Chapter 12 Salma #2
Mamoo reverted to his regular voice, explainer and teacher of all things.
“The house and belongings by rights of succession were supposed to go to the next male family member. I was half a world away with at least three more years of study before I could even consider returning to Pakistan. I had no money to my name. The next male relatives in line were my father’s brothers.
One brother lived in Lahore and the other in their ancestral village.
My uncle who lived in Lahore wanted our house before my other uncle showed up to make a claim for it.
What I heard in the background—the mayhem—was them moving in.
“My immediate reaction was that I had to go back and stop my uncles. If I was there, the house would be mine, and my sister’s fate would be my responsibility.
But then what? I would have had to stop my studies.
How would I make a living? I was good for nothing other than my brain.
I had no skills to speak of. I didn’t have any land or means by which to support us until I finished school.
And for how long would it be acceptable for a brother and sister to live by themselves?
Eventually, marriages would have to be made, and I would have to find Sadia a husband.
How was I supposed to do that? As a man, I could delay the inevitable for as long as I wanted. But I couldn’t delay it for her.”
I had always felt protective of Ami, long ingrained in me and laced through my earliest memories.
She was one of us, the three girls holding each other up and supporting each other in whatever ways we could.
She cooked for us and was the marginal adult, and we translated the world for her, filtering out the scariest and most threatening things.
Suddenly, I could feel my mother’s fear course through me, terrified for the girl she had once been.
“Her future had been limited before, especially relative to mine. But it was positively bleak afterward, and there was nothing—nothing—I could do about it. Our parents’ death was our joint loss, but it was only my sister’s life that was going to change as a result.
Mine would go on as before. Educational opportunities, career choices, whom I married—these would be at my choosing.
But she was helpless in the face of our culture and its expectations. ”
“So what happened?”
“She married your father. He was old enough to be her father and, maybe in some ways, probably exactly what she needed. Someone to take care of her. Why he was unmarried at that age and agreed to marry such a young girl . . .” Mamoo caught himself and stopped. He was still my father.
Can we ever escape the pain, the injustices of the past?
I am living proof that humans can’t. Here I am, a generation later, still licking my wounds.
I am still shocked that this was how my parents met—through a forced, shotgun, arranged marriage.
She was younger than I was at that point in my life and had been married off to a man almost double my age.
There are moments that I think perhaps I can understand parts of her.
Perhaps the traumatic events of her young adult life had stopped her development, forever stuck at the emotional level she had reached when her parents died.
It shouldn’t affect me, I know. There are still young girls, much younger than even my mother was, that are married off as children.
But my mother was not a statistic. She was my mother.
Most of the time, she generated a complicated set of emotions in me, like oil and water that never really mixed.
Even when I was mad at her, I was still feeling sorry for her.
“It was really difficult knowing that I’d never see my parents again.
But in some ways, it was a theoretical loss.
I’d gotten used to living without them and had to remind myself in my daily life of lectures and studying that they were gone.
Sometimes that knowledge seemed overwhelming.
And, at other times, removed as though it had happened a long time ago.
The life I had remembered in Pakistan, the memory capsule to which I came back in my mind at the end of the day—those moments in the courtyard, the jasmine, the love and pride of my parents—was gone.
It was the permanent end of something. And unlike most experiences where one doesn’t know it’s ended until long after it’s over, I knew then, in that moment, that my old life had ended. ”
I wanted to cry. For Mamoo. For Ami. But it wasn’t my story, and I didn’t have the right to make it mine.
I asked, “Did Ami send you any pictures of their wedding or anything?”
Mamoo cleared his throat and straightened up.
“No. It was a pretty quick wedding, I think. I don’t even know what the actual day of their marriage was or how long they waited after my parents’ accident.
My feelings of guilt and helplessness around your mother .
. . they kind of replaced the way I had thought about her up until then.
She was no longer just my sister, my childhood best friend, the person who was desperate for new books and to grow up to be like me.
She was this person whom I had failed to protect.
She was on a boat in an ocean a world away.
I didn’t know where her boat was heading or whether it would be able to withstand the waves that life brings.
But I had no power to bring her back to shore or build her a stronger boat.
All I could do was listen to her crying until the phone disconnected. ”
It is Rainforest Night. I believe I’m prepared this time. I told Mamoo not to come. I have no idea what to expect, and there are too many variables I can’t control. I plan on telling Ruby that we can meet and that I’ll talk about whatever she wants to talk about.
The event is scheduled from 6:00 to 7:00 and is structured as an open house.
I greet children and parents, some of whom come straight from work, still in their business suits and scrubs.
The room fills up quickly, and children stand next to their stations, which have been set up around the room and extend into the hallway.
At ten minutes past the hour, I clear my throat.
All eyes turn to me, and I make a few comments welcoming everyone and applauding the effort by the students.
I give a one-sentence shout-out to each child’s area of inquiry.
“If you want to know the number of unique species of animals in the and why that is their only habitat, you should check out Winifred’s presentation. ”