An American Brat (5 page)

All this was quite apart from the blooming of genius an expensive education (in Manek's case at M.I.T.) was expected to ensure. All Parsee boys, by virtue of their demanding roles as men, were presumed to be geniuses until they proved themselves nincompoops. And since the community's understanding of genius was inextricably knit with the facility to make money and acquire a certain standing — even if only within the community — the men generally measured up. The community bristled with financial, business, engineering, doctoring, accounting, stockbrokering, computing, and researching geniuses.

Not being burdened with similar expectations, the girls were not required to study abroad. If they persisted, and if the family could afford it, they might be affectionately indulged. It was also expedient sometimes to send them to finishing schools in Europe, either to prepare them for or divert them from marriage.

They had phoned Manek with the flight details two weeks before Feroza was due to leave. Manek assured them he would be at Kennedy Airport when she arrived and would take good care of her. He instructed Feroza to do her duty-free shopping at Dubai Airport, since it was the cheapest. He did not require much persuasion to disclose what he would like, namely a cassette player and a camera. He gave her the brand names and particulars of each.

Like most Parsees, who know very little about their religion, Feroza had a comfortable relationship with the faith she was born into; she accepted it as she did the color of her eyes or the length of her limbs. The day before her departure, Feroza drove their blue Volkswagen to the trendy new agyari in the Parsee colony. She visited the fire temple about four or five times a year: on the three New Years the Parsees celebrate according to different calendars; on Pateti, which is the last day of the year; and on special occasions, like her impending voyage.

Zareen could not accompany her because she was having her period; her presence would pollute the temple.

The atash — the consecrated fire in the agyari that is never permitted to go out — had been lovingly tended for eighty years by mobed Antia and his son, who was also a mobed. The holy fire had been moved about two years ago, with due reverence and ceremony, to be housed in the new agyari near the fashionable Liberty Market in Gulberg. The old location behind the Small-Causes Court had become congested, and the traffic of tongas, bullock carts, and lorries that jammed the narrow lanes made the approach difficult.

Feroza honked to alert the priest of her presence. He lived in special quarters built right next to the temple. As she walked past,
Feroza noticed the large padlock on his door and was disappointed.

Feroza liked to hear the priest chant her family's names during the Tandarosti prayer for good health. He recited the prayer slowly and with a solemn majesty that caused each word to resonate with sacred significance beneath the dome of the inner sanctum and the soaring vault of the hall.

Feroza also liked to watch the priest, luminous in a froth of starched white robes, decorously feed the fire with offerings of sandalwood from a long-handled silver ladle.

The narrow side door of the agyari was open. Feroza covered her head with a scarf, daubed her eyes with water from a silver jar, and performed her kusti in the lobby. As she unwound the sacred thread girdling her waist and retied the knots in the front and the back, she asked Ahura Mazda's forgiveness for every ignoble thought, word, and deed she was guilty of and prayed that she might have the good thoughts, the eloquent tongue, and the strength to perform the deeds that would advance His Divine Plan. Having thus girded her loins in the service of the Lord, she entered the circular hall fragrant with sandalwood smoke and frankincense.

Feroza lit an oil lamp and saluted the enormous framed portraits of departed Lahori Parsees and, removing her shoes, knelt before the marble threshold of the inner sanctum. The walls and dome of the small, round room imbued the space with a mystic aura and provided an appropriate foil for the atash as the manifestation of God's energy.

Feroza lay her forehead on the cool marble and requested the Almighty to protect her during her long journey overseas and to make her visit to America happy and successful. Then she solicited His blessings for herself and for all members of her family. Taking a pinch of ash from a ladle placed on the marble step, Feroza daubed her forehead with it; she already felt as if she had shed all impure thoughts.

Feroza took a few steps backwards and, holding her palms together, raised her eyes to the atash. The holy fire glowed
serenely on its bed of pale ashes in a round tray on top of the fire altar. The altar was like a gigantic, long-stemmed silver egg-cup with a turned-out lip. The embers of the larger logs gleamed through a latticework of freshly arranged sticks of sandalwood at the level of her eye. Someone had made an offering, Feroza thought; the priest must have left just before she came.

Feroza whispered her prayers and gazed devoutly at the small flames licking the crisscross of sandalwood, and, suddenly, she felt the spiritual power of the fire reach out from its divine depths to encompass her with its pure energy. She was at once buoyant, fearless, secure in her humanity. And as the lucid flame of the holy vision illumed her mind and was absorbed into her heart, she felt herself being suffused with God's presence. She felt He was speaking to her, acknowledging her prayers.

Feroza's spirits leapt with exultation. Bowing her head in gratitude, she moved to a side window and, pressing her radiant face to the polished brass bars, chanted the happy little Jasa-me-avanghe Mazda prayer. Although she recited it in the hallowed Avastan language of the Gathas, she knew its meaning from the English translation in her prayer book:

Seven cars drove up the cemented drive to the welcoming portals of the Ginwalla residence at approximately eleven o'clock the following morning. Set deep in its carved frame, the door had been painstakingly transported a couple of years ago from the neglected haveli of bygone nawabs to grace the Ginwallas' new residence. Zareen had hung her prized possession with strings of white roses and decorated the entrance with festive designs of fish and flowers pressed from small perforated tin trays containing powdered chalk.

Since it was Friday, the Muslim sabbath, Cyrus was home. Debonair in an ivory raw silk shalwar-kamiz and matching woolen
waistcoat, Cyrus led the guests — mostly relatives, Parsee friends, and a sprinkling of close Muslim friends from their nightly round of parties — into the front lawn, boxed in by thick gardenia and rose hedges. The farewell was an almost ceremonial occasion and, as such, an essentially Parsee affair.

Feroza sat amidst her well-wishers, too excited to touch the food on the plate on her lap. Behind her the white roses, their velvet petals still cradling dew, gleamed against the bottle-green hedges as if fashioned from mother-of-pearl. Her younger cousins, particularly the girls, gaped at her in awe — when they were not running around noisily — made bashful by her sudden importance.

Feroza's voluble aunts looked proud and exhilarated, as if they had a share in the adventure she was embarked upon. Their loud, cheerful voices drowned out the clamor of the scooter-rickshaws and minibuses and the cries of the hawkers and of men brawling on the street. The Ginwalla bungalow was just off the enormous roundabout of the Gulberg Main Market.

A formation of parrots streaked overhead in a chutney-green flurry and disappeared in the thick foliage of a mango tree next door. A couple of crows hopped on the garden wall, alertly turning their heads this way and that, their beady eyes on the food table. They cawed raucously, and two other crows joined the party on the wall. Between them they set up such a racket, spreading news of the banquet to sundry other crows, that Cyrus, withdrawing from his pocket a large cambric handkerchief and waving it, loped to the wall shouting, “Shoo, shoo!”

A few guests were gathered at the long buffet table covered with lace tablecloths. Armed with a duster, her stiletto heels sinking in the grass, Zareen kept the flies off one end of the table and her eye cocked on the kites wheeling high above like vigilantes of the enormous azure sky. She hoped the duster and the crowd would keep the kites, which up close were as big as chickens, from swooping down on the food.

Zareen had wrapped the rich palu end of her yellow tanchoi sari round her neck to free her movements. Except for her gold
bangles, her shapely arms as well as her velvety midriff were defiantly bare. Since Feroza was too excited and Khutlibai and Cyrus too busy talking to and serving the guests to notice or comment, Zareen did not get to deliver the retorts she had prepared.

The wizened little ayah whisked the flies at the other end of the long table. She obligingly lifted the net doilies, trimmed with beads, from the dishes when the guests wished to help themselves to the food. It was the usual auspicious-occasion fare: sweet vermicelli sprinkled with fried raisins and almonds, thick slices of spicy fried salmon, and fruit. Round stainless steel platters contained yogurt as firm as jelly, upon which a thick skin of clotted cream had formed. The yogurt had been sweetened and set the night before and strewn with red rose petals just before the dish was carried out. Deep silver dishes heaped with plain white rice and the special-occasion yellow pureed lentil — the combination known as dhan-dar — formed the main course. The aroma of the fried fish and spices hung in the scented air, whetting appetites. Emptied dishes were promptly replenished by the bearded and harried cook, whose portly frame was mummified in a white apron that reached almost to his ankles, specially stitched for the occasion by the nearsighted ayah.

The children ran everywhere, drinking colored sodas directly from the bottles, and the women, flaunting a slightly risqué air, drank Murree-beer-and-7UP shandies. Cyrus's unabashedly fat sister-in-law, Freny, who lived twenty-five miles from Lahore in Kot Lakpat, persuaded Khutlibai, who hated beer, to try a little of the mixed brew.

The men strutted on the lawn with their froth-topped beer mugs as if they were toting weapons. They had the jaunty, faintly guilty mien of men who are up to mischief — and that despite the Drink Permits in their pockets.

Once the food and drinks were consumed, the bustle to and from the garden increased. Feroza went in to brush her teeth and check her last-minute packing. Her two bulging suitcases stood in a corner of her room. She slipped a cardboard cylinder containing a handsome poster of Bhutto, right arm raised and mouth arrested
mid-speech, into one of them.

Zareen examined the silver prayer-tray to ascertain that it contained everything needed for the auspicious sagan and placed it on the small, brass-inlaid hall table.

In the garden, Khutlibai was regaling relatives with the latest family health and news bulletins. Cyrus's mother, Soonamai, a thin, bamboo-straight, wonderfully dignified, and tactful lady, sat next to Khutlibai, obviously enjoying her company. The two shrewd old women got on very well when they saw each other, which, by tacit agreement, was not often.

Soonamai visited Cyrus and Zareen only rarely because of her dependence on Rohinton, her eldest son, to transport her from Kot Lakpat, where she lived with him and his redoubtable wife with so much discretion that Freny considered her mother-in-law her best friend.

Suddenly an indefinable noise stopped their breaths. Almost at once they realized that the Market mosque's stereo system was being tested. The air was blasted by a cough. And when the assistant maulvi cleared his throat in a loud “ahun-haam!” with impressive squelchy undertones, the feat was broadcast from the eight most powerful stereo amplifiers in Lahore, mounted right on top of the mosque's minaret.

The maulvi made a few announcements that rent the peaceful afternoon, “A girl, age five, who answers to the name of Shameem, is missing. She is wearing a red cardigan and gold earrings … A boy, age three, who answers to the name of Akhtar, is missing. He is wearing a white shirt and blue knickers …,” and then the Main Market maulvi proceeded to shred the afternoon completely, when, accompanied by a children's choir, he began to sing religious songs.

The guests gathered on the Ginwalla lawn all had their own street-corner mosques with their own resident maulvis and stereo systems, but they had never heard such a nasal, grating voice or been subjected to such uninhibited disregard for the esthetics of a tune. The assault on their ears was intolerable. They could hardly hear themselves speak. Since it was Friday,
the head maulvi, his invited cronies, and sundry bearded cheerleaders could be counted on to keep the stereo system booming all afternoon.

It was pointless sitting outside. Led by Khutlibai, followed by Soonamai, the party drifted indoors. In any case, it was time they thought about leaving for the airport.

In her trendy new denim shalwar-kamiz and cashmere cardigan, Feroza stood on the little wooden pallet in the sitting room, happily receiving travel money envelopes and hugs.

Khutlibai, who had modestly hung back because she was a widow, was persuaded by Zareen and Soonamai to launch the good-luck ceremony. She stood before her granddaughter while Zareen stood at hand, holding the prayer-tray. Khutlibai put her thumb into the red paste in a silver container and left her imprint on Feroza's forehead. Feroza leaned forward accommodatingly, and Khutlibai pressed the rice she held in her palm on Feroza's forehead. Quite a few grains stuck to the drying paste, and Khutlibai was pleased. It meant as many blessings on the child.

She next popped a lump of crystallized sugar into Feroza's mouth, handed her a coconut, and bestowed a long list of specific blessings. May you return home safe and soon. May you marry a rare diamond among men. May you have many children and become a grandmother and a great-grandmother, and live in contentment and happiness with all your children and their children. May you live a hundred years and always be lucky like me, and happy and God-blessed … Aa-meen!

Then she garlanded Feroza and finally, expertly cracking her knuckles on her own temples to remove the envious and evil eye from her lovely granddaughter, stepped back.

Soonamai's turn was next. One by one the aunts came up, performing a much shorter version of the ceremony, mainly blessing and hugging Feroza and presenting envelopes anointed with the auspicious red paste and thick with cash. The uncles also gave her hugs, while the cousins, fingers stuck in mouths and noses, looked on with envy.

At a little after two o'clock, a stately cavalcade of nine cars, their chassis swinging low from the loads of passengers and luggage, drove out of the gates of the Ginwalla residence.

Feroza sat snugly ensconced between her grandmothers in the Toyota. Covering their heads with their saris, stroking Feroza's arms and thighs, the two old women prayed for her safety during her dangerous voyage and for her protection from unknown perils once she reached her destination. She knew from their sibilant whispers and inclination to rock that they were going through the proscribed seven Yathas and five Ashem Vahoos for the benefit of the traveler.