AS MUMMA INSTRUCTED, Hadia sat far enough away from Tariq that two hands could rest between them. She made sure to not laugh too loudly, to not touch him, to not appear, in Mumma’s words, shamelessly eager to be married. It was an absurd expectation placed on women: that they agree to marriage without appearing as though they wanted it. That they at least display innocence. Hadia never understood what was so threatening about a woman experiencing a desire and being unafraid to express it. But on the stage now, she complied with Mumma’s wishes, remembering how Mumma had told her, “You chose your husband. He is not Shia. Please do us the kindness of not making it appear so obviously a love marriage.” She was getting married to who she wanted. Her mother might say it like an accusation, but the fact remained true. She had won the biggest battle: the battle that would determine the rest of her life.
She and Tariq had just begun to see each other when Amar ran away. Even now, she was not sure if it had been a coincidence, that what had been previously dormant in her friendship with Tariq had suddenly bloomed and intensified. At first Hadia had hesitated. To be with him. To maybe marry him. He was not Hyderabadi and he was not Shia. He did not speak Urdu. And though he was, in many ways, familiar to her, he was also relaxed in his approach to his faith in a way that was new to Hadia. He had smoked weed in college and had tried alcohol. He did not feel guilty when they began to spend time alone together, the way she had at first. He prayed but struggled to maintain a disciplined routine.
Next to him, Hadia became more aware of her choices, of what was important for her to keep and what had just been an inherited, unexamined habit. On and on she explored and was thrilled at the exploration. Fasting was important. Cursing did not matter. She deeply respected hijab but did not wear it for herself. Her faith became a highly personal affair: what did it matter what others believed? She had friends of other faiths or no faith at all. She could be in a room where people were drinking. She would sip water and make no fuss of it. She could hold in her heart a belief in Islam as well as the unwavering belief that every human had the right to choose who they loved, and how, and that belief was in exact accordance with her faith: that it is the individual’s right to choose, and the individual’s duty to empathize with one another. Didn’t the Quran itself contain the verse, We have created you from many tribes, so that you may know one another.
Her family had impressed upon her a specific belief and in a specific way—and as a young woman she had not known, when she touched her forehead to the ground, if she was praying to God because Mumma had reminded her to, or if it was her own desire. Being with Tariq allowed her to stretch herself while also remaining fundamentally herself. It was not that they made the same choices so much as he understood hers, and she his. He might not accompany her to mosque during the first ten days of Moharram, but he did not turn the radio on when they drove together in those days either, and for her, on ashura, he wore black. Theirs was a love that acknowledged the individual as separate from the whole, from the family as a unit.
Now Tariq’s sisters’ heels tapped against the stairs as they made their way up to the stage. His sisters hugged her first, then Tariq, and then sat on the couches beside them that were set up for the guests. The wedding would go on this way—the guests would come up in clusters, sit with them briefly, and then leave the stage. She leaned in to wipe lipstick from the chin of Isra, Tariq’s youngest sister. Hadia felt at ease with them. She wanted Tariq to feel it too, she wanted him to meet Amar and think, as she did now with Isra, that this family will be mine, that any brother of my wife is a brother of mine.
* * *
“ARE THE APPETIZERS no good?” Mumma asked Amar as he set the plate down to be cleared. She watched him intently and he remembered why he had sought out food in the first place: he had downed one whiskey and wanted to eat something to mask the smell. He turned his face from her before he answered.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Everything is all right?”
“Yes.”
“Sachi?” she asked in Urdu, truly? It was one word but it had the effect of implying that his first response had not been honest, and that he needed to be pressed for truth.
“Truly.”
Mumma smiled.
“I would like to introduce you to some of my friends,” she said.
“Friends?” he teased her. He had never known Mumma to have friends. She had women from the community who gathered by habit in the same mosque halls for the same events, who had formed something like a friendship after years of routine.
She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the main hall. “You think you’re the only one with friends?” she joked.
Amar suddenly felt sorry for his mother, sorry that maybe the only thing she had in common with these women was that they had migrated to the same place, sought the same shelter.
“Ami?” Mumma asked, her voice soft, “where should we say you have been?”
His stomach tightened. He traced his teeth with his tongue for any taste of the drink. He had arrived at the last minute. Partially so he would not be able to change his mind, and partially so they would have less time to speak of it.
“Your father and I—after—we began to tell people you had gone to India, to be with my sister.”
He had made it difficult for them. They lied for him and were not asking him for an explanation.
“I can tell them that.”
She held on tight to his arm and then let go.
“Only if they ask.”
He nodded. He felt at the edge of discomfort, made worse by how desperately Mumma was trying to protect him from discomfort. He could lean into the feeling as it advanced toward him or he could deny it and remain present.
“You have a choice, Amar,” Hadia had advised him years ago. “All of us are in this same boat, but you are the only one who chooses to thrash about, making unnecessary waves. You can be still. You can go with the flow. That way you’ll save energy to swim when you need to.”
She was prone to using one metaphor after another and sometimes the connections between them did not make sense. It would have been more effective if Hadia had used only one, but he never told her this. He could be still. Go where the night took him.
* * *
LAYLA DID NOT like lying. If she were to be honest with herself, there was no point: nothing hidden remained so, time had a way of unearthing the truth. She would rather not speak than speak falsely. She imagined what others might say behind her back: poor Layla and Rafiq, what a test has befallen them—saying their son has been in India when everyone knows he ran away, became an unbeliever, gave them no account of his secret life.
But he was her son. It did not matter what he had done or where he had been. Not when he was back now. A table of her friends had unwrapped the golden favor boxes and were unfolding the ayaat Huda had designed and printed about the love and mercy God placed between the hearts of couples.
“What a beautiful wedding this is,” they said to her, and stood to greet her. The chairs had been draped with white cloth, tied together with a golden bow. She hugged them one after another, taking in the varied scents of their perfumes.
She touched Amar’s arm and he stepped forward.
“This is my son, Amar.”
It had been years since she had spoken the words.
“Mashallah he looks just like Rafiq,” one said.
“Exact,” another agreed, pinching her fingers together for emphasis.
Amar lowered his head and lifted his cupped hand to meet it. It was a small gesture, adaab, but Layla was instantly moved by how he had thought to do so without her reminding him. Her friends reached out to touch his head and they all said gee te raho, keep living, keep living.