The Good Muslim (22 page)

1984
December

‘T
he treatment hasn’t worked,’ Dr Sattar said. He would have to take out a piece of her liver. Rehana laughed at this news, and they all knew immediately what she found so funny. Kolijar tukra,
piece-of-my-liver
, was a common form of endearment; she had applied it many times to her children. My sweet, my heart, piece-of-my-liver. In all those years, she had never thought that she had promised to give an actual piece of the organ away. She said, ‘Make sure you leave enough of it in there, Dr Sattar. I believe it’s my only one.’

The surgery was scheduled immediately. That night, as she was helping her mother with her bag, packing toothbrush, comb, prayer mat, Maya had the feeling she should have come up with a list of things to say, words stored up in the event of this very occurrence. In the months since her mother had told her about the tumour, she should have been preparing herself. Instead, what had she done? Shaved her mother’s hair, sorted through her medication, ferried her back and forth from the hospital, made short, abrupt phone calls to her friends to give them the news: yes, Ammoo is feeling better, yes, she’s been eating. I gave her the food you sent, she liked it, yes, I agree, she needs to keep up her strength. Can you come around ten? She is better in the morning.

And she had nurtured a fragile alliance with the upstairs. She could think of her brother without that piercing anger, she could behold the serene, remote man he had become, and she could lie in her bed and listen to the chaotic footsteps above, and she could watch the clouds of men and women go up and down the stairs, and yes, she could even bear to witness the ragged condition of the boy, and tell herself it was all a casualty of the past.

She told herself she was growing up. There was her mother, and there was readjusting to the city, and the lack of politics, and maybe, just maybe, the beginning of a truce with Sohail. But that was all. Silently she folded Rehana’s clothes, listening for the rustle of rain in the trees so that she would have something to remark on, so she could make some comment about the garden, how it would flood if they had another downpour. She started a few sentences in her head, but none of them sounded right. She remembered something Dr Sattar had said. ‘The disease hasn’t won yet.’ She clung to this.

Rehana was sitting up in bed, cross-legged, with her right hand on the Qur’an. ‘You need your rest, Ammoo, you know how the ward is.’ It had finally begun to rain, soft sheets casting grey shadows into the room.

‘It says here your lord has prescribed for himself mercy. Do you know what that means?’

‘No.’

She closed the Book. ‘You never did pay any attention to your ustani.’

Maya flopped down on the bed beside her mother. ‘She never explained anything to me. And she told me to shave between my legs.’

Rehana’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I’m not joking. She said it was cleaner that way. But you remember, Ammoo, she was always scratching herself there?’

‘No, I don’t remember.’

‘I swear, I thought there was a man hiding under that burkha. Or a hive of mosquitoes.’

‘Chi!’ Rehana slapped Maya gently on the cheek, but she was laughing now, shaking her head. ‘You’re still that little girl who pretended to be ill every time the teacher came. You told her you had your period, remember, when you were only eight.’

‘She ran out of the house so fast!’

‘When will my little girl grow up, hmm? Give me some grandchildren?’

‘I’d have to get married first, you know.’

She placed her hand on the cover of her Qur’an, her fingers tracing the gold lettering. ‘I hardly knew your father when we married. After it was arranged there was a photograph going around the house, but I didn’t have the courage to ask for it. Marzia brought it to me one night, and we examined it by candlelight.’

‘What did you think?’

‘That I wished I hadn’t seen it. I had to marry him anyway.’

‘Would it be so bad, if I never married?’

‘No, it wouldn’t be so bad. Look at me, I’ve spent most of my life without a husband.’

‘Men can be so horrible.’ She was thinking about Nazia now, the baby that came out with narrow eyes and a foreign cast, and Saima and Chottu, and all the cruelties that might be inflicted on her if she agreed to be someone’s wife.

‘That’s true,’ Rehana said, stretching her legs slowly and leaning back on her pillow. ‘But to whom will you utter your sorrows, my little girl?’

‘I don’t know.’ Maya found her mother’s foot under the blanket and began to knead it. ‘I’ll do what you did.’

Rehana smiled. ‘I am taking comfort from the love of my child.’

Maya felt it stirring then, the need, deeply buried, for love. The chemo had made Rehana’s circulation sluggish; her feet were cold, and Maya heard her sigh as she scrubbed the arch with the palm of her hand. Outside, the rain softened the other sounds of the evening. The crickets and the lizards chirped, the high notes of their calls swallowed by the fall of water. Only the leaves increased their volume, making themselves heard as they clapped against the raindrops.

She had told herself many times that marriage could not be for her. Or children. She saw them coming into the world every day, selfish and lonely and powerful; she watched as they devoured those around them, and then witnessed the slow sapping of their strength as the world showed itself to be far poorer than it had once promised to be.

Rehana closed her eyes, suddenly appearing very tired. ‘Say Aytul Kursi with me,’ she said.

‘All right.’ Despite telling herself it was for the sake of her mother, the same thing she told herself of the visits upstairs, Maya felt relief flooding through her as she recited the prayer. The words stumbled out of her at first, then came to her smoothly, like the memories of childhood, her favourite foods, the marigolds on the lawn.

Allahu la ilaha illa Huwa, Al-Haiyul-Qaiyum.

There is no God but He, the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal.

La ta’khudhuhu sinatun wa la nawm.

No slumber can seize Him, nor sleep.

‘I would like you to pray, Maya. Just once a day, at Maghreb.’

Maya shook her head. ‘You know I can’t do that, Ma, it wouldn’t be fair.’

‘To who?’

‘To all the believers.’ She was crying now, the tears landing hot and soft on her cheek.

‘God is greater than your belief,’ Rehana said. ‘I’m asking you because you might need something, if I am gone.’

‘Ma, please, don’t say that.’

‘You act so independent. You left home, you made your own life. You’re a strong girl. But who will take care of you when I am not here? I wish you had something of your own. Your father would have wanted that.’

Something of her own. What could she have? A marriage, a family, a God? She had prepared herself for none of these. And then she realised Ammoo had been encumbered by her daughter’s loneliness all this time. She has had to bear me all alone. All my burdens. Perhaps, Maya thought, she should tell her mother that it was all right for her to die now, that she would find a way to make up for the space that would be left behind. But she couldn’t do it, she wasn’t ready. ‘Let’s pray some more, Ammoo, if that will make you feel better.’

‘I’m tired now, jaan. Let’s go to sleep.’

Maya kept vigil beside Ammoo, listening for her breath, her hands ready to shake her if she faltered, if she showed any signs of giving in to her forehead, her fate, or her sense that she had completed what she had come to do.

And she thought about what Ammoo was asking for, a prayer once a day, at dusk, that holy hour. She thought about giving in, and wished somehow she had done it long ago, surrendered to the practicality of religion. If she chose it now, it would be a hollow bargain, shallow and insubstantial. No God she could respect would enter into such a pact, knowing the believer knocking at the door wanted nothing more than a genie, a single

wish, and that even if this wish were to be accompanied by a deeper longing, there was no saying if she would ever keep her promises.

*

In the morning Maya found Zaid curled up under the small wooden desk. She peered underneath and saw his knees, wedged tight against his chest.

He opened his eyes. Held out his hands and she pulled him out from under the desk. ‘How did you come?’ she asked.

‘The bus,’ he said.

‘All by yourself?’ He couldn’t have chosen a worse time. She had to help Ammoo pack her things for the hospital. He stank of sweat and God knew what else, and his head was shaved so close she could see the pale veins of his neck as they climbed, creeper-like, over the dome of his head. She had waited all these weeks for him, and here he was, dirty and bald and breaking her heart.

He nodded, eyes rimmed with water. ‘It’s a holiday,’ he mumbled.

‘Are you hungry?’ she said, sounding rougher than she meant. She had known her mother’s treatment wasn’t working; she knew what it meant, the spread to the liver. Zaid was crying now, his hands pressed tightly to his face.

She grabbed him, and squeezed the breath out of his lungs. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Did you know that?’

She brought him a piece of toast and a fried egg, which he ate slowly, his mouth trembling as he chewed. Ammoo was awake, calling out to remind her to pack the prayer mat into her bag. She turned to Zaid. ‘I have to take Dadu to the hospital.’

‘It’s a holiday,’ he repeated. ‘Huzoor let us go home.’

Because she had to, she believed him.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

He handed her the empty plate and crawled across the room, tucking himself under the desk again. ‘I’ll stay here. I’m just going to stay here.’

She told herself he would be all right. She would come back from the hospital and fetch him and they would go to the park and Ammoo would recover and they would all play Ludo together and he would cheat, like he always did.

*

Maya counted the hours of her mother’s sleep. Twenty-two. Thirty-seven. Forty. On the third day, Dr Sattar asked Maya to call her brother. And anyone else who might want to see her. She made the telephone calls, and they came, people she remembered from her childhood, neighbours and friends. They brought their children, who tugged at the bedsheets and complained about the hospital smell. They said innalillah, as though she were already dead. Maya called the bungalow, begged for Sohail.
Ammoo is going
, she said into the telephone,
do something
.

‘I’ve done all I can,’ Dr Sattar had said; ‘now we just wait.’

Rehana breathed, but she hadn’t regained consciousness. Her kidneys were failing. Her fingertips had begun to turn blue.

They had put her in a private cubicle, away from the ward and the other patients. Maya greeted the guests, repeated the lines about cancer, her uterus, the liver resection. She was polite; she didn’t protest when Mrs Rahman brought a piece of thread from the Saint of Eight Ropes and tied it around Rehana’s wrist.

On the fourth day, Dr Sattar pleaded with Maya to go home. Just for a few hours. Freshen up. Change her clothes. When she refused, he offered to let her rest in the doctors’ lounge. He held her elbow and led her down the stairs and across the courtyard. She knew the way, through the green corridors, the patients lining up outside, holding ragged bits of paper and files with worn, blackened edges.

‘I’ll send someone to fetch you. Sleep now.’ Dr Sattar shut the door behind him, and Maya focused her eyes on a line of light under the door. Yellow and gold, it glowed steadily, lying about the other side, where her mother lay, blue-fingertipped, dying out of herself. She told the line of light she would stare at it until its colour changed, until it turned from gold to blue, day to night, but her eyes must have closed, because when she opened them the light was there again, steady, unflinching, casting its narrow length into the room, and she thought, then, of her father, of the short line of his life, and of all the boys who had bled into the dust, and of her brother, and his child, and she suddenly remembered Zaid, wondered whether he was still hiding under the desk – how could she have left him there? – and then she worried whether she would ever have a boy of her own, because she might never be able to love anyone enough, love them enough to swallow their loneliness and make it her own.

The line of light shone steadily. Day remained day. Then it lengthened, acquired shadows. She held up her hand to shield her eyes. A nurse in the doorway.

‘How long has it been?’

‘A few hours. Not long.’

She returned to a roomful of strangers, a ring of men in long white coats. Were they ready to write it up? Fifty-two-year-old woman with stage four metastatic uterine cancer. Hysterectomy. Liver resection. Through the crowd, she saw her mother’s feet sticking out from under the sheet, her neat, organised toes, a dark spot under her ankle bone.

Dr Sattar separated from the others. ‘Come, Maya, join us.’ The circle opened to let her in. Did they want her medical opinion? Now they raised their arms, palms to the sky. She understood all at once, that gesture. Not doctors after all. I put my palms up to you, and ask. O Allah, I beg. I entreat you. Her arms went up. She turned around and saw her brother at the end of the bed, where her mother’s feet lay open and lonely, whispering words she didn’t recognise. The men in white repeated after him, raised their voices in chorus. Ameen. She knew it was wrong, standing in a circle, facing this way and that, appealing to God. It wasn’t done like this. This world, he had told her, was only temporary. Ammoo would reap her heavenly reward. It was selfish to keep her here. He was doing it for Maya, because she had begged him not to let her mother die. He had come, he had brought these men, and they had stood in a circle, not in a line facing Mecca. They knew the words. They had decided to use them.

She caught his eye, and she moved to embrace him, but his face told her to keep apart, that their keeping apart was part of the spell, so she stepped back and concentrated on believing that this was the cure.