The World We Found (13 page)

He felt a sudden stab of pity for Laleh. But then he remembered the anguish in Iqbal’s eyes as he’d recounted the molestation of his baby sister. Laleh’s pain would pass; Iqbal’s would be lodged in him the rest of his life. Adish closed his eyes and imagined someone hurting his daughter, and just the thought of it made the blood rush to his head. To have actually lived through such a thing and to be too weak to do anything about it—to be too poor, too powerless—to not be able to march over, knock on the bastard’s door and kill him with your own bare hands—was something he could not fathom. Iqbal had lost so much; he, Adish, couldn’t ask him to give up anything else. Maybe if Laleh had not mentioned to him what Nishta had said about probably not returning if she left India. Maybe if he had not carried that knowledge to his meeting with Iqbal, he could’ve tried harder. Been more persuasive. But that knowledge had sat like curdled milk inside of him and made it impossible to deceive Iqbal into thinking he was parting with his wife for a mere few weeks.

“I want to tell you something,” he said quietly. “And I need you to trust me. Trust my judgment.” Seeing that Laleh was about to argue, he raised his hand to cut her off. “Wait. Let me finish. Please.” He paused, his eyes searching her face, trying to find the right words. “Look, I know you’re disappointed. And Armaiti—if you like, I’ll give the news to her. But Iqbal—he’s a broken man, Lal. That young, bright man who was our friend? Forget him. He’s gone. He’s had a very, very hard life since the time we were friends. Some terrible things, you know? And please, I can’t say more. I promised. And yes, I also promised him we’d leave him alone. And I won’t go back on my word, Laleh. Not even for you.”

She emitted a sound he’d never heard before. “You’re not even making sense. Why can’t you tell me? Maybe we can help them. Why did he cut us off?”

“Laleh. Calm down. This thing—there’s nothing we can do to help. Some things are too big even for you, sweetheart. You . . . I told you. You’ll just have to trust me on this one. Don’t you think I know how much this means to you? Don’t you know me well enough by now? That if I could’ve made you happy, I would have?”

And suddenly, she was in his arms. “I’m sorry, Adish. I’m an ungrateful bitch. I’m so thankful you even tried to reason with him.” She looked up at him tearfully. “Oh, but the thought of Nishta in that miserable house. It makes me want to throw up.”

“I know, sweetie. I get it. I hate it, too.” All the while thinking that misery was the connective tissue that bonded humans to each other. All the while tracing the path from the tragedy of the 1993 riots to the personal catastrophe that had engulfed Iqbal, and to its aftermath, Iqbal’s religious conversion, and how that curtailed Nishta’s life, to its most recent manifestation, the pain it was causing Laleh. And all because the despicable politicians had played one group against the other in order to shake down a few votes. And all because one bastard couldn’t keep his prick in his trousers.

Adish tightened his grip on his wife. “So, did you get the tooth fixed today?” he murmured after a few moments. She nodded. “And? Are you in pain?”

“No. I’m okay.”

He hugged her even tighter. “Do you want me to call Armaiti with the news about Nishta? I’ll tell Kavita, too, if you want.”

She shifted in his arms. “You’ve done enough. I’ll tell them.” She looked up at him, her face small and pinched. “Maybe it’ll be enough, after all, to have me and Kavita with her?”

“Of course it will.” He swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. After all these years, Laleh could still slay him with a look or a word. Just slay him.

Chapter 11

I
don’t get it,” Armaiti said. “Iqbal really said no?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Armaiti picked at a piece of dry skin on her face. “Adish did tell him, right? About the reason—about my condition?”

“Yes, my darling. I’m so sorry.”

“And she’d said she wanted to come? When you saw her?”

“I, I think so. I got the distinct impression that if Iqbal had—”

“Give me her phone number. I’ll call her directly.”

“You can’t reach her. I told you. He doesn’t want us to contact her anymore.” Laleh sighed. “I just hope Adish showing up doesn’t get her into trouble.”

Armaiti forced herself to concentrate. Because she was having difficulty comprehending. “Trouble? With whom?”

“With Iqbal, of course. He obviously doesn’t want her to have anything to do with us.” Laleh made a mocking sound. “He’s probably afraid that we would infect his begum with our godless, secular ways.”

“I don’t believe this. Why does Nishta put up with this? She has a degree in French from a good college, dammit. Surely that’s worth something? Why doesn’t she put it to use? With all these multinationals flocking to India, surely there’s a need for translators?”

Even across the phone line, she heard the smile in Laleh’s voice.

“You’ve lived away from India for too many years, my Armaiti. You’ve forgotten how hard it is to do anything in this damn country. There’s probably ten million graduates with more skills than Nishta. And they’re all unemployed. Besides, I told you—she’s changed. There’s something—I don’t know—sluggish about her.”

“Nishta? That’s impossible.”

“Anyway. Kavita checked her work schedule today. She can leave in about twenty days. Adish is working on booking our tickets. A lot depends on when they give us an appointment for our visa interviews. I’ll keep you posted, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll fax the letter from my doctor tomorrow. Hopefully, that should help with the visa.”

“I’m not worried,” Laleh said. “It’s all going to work out.” There was a brief pause, and then she said, “I feel like I’ve let you down, Armaiti. About Nishta, I mean.”

“And it’s raining here today. Feel guilty about that, too, would you?”

Laleh laughed. “Bitch.”

“Better believe it.”

She laughed again. “You’re in a feisty mood today. You feeling better?”

Laleh had become the one person with whom she could talk freely about her health. “Not really. My hand-eye coordination is pretty bad. I’m fine with large movements. But if I try to break an egg on the rim of a cup, half of it might land on the counter.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Not much. The steroids are helping with the headaches, thank God.”

“Thank God,” Laleh repeated. “You take care of yourself, okay, my darling?”

“Oh, I do.” Armaiti was quiet for a moment, and then she chuckled. “You know what’s funny? For years and years I told myself that if I ever found out I had six months to live, I’d have potato chips, French onion dip, and a Coke for breakfast every single day.”

“So do it. What the hell.”

“That’s the funny part, Laleh. I tried doing it once. And I hated it. I’ve become more paranoid about eating healthy than I ever was. Isn’t that strange? It’s like I’m training for a marathon. Turns out even dying is hard work.”

“Armaiti . . .”

“I’ve depressed you. Sorry.”

After she hung up the phone, Armaiti remained on the couch, trying to process the incomprehensible news about Nishta. She remembered so clearly the morning Nishta and Iqbal had bounded into the college cafeteria and announced that they’d decided to get married soon after graduation. Despite the obstacles they all knew she faced, Nishta had looked so sure, so confident. As for Iqbal, he had kept whistling “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” until a groaning Adish had offered him a ten-rupee note to stop. How to reconcile that happy memory with what Laleh had just told her? Could time really alter things so much? If so, the devil that every religion taught people to fear and loathe was simply the passage of time.

She was lost in her thoughts when Diane entered the room and flopped down on the armchair across from her. “Okay, that’s it, Mom,” she said in that take-charge tone that set Armaiti’s teeth on edge. “I’m going to confiscate the phone if you’re gonna look so glum each time you talk to your friends in India. The whole idea was to cheer you up.”

Confiscate the phone? Armaiti bristled. Was their role reversal really that complete? Already? She was thinking of a suitable response when Diane asked, “So, what’s the word on Auntie Nishta? Were they able to reach her?”

Her disappointment about Nishta not coming was still too raw to discuss with Diane. “No,” she said shortly.

“Why not? What’s the problem?”

Armaiti couldn’t keep the frustration out of her voice. “The problem is her husband. He won’t let her come, it seems.”

“Why not?”

Her words came out in a rush. “Because he’s turned into a religious fanatic. He’s become this pious, fundamentalist Muslim who apparently prays five times a day and—” She stopped, noticing the look on Diane’s face. “What?”

“I can’t believe you said that.”

“Said what?”

“That you called him a fundamentalist, just because he’s religious.”

She loved Diane deeper than life, but right now Armaiti’s fingers itched to slap the smug off that young face. “He used to be a
socialist
,” she said. “He used to laugh at the person he’s become. He’s become a caricature of the person he used to scorn.”

“So? He’s not allowed to change?” Diane had that righteous look made Armaiti fume. “How come you’re so contemptuous of people of faith, Mom? You’re so dogmatic. Don’t people have the right to believe whatever they wish to?”

Her daughter had never seemed as much of a stranger to her as she did right now. Diane had gone to a prestigious private school where political correctness was extolled, where tolerance and multiculturalism were buzzwords. She had grown up in a town that proudly—if inanely—labeled itself a nuclear-free zone, had gone to the nondenominational Unitarian church the few times her parents had bothered taking her to church, and now attended a university that was famously liberal. Diane had become exactly the person she and Richard had wanted her to be—progressive, broadminded, tolerant.

So why did she feel like she and her daughter were not speaking the same language? That there was something simplistic, even childlike, about her daughter’s understanding of the world? That right now Diane seemed more like Richard’s daughter—good-hearted, well-meaning Richard, whose American innocence had always felt endearing and dangerous to her—than her own? That the Diane who was looking at her with a slight frown on her face was truly the child of the American Midwest—sweet but bland—with not a trace of her mother’s heritage of spice and vinegar?

And you, Armaiti asked herself, what language do you speak? A dead language. The language of a faraway time, of a world that no longer exists. Of a time when they had believed the prophet who claimed that religion was the opiate of the masses. They had not seen religion as a polite, innocuous, private issue, as Diane did, or a topic for cocktail-party conversation. Not for them the benign, New Age, crystals-and-angels view of religion shared by so many of her American friends. She and the others had seen religion as a ferocious beast to be tamed, as a weapon that the ruling class used to keep the masses in servitude. Or a demon-genie that the politicians let out of the bottle every time there was an election to be won. And then mobs of Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs bludgeoned each other to death, set houses and people and children—
children
—on fire. Or threw acid on the faces of young girls walking to college. Or rioted to ban books or movies or paintings that offended their religious sensibilities. Several times Armaiti and the others had gone on fact-finding missions after a riot or a massacre, traveled into the hinterlands of Bihar or Orrissa, witnessed the aftermath of religious fervor. It had turned her off religion, forever. Or, rather, it had given her a new faith. She and the others had proudly called themselves secular humanists, the words honey in their mouth. The only gospel they could believe in was one that preached food for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and justice for the oppressed.

She looked now at her daughter, lovely and guileless, and was torn with conflicting desires—the protective, motherly desire to have Diane always remain this innocent, secure in her small outrages over small grievances. But there was another part of her that wanted her daughter to know—not just the world she had grown up in but to know
her
, the wars she’d fought and lost, the idealism that she wore like a tarnished shield. It felt like a dereliction of duty somehow to die before passing on some of this knowledge to her only child. Because she feared that the world had changed too much, that this new, jittery world of global capital and virtual friendships would never again nurture the kind of community and optimism that she had known. Diane would be a good person—she would put milk out for stray kittens and remember to refill the bird-feeder, she would send money to sponsor a child in Africa and she would give up her Fridays to read to old people in a nursing home—but she wouldn’t know the meaning of a collective struggle, wouldn’t know the heart-pounding thrill of marching along with tens of thousands of others, or the cold fear of facing down a police barricade.

In short, Diane would lead the same happy but dull middle-class life that she had for the last three decades. Armaiti sat up in her chair at the realization.

She must’ve looked stricken because she heard Diane say, “Hey, Mom, I’m sorry. I wasn’t really angry at you or anything.”