Chapter 16 Asma #3
While her mother served the turkey from the middle of the table, her father passed each dish traveling around the table to Asma.
First the mashed potatoes, then the stuffing, and then the green beans.
At each handoff, he was solicitous and held the serving dish a touch too long so that they were both holding the bowl at the same time.
Asma refused to look up and meet his gaze.
“How was the funeral, Yar?” Mamoo asked her father gently.
But he waved his hand like he couldn’t talk about it.
Her mother breathlessly monologued. “You can’t believe what all they have at the markets now.
I saw Corn Flakes!” “Our house is gone. There’s a highway where it used to be.
” “Women wear short sleeves and dupattas over their shoulder. It’s so stylish.
” “Your father would have done so well if we’d stayed in Pakistan.
” “Rabia is doing so well. She’s in medical school and already married.
” She rattled off stories about cousins and people they had never heard of, and the small mounds of food on her plate remained untouched.
Mamoo leaned toward her mother, barely blinking, and listened raptly.
He punctuated her observations about the modernity of Pakistan with questions like, “Was the kulfi stand across from the school still there?” Sometimes she paused long enough to answer his question, but mostly she just railroaded onward breathlessly.
In the middle of her exuberance, it was possible to forget that Musharraf’s father had just died.
Asma’s end of the table sat silently, observing the manic energy radiating from the other end.
Asma was grateful for her mother’s nonstop prattling, which kept the attention relentlessly focused away from her.
Salma silently picked the few pecans from her sweet potatoes and placed them on the side of Asma’s plate.
Her father asked Asma how school was going.
She expected to see wariness or judgment on his face.
Instead she saw only a tired, aging man whose yellow skin clung too tightly to his face. She mumbled noncommittally.
The thing with being a family that did not engage in casual banter was they had no capacity for it.
Never could Asma recall a time when her father had sauntered over and plopped down on the couch next to her and casually asked, “So what’s going on?
” and waited to hear something interesting she’d read or experienced that day.
They didn’t have anything to talk about that wasn’t affected by the past or burdened with the expectations of the future.
The few times her father spoke, she braced herself, expecting a reference to the night of the play. But not once was it mentioned. It was as though the entire ugliness, from the raw physicality to the silent complicity, had never happened.
And for a while it appeared that they would get away with an uneventful, if boring, dinner and, in that way, be more American than ever.
Finally, her mother stood up and started cutting pieces of pie. “So many people have washing machines, and washing women no longer come to the house.”
“Welcome to the twentieth century,” Asma muttered. Almost immediately, she regretted vocalizing her inside thoughts.
For the first time, her mother stopped talking. She looked around the table as though she was just now noticing everyone sitting around her. And then, offhandedly, she said, “I almost forgot, baitay. We’ve asked family to start sending rishthas for you.”
The surface easiness of the room snuffed out.
Out of all the things Asma had thought Thanksgiving would bring—anger, blame, judgment, recriminations—she had never considered this.
Her ears got hot and felt like they were about to pop.
She knew what the word meant, of course.
What Pakistani girl didn’t? If all American girls dreamed of their weddings, all Pakistani girls understood that it was the stuff of nightmares.
Asma felt like she was in a tunnel whooshing past some basic understanding that was just out of her reach.
She understood what her mother had said but couldn’t make sense of what she was actually saying as it related to her life.
Mamoo started coughing on his water. Her father chewed, the sound magnified in the stillness. Aunty, sweet Aunty who didn’t speak the language and had no idea what was being suggested, smiled encouragingly from across the table.
Asma turned to Salma and saw that this was not new information to her. Asma felt gut punched. Again.
“What are you talking about?” Asma barely breathed.
“Baitay, you’re at that age we need to be thinking about these things,” her mother said in a clear and saccharine voice.
“Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Marrying me off would solve all your problems.” Asma threw her fork on her plate with a loud clatter. “No, Ami. We don’t. I just started college.”
“Well, of course. You don’t have to get married right now.” Her mother beamed as though this was the happiest of news. “It’s just an engagement.”
“Your mother’s right. It’s time you understood who you are. It’s time to grow up.” Her father spoke quietly and as though it pained him to say those words.
Asma’s mouth gaped open and closed. “Understand who I am? I know exactly who I am. It’s you. You don’t know the first thing about me! You’ve never known.” She looked around the table desperately.
Her father put his hand on Asma’s arm. “We know what’s best for you.”
Asma yanked her arm away. “Best for me? You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“I know I saw you on that stage and that it was filthy, shameful.”
“It was a play! People pretending! I wasn’t actually having sex on stage.” Asma threw her hands up in exasperation.
“This country will corrupt you, Asma. Don’t you understand?
All this sex with many people? You’ll end up loose and divorced, like all these women here.
You have to trust me. I know what I’m saying.
I see these kinds of people all the time.
Children with different men, barely able to scrape by. This is not what we want for you.”
Asma was so braced for his anger that she was struck by its absence. He was using a cajoling, almost gentle tone, like he was trying to convince her.
Mamoo looked back and forth between her parents as though he was trying to find the weak link. Finally, he started, “Sadia, don’t you . . .”
“Javed, this is a family decision. It doesn’t involve you.”
Mamoo paled. The sad and bitter pill was that no matter how much Asma wanted Mamoo to be her father, he wasn’t.
She and Salma were her parents’ children, and no amount of pretending or imagining otherwise would ever change that.
Asma sat numbly in the middle of the disappointment that was her family.
No one took the dessert her mother held out, so instead, she walked a plate, with a slice of pecan pie and a gulab jamun, around the table, humming to herself the whole while.
“Sadia, sit down!” Mamoo ordered.
No one had ever heard Mamoo use that tone of voice. It came from a distant past.
Asma’s father glanced sharply at Mamoo, as though he was going to stand up for his wife. Instead, he said, “Asma needs to realize what is expected of her.”
“We’re not living in that bloody backwater! We live in America.” Mamoo jabbed the table with his finger. “Here, we don’t marry our daughters off when they’re barely out of junior high!”
“You see the things she’s doing. In front of others. You can see where this is going.”
“I’m right here!” Asma screamed. “Why are you talking about me like I’m not here? Where ‘this is going’? The only thing that’s going is me. From this family. The first second I can.”
“This isn’t our way. Look at the home your mother and I raised you in. That is how you should act.” Gone was the cajoling voice. “Do you think that this is okay? The Quoran tells how Muslim girls should act. This is not what we expect from you.”
“Is a father hitting their child expected?” But even as she said it, she knew that in their culture, at the time he came from, it was. It was permitted and, in some cases, might even be encouraged. “Because I don’t know God wants that either.”
Maybe he had thought that what had happened in that dark parking lot would remain there and that it would be relegated to everyone’s collective memory, because Asma could see that she had shocked him into silence.
Her father had been prepared to say something.
She could see it hovering, just on the edge of his lips.
But he stopped. Abashed? Ashamed? It was impossible to tell.
“I know what happened, Musharraf.” Mamoo pushed his chair back from the table with a scrape. “In this country, there are laws prohibiting parents from hurting their children.”
So everyone knew. Asma turned to look at Salma and found her with her head tucked down. Of course it had been her. Asma filed it away, with all of Salma’s other omissions.
Her father’s face contorted, and he placed his hands on the arms of his chair like he was going to stand up. Instead, he spoke in a false, slow voice. “We’ll talk about this more later.”
Oh, she had so much to say. But too much had already been said, and she just wanted this to be over.
He went on, unable to stop sermonizing. “It’s my job as your father. It’s my job to protect you.”
“‘Protect me’?” Asma scoffed.
He picked up his spoon and cut off a small bite of pie. “After this trip home, it’s very clear.”
“‘Protect me’?” she said again, incredulously. She stopped herself from going any further because she knew if she said what was in her heart, there was no going back.
“I tried to be a better father than my own. And maybe I haven’t been perfect, but I’m going to be better now. Your life is so much better than my sisters had it.”