Chapter 2 Asma #2
Asma hurried down the sidewalk, but before she could get there, Ray had already reached her father and extended his hand.
She heard him say, “Musharraf! I haven’t seen you in a while.
” They knew each other? They shook hands, and Ray clapped her father’s shoulder.
She couldn’t hear her father’s response but saw him flash one of his rare smiles, hesitant and uneven.
Ray waved his hand at the car, like it was okay to stay there.
What moral failing did this man possess that had escaped her father’s notice or he had chosen to ignore in the name of male kinship?
Her mother, her hair in a messy braid, stood off to one side.
She glanced at Asma’s approach and did a double take, clutching her chest with one hand and flailing in the direction of her father with the other.
It’s not that she expected overt warmth or welcoming affection—that wasn’t her parents’ way—but still, she wasn’t prepared for the expression on their faces.
She had left for college in late July to participate in a one-month jump start program and, over those two months, had forgotten that look of disappointment.
Asma stopped.
“What did you do?” her father asked as he stared at her head.
She had been so focused on meeting them to tell them her news and get it over with that she’d forgotten that they hadn’t seen her new hairstyle, although hairstyle didn’t quite do it justice.
Her long, glossy mane was now gone and replaced with a tousled, ear-length cut, gelled into carefully careless disarray.
“Oh yeah.” Asma fingered the spiky tips of her hair, willing it to grow.
She looked like a member of a boy band, and she loved it.
At first, glimpses of herself in a passing mirror had caught her by surprise and delighted her.
But by now, it felt natural, ever closer to the version of herself that she was striving to become.
She laughed nervously. Their reaction stung, and she silently berated herself for caring what they thought.
It was a lesson she had learned a long time ago and had apparently forgotten in her time away from them.
Salma quickly stepped between their parents and Asma. “You cut your hair.”
Asma leaned down to hug Salma and heard the hurt in her sister’s flat affect.
They knew each other’s every tone. This was not how she had seen this unfolding.
She hadn’t thought to tell her sister on one of their near-nightly calls.
Salma, who had the ability to calm her parents and buffer Asma from their worst instincts.
If she had known, she could have helped manage the situation.
She avoided her parents’ eyes but felt them inventorying her face, her head, her jeans and T-shirt, as though checking for other lurking dangers.
“You came,” her mother said, stroking her eyebrow.
“I told you I would,” Asma mumbled.
“You say a lot of things.” Her mother’s eyes flitted about to see if anyone was paying attention to them. She opened her handbag and started rummaging through it. “I brought a dupatta for you.”
Her father stared hard at Asma, and she could sense the instinct that had inhibited her father from stretching out after the long drive was the same one making him hold his tongue now. He wasn’t a yeller. He had other ways of making them feel small.
“I have one, Ami. I brought one.” Asma shrugged herself into her jean jacket so her arms would technically be covered and, like a magician, pulled out a dupatta from the inside pocket. She shook it loose with one hand and set it loosely on her spiky hair.
Her mother frowned. “You can still see it. Maybe you should use another one. Here, tie this one . . .” She reached up like she was going to place it on top of Asma’s head.
But Asma was too tall, and by stepping back just one step, she was out of her mother’s reach. Salma took the dupatta from her mother’s outstretched hand nonchalantly and put it around her own neck.
“Listen, I have something I have to tell you,” Asma said.
The call for prayer, haunting and ancient, came from inside the mosque.
“Later,” her father said and disappeared into the men’s entrance.
The men’s and women’s areas of the mosque were joined by two things.
A one-way speaker system, so that whatever was broadcast from the men’s side could be heard by the women, and an industrial-size kitchen so the women could cook for the men.
By the time Asma, Salma, and her mother had taken off their shoes, the men were making their presence known.
The sound system crinkled with static, deep voices, and cleared throats.
It was a different kind of background noise, one that acted as a reminder of whose needs had primacy.
Women briskly greeted them as they snaked their way through the assembled lines.
There was no time to talk. Prayers were about to start.
Silky fabrics rustled like autumn leaves as the women lined up in their habitual spots.
Asma led them to the far side of the room where her mother had always preferred to sit, her back up against the wall.
Asma went through the ritualized motions for namaz.
With no conscious effort, the specific prayers corresponding to each turn and bow appeared on the tip of her tongue.
When she was little, she and Salma would pull out the prayer mat—really just an old sheet—and spread it at an angle on the living room floor so that the long edge faced east. The four of them would stand close together, their folded arms tight against their bodies, bumping elbows.
Asma had loved the way it used to feel in those moments of quiet darkness, the whole family huddled together like penguins on an icy tundra.
She remembered how her father’s anxiety drained from him and her mother seemed sure about at least this one thing.
That was before she had started claiming, regardless of when she was asked to join, that she was menstruating and, therefore, under religious law, exempted from saying namaz because she was considered unclean.
It was the ideal get-out-of-jail-free card, one that couldn’t be disproven.
But now, this practice of collective, private praying brought her no comfort or peace.
It was the opposite. It annoyed her that she was reciting words she didn’t even understand.
But she couldn’t come to the mosque and not say her namaz.
She reminded herself that she was simply acting out her programming and she could walk away from it at will.
After prayer, the loudspeaker was turned off on the men’s side, and a hush fell.
The women visibly relaxed and scooched into more comfortable seating positions and came back from whatever meditative place they visited.
A whisper here, a rustle there, until, finally, their voices rose and mingled like an orchestra.
Asma was acutely aware that she had been transported nowhere.
Her mother wandered away and sat at the feet of the old women, her head tilted up like a child.
Asma and Salma sat side by side, leaning against the back wall. Together, they people-watched, knowing what the other was noticing without a word being exchanged. Asma elbowed Salma lightly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Salma asked.
“About what?”
“You know what.”
Asma kicked herself again for not telling Salma in advance about her hair. “Sorry, Sal. I just forgot.”
“How could you forget that?”
“I don’t know. It’s always so busy. Classes and labs and then there’s always something going on on campus or someone to meet up with.
I mean, I tell you everything. I make a lot of time to call at night, you know?
” She forced herself to stop talking. Her words were having the opposite effect than she’d intended.
Salma remained silent.
From a long way away, thunder sounded. Women gathered in small and large circles, cross-kneed on the floor.
Babies and children ran around. A young teenager sat in the corner reading.
It reminded her of Salma who, for as long as she could remember, had always kept a book on hand as an escape plan.
She wondered where Salma was hiding her book now.
An elderly woman stood up from her chair and rubbed her hip.
And with that small, innocuous motion, Asma and Salma fell against each other giggling.
Asma put her head on her knees to hide her face, and Salma leaned behind Asma’s back, to hide her shaking body.
Once, many years before, their mother had one of her migraines. She was prone to them. In response to a question about how her head felt, she had said, “My headache has moved to my hip.” And since then, any passing reference to hips had become an endless source of hilarity.
An older Pakistani woman walked up to them and said, “You two are having fun, aren’t you?”
“Salaam aleikum, aunty,” Salma murmured.
Asma wiped away her tears.
“Nadia left early because she’s not feeling good. Go and help set up the kitchen.”
After services, the men walked through the kitchen and served themselves.
Once they were done, the women ate. No matter how expected it was and how many times Asma had seen this process unfold, it never failed to roil her.
The younger women moved bright and quick, trying to manage their children and their elders, seemingly in multiple spots at the same time.
The older women sat, slow and heavy, finally having earned the right to not be bothered.
How many of them had gotten to pursue their own interests, seek mastery in something other than their husbands’ favorite meals?
How many of them even knew what their interests were?
Everything they had was due to their husbands and fathers and brothers.
Every pleasure or happiness stolen from life was on loan or at the mercy of men.
Asma already understood that it was a luxury to even be permitted dreams.