“Of course you didn’t,” Sister Mehvish says, and some of the students snicker.
The only empty seat is directly behind the eldest Ali boy’s. He leans back in his chair, turns to face her when she sits, and she catches some sympathy in his eyes—but by the time she has settled and he has turned to face the teacher, she realizes it could easily have been pity. He rocks in his chair throughout the lesson, taps his pen against his blank binder paper, and she finds it hard to concentrate on the Arabic words Sister Mehvish is writing on the chalkboard. She remembers his arm around Amar, the points he scored, the moment he looked to her from the court, the vein in his neck, the skin revealed when he lifted his shirt—she feels instantly and intensely guilty for storing away that brief glimpse of his skin, especially ashamed that it has come back to her in a class for learning the holy language, holy texts. She does not recognize herself, and tugging on her loose sleeve so it covers her hand, she does not know if she likes herself. But he has a small speck of a birthmark where his hair meets his neck in the shape of a strawberry, and every so often he runs his hand through his hair, then lets his hand rest at the back of his head, so close that she would hardly have to stretch to touch him if she dared. Twice, she thinks he will turn to look at her, but he does not.
When the class is over everyone stands, no one faster than Hadia. The eldest Ali boy turns to her, nods toward Sister Mehvish, and rolls his eyes. That drum in her body again. Sister Mehvish has her back turned to the class and is erasing the words that look like scribbles from the board, creating a cloud of white dust. Hadia looks back at him. He has not looked away from her. He pulls an almost empty packet of gum out from his pocket and removes the last piece, a stick wrapped in silver foil, and extends it to her, his palm open, his eyebrows raised. Hadia reaches for it, her fingers lightly graze the surface of his palm. She wants to say thank you but does not, she can feel her face getting warmer, she fears he will notice a change in color, so she offers a small, quick smile and walks away. Her classmates have not noticed and Hadia looks up to where she imagines God is, sometimes a spot on the ceiling, other times a patch of brilliant blue in the sky, to thank Him for the moment passed unseen. She doesn’t want to be the subject of the next story they share in the bathroom: Did you see how he offered Hadia a stick of gum?
In the corridor light, the silver wrapping of the gum gleams. She tucks it into her pocket like a secret.
* * *
THAT EVENING, SHE sits in the living room armchair and runs her finger over half of the silver gum wrapper in her hand. The other half is taped to the ceiling above her bed, the interior inside out, so the white blends with the ceiling paint, unnoticed. On it, she had drawn a small strawberry. Most days even she would not notice it there, but there it would be.
Her mother is setting the table for dinner. The smell of kheema and fried tomatoes sizzling fills the room. Amar is bothering Baba while Baba is trying to read the newspaper.
“Why don’t you wear it every day?” Amar asks Baba, pointing to the watch on his wrist.
It had belonged to Baba’s father, their dada. They asked to be shown it some nights because it was the only piece of Baba that had been there since before them, and because Baba was proud when he lifted it from the box to polish it. Dada was a mystery to them, just a photograph in Baba’s office, or the few anecdotes Baba would share, and so the watch itself felt like a mystery, kept in its box unless Baba wore it.
“It still feels like my father’s,” Baba says to Amar. “I just inherited it, when my Baba passed away. It had been a gift to my father from his father.”
“Does it always go to fathers?” Amar asks.
“You mean sons,” Baba says.
Hadia knows the story. The watch had been gifted to her grandfather when he went to Cambridge to study law. Her great-grandfather had wanted his son to have a Swiss watch, like the men with whom he imagined his son would be studying.
“Hardly anyone studied in England then,” Baba tells him. “He returned home a lawyer.”
Baba flips the page of the newspaper, and then extends his arm to Amar so he can get a closer look. Baba says to him, “This watch will work forever. It will never stop.”
Hadia smiles from her couch. She likes thinking of her ancestors as people who had done something with their lives, that her grandfather had been brave to study in England and that her father had been brave to move here, each of them doing what they could so that she and her siblings could now be brave in their lives.
“Where are you lost?” Mumma snaps at her in Urdu. “Put water on the table.”
Hadia stands reluctantly to help her mother. Huda is setting the table slowly. Huda was lazy with her tasks; it was always apparent when she did not care about what she was doing. Hadia’s efforts never changed; she was determined to do everything well, even the tasks she hated. Amar refused to approach what he did not care for at all. But when he did care, he put more of himself into the task than Hadia ever could. Amar begins to throw pillows into the air before catching them. Baba continues reading. He has an angry look on his face and he is moving his hand up and down his eyebrow, and she wonders what is happening in the world that is worrying him. Hadia brings down the jug and fills it with ice and then water, listens to the way the cubes begin to crackle, which is her favorite part of this task. Amar is excited in a way that he is usually not, and she wonders if it is because he was included with the older boys today.
Sometimes, Amar acts so despondent that Hadia wants to hold on to his shoulders and tell him to stop. He never seems to enjoy being at home, but complains whenever he is dragged to school, to Sunday school, to mosque on weeknights. He complains until something in their father snaps and he strikes at Amar—with a look, a sharp shout, sometimes a hand—a reaction that silences his protests but alters nothing in his attitude. She is beginning to wonder if Amar acts this way on purpose, just to see how angry he can make Baba. Mumma and Baba have gone to countless appointments with his teachers, but little has changed and Hadia often overhears them talking about him on the other side of their bedroom door.
But tonight, Amar offers to help their mother. Mumma looks to him and smiles.
“You don’t have to today,” Mumma says, “because you were so good to ask.”