ON NINTH MOHARRAM she removes all jewelry—Dada’s watch, her small earrings that are shaped like little strawberries, her akhiq ring—and she sets them down at the edge of her desk. No adornments on ashura. It is still early evening. Once the stars are out, she will pray before they leave for mosque. There is a knock on her door and it is her brother.
“You’re awake,” she says. He has been asleep all day. She studies him as he approaches, he peers out the window, jumps onto her bed. He seems steadier on his feet.
“You see—that’s exactly why I never want to become an early riser. They just look down on people who sleep in.”
“It’s almost six.”
“It was a joke, Hadia.”
She considers making a joke in return, letting the moment pass easily and undisturbed; but instead she says, “Listen, I wanted to speak to you. You’re being reckless, Amar.”
She knows her father. His pride, his values, his adherence to the religious rules. They are more important than love. More important than loyalty to one’s child. She always sensed conditions to their parents’ love and so she did nothing to threaten it. Amar sensed the same and only thought to test its limits. See how far he could push them before they left him.
“If you don’t want to pray, don’t pray. If you don’t want to come to mosque, don’t come. But please. Have some respect. They will catch you and it will break their hearts.”
“There is nothing to catch.”
“I found the weed and the bottles. If something is wrong, I can help.”
For a moment he looks as though he has registered nothing she has said, and then, as though it took a minute for her words to reach him, his face softens. She thought he would be angry at her for trespassing, but he does not appear to be.
“No one can help me.”
A break in his tone. She thinks of how they are told that God wants to help His creations, how He says: take one step toward me and I will take ten steps toward you. She is only human, but still, if her brother would only speak to her, be honest with her, she would step a hundred times toward him. He studies her for a long time.
“You think it’s okay,” he says, looking at her the way he would look at a friend, “but they don’t.”
He gives a venomous look to the closed door, where on the other side and across the hallway, their parents are setting out their rugs for maghrib prayer.
“I never said I think it is okay. It doesn’t change how I think of you. But I can’t say the same for them.”
It was still the two of them against their parents. It would always be.
“But who will tell them? Not me.”
“If you don’t be more careful, no one will have to. Amar, is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No.”
He clasps his hands together. He narrows his gaze.
“We can talk about her, Ami.”
She uses the name Mumma had used for him when he was younger, and she would overhear it and wish that she too had a nickname.
He stands abruptly. She steps back without meaning to.
“Don’t ever,” he says, so sharply she is afraid he might push her out of his way. She is suddenly still. Outside, it is now dark. He does not finish his thought, not after seeing the look on her face, how she was, for a moment, afraid of him. Amar turns to head for the door. She could let her anger keep her quiet. She could be cold to him and not speak to him for the remainder of her visit.
“Amar, wait.”
He stops and turns to face her but he does not look up.
“I’m not saying don’t do this. I am only saying don’t go so far that you don’t know how to come back home again.”
She has reached him. She can see it from the way his eyebrows knit together before his face opens, unguarded, to her. She only needs him to nod or offer any reply that suggests he understands.
“Hadia,” he says softly, in a tone that says she is the one who is failing to understand. “I have never felt at home here.”
* * *
AMAR IS STILL sleeping. It is the day after ashura, three in the afternoon, and in a few days she will leave to begin her new rotation. Huda is still at mosque, meeting with her Sunday school students and cleaning up after a play she organized for them. Hadia peeks from the doorway into her mother’s room and sees that she is napping.
“Hadia? It’s all right. I’m not asleep. Come in,” Mumma says, even though her eyes are closed.
Hadia joins her. Mumma opens her eyes and stares up at the ceiling. When Hadia saw her mother cry as a little girl, she would begin to cry instantly. Even if it was a scene in a movie that had touched her mother—it did not matter. Mumma is quiet in a way that tells Hadia not to speak. The bedcovers rustle under the movement of her head and she is aware even of the scrape of her eyelashes against the pillowcase.
“I did everything right,” Mumma says.
Hadia does not ask her to clarify. She is nervous—Mumma spoke in English. Not that she could not, but that the language between them, the casual and comfortable one, when they were at home or in public, was always, unless Hadia did not know the right words, Urdu.
“I married when my parents said it was time to marry. I prayed almost every single prayer. Even the ones I missed I made sure to make up later. I never said no to my parents. Not once, not even ‘uff.’ They said he lives in America. I said, whatever is your wish, whatever you say is best.
“I could have gone—like you—to more school and more school. I could have said this is my life. This is my room. My privacy. My business.
“I did not get one job. Your baba said, ‘If I can support you, Layla, why don’t you stay at home with the kids?’ And I agreed. I would stay with you three. I wanted to. I was lucky; other mothers cannot even if they want to, but I wanted to. I was with each of you every day you were home. Never let any of you sleep over at a friend’s house. Never left any of you in a park alone. Do you know what happens to children in this world? What this world is like? When you played outside I listened for cars—to make sure they did not, what’s the word—screech. Some parents go together—do you know that? They go on trips or to the movies. Not us. We never. Let’s go as a family, your baba and I always said. Let’s go to a movie the kids will enjoy. Put you three in Sunday school. We only missed a weekend if one of you was sick. Drop and pick and drop and pick from school. Three times a week I drove you to Quran class. I waited for two hours in the car because the Arabic teacher lived far away. Every time Amar began to hate one of the Quran teachers, I found a new one, we drove even farther. We went to ziyarat. Every week we went to mosque. We were never a family that came only once or twice a year. There are families like that. Tell me, did I ever give you or Huda anything I did not give him?”
She stops speaking and Hadia is so still she can’t exhale for fear an answer will be asked of her. Then Mumma says, in Urdu this time, “Everything. Everything we could think of doing that was good, we tried to do.” And Hadia relaxes to hear it in Urdu: it doesn’t change the words but it does change their effect, and Mumma covers her eyes with her hand again and whispers, “He hasn’t woken up all day. When I go into his room and shake him, when he opens his eyes to mine—it’s like he’s not even there. It is like there is no one behind his eyes.”