Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (8 page)

Read Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel Online

Authors: Samina Ali

BOOK: Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel
13.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Why did you stop writing?” I asked. Henna had gotten married three months after my engagement, when I’d already returned to the U.S. Growing up, I’d always vowed to return for her wedding, yet after the engagement, I found I didn’t want to come back to Hyderabad because I didn’t want to see my fiancé. By the time of her wedding, I had already received twelve letters from Sameer, one for each week we’d been apart. If I had been unsure about him at first, then surprised at my own softening, his letters did nothing but push me away Yet my absence from Henna’s wedding must have hurt her enough to make her stop writing me herself. And my own guilt and embarrassment kept me from persisting. It was the only reason Henna didn’t know about Nate.
She now set his letters before me on the railing and pulled her long hair up with both hands, twisting it into a high bun. Her fair cheeks had become fuller with the pregnancy, which made her eyes appear even more deep set. There were dark shadows under them I hadn’t seen before. She was staring down the congested alleyway at the expanding houses. Like her husband, young men from the Old City were leaving to work in the Middle East, then sending back money to support their families, aging parents, young wives, and children who weren’t allowed to join them. Rials converted generously into rupees, and soon the houses began to sprout up. When I was a child, Amme’s place had been the largest in the neighborhood. Now nearly every one in the narrow alley had added a second level, and one down at the end was even laying bricks for a third.
“I was married and didn’t have time to write,” she said, and I thought I saw tears coming to her eyes. Very quickly, she blinked and turned to me and said, “I didn’t know how to tell you. No,” she corrected herself, “I didn’t
want
to tell you. And I made sure no one else did, not while you were planning your wedding.”
So she had come with a secret of her own, so painful that she had carried the burden alone in order to protect me.
“Do you remember, Layla, how we’d always dreamed about our weddings? Coming up here or climbing the neem tree in my courtyard and filling the whole day with our talk of how our wedding dresses would look, how our husbands would look—we planned our whole futures with them even before we had glimpsed their faces!
Hai
Allah, we were so young…” Her words ended with a sigh and she reached out and squeezed my face.
Were
young ? Henna was eighteen, the year at which most in the U.S. are just graduating high school and embarking on their futures, lives not yet begun.
“Henna,” I said, and my voice broke.
“Look at you,” she cried, putting on a smile. “You see why I didn’t want to tell you. You’re finally getting married. You should be rejoicing!”
She began to move away and I grabbed her hand and pressed my palm against hers. Life lines intersecting, the intricate lines of my henna designs weaving with her own. This was a gesture we’d been making since childhood, a sign that showed we were one, nothing between us.
She sighed and shut her eyes. Her full breasts pushed against her tight sari-blouse. The bottom three hooks had been left undone above the rise of her swelling belly. She spoke slowly without opening her eyes. “After Hanif left for Saudi, he wrote my father. He told him …” she bit her lower lip and her body grew very still. She took in a deep breath. “He told my father to take me home.”
I clasped her hand and my gaze fell from her full face to Nate’s letters.
What was the use in reading them? What could they tell me that I didn’t already know?
I said, “I don’t believe you could have done anything to deserve being thrown out.”
At last she opened her eyes and there was that promise of redemption. She pulled her hand from mine and placed it on her belly, then wrapped the sari-
pallow
over both. She gazed down at the expanding houses again. “These Saudi laws,” she said, her voice firm and reasonable. “I can’t join him, and he has to work for two years before he can take leave. Then he comes back for a month, and then returns again for another two years. How can a marriage survive? There was no reason for me to go on living with his parents … without him.” She laughed and there was an edge of defiance in the sound, the courage she possessed at last presenting itself. “In all we’d dreamed, Layla, this kind of life—no, it’s not a life at all! I prefer to be at home. I’ll raise my child myself.”
And so she would have to, alone. For if Saudi had its laws, so, too, did the Old City. No one would marry her now Her life was over, even before it had fully begun. She was no better than Amme. And it was to avoid becoming my mother that I had gone on taking the pill, killing the life inside before it had a chance to swallow me whole. It wasn’t a matter of courage, but of will.
We stood silent for a while, and the wedding music rose between us, the same tunes played over and over until I had them memorized. Yet from up here, they sounded distant and strange, the marriage announcement of some other girl. The announcement of some familiar and anticipated doom.
Finally Henna scowled at the view and said, “Everyone in the Old City knows. Wherever I go, women have questions or advice. They blame me or they pity me. It’s become so hard, I don’t want to leave the house.” She grunted as she picked up Nate’s letters and ran a finger over his name in the way I wanted to myself.
She said, “Your situation is different from mine, Layla. You’ll be
bringing your husband with you to the U.S. The two of you can make a life together, just like you would with an American.” Then she said, “There is much more to a marriage than love.”
So here was her advice. Forget Nate and what I’d done. Move forward with the wedding. Yet how could I tell her it wasn’t what I had intended to ask? What I had wanted to know was how, with my pregnancy, I could make my husband believe I was still untouched.
When she pushed the letters at me again, I turned toward the view, unable to take them. I said, “What did your father do when you returned home?”
Her jaw stiffened, though her gaze remained steady on me. She said, “It was the reason he had his heart attack. He almost died.”
Yes, the very fate I feared for Amme. I was like Dad, she always told me, and as his one deed had ended her life, mine could now kill her.
 
 
THE WEDDING MUSIC came to an abrupt end, and in its place, Nafiza’s voice flew, asking us to come. It was time for the bride to get dressed for the evening’s ceremony
Henna took my hand and we walked slowly down the circular stairs, our steps sober and careful. As we neared the second floor, we could hear the men talking below We stopped and peeked over the balcony The bamboo chairs had been brought out to the verandah, where Dad and my two uncles were sitting in the cooling air, the day slowly collapsing into the purplish hues that it had blossomed in. On the table between them were empty cups of chai, and the three men were now enjoying sweet mango juice Munir had freshly prepared. July, the season for mangoes. When Henna and I were children, we’d each take a
rasala
mango and sit under the shade of her neem tree, squeezing the fruit, the yellow juice running down to our elbows. We would lick each other’s arms.
The men were discussing the land my grandfather had once possessed in the jungles near Miryalgurda. Along with the
haveli
and fields,
the lush acreage near the Krishna River had also been seized by his servants and workers, then later, by the local government. In 1966, close to twenty years after Partition, the world’s largest masonry dam, NagarJuna Sagar, was constructed near his land, transforming the entire dense jungle, including what had been the family’s private property, into a well-traveled tourist spot. Amme’s older brother, Taqi Mamu, had been entangled in an eight-year court battle with the local government, hoping to receive monetary compensation. Only in the last few months had he finally located the deeds that proved he legally owned some of the site, and the case was about to be decided.
As we were climbing down the last flight, I glimpsed Dad wiping his brow with a cotton handkerchief. The other hand was again lost in his curly hair as the fingers pressed the scalp. It was hard to believe he had grown up in this heat.
“Ask twenty
crore
,” he advised my uncle. “Do you know how much property values have gone up? Just look at this neighborhood, all these men going off to work in the Gulf, sending back money. In the last five years, this house itself has tripled in value. Inflation, Bhai, inflation.”
Taqi Mamu shrugged before resting his square chin on a hand. He appeared to be considering Dad’s suggestion, though I knew he was really trying to figure out a polite way of saying what he really believed.
Henna and I reached the bottom of the stairs and I saw the lamb gnawing on the guava trunk, its thick tail swatting flies. It finally had some peace, since my two half brothers, along with Sabana, had gone to stay at her mother’s. They planned to return the morning of the
nik’kah.
In the kitchen, the musicians were squatting on the floor as they ate their dinner. Later tonight, when food was served to Sameer’s family, the musicians would be back on the
takat
reclining against velvet pillows as they performed, while I again became the heart of the gathering. Could I, the ill-fated daughter, the one with no real position in this household, rightfully belong at its center?
Taqi Mamu’s gaze landed on us as we crossed the courtyard toward the house. Like Amme, he had wide, almond-shaped eyes, a straight
nose that flared at the nostrils. He and Abu Uncle were sitting side by side, facing Dad across the bamboo table. None of the men were wearing yellow. I hadn’t seen Taqi Mamu since I had locked myself into his bedroom a year before, in protest of the wedding, and I wondered if he would compliment me on my outfit. But he returned to their conversation with no sign of recognition, a hand lost in his own thick hair in imitation of Dad’s gesture. He was not a man who worked for an income. He lived on his inheritance and his wife’s teaching salary This made him feel insecure before my father.
He now glanced at Abu Uncle before speaking his mind. “It’s useless to ask the government for anything,” he told Dad. “
Ar’re
, just look at how our city is failing. This used to be one of the most beautiful cities in India, paved with gardens. Now when you cross Musi River to get into the Old City, it stinks of feces and urine. Hundreds of huts have gone up along its banks. People defecate in the water. They let their animals defecate in the water. Then they bathe in it. And it’s the same water that runs into our homes. If the government won’t give us clean drinking water, why will they give me twenty
crore …”
“That is a different issue,” Dad interrupted. He didn’t have the patience for local complaints. Hyderabad, the landscape of his childhood, was now a place Dad visited two weeks a year. The concerns here, the Old City’s limits, no longer hemmed him in. “We’re talking about personal property, what rightfully belongs to you …”
Abu Uncle chuckled, palms flat on his thighs. He was wearing the jeans Amme had brought back for him. “Doctor
sa’ab
is right,” he said to Taqi Mamu, calling Dad by the title he’d used for as long as I could remember. In a place where not many men were educated beyond high school or Islamic school, Dad’s success was prized and honored. He said, “The water doesn’t belong to you, even if it runs through your house’s faucets. You have no right to say whether or not it should be clean. That’s how our system works. But these people have taken your land. You’ve got the papers to prove it. Ask for thirty
crore
fifty
crore
who cares whether or not you’ll get it. The point is, you finally have the right to ask the bastards for something!” Abu Uncle
laughed as he nodded at Dad and his palms turned up in a gesture that said, Isn’t that right, Doctor
sa’ab ?
He was always trying to please someone.

Other books

Unknown by Unknown
Certain Sure by Williams, Reina M.
The Wiz Biz by Rick Cook
Sea of Tranquility by Lesley Choyce
The Storm Murders by John Farrow
This is WAR by Lisa Roecker