envelope. She read the covers: Edward Said, Kurt Vonnegut. She’d not heard of either. Anu mouthed each name several times, softly. The Said had been heavily marked.
She opened the lacquer box. A label in block letters read, BIVALVES. There were a dozen different brightly colored shells, some smooth, others furrowed. Daanish’s note was dated June ‘89 – two months before he’d left. Sheer muscle power. By snapping its two valves, a scallop, for instance, can swim many dozen feet per bite. At the cove one day, Aba first told me about giant clams. ‘Four feet long!’ he said. ‘They live right here, in our very own ocean.’
Anu quietly shut the box.
Next she examined the envelope. It contained letters from the doctor and herself and a stack of photographs. She glanced at Daanish: he neither snored nor stirred. The boy would probably not wake up till evening. Settling on the rug, she began looking through the pictures.
The first few were of Daanish and a very handsome boy with golden hair in a beautiful garden. In some pictures the garden was covered in snow. In others it was ablaze with color. She smiled at her son lolling on the grass, frowned that in one he seemed to be smoking, and panicked when in yet another he appeared to be in a tall tree, balancing the way he always had on a bicycle: standing, and with hands in the air. But always, though dark, he was so good-looking: tall, with his father’s wide amber eyes and his suddenly boyish disposition.
Resisting the urge to wake him up with an embrace, Anu continued on. There was the golden boy with a pretty girl. Then there were girls with no boys. Then there were girls with Daanish.
Anu backtracked.
There was a girl leaning against a tree. Red and yellow leaves scattered all around her. Against the strong colors of her surroundings, she looked especially pale, glassy almost, like a fish. A white fish with hints of yellow on its gills, poised before an orange brocade. Her head was slightly tilted to the left so her right eye seemed larger than the other. It looked directly at the camera, a bluish-green eye.
Anu skipped to a picture with the same girl and Daanish. They were seated around a table, at some party it seemed. Daanish held the girl’s waist with one hand and a drink with the other.
She stared hard at the picture, and neither an eyelid nor a finger moved. Only her mind worked. She backtracked to a picture of another girl. This one was almost his height and had stringy brown hair. She seemed to be dancing in a field of corn and was not as shapely as the other one. Anu skipped ahead: there was Daanish and another tall girl in a dark room with candles all around, and tinsel stars hanging from above. She sat in his lap.
By the time Anu had sifted through all the photographs, she counted six different girls in close physical contact with her son. She thought hard. And came to a conclusion: at least there wasn’t only one. He was distracted, but probably not yet committed. His bride would just have to handle that. After all, she had.
Anu collected the photographs, camera and lacquer box. She contemplated the shell necklace but softening, left it on the table. With the three items in hand, she returned downstairs.
As lunchtime approached, the mourners began to leave. Soon she was left alone to feed the doctor’s sisters. They began complaining that no fresh food had been cooked that day. Her son had come back just that morning, what did they expect? She left them grumbling in the kitchen. In her bedroom she regarded the objects fished from Daanish’s life in his faraway world. She did two things. First, she telephoned Nissrine’s mother to say Nissrine should hasten her arrival at the readings. Second, she returned the lacquer box to Daanish’s room, but with some unexpected debris inside.
The following day, Anu wept proudly as Daanish came downstairs to meet the several dozen friends and relatives waiting to grieve with him. He embraced them all, quietly accepting their condolences, winning the approval of the stylish women who continued appraising him as he walked on. Nodding to each other they proclaimed, ‘A spitting image of the doctor.’ Since he’d left for America, these women had ceased snarling at her. Many had sons who’d not received a full scholarship, certainly not to any college as well-known as the one he attended. They knew this. It was the one aspect of her son’s going away that Anu enjoyed.
The men sat apart. Daanish snaked toward them, passing the girl Nissrine, her mother, and a friend of Nissrine’s called Dia. She was pleased to see Nissrine did not make eye contact with her son, but dismayed that the other girl examined him quite boldly. Even Pakistani girls were like that these days.
Anu watched as his bare feet padded over the white sheets. His toes had grown even hairier than before. He picked up a siparah, and settled down to read. His body began to sway with the rhythm of the recitation. Occasionally, he looked up and gestured reverently at a new arrival. Frequently, he caught her gaze and smiled ever so sweetly.
She knew he was not fluent in his reading of the Quran, and the three years away would certainly not have helped. She had wanted him to continue studying with a maulvi but the doctor had disallowed it after the boy turned twelve.
Now she watched as Daanish seemed visibly relieved when arriving at a familiar passage. She could feel it roll over his tongue smoothly like a jingle. At other times, his facial muscles tightened. It was the same with many of the women, including, to her dismay, Nissrine. She seemed quite hopeless really, her accent still British, her Urdu pathetic. But the family was a good one. There were rumors that her father’s business was dwindling but instead of returning to London, where it had thrived, the family was staying in Pakistan for the girls. Of this, surely the doctor would approve. He was probably chuckling as Nissrine struggled over a prayer for him. And what did he think of Anu arranging the meeting so soon after his death? Would he be surprised? Tickled? Was it eccentric enough for his pleasure or was that pleasure only to be instigated by him?
About one thing he would not approve: Nissrine was a distant relative of Anu’s, ensuring that Anu’s blood, not his, would continue. Her grandchildren would have the same fresh mountain glow on their brow as she did, not his swarthy, sea-faring pallor. And there was nothing he could do about it. Except observe.
Nissrine sat quietly with a pale peach dupatta covering her head. The color became her fine, white complexion, almond eyes, and rosebud mouth. She kept her head lowered. Surely Daanish would take to her. She was not blonde like that other one in the pictures, but she was graceful and demure. Every man wanted to come home to that.
The recitation was punctuated by women pulling their hair and crying, ‘Hai, hai.’ One she barely even knew now clutched her, kneading Anu’s head into a massive bosom. Anu choked, trying both to free her windpipe and straighten her neck.
But then something saved her. A scream. A real scream. The keening ceased abruptly. The wrestler released her. She surfaced again, gasping, adjusting her eyes to the light in the room, painfully bright after the darkness of the woman’s embrace. Tidying her hair she noticed most eyes rested on the lady-like Nissrine, who was shifting discreetly with an arched back. There were murmurs and nudges. Then, slowly, eyes still on the girl, the recitation continued and the wailing started again. Anu quickly moved five feet from the wrestler.
But there was another scream, louder this time.
It did come from Nissrine.
Anu gaped in astonishment as the girl reached frantically for the back of her kameez, pulling it away from her skin as if the cloth were on fire. Her peach dupatta lay bunched on the shrouded floor. Beside her,
