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July 25, 2004
Excerpts: Engulfed in a storm
Yasmeen and Laila, Sehba Sarwar’s protagonists, confront old memories to bury the hatchet
Yasmeen
BUT I knew that it was more than Amman’s presence that was making me feel changed. The gaps in my own life had become more stark since the World Trade Centre explosions. I couldn’t seem to watch television any more without wanting to scream. I didn’t have anywhere to express my anger because even my friends were telling me to “be careful” and that “now’s not the time to criticize the government”. Certainly, the incident at Saira’s school would have been dealt with differently. I felt like a helium balloon, floating without a string. And I’d invited Amman to Houston hoping her visit might help me get grounded again and so I could find peace again. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen.
I entered the house through the kitchen door. It was dark but I knew my way to the refrigerator. Suddenly, the kitchen light flashed on, making me blink and drop the water pitcher to the floor.
Amman stood behind me holding a broomstick in front of her like a protective sword. “It’s you. I was worried. I thought it might be a dacoit.”
I grabbed a sponge to mop up the water. Dacoit? We don’t have those here. You don’t have to wait up for me.”
Amman set the broom down and crossed her arms. “‘It’s late. I was worried.”
“Amman, I’m thirty-six. Mother of two. I’m not one of the kids.”’
She let out a deep sigh as if air from a balloon inside her were being deflated. “You’ll always be my child.”
“Well, I’m not a child.”
“Baita, you work too hard. If I weren’t here, who’d look after the children?”
My hands were on my hips. “You’re feeling as if you’re being put to work?” If only I could tell her how much I cried before she came but the words wouldn’t leave my mouth.
“I enjoy my time with the children. But they also need you around.”
I turned off the light and slipped past her, whispering, “Good night.”
Laila
The kitchen’s dark except for the slat of light from the open refrigerator door. “I enjoyed meeting your friends,” I say.
Without turning around, Yasmeen takes a gulp of water, swirls it in her mouth and let it trickle down her throat.
“They’re nice. Janet is very beautiful.”
“Yes.”
I sit down at the kitchen table. “I know you’re upset. Can you talk about what’s making you so angry?”
Yasmeen slams the fridge door shut and it takes me a moment to adjust to the darkness.
“What is it? I can’t understand how you feel unless you explain to me, Baita. I don’t even understand why you left us and why you stopped talking to us. It’s been too many years Baita. Don’t keep all your anger inside. What is it?”
She turns away. “You should know...”
I stand up. I’m reaching my limit with my daughter. She talks even less than she did when she was little and at least back then, she had a twin who told me things that I needed to know. She’s never told me why she stopped talking to us. It was a sudden break and I’m tired. It’s time she and I talked. “Baita, please tell me or I’ll go upstairs.”
Yasmeen slams her glass on the kitchen table. Water sloshes over its rim. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you. I’m upset because you keep talking about him. About me. You don’t need to discuss me with my friends. Why can’t you let it alone?”
I hold back my tears. “I have your pain also, Baita. He was my son.”
“Yasir.” She says his name heavily as if it is a stone that she tosses into a black pond, a stone that plops into the depths of the water, causing no ripples.
“Can’t we celebrate his life?” I know that these are my older sister’s words but I want to repeat them often so that they begin to feel true. “He had a good life. It was short, but I would like to celebrate the joys that we shared.”
Yasmeen throws on the light switch and I blink in the sudden brightness. “I’m ready to put the past aside. You’re the one stuck there. That’s why I don’t talk about him. Or about what happened in Hawagali.” Her lips twist and her hands and elbows push into her stomach. Transformed from a furious woman to a crumpled child, she looks as if she’s going to vomit.
“Baita, don’t fight me. It’s the wrong battle. How long will you run from yourself?”
“What do you mean.” Her voice is soft.
“You ran all the way across the world to get away. We let you. How much longer will you run? How much further?”
“I’m trying to make a life for myself after you wrecked it.”
“What are you saying?”
“Yasir’s accident — it was your fault.”
Fiery anger licks my throat. “How dare you!”
“I should never have invited you. Never. Never. I just did it in a moment of madness. I was feeling sorry for you, alone in Karachi.”
She says nothing about how alone she must have felt after her divorce. After all, she invited me to Houston just a few months after all the paperwork was formalized. When her letter arrived in Karachi — her first one to me in ten years — I caressed the envelope and ran my fingers along its edges. Without looking at the American stamp, I knew it was from her. I know my daughter’s handwriting; after all, I’m the one who taught her how to write her name and her brother’s name in Urdu and in English.
Now I watch her grope in her purse and draw out a cigarette. “It was an accident,” I say. “We have to accept it. Blaming others won’t bring him back.”
She stops pacing. “An accident? Why was he out that night?”
“What are you saying?”
“He went to look for you. And you weren’t where you said you’d be. You said you were with Heera. She limps. She can’t walk fast. Or far.”
Behind my closed eyelids is the image of my son, wet and limping in the rain, stumbling through crashed boulders.
Yasmeen is still talking. “No one walks late in the evening. Not with a storm brewing. Thunder was rolling that night. Remember?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Can you remember the lightning crackle when you came to see me before leaving? You were dressed up — a red sari in the mountains!” Her voice is highly sarcastic.
My hands are trembling as I push my hair back. “Please stop.”
“You and Abu had a fight that night. I remember him shouting. What were you fighting about?”
I know my face is white. “You’ve been through a divorce. People argue. That’s what happens in relationships.”
She snorts. “Yes. It happens. It’s normal, right?” Her shoulders drop. “You want me to believe you and Abu had a normal marriage?”
“I’ll talk to you after you calm down.” I know that she has a right to learn more but I can’t talk with her when she’s spitting out two decades of anger upon me. Yes, she’s my daughter but Yasir was my son. I, too, have the right to anger but I have no one to blame.
“Who were you with when the storm hit? You couldn’t have been outside?” Yasmeen’s chin is an accusing finger.
I stumble to the door.
Her voice drops. “I was sick. But I remember — the perfume. And the song you were humming.”
“Baita, I’ve relived that night a thousand times. I wasn’t much older than you are today. Can you understand how broken I was. I’d give my own life to bring Yasir back. I gave you up. I’d give up anything... but don’t blame me for what happened...”
My eyes clouded with tears, I leave her in the kitchen, walk up to my room and close the door.
Faces crowd my mind: Tariq’s thundering voice, Yasmeen’ s forehead burning with fever, Heera’s firm hands, holding mine, begging me to calm myself. His smooth chest, my precious Qais. I cover my face with my blanket just as I had done with a chaddar on those illicit visits. It’s too difficult to enter that doorway. My shoulders shake. Yasmeen’s accusations are earthquakes shaking my foundation, rocking the stability that I have built brick by brick since that terrible accident 18 years ago.
A month before the planned wedding date, after my family refuses his marriage proposal to me, I lock myself in my room, crying, begging them to call off my engagement to Tariq. Finally, my mother sends Sikandar to me, knowing how hard I find it to refuse my eldest brother. “They are our parents,” Sikandar tells me. “They only want the best for you. They’re on your side. Tariq is a good man. Well respected. He doesn’t want dowry. He wants to help the family business. Think of your izzat, the family’s izzat. Everyone’s respect is at stake here. “
I stare at my hennaed hands, red in preparation for the wedding. I know that my father will go bankrupt if he doesn’t get money from somewhere. “‘You want me to give up my life so you can have yours?”
My mother enters the room and sits on the bed beside me. She takes off her chappals and puts her scuffed toes on top of each other. “Your Abba came from India, sold clothes and shoes to the English, built the hotel after they left,” she says. “All that has ended. The Angrez are gone. If things continue the way they are, I don’t know what will happen. We’ll have to sell everything — including our home in Hawagali. If you marry Tariq, he’ll invest in your father’s hotel. And he’ll give you respect, izzat. Marry him.” Her thin cheeks are creased from days of weeping.
In that moment I press my lips close together and, with my eyes staring at my mother’s face hidden behind her knobby palms, I make the decision to marry Tariq and save the family.
Laila
Long after the thunderstorm ends, much later after Tariq and the doctor bring him home, I sit beside Yasir. He’s hidden beneath a heavy blanket, his tall body barely fitting the bed, size 11 feet sticking out over the edge. I hold his hand close to my mouth and mumble prayers that I’ve never said before, breathing heat into his palm, urging his sickness to leave his chest, his heart. In the room next door, Yasmeen rests, her fever finally completely gone. The doctor sahib places his stethoscope on Yasir’s chest, his forehead furrowed as he strains to listen to Yasir’s faint heartbeat. “Keep him warm,” he says. “Hot water bottles, hot tea. Anything to increase his heartbeat.”
Tariq stands beside me, the alcohol and anger melted from his system. He combs my hair with his thick fingers and kisses the crown of my head. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Sorry for everything. I swear I’ll never treat you like that again.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing left to say.
“No, I promise. I’ll never hurt any of you again.” Tariq’s voice is low, a whisper. His face is unshaven, his eyes red. Even his moustache droops. He wanders into the kitchen, returning with three hot water bottles. Together we lift up Yasir’s limp body to slide the bottles beneath his back, under his neck and on his heart. Yasir’s eyes don’t open even once.
Wearing her flannel nightgown, Yasmeen enters the room, pushes past us and throws herself on her unmoving twin. She holds his ice-cold hands to warm them and cries, “Wake up, Yasir. Wake up.”
Her tears spill on his heart, the golden heart that all of us forget about when he disappears for hours in that attic. She breathes into her brother’s chest but Yasir remains still, his face pale like the frozen fairy tale prince. And, unlike the princes and princesses in the stories he and his twin love to read, he doesn’t awaken.
At dawn, doctor sahib covers Yasir’s face with a white sheet and Yasmeen throws herself on his still body, weeping loudly. Afraid that she might harm herself, the doctor sedates her, and then me.
Excerpted with permission from
Black Wings
By Sehba Sarwar
Alhamra Publishing, Saudi Pak Tower, Jinnah Avenue, Islamabad. Tel: 051-2800248, 2800253. Email: contact@alhamra.com Website: www.alhamra.com
ISBN 969-516-147-2
280pp. Rs295
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