brown eyes that were bearing the news of a burning fire that awaited me. He looked back earnestly and suddenly laughed. I remember being confused and angry because hell was no laughing matter. I was twelve but the idea of hell was clear enough that I did not want to be there. Ever. Moulvi Sahab had always told me hell was full of insects and fires that burnt white hot and kept burning you until you were crispy and deeply fried. And then it just started over again. Till all of eternity.

He went to study medicine in the city (Zohaib, not Moulvi Sahab) and I stayed home, like my sisters, to get a Matriculation certificate from the local school. It wasn’t so bad, the local school. The girls were friendly and everyone respected Hakeem Abdullah’s children and grandchildren. Baray Taya Jee had enough grunts and shoves to make sure none of his children were bullied and got top marks in all the tests. He brought the best tutors from around the village and often sat down himself to overlook our studies. There was so much fear and hard work instilled by the elders, there was simply no room to fail.

I read newspapers and books in the meantime. Books that made no sense. Especially those crazy romance novels that I begged Amma to let me buy every time we were in the city. I knew women were powerful and independent in the western world but didn’t they also get into a lot of trouble all the time? I had heard Baray Taya Jee say many times that a woman in America is ten times more likely to be raped and murdered than she was in Saudi Arabia or even a place like our village. I vehemently agreed. Of course no one dare rape and murder Baray Taya Jee’s daughters and Hakeem Abdullah’s family members. Baray Taya Jee knew so many influential people in the city, the rapist/murderer would be caught in no time and be really sorry he touched any of us.

It did make Amma seethe though. Every time Dadi Farrukh asked her to wear a dupatta on her head whenever we went out. Amma was religious because she offered her prayers and finished off a Quran every Ramadan. But Dadi’s tone when she said, “Taskeen, aren’t you a daughter of Hakeem Abdullah?” somehow meant my mother had been a philandering nymphomaniac, reminded Amma to wear a dupatta on her head whenever she walked out of the house. I was incredibly scared of Dadi Farrukh and her tones, so I never took off the dupatta off my head even when I was in the house. What if the maids did produce rapist sons? Whenever I had the dupatta on my head, I felt like there was a huge force field that told the possible rapist to stay as far away from me as soon as possible. In the presence of a white chaadar, his evil would incinerate, I’d like to imagine. He would fall into a mass of his own sin and I was reminded of that old PTV movie where the angel recited “La hol wala quwatta!” And the devil covered his face and immediately slid off screen. I felt my chaadar had the same power. All men and rapists knew better than to aim toward a woman wearing a white chaadar. I also thought all those jilted women in the romance novels would have had better luck with men if they’d only worn chaadars. Their men would have respected them more then, you see.

When Mamu Zubair arrived one day at our house looking all happy and glowing, I instantly thought Zohaib had gotten a new medal. Mamu Zubair was in the habit of flaunting Zohaib’s academic success, which was quite insensitive in my opinion. Zohaib was a city boy, with city benefits like huge libraries and lots of easily accessible internet. When I was twelve the only internet we had was the 45 rupee per hour internet that came after you went and paid at the office. Zohaib lived in a hostel where he even had a mobile phone. In Farrukh Mahal we had only one landline that everyone took turns on. We could have easily installed more than one landline but that would have meant Dadi Farrukh could not keep an eye on any of the conversations that took place in the huge house. Because the single white phone was kept on Dadi’s dresser where everyone knew you could only go to make a phone call if it was an utter emergency.

We had our landline installed when my second sister was born. It was one of the few times Abba had put his foot down because Ghania was on the phone and he had been calling from the city to talk to Amma to ask if she had had a boy or a girl.

Zohaib was apparently going to be my husband, I thought blankly, when Amma delivered the news to me. Mamu Zubair had officially put forth the absurd idea and Abba and Amma had absurdly agreed to it. The funny thing about this absurdity was that Amma said Zohaib had no issues with the whole idea. I had read enough romance novels to know that a man like Zohaib only liked pretty girls and weren’t pre-conceived ideas a bad precedent for a marriage? He must like those fashionable girls wearing those short kurtis and flowy pajamas who walked in whenever we went to shop in the city, those girls who had cell phones in their hands and were smsing their friends and family. How could Zohaib possibly agree to the idea of marrying – MARRYING – a girl who only had one landline to her disposal?

The next week, Mamu Zubair came with Zohaib and the rest of his family, brought sweetmeats and money for me. The idea was still absurd. Was the money compensation of some kind? “Here, give us your poor, dowdy daughter for our hip, cool son and here’s some money for all the humiliation she will have to endure after this marriage is sanctified.”

Amma laughed at the idea. “Zohaib is lucky to have you. Look how beautiful you are.”

“I’m not beautiful,” I scowled as Amma arranged the dupatta on my head. “I’m only slightly passable.”

“Oh, then who’s beautiful? Ghania?” she snickered. Ghania was still fat then. So it was a legitimate joke.

“Amma, Zohaib Bhai –“

“For the thousandth time… ”

“Uff, okay, Zohaib is not going to make fun of me, is he?”

“Not if you keep your figure in keeping with your age.”

“Does that mean I can be as fat as Dadi Farrukh when I’m a grandmother?”

Amma swung me severely on my feet and brought me face to face. “You are never going to be a round chapatti. Even if I am dead and buried, don’t ever let an angel bring the news to me that you are fat and lazy.”

I could see the subtitles. “Never be Dadi Farrukh.”

I had my own subtitle in my head. “Never be my mother.”

We went down, Saima and Sidra giggling at my side. Zohaib was sitting in a crisp white shalwar kameez that made my heart sink. I was not ready, I was not ready, I was not ready …

There were three kinds of puke forming in me. One that was at the pit of my feet, the one that was threatening to come forth if I moved from the ornate lawn chair that my sisters had decorated out of the garden jasmines and roses. One was in my belly that I was afraid would make a gurgle loud enough for Amma and Dadi Farrukh to hear. One was in my chest, and in my throat at the same time, one that made me feel the sickest. I had never been this close to a man who could have been a prospective  husband. And there he was, grinning and smiling and joking around with Saima and Sidra, the idiot.

The elders sat to discuss the dates and venues and I kept fiddling with the ring that was on my finger. Up and down. Up and down.

“You’ll have to stop playing with that at some point.” There was a laugh hidden in that sentence and I deeply resented it.

“I will call you later tonight. Stay by the phone.”

And suddenly the image of him pulling my ponytail flashed in front of me. His brown eyes and his snide smile. My breath caught in my throat and it might have sounded like a half-laugh or something because he that’s when he said,

You told me to run, as fast I possibly could, and I ran and I couldn’t see beyond the pain because I was so interested in seeing your reaction when I’d come and say, “I did it. I did it all.”

Sometimes, us women, we tend to take praise a little too seriously. We tend to overlook what it does to us, what it turns us into, either monsters of greed and jealousy or hapless depressive blobs that eat their hair and bite their fingernails.

Ghania’s smile reminds me of that. Her dark kohl-rimmed eyes and slim wrists.

Those wrists weren’t so slim two years ago, I think to myself smugly. Too many meals skipped, a ridiculously fast metabolism, I stare at my own chubby calves modestly hidden inside my shalwar. These young girls have it easy. But she waves those bangled sticks around again, those long fingers that are characteristic of your family: thin, thin wrists, long, long fingers, and a high-pitched, annoying sound that women make when their brains are empty of intelligent thought.

In women of substance, it’s called a laugh, I grin silently. My smugness is irrevocable, like a disease that saves me from something even more serious, like suicide.

From the moment Ghania stepped into the village, my brain and I were constantly in cahoots about what to do about her uncharming gait, her silly narrations of her college mates, and her petty talks of how she knows what the latest fashion was in Islamabad. My mother had been staring curiously at my reactions to Ghania’s visit. Amma would ask me to come, serve tea and I’d do it before she could say it twice. Which was odd for me, and she knew it. It was a monologuic wheedle, always. “Summa, make the tea. You know you have to. What will you do at your in-laws house, what will Aunty Huma say? Everyone says I make the best tea, everyone will ask me ‘Oh, Taskeen, why doesn’t Sumera make tea as good as yours?’ … and don’t get me started on your chapattis. Such fat chapattis you make, child. Fat chapattis are like fat women. No one likes them but if they’re served on the dinner table, everyone’s too polite to decline them.”

Amma jee’s grand wisdom always fit somewhere. Ghania to me was like a round chapatti. Well, Ghania of 2 years ago. Ghania-of-two-years-ago was teased and poked mercilessly. Behind her back. No one could call Ghania-of-two-years-ago fat because she was the daughter of Baray Taya Jee. Baray Taya Jee was particularly protective of his fat daughter – maybe because he knew she was fat or maybe because it took two men to heave Taya Jee from his manjhi.

Ghania’s shape was the brunt of many snickering schoolboys who liked following her around after school. Ghania threw rocks at them. They never said anything. Ghania knew. Baray Taya Jee didn’t. He kept doling out paratha after paratha on the breakfast table, while my mother pinched me hard under the table if I tried to take a second helping of omelet.

Ghania-of-today was still the daughter of Baray Taya Jee but boys didn’t make fun of her any longer. They stared at her in awe and perhaps were even more thunderstruck when their elder brothers nudged their mothers into talking to Baray Taya Jee for Ghania’s hand.

The year Ghania left for college, Abba announced he was going to move out. Amma Jee had casually mentioned at opportune times that things were tough. I saw what she was doing all along. I knew how she didn’t move a muscle the whole day but began working at three, which was round about the same time as Abba came home. Dadi Farrukh would be retiring to her room for her afternoon siesta and Amma would be flexing her muscles to make the evening makkhan (the morning makkhan was all spent for Ghania’s palak aloo gobhi), to clear the fridge (all the leftover things that Bari Tayi Jee had kept from last week’s davit of her friends), to wipe the portions of the veranda that Ghania’s little brothers had messed after a long afternoon of havoc. Abba would come home and ask for tea, and Amma would be late. She would always be late. On purpose. I knew it. I knew it because she could have asked anyone to run any of these chores for her in the morning when the house was filled with servants and their children. But she knew that Dadi Farrukh didn’t like housemaids or servants or anyone outside family in the house once she lay down for her siesta.

“These maids will seduce my sons and their harami children will rape my daughters.”

Dadi Farrukh’s system was in place, and so it had been for the past 20 years, ever since Dada Abbu had gone to a better place. “They didn’t name this house Farrukh Mahal for nothing.” Dadi Farrukh had used these words to good use the day Amma had wanted a servant in the evening. “God give peace to your husband’s father. He was a good man. He knew the ways of the world and he knew it is a complete idiocy to keep these young virgins in the house for work after a certain part of the day-“

“But, Amma Farrukh, Sumera’s father comes home after three, all the dishes of the day are for after-“

“If you want to interrupt me, you will have to find another Mahal, Taskeen. In the Mahal of Ajmal’s father, in the Mahal of Sumera’s father’s father, the dishes will remain unwashed, or you can wash them, if you please. But there will be no servant in the house after three pm.”

So that is what Amma did for the next fifteen years. She sporadically fought Dadi Farrukh for the first five years, because if she hadn’t fought, she would have ended up like her sister, Samreen. “And I can never be a doormat like you, Samreen, you just don’t say anything!” The next fifteen, Amma only cleaned the house after three pm. Dadi Farrukh would be napping and Abba would wait for his tea, and would drink it alongside the sight of his spouse dripping with water and sweat (in the summer) and mud and smelling of old curries and the special scent of the fridge that Amma had bought from her dowry.