Then there was a hiss, and a streak of smoke in the sky, and Tariq pulled her close and kissed the top of her head, said surprise just as the firework boomed, and the sound drummed in her whole body and the glitter descended and disappeared.
Hadia had told Tariq about the first time she ever saw fireworks. How, even now, anytime she saw them it made her feel the way she had that night, full of wonder and excitement about all the sights life could offer her. There was another and another and another. Her heart was beating very fast. All their faces were lit up by colors: blue and red and green. Once, she had sat at the dinner table and overheard a fight between Amar and Baba. Baba’s voice had shaken the beads of the chandelier. In that moment, Hadia had wished for exactly this, exactly what was being granted to her now: a new family. Her own. A new window from which to look out and think, I am home. A firework that reminded her of a rocket zipped up in coils and exploded in coils. She had seen it somewhere before: Amar was laughing in that memory. When the chandelier shook, this had been her wish. Now everything she had ever wanted had become hers. And where was her brother, and was he close enough to look up and see the rocket firework that somehow she knew he liked? She tightened her hold on her husband’s hand. She loved him. She would start her own family with him. The last of the fireworks dissolved. The sky was all smoke. Had she reached out for Amar’s hand beneath the dining table that night? Had she done as much? She could not remember now.
PART FOUR
1.
WHEN YOU WERE BORN, YOU DID NOT CRY. YOUR FACE turned blue, almost purple, and the relief I had felt at seeing you, at realizing you had entered the world, plummeted when the doctors and nurses huddled around your body, separating me from you. Your mother raised her head to ask if everything was all right. Her voice was pitched high but her expression oddly calm, as though she had foreseen such complications. The doctor did not reply. A nurse’s sneaker squeaked against the linoleum floor. The clock ticked. Only then did I realize you had not marked your entrance into this world with the same screams as your sisters before you.
That is how you came into our lives. I held my breath. I did not move. I stood between your mother and the doctor examining you. Unable to look at either, unable to do anything but focus on my gloved hands held out helplessly in front of me. Because you could not breathe easily, I could not either.
Your mother regards it as our miracle from God, that soon your lungs were emptied and you began gasping for air, crying even. And I too thanked God, knelt in sajda-shukr once the nurses and doctors took you and gave us privacy. But when my forehead touched the cold floor, I wondered if it had been an omen, though I have not told Layla this, have not told anyone.
* * *
NOW I AM watching the clouds quicken across the sky from my hospital window, cities away from the one I swear I was just in, pulling tight the gloves over my wrists, slipping my arms through a paper gown, going to Layla to be beside her. In that room I was a young father—I had cut the cord connecting you, my third child, to my wife. You were a boy. It was my one thought that instant before the doctor took you. I was a father to a son. It has been thirty-some years but it has felt like blinking, I am awake in one room, I close my eyes, and by the time I have opened them again I am here, I am insisting on helping myself when Hadia steps forward to peel back the foil wrapper of applesauce.
“Bas,” I say to her, holding up my hand, “this changes nothing.”
She is not convinced. She raises her eyebrows like she does when she says—okay, Baba—her bad habit of stretching out the okay. But instead of saying it she bites her tongue, and though this is the respect I have wanted, it now makes me uneasy. Her beeper buzzes and she sighs, glances at it and says she will leave me in a minute, and soon after a nurse will take me for an MRI.
This is my first time seeing my daughter at work. She is professional. Her voice, when speaking to other staff members, is commanding. She wears a spotless white coat that seems big on her frame. Her stethoscope is turquoise, curled and tucked into a pocket where our last name is stitched in blue thread.
Recently, I had begun to feel a headache so blinding I could no longer ignore it, and though I told Hadia all was fine, Layla must have described enough symptoms that they alarmed her: how I became disoriented when I stood, how I waited a moment to take a step, afraid I would lose my balance. Hadia told us to drive to the hospital where she worked, so her colleague could admit me and arrange for some tests. She assured me I would be in good hands. That she trusted the staff here. That the neurologist was one of the best in the state. And that way Layla could stay with Hadia and help with our grandkids, and they could easily visit. At this, I relented.
I have been treated well. Which is a relief to me, not necessarily because of the comfort their generosity provides me, but because it has given me a sense of how Hadia treats the people around her, and how she is regarded and respected in return. You must be Hadia’s father, some say when they approach with their plastic water cups and blood pressure machines, and they speak kindly of her qualities or tell me that I have done well in raising her.
“Will you bring them tonight?” I ask, when she stands to her feet.
“We’ll see, Baba. Abbas has soccer practice. First let’s concentrate on getting the tests done.”
I sink back into the uncomfortable bed.
“But that reminds me,” she says, and pulls pieces of folded paper from her pocket and hands them to me. I hold on to them, but do not look down at them; I want to save them until I am alone again. I want to ask her if I can go home after the MRI, but I know what she will tell me: how they are monitoring my blood pressure, which is too high, how they want to “get to the bottom of” the lack of balance, that it is good for me to be here until then, and that I should trust her. She is stern when she speaks with me about all this, but gentle, using a voice I have not encountered. Perhaps she is taking full advantage of this shift, and I wonder if I would not feel as uncomfortable, had I seen my own parents grow older, had I been able to care for them and find there is no shame in the matter.
“If I can’t get away between patients, I’ll be back with the results of the MRI,” she says.
She smiles at me. I am so easily moved these days that I have to steady myself at the sight of her. You would be amazed to see her now. How she has matured, how she carries herself with confidence, how an entire streak of her hair has turned gray and how it suits her. She holds my hand for a minute and kisses its knuckle before letting go—a gesture that is intended to be loving, but I feel less love and more nervous, wondering what her fears might be. When she is gone, the sounds of the hospital return: my monitor reminding me of the beating of my own heart, the rustle of the rough blanket against my papery gown, the nurses talking together in the hallway, the sound of wheelchairs or walkers making their way across the tile.
* * *