WHEN HADIA FIRST applied to college I could not imagine allowing her to move away. We wanted her to get engaged. We wanted her to be settled and safe—with someone who would prioritize caring for her and providing for her, as I had for my family. But when she rushed inside to tell us about the program she had been accepted into, I felt all my discomfort and fear rise up. It was not the path for her I had anticipated and not the path I preferred. But how could I be the one to stand in her way? My daughter intended on navigating the world respectably, accomplishing something good, with her intelligence, her will. The night that we found out, Layla had to be convinced. She was not worried for Hadia’s safety, as I was, but rather that Hadia had disregarded our wishes for her life, and from what we could see, was doing well despite it.
“If she stays home, if she accepts any of these perfectly good proposals, I will know how to guide her,” Layla said to me as we lay wide awake in bed, unable to fall asleep. “If she begins her own way…I won’t know how.”
And I did not know how to answer her. I searched for a way to deal with my own discomfort quietly. The day I dropped her off at her dorm, she slept the entire car ride and I drove in the dark watching the sky slowly lighten. I stopped for coffee, something I never drink, and each hour I drove I thought, this is one hour I will have to drive back without her. This is one more hour that will separate me from my daughter. I kept looking over at her. She was wearing my father’s watch and a blue button-up. I want to be professional, she had explained to me the night before, excited when deciding what to wear. As I drove my fears multiplied: Whether she could handle her studies. Whether she would take on too many classes at once. Whether she would have friends—oddly, I worried equally that she would not, and that she would. Whether she would know what to do when she encountered someone who pressured her to sin. But it was not until my own fears were echoed in comments from my friends that I found myself facing them and finding comfort. People would question me, how did you let your daughter move so far? Too much independence is not good for a woman. To protect her from their judgment, I would defend her, and only after I defended her aloud again and again did I realize that I believed what I told them. “Hadia will be fine. My daughter is brave and capable. She will know what to do. I trust her.”
Now both my daughters work, and it is not so much that I have relented and accepted this, but that these are the very things that have become a great source of pride for me. They have shown me what to value that I did not know before them to value. When Huda calls me and says she might not be able to come visit because she is working, I am proud that she is doing something with her life that gives to others. That she teaches children, and from the stories we hear, is very good at it. Or that Hadia is regarded no differently at what she does than Tariq, and what does she do but care for human lives? She holds an intimate knowledge of what is unseen to the rest of us—what it might mean when I struggle to find balance, what it might mean if I get sharp headaches—and after asking a few questions and running tests, she can eliminate what it is not and like a hawk swoop down to claim what it is. Had they married the men we wanted for them years ago, we would have been happy, but if, God forbid, their husbands had been unable to provide, or if destiny had dealt a difficult card and their marriages had fallen apart, I would have sat here today, days before my surgery, and I would not be at peace. If I do go, I know that my daughters will be fine, as they are not only cared for but also completely capable of caring for themselves, providing for themselves, and also for Layla, and also for my grandchildren.
2.
THERE IS AN OFFICIAL KNOCK AND I LOOK UP, THINKING IT might be Dr. Edwards coming to check in the night before the surgery, but it is Huda, my Huda, smiling at me gently and sort of sadly. I did not know I wanted so badly to see her until she was there, unflinching at the sight of me in a hospital gown, wires taped to my arm, in a way that even Layla does not muster for my sake, and even Hadia breaks from, despite this being her profession. These are the moments when Huda’s presence is most appreciated. I tell her she did not have to come, that everyone has made this into a bigger fuss than it need be. Dr. Edwards himself said that the surgery will be fairly simple. It is only Hadia who insists there are other factors complicating my health and only Hadia anyone listens to anymore. You were never one for the “proper way,” and so when Hadia says I must stay here, must change my diet, and Layla agrees, and even my grandson says please, Nana, eat what they tell you to, I think of you, and how you might have had it in you to side with me, if only because it meant disagreeing with the rest of them.
“Of course I came,” she says as she takes a seat on the chair beside me.
Soon, Hadia appears and Layla too. Tahira rushes forward and climbs into Huda’s lap. All the women of my life. Tariq is at soccer practice with Abbas, Hadia explains, and Huda tells me that Jawad had to stay in Arizona but sends his regards. I hated the clamoring of people before. Now it is silence that unsettles me. Hadia holds on to Huda’s shoulders and leans into her and says to me, “Happy with your surprise?”
“I am happy,” I say.
I am not afraid. For four days I have known the surgery was approaching and I have prepared for it. Tahira leans back against Huda’s chest. Huda runs her hand through her hair. I am amazed at the trust between them: Tahira sees Huda only a few days each year and yet she knows somehow that this is her mother’s sister, and she gives love to her that she keeps from others we see regularly. Huda is a wonderful aunt. Perhaps extraordinary—the limitless space she gives them in her heart because she has no children of her own, though we’ve prayed every time we pray for anything at all.
“How long is your stay?” I ask.
“Just until Sunday.”
“Class is okay without you?”
She nods. Tahira lights up, remembering their game, and looks up at Huda. “Amijaan, can you give me assignment?” she asks.
This is how they play. Huda does anything Tahira asks. The same could be said for any of us. We become teachers for her or puppy dogs or patients, Tahira the doctor, asking on a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt? Behind them, I catch a look in Layla’s eyes, and I know she is wishing for more moments like this one, all of us together. I have not voiced to her, or even fully to myself, my recent and recurring wish, that all of us together again includes you.
* * *
WHEN YOU WERE almost four your mother became pregnant. Despite how much you begged for a younger brother, your mother and I had not intended on having any more children. The night you were born returned often in my nightmares. If the dream had been particularly vivid, or if we had fought badly the day before, I would not be able to help myself from stepping into your bedroom, taking a seat on the floor, placing a finger in front of your open mouth until your warm breath touched my skin. Having feared the worst, I would naturally fear for Hadia and Huda too, and check on each of them sleeping, breathing.
I was nervous when we first learned Layla was pregnant. Her pregnancy with you had been difficult. My job required me to be away for days at a time, I would come home not knowing how sick she had been. Every time she lifted the Quran above my head for me to walk out beneath, I would look back at her, fresh-faced and chubby when carrying you in a way that she hadn’t been with the girls, and I would wonder if I was shirking my duties, prioritizing work over caring for her. I feared that though she never said as much, she resented how I left week after week. But I worked for her, I told myself, I worked for Hadia and Huda, I worked for you even before I knew you.
This is good news, Layla said the night we found out, why do you look pareshan? I listened to her. We were lucky. Soon, we could not imagine anything else. You three were too young to inform right away, and we decided to guard the news in our hearts for a while. When my forehead touched the cool surface of the sajdagah, I had a new prayer on my list: for the child’s birth to come and pass without complication, and for it to be a healthy boy.