Chapter Seven
Seven
Maryam and Hassan lived twenty minutes south of the Ibrahims in San Jose, on a tree-lined street of cookie-cutter suburban sprawl. As Asma pulled into the driveway of Maryam’s house—a two-story wood-shingle-roofed home in the middle of a row of almost a dozen identical others—she saw Maryam peek out of the upstairs window. She’d disappeared by the time Asma got out to open the trunk, but Asma knew she wasn’t on her way down to help.
It wasn’t lost on Asma how pitiable it was for her to have to crash with her younger sister’s family because she herself was unwed. It was as if she still needed supervision, despite being a doctor and Maryam’s older sister. In fact, the whole situation created a strange sense of vertigo for Asma, a glimpse of the life that might have been hers, if Farooq and medicine had not found her first.
It was an old family not-so-secret that Hassan and Maryam were together because Hassan and Asma weren’t. A matchmaking aunty had brought Hassan’s rishta to the Ibrahim family intended for Asma, but she had turned it down immediately. It was more than two years after her breakup with Farooq, but Asma was focused on finishing school and had no intention of marrying anyone else. Maryam, however, had seen his picture and sought him out on Facebook afterward. She’d become the first Ibrahim girl to marry, despite being the youngest.
Asma had been amused, and impressed, by Maryam’s gumption. And self-awareness. She’d instinctively known what she needed in a partner—an easygoing, good-humored man who would take care of her and be more charmed than irritated by her theatrics. Asma’s affection for Hassan had only grown over the years. He was a welcome addition to their family, the brother she didn’t realize she needed. His marriage to Maryam felt like a godsend—another person to look after her little sister, to lighten the weight of Asma’s responsibilities.
Asma let herself into the house and dumped her bags by the front door. She looked around the cozy and cluttered home. Toys were everywhere, shoes were piled by the front door, and a basket of unfolded laundry sat by the stairs. The house was outfitted with the Ibrahims’ old furniture cast off over the years from Iman and Mr. Ibrahim’s frequent, frivolous remodeling. Asma’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the couch: a completely impractical, ridiculously overpriced mahogany chesterfield that Iman had purchased on Mr. Ibrahim’s credit card over Asma’s strenuous objections. Iman had lost interest in it just a few months after its arrival and passed it on to Maryam.
“Maryam? Boys?”
No answer. Asma sighed. It was so like Maryam to pretend as though she couldn’t hear. Asma trudged up the stairs and knocked lightly on Maryam’s bedroom door. Nothing. She knocked again. Still, no answer.
Asma pushed open the door slightly, “Maryam?”
The shades were drawn and the lights were off. It took Asma a second to adjust to the darkness. When she did, she saw her sister sprawled out on the bed, hand flung over her forehead.
“Asma? Is that you?” Maryam whispered.
“You know it’s me, Maryam. You just saw me from the window.”
Maryam ignored the comment. “I’m so sick.”
“You are? You sounded fine an hour ago.” Asma tried to hide the annoyed skepticism in her voice. Maryam had a storied history of coming down with vague, chronic ailments any time she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention from her family. It had begun in the years after their mother died, and while Asma had been willing to coddle her sister, then just a preteen, her patience with this particular act had run thinner and thinner the older Maryam got.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t. I’ve been sick since Thursday. But I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I swear, I’m just getting worse.”
Asma walked to the window and threw open the curtains. “Where is everyone?”
“Hassan took the boys out. Can’t believe he left me alone while I’m this sick,” Maryam said. “Although he did bring me those flowers.” Maryam gestured to a bouquet of deep orange tulips on the nightstand.
Asma smiled at the sight of them. Hassan knew just the formula for handling her sister. He’d acknowledged Maryam’s feelings, then deftly removed himself so as not to indulge her. Devotion without pandering.
“Do you think I might have croup?” Maryam asked.
“You don’t have croup. You’re not coughing.”
“Well, not right at this moment, but I do have a cough.” Maryam coughed feebly.
Asma looked out the window at the house across the street. Maryam was in one of her moods. As with a child, it was best to redirect.
“Are the Qureishis home?”
Maryam had been less than thrilled when Hassan had announced excitedly just months after their wedding that there was a house for sale across the street from his parents’. Asma felt for her. Who wanted to live that close to their in-laws? But when Maryam became pregnant with the twins, Asma realized that Maryam couldn’t have had it any better. Aunty Bushra, Maryam’s mother-in-law, was indispensable when it came to helping take care of the boys.
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen any of them today. I’m sure it didn’t even cross Hassan’s mind to tell them I’m sick. Can you feel my glands? I think they’re enlarged.”
Asma humored her sister, lightly touching Maryam’s neck. “Nope, totally normal. And I’m sure they’ll stop by. It’s still early.”
“Well, I don’t really want them to. The house is a mess and you know how Aunty is so judgmental. And Saba and Lubna—they make me so tired. Nonstop talking and laughing.”
Maryam paused, then coughed for effect.
Asma knew Maryam wanted her sympathy, but she didn’t have the patience to give it to her. She attempted to change the subject, again.
“I would’ve come sooner but I had so much to do.”
“Like what ?”
“Well, I basically packed up the entire house by myself in between shifts at the hospital because Iman and Abu are useless and spent their time complaining that we didn’t hire anyone. I was counting on Aunty to help, but then she bailed for Pakistan last week. It’s a wonder I pulled it off.”
Asma had thought she’d be more emotional about the move, but she’d felt nothing but relief as the last of the moving trucks pulled away from their house that morning, her father and sister close behind. One chapter closed, a new one beginning—with a pit stop at Maryam’s.
“Okay, I get it. You were busy,” Maryam said. “I’ve been busy too.”
“Oh yeah?” Asma was actually curious. The twins were in preschool for most of the day, Maryam had a housekeeper who came by once a week, and her mother-in-law cooked for them almost daily.
“Just because I don’t have a job doesn’t mean I’m not busy. Hello, I am the room mom for the boys’ preschool class. I’m in charge of coordinating their big field trip to the zoo and the gift for Teacher Appreciation Week. And I have to work with all these other moms who are not pulling their weight.”
Asma had to admit to herself that the chaos of the ER did seem preferable to dealing with difficult parents. But she was reluctant to acknowledge that to Maryam, so she just nodded.
“But of course, you don’t care,” said Maryam.
“Of course I care.” Asma kept her voice soft to sound convincing. “Why would you say I don’t?”
“Because you don’t even check in about my life. Like you forgot to ask me about Zahra’s mendhi last night.” Maryam held up her hands to show faded henna in an intricate design. “The mendhi lady was so terrible, it looks like I have leprosy.”
“You went? I thought you were sick.”
“Of course I went, there would’ve been so much drama if I didn’t. Zahra’s super pissed that you didn’t go.”
“I told her I had to work. I don’t know why she even invited me. She’s your friend, not mine,” said Asma.
“You didn’t miss much. These mendhis are all the same. I went with Aunty and the girls, who of course spent the entire time in the middle of the dance floor.”
“Aunty Bushra told me that they’ve been practicing their dance for weeks.”
“They shouldn’t have had that friend of theirs join them. Her jumps were embarrassing. Everything was jiggling.”
“That’s so mean! What is wrong with you?”
“I’m the one you should feel bad for,” Maryam said. “We had to pick her up on the way and I was crammed in the back seat with her, totally squished by the window. Not to mention she was sneezing and blowing her nose the whole time.” Maryam sniffled. “That’s probably how I got sick.”
Asma patted Maryam’s arm, exhausted from their conversation. “Probably.”
—
Asma heard the giggles before she opened her eyes. When she did, she was startled by her twin nephews, Zayd and Zaki, standing over her, their matching thick black hair falling onto their foreheads and over their eyes.
“She’s up!”
“We were waiting for you!”
“Patiently!”
Asma struggled to sit up on the partially deflated air mattress wedged on the floor between the twins’ bunk beds and their dresser. Asma had offered to sleep on the floor of Hassan’s home office, but there were so many boxes jammed into the room that it was barely possible to step into it, let alone enough room to sleep.
Zaki pulled a picture out from behind his back and thrust it at Asma, just inches away from her face. “Who is this?”
Asma jumped at the sight: the photo booth strip with shots of a much younger Asma and Farooq.
“Where did you find this?” Asma said to Zaki, more sharply than she intended.
“Mama said not to touch her stuff,” Zayd told Zaki.
“I sorry,” Zaki said, bottom lip quivering. He wasn’t used to his Asma Khala yelling at him. “I got it here.” Zaki held up a copy of the book The Rumi Collection .
Asma snatched the book from Zaki, but before she could console him—or chastise him any further—they heard the front door open and Hassan yelling, “I’m home! Boys?”
“Daddy!”
The boys ran out of the room. Asma tried to stand up but tripped, her foot catching in a fold of the air mattress. She lay sprawled on the floor as their footsteps receded, the picture and book still in her iron grip.
Asma looked at the picture a second, marveling at how happy she and Farooq looked. She sat up and opened the cover of the book. There, inscribed on the title page:
I’m no poet, but I love you. (Hope you know it.)—FW
Asma traced the outline of the inscription with her finger. The book had been a gift from Farooq shortly after he proposed. She flipped through the highlighted and dog-eared pages, stopping at a passage underlined in red: the poem “This Marriage.” It described the blessings of marriage with spiritual reverence, evoking imagery and language of the Quran.
She had read the poem out loud to Farooq on one of their hiking trips. After agreeing that it encapsulated their marriage goals and that someone needed to read it at their wedding, Farooq had said that the last couple of lines—describing the limitations of words to convey the spirit of the union—perfectly captured how he felt about her. It was clear from the circumstances of their meeting and the way they had clicked together so easily that they had always been destined for each other.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Maryam calling from downstairs.
“Asma? Asma, where are you?”
Asma slammed the book shut and pushed it under her mattress.
—
“What do you think?”
Saba held the iPhone up so close to Asma’s face that she had to guide her hand away to see the picture.
It was an unflattering close-up of Lubna. Lubna’s eyes were closed, her mouth was open, and her hair was wrapped up in a towel turban. The picture was affixed with the hashtag #GoodMorning.
“OMG, don’t post that!” Lubna lunged for Saba’s phone. “It’s bad for my brand!”
Saba was quicker, darting out of Lubna’s reach and around Asma, using her as a human shield. “It’s great for mine!” She laughed.
Lubna ran toward Saba, almost knocking over her mother, who was standing at the stove over a pot of bubbling daal.
“Stop this nonsense!” Bushra swatted Lubna on the arm before turning her attention back to her cooking.
Now untangled, Asma finished chopping an onion that she slipped into the daal. Hassan’s mother, Bushra Qureishi, was known throughout the Bay Area’s Pakistani community for her excellent cooking—her dishes were the first gobbled up at potlucks, and unannounced visitors around mealtimes weren’t a rare occurrence at the Qureishi home. Asma couldn’t get enough of Aunty Bushra’s food—home-cooked Desi meals she learned never to take for granted after her mother’s passing. Aunty Bushra, in turn, loved Asma’s interest in learning from her—unlike her own daughters or daughter-in-law. And so, despite pleas from friends and acquaintances near and far, Bushra never shared her recipes with anyone—Asma was the notable exception.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t the best of teachers.
“Just throw a little haldi in,” Bushra said, standing on her toes to pull the turmeric off the top shelf of a cupboard.
“How much is a little?” asked Asma, thumbs poised to take notes in her cell phone.
“Just a pinch.” Bushra dumped more than a pinch into the pot. As Asma typed into her phone, Bushra pulled a few more bottles out of the cupboard and threw more spices into the pot.
“What was that, Aunty?”
“What was what?” Bushra asked, genuinely confused.
She removed her apron from around her waist. “Beta, please watch the pot, I have to say my zuhur namaz.”
“You have the patience of a saint,” Saba said to Asma, as soon as her mother had left the kitchen.
Lubna and Saba sat at the kitchen table, neither looking up from her phone. They were just fifteen months apart and practically joined at the hip, in spite of their differences. Saba, an aspiring stand-up comedian, thrived off the perceived disconnect between her physical appearance—small, slender, and hijab wearing—and her onstage persona, loud and goofy. Saba stood a petite five feet in contrast to her older sister, who towered over her by more than half a foot. Lubna, with her bubbly personality and low-key glamour, seemed predestined to be a social media star. She had a special gift for connecting with people, her earnest and genuine posts inspiring adoring comments from her followers with nary a snarky comment in sight.
“Asma, you should Instagram your cooking lessons with Ammi,” Lubna suggested. “Desi cooking is so hot right now.”
“It’s been hot for hundreds of years,” said Maryam, entering the kitchen with Hassan. “People on Instagram didn’t just invent it.”
“Gen Z invented everything, Maryam,” Hassan said, the two of them sharing a smile.
Saba rolled her eyes, then became distracted by her phone. “Ooh, Lubna! Your morning portrait already has 162 likes. An instant classic!”
Lubna lunged for Saba’s phone again as Maryam narrowed her eyes on Zayd and Zaki, sitting inches away from the TV in the adjoining family room. “Boys! I told you to turn off the TV ten minutes ago.”
“But Dadi said we can watch!”
“Boys!” Hassan clapped his hands. “Give your poor mother a break. Let’s go outside, Dada is picking oranges from the tree, we can help.”
At this, the twins jumped from the couch, turned off the TV, and raced out the glass sliding doors into the backyard ahead of their father.
“Enjoy the peace and quiet.” Hassan kissed Maryam on the head before calling over his back ominously, “They’ll be back.”
“They never listen to me,” Maryam grumbled. “Only Hassan.”
“At least they listen to someone ,” said Lubna under her breath.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Maryam asked.
Asma flinched. Maryam was notoriously defensive about her parenting.
She turned to the girls to change the subject. “What have you two been up to?”
“I’ve been trying to hit up five open mic nights a week. Plus, studying for the GRE,” said Saba. “So basically I haven’t been sleeping.”
“I’m editing some fun new videos and posts,” said Lubna. “If you get to two hundred fifty thousand followers your sponsorship opportunities really expand.”
“As do your chances of finding a man,” said Saba.
“I have to work it somehow. Not all of us were lucky enough to find a nice guy in our MSA,” Lubna teased Saba.
Saba grinned. It was an open family secret that Saba had been talking to Tariq Badawy, whom she had met her freshman year at a meeting of San Jose State’s Muslim Student Association. Although the two were not officially engaged, things had been progressing fairly seriously.
“Don’t worry, Lubna, you’re pretty cute. You’ll have your pick,” Saba said, reaching out to tousle Lubna’s hair. “Too bad Farooq Waheed is dating some Arab supermodel.”
Asma felt herself shocked to attention at the mention of Farooq’s name. She’d been mulling how to engineer an encounter with him since his failure to show up at Yusef’s book launch. With her family moved out of the house, and her life now stretched thin between residency and spending time with Maryam, the odds of her unexpectedly crossing paths with him again weren’t high. She would have to make her own luck.
“Farooq Waheed again,” said Maryam. “What’s his deal?”
“Yeah, Asma, what do you know?” Saba asked. “Hassan said you went to Cal with him.”
“I didn’t know him well,” Asma lied. She and Farooq had been careful never to behave like a couple in public—their classmates assumed they were just platonic hiking buddies. Asma wondered if that was when she developed such a skill for lying, one that was serving her well now.
“He’s not on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter,” said Saba while staring at her phone. “But his office is in Menlo Park. So we’ll have to find our way over there to commence Operation Get Lubna Married.”
“Are you serious?” Asma asked, before she could stop herself. In no way did Maryam’s sisters-in-law factor into her plans to reconnect with Farooq. She wasn’t going to stand by and watch them pursue him as marriage material. “You really think Farooq Waheed is a good option for you?”
“He’s rich, he’s handsome, he owns his own company,” Lubna said with a skeptical, arched eyebrow. “If he’s not a good option, our standards might be a little high.”
“No, I mean, he’s not right for you, Lubna,” she said. “I heard he’s a jerk. Really arrogant. Totally not your type.” Asma grimaced, hoping the girls read her face as distaste for Farooq, not self-loathing for her lie.
“It figures,” said Lubna. “Startup guys are the worst.”
Asma was saved by the simultaneous return of the twins, Hassan, and Bushra. As Maryam took the boys into the bathroom to wash up for lunch, Bushra sent the girls into the garage to get some folding chairs. With everyone out of earshot, it was Bushra’s turn to complain.
“Beta,” Bushra said to Hassan, “the boys are out of control. Maryam doesn’t discipline them properly.”
Hassan laughed. “Ammi, they’re three! All three-year-olds are out of control. Maryam’s doing her best.”
“There’s just so much talking. You can’t reason with children!”
Asma pretended not to hear the conversation, focusing intently on stirring the daal. At that moment, the boys came out of the bathroom, hands still wet and fighting over a small towel. Zayd yanked the towel out of Zaki’s hand so forcefully that it went flying, almost knocking over a glass bowl perched on the edge of the table.
“Badtameez!”
Bushra’s screech made the boys stop dead in their tracks.
“What did I tell you two about fighting?”
“But, Dadi, Zayd was—”
Hassan stepped in.
“Boys, let’s go help Saba and Lubna Phuppo get some chairs from the garage,” he said, ushering the twins out of the kitchen.
Asma pushed the bowl to the middle of the table before returning to her place beside Bushra at the stove, just in time to see her throw something else into the pot of daal.
“What was that you just threw in, Aunty?”
“Just a bit of chili.”
“How much is a—”
“See what I was saying about the boys? I am just so tired. Can you please talk to Maryam?”
“Talk to me about what?” Maryam stood at the kitchen door.
“Nothing. Can you help me set the table?” Asma handed Maryam a stack of plates and pushed her into the dining room. Bushra threw a few more things into the pot, and Asma officially gave up taking notes.