Chapter 15 Salma #3
When I was thirteen, Abu met a friend. It wasn’t the kind of superficial acquaintanceship that immigrants sometimes substitute for friendship.
Oh, you’re Indian? I’m Pakistani. We understand each other’s language and eat similar food.
Let’s be social friends, never mind we’d never talk to one another in our home countries.
No, Abu had more connection with Fazal Karim then he had ever shown with anyone.
They met while filling up their cars at a gas station.
What made the meeting remarkable was not the randomness of meeting a fellow Punjabi at a gas station, it was the location of the gas station, less than ten minutes from our home.
For people that were in wonderment when a character on television referred to anything that made them think of home—for example, a reference to naan—the awareness that another Pakistani family lived a few towns over felt nothing short of a small miracle.
They were probably close to the same age.
He had two adult children I have no recollection of, and a teenage daughter named Daisy, who was about five years older than us.
For a while, we started a practice of either going to Uncle Fazal Karim’s house on the weekends or he and his family coming to ours.
Theirs was no grand house on a lot too small.
They lived in a split-level house with white siding that looked almost the same as ours.
There was no talk about biannual trips back to Pakistan or how many cars their husbands had.
They were like us, working class. Fazal Karim’s wife was old enough to be Ami’s mother and walked stiffly, her upper body covered in a shawl, even in summer.
Abu acted like a different version of himself when he was with Uncle Fazal Karim.
They spoke an informal dialect of Punjabi, which Asma and I only partially understood.
We helped in the kitchen with Ami and Fazal Karim’s wife, and from there, we could hear them talk about how hard it was to earn a living in this country, how they had been drawn by the idea of plentitude and infinite choices but hadn’t been prepared for the paradoxical lack of both.
They laughed. Abu, in a high-pitched giggle we’d never heard before.
He slapped his knees and started every story about their past with “yar.” We liked this version of Abu, who remained buoyant for long after the visit.
Uncle Fazal Karim was short and balding with bad breath.
He took great interest in us, always wanting to know how we were getting along at school and about our American friends.
His sense of personal space was different from any other adult man, Pakistani or American, we’d ever met.
He would make comments in our presence about what good girls we were, how quiet and well-behaved, and, while looking at Asma with a wolf’s gaze, would comment on what beautiful young women we were becoming.
At the end of our visits, he would pat me on the back and would hug and kiss Asma goodbye.
No other father had ever hugged or kissed us.
Not even our own. The first time it happened, I looked at my parents to make sure it was okay.
Ami looked unnerved and unsure of what to do, and Abu had his back to us, making his way down the driveway to the car.
Soon, we learned that Uncle Fazal Karim’s timing was more refined than an elite athlete’s.
Somehow, he would find the precise second when no one was looking or we were alone to give Asma a hug that lingered a few seconds too long, a hand on the back that was too low, or a lascivious glance at our developing bodies.
The summer we received our citizenship, Ami and Abu wanted to have a party to celebrate. It seems like that should have been a pivotal part of our family history, but because of what came next, I barely remember it.
That weekend, they invited all the Pakistani families from mosque and the ones we used to visit the year before.
And, of course, Uncle Fazal Karim. Mamoo and Aunty weren’t there for some reason I don’t remember, and neither was Uncle Fazal Karim’s wife, who had returned to Pakistan with their oldest daughter to marry her off.
The men sat in folding lawn chairs on the patio and in the grass, drinking tea.
The women sat inside in the air-conditioning.
Abu basted the chicken legs with a spicy barbecue sauce Ami had made.
Someone played tapes of Pakistani music featuring men and women singing about heartbreak in nasally sopranos.
The kids all played hide-and-seek in our yard and the tall grass in the adjacent lot.
As dark fell, the kids and men started to shoot off bottle rockets and Roman candles, and the mothers went out to wave sparklers.
At some point, I looked around and didn’t see Asma.
She loved fireworks, and she was going to miss them.
I went inside to find her. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom on the upstairs level.
I took one step down the stairs and saw that the lights were off in the basement.
For reasons I cannot explain, I felt pulled.
From the landing, I looked into complete darkness.
I could have walked those steps blindfolded.
Yet I held on to the wall and descended one halting, incremental step at a time.
From the distance, I heard the pop pop pop of fireworks.
The air felt heavy. There was a curious lack of sound, and at the same time, I sensed a presence.
It is what I imagine space to feel like.
Completely silent with the presence of nothing, yet energy thrumming through it that can be felt in the body.
I fought the instinct to run and looked around.
The stripe of light coming from underneath the bathroom door cast a dim aura into the dark basement.
I heard a furtive sound, like someone was trying to move something without being heard.
If I’d thought about it, I would have never walked into a bathroom with someone inside. But I was acting on instinct.
I pushed the bathroom door open and stood still.
It took me a few seconds to understand what I was seeing.
Asma was pinned to the wall by Fazal Karim.
He had one hand on her shoulder like a kindly uncle and the other up her shirt.
His head craned forward, straining toward her lips.
He looked like a zombie, trying to make contact with his prey like his life depended on it.
Asma’s body was rigid, her shoulders drawn up, her eyes squeezed shut with her head and neck twisted away. There was a boisterous laugh outside.
And in that terrible millisecond, I could tell that Asma was trying not to offend Fazal Karim at the expense of her own violation.
She twisted in his grasp, gently evading, trying not to make any sudden movements.
In that way we could read each other in the absence of words, I understood what she was feeling because I was feeling it too.
Of course, I understood that what was happening in front of me was wrong.
It was bad and dangerous. It was against nature.
We were children and, especially in our culture, weren’t supposed to express interest or ask about sex.
That was a private thing for adults. But here, he was the adult.
He was doing what he was allowed to do. What were we supposed to do?
How was I going to extract her from this situation without offending Fazal Karim or getting in trouble?
“Asma?” I said, shy and hesitant. I think back on that moment now and am enraged at my thirteen-year-old self. Why do girls, women, in moments of crisis, speak softer? Children should respect their elders. Men’s needs are more important than your own. It is hard to overcome brainwashing.
In the interminable pause after I called her name, Asma’s eyes opened, bulging like a frightened deer, turned toward the door and me.
“Asma?” I said again.
Fazal Karim turned halfway toward me, and in that distracted space, Asma dislodged herself from his grip.
She pushed past him and stood behind me clutching my shoulders.
His back to the bathtub, there was nowhere he could go.
I have no idea how long it had been since I walked into the bathroom and how long we stood there.
But it felt like it lasted hours. I didn’t know how to get ourselves out.
All I knew was that I had to keep Asma safe, and I was scared to be in the room with him.
Fazal Karim stood there with hands splayed out. “Baitay, this isn’t how it looks.”