Chapter 9 Asma #2
“It was a Catholic school. Most of our teachers were nuns and priests,” Mamoo said matter-of-factly.
Asma was dumbfounded. “What?”
“What? You didn’t think there were any Christians in Pakistan? The British brought their schools. The reality is that life is far more complicated and diverse in these countries than is made out in the Western news.”
Mamoo shuffled his money distractedly.
Asma could see the picture Mamoo painted, that long-ago world just visible beneath the surface of his words.
Salma asked, “So how did your parents die?”
Mamoo took a turn.
Then Asma took a turn.
Salma held the dice on her turn. “Mamoo?”
“Jesus, Salma. Let it go,” Asma said. Her voice sounded as harsh as her father’s when he spoke to her.
Mamoo tapped the table and said, “You must understand. We . . . Sadia, grew up in a different place and time. Women, girls, just weren’t given the same opportunities.”
Asma wasn’t particularly interested in hearing an unasked-for defense of her mother and stood up to stretch.
Mamoo went on. “Just watch, you’ll grow up, get married, have children.
And you’ll understand your children’s experience because you’ll share the same cultural fabric.
But what I’m talking about, when I’m talking about, it was a different world.
There were more horse-drawn carriages on the road than cars.
There were no grocery stores; people came by your house to sell you food.
In a million years, I could never have imagined that this is what my life would look like.
I didn’t even have the words for the things that are now my everyday.
When I look back on that time, it feels like that life was someone else’s. ”
She was not of Rosebud, and yet she understood its language, its ways, and was nostalgic for it. After all, those were still the memories of her childhood. Maybe she understood what Mamoo meant.
“How did you come to England?” Salma asked, redirecting.
“As it turned out, I was smarter than the rich kids. Or at least worked harder.” Mamoo smirked.
“I was an excellent student, and the headmaster thought I should apply to universities in England, which accepted students of promise from former colonies. Once the headmaster suggested it, that’s all my father could think about.
His only son going to England to become educated.
As he said, ‘to learn the best of both cultures.’ I think he thought—hell, I thought—that after school I’d return to Pakistan and help build the country.
Pakistan was recently independent, and there was this air of hopefulness that permeated everything.
Like now, we could fix our own problems.
“I got accepted at Oxford. My parents sent me on the plane with one thousand rupees, which, at that time, converted to a bit more than one hundred British pounds. That was a lot of money for my parents, but not much money with which to send a sixteen-year-old across the world by themselves. I was scared but ready to get out of there and see the world. To do my part. But the details and realities of living in England, in a country where I knew no one, where food was provided only during the weekdays, where I didn’t know how to do the most basic things, like how to get milk delivered, where to buy socks for the cold, find a doctor .
. . all of that I had to figure out on my own.
“I also felt horribly guilty for leaving Sadia. By that point, she’d moved on to the Pakistani girls’ school where the curriculum was not what it was at Cathedral.
In secondary school, I brought home all the books assigned to me in English class because she insisted on reading them too.
If I couldn’t find a book, I knew where to find them. ”
Asma shared a look with Salma and, without saying a word, knew that they were recalling the same memory.
In elementary school and middle school, when they couldn’t find their books, whether assigned in school or checked out from the library, invariably, they found them stashed in their mother’s room with her bookmark.
“I was her ticket to a bigger world. After I left, my parents, because of what was expected of young women at that time, could only do so much.”
He was talking about things that Asma had never thought about asking her parents. The world he conjured was completely unfamiliar. It was like a thread of memory. The more he pulled it, the more the garment came apart.
Mamoo smiled wryly. “Here’s something. I didn’t eat any kind of salan or curry for more than a year. And that was only after I met a married couple from India who had me over now and then for a vegetarian meal.
“During the five years I studied in England, I only had two phone calls with home. The first was when I arrived. The wonderful Mrs. Cobberly, my housemother at Oxford, insisted I call home to let them know I’d arrived safely.
She said there were funds for that sort of thing.
” He stopped for a long minute and took a deep breath like he was going to jump into a pool.
And then, his voice went monotone. “The second call was after I received a telegram . . .”
Just then, the pager clipped on his waistband beeped and snapped him out of his reverie. He stood up quickly and, when returned from the phone, said abruptly, “I’m needed. I’ll be back late.” He did not look unhappy.
Asma spent a long time in the bathroom getting ready for bed in the hopes that Salma would be asleep by the time she was done.
She tiptoed quietly into their shared bedroom.
When they had been little, Aunty had commissioned an artist to paint a jungle scene on one wall.
The tiger’s gold eyes glowed softly by the light of the lamp between their twin beds.
She and Salma had always freely undressed in front of each other, and even though Salma had witnessed everything that night, the thought of her sister seeing her undressed made her uncomfortable.
She could sense that her secretiveness registered with Salma, hitting some thin nerve.
It’s not that Asma was in denial about what had happened and having Salma see her stomach would make it more real—there was nothing more real than seeing the bruise continuing to erupt on her stomach like a slow-motion video of a flower blooming.
It’s that the events in the parking lot felt like a divider between them, not a uniter.
If Asma had spent any time thinking about it, she might have understood that she was simply embarrassed at having been checked by her father.
She walked through life with a gum-popping swagger, and her father had stripped her of that veneer, reminding her of who was really in control.
Salma was her mirror, and seeing that knowledge reflected in her face brought it home in a way that was impossible to avoid.
She stared long and hard at herself in the bathroom mirror and remembered Ruby. She hadn’t thought about her for at least two hours and felt relief from the unsatisfying ache of fixating on her and, at the same time, guilt, as though she had abandoned a sentinel post.
Salma’s eyes were closed. Asma switched off the lamp softly and snuck into bed, between the cold sheets.
“We need to talk,” Salma said quietly.
Asma exhaled dramatically. “About what?”
“You know what.”
The dark air seemed hazy with movement. “Why do you care? You did nothing to help.” Asma’s voice flattened a beat. “I’m not sure why you did that, by the way.”
“Did what?”
“Mamoo. He obviously didn’t want to talk about any of that stuff, and you forced him to.”
“What do you mean I did nothing to help? What could I have done?”
“It’s not like ‘How’d your parents die?’ is a comfortable question.”
“Okay, fine, maybe I shouldn’t have pushed Mamoo. Who made you his protector?”
They lay there silently, and for a moment, Asma thought Salma may have fallen asleep or gotten tired of trying to make her talk about her feelings.
“So? Are we going to talk about it or just pretend like it didn’t happen?” Salma asked.
Asma kicked off her covers noisily. “What do you want to talk about, Sal? Huh?” She was irate that Salma was intruding on her privacy, the quietness of her mind, which was now reserved for dreaming about Ruby.
Salma spoke very slowly, reminding Asma of their mother. “Why do you do this? Why do you shut people out?”
“I’m not shutting you out. I just have to be careful to not corrupt you.” In the dark of the bedroom, she made quotation marks with her fingers.
“Knock it off. What Abu did is fucked up. Okay? It’s not exactly been easy for me.” Salma took a deep breath like she was going to dive into deep water. “But you knew how upset he’d be. You knew! And you did it anyway.”
“You’re blaming me?”
“Of course not. But I told you it would be a big deal. I tell you not to do things, and you do them anyway.”
“Jesus, Sal. You sound exactly like him! Are you really excusing him?”
In the dark, Asma could tell that Salma had bolted upright in bed.
“You sound just like him! Always trying to twist the situation and words to your advantage. No! Of course I’m not excusing him. I’m only saying your need to poke the wasps’ nest can get you in trouble. I mean, what did you think was going to happen?”
“Are you telling me that you knew he was going to hit me?”
“No.” Salma’s voice was shaky. “I was as shocked as you were.”
“Then what? What do you want me to say to you? Am I supposed to take care of you, make you feel better?”
“No, I don’t expect you to make me feel better. I expect you to acknowledge that every time you push him, every time you act out, I’m the one who suffers. Not you!”
There was a quiet knock, and the bedroom door pushed open. Aunty’s shadow filled the doorway. “Girls? Is everything okay?”
“Sorry, Aunty,” Salma said.
“Sorry. Yeah, we’re fine,” Asma said.