“If the apple is chopped then the children get to feed it to the horse longer,” she said, nodding to where you three waited for me at the edge of the driveway, Huda already jumping. She always thought of you three. She always thought of everything.
That evening, the horse trotted to me as soon as I approached the fence. I reached out and touched the white diamond between his eyes. The horse blinked at me and there was something gentle and almost human about him. A very dangerous anger and ignorance has been unleashed, I thought. My thoughts felt foolish and inadequate against it. I was just one man. My voice would be like shouting into the wind, only for the wind to suck it in and carry it away to nowhere. The horse kicked his hooves against the dirt and dust rose. And all of a sudden I pictured your face from years ago, when you were in seventh grade and I watched you approach me after you had been suspended, your eye swollen and your white shirt stained with blood, and that blend of absolute love and complete terror I had never felt for anyone before that moment. My breath had caught in me. I had not even known I had been capable of such a reaction. I trembled. My Abbas was five years old, he was as confident and curious as any other child, he was about to begin his first year of kindergarten, I was his second-favorite person in the world, and I was not sure what to explain to anyone in a way that would protect him. And you, wherever you were, even though I could not accurately picture your face past twenty-three, I knew the faint scar above your eyebrow, and the fainter one beneath your lip. God, I thought, it feels tonight like the forces of the world are closing in on me, the way darkness closes in to become night, slowly and then all at once, and I do not know what I can do or say so that no one will ever think to strike my Abbas’s face in the future, as my own son’s face had once been struck, by others, by me.
* * *
THE MORNING OF the surgery, I wake mid-thought, as though I had spent my sleeping hours asking questions and attempting answers in my mind. What do I owe? Who have I wronged? The surgery will take no more than four hours. Hadia wheels me into a small room and together we wait for the cue from Dr. Edwards. She tells me that as soon as I am settled with Dr. Edwards, she will join Layla and Huda in the waiting room.
“You won’t be needing me in there as much as Mumma will,” she says with a smile.
My children have been shielded from aging. I am impressed by them now, by their maturity, by their seriousness, by their consideration to care for me in ways I have not asked them to.
“Are you nervous?” Hadia asks.
I shake my head. The room we wait in is bare. Nothing about hospitals is designed to comfort the patient.
“Hadia,” I begin, before I realize what I am trying to say. “I let my anger control me too often.”
She opens her mouth to interrupt me but I raise my hand to stop her.
“Let me say it. I know I had a temper. I know it hurt you.”
Hadia is still, and then, she thanks me. “Anything else you want to get off your chest?” she jokes. She takes a sip of her coffee, which battles with the disinfectant to be the strongest smell in the room. Then she reaches over and places her hand over mine. “Just focus on getting better, Baba.”
She glances at her watch. When I first saw her wearing it again, years after it had gone missing, she explained its reappearance before I even asked. Still, I’ve wondered.
“Have you heard from Amar?”
I say it out loud. Just like that. As though only a week or two has passed, as though I failed to reach you on the phone after trying a few times and thought to ask if she has had any success. Any lightness that was in the air between us a moment ago vanishes. She does what she does now that she has become self-conscious of how much her hair has grayed; she runs her hand through it as if to comb it. My heart begins thudding.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asks me in Urdu.
“Does he know I’m here?”
I didn’t expect my voice to break. But it has taken years for me to draw up courage to ask. She shakes her head. Wraps both hands around her coffee, cradling it.
“Do you know where he is?”
Again she shakes her head. When she finally looks at me there is fear in her eyes—of what, I’m not sure.
“Are you in contact with him?” I ask.
She sighs. I watch her as though any action of hers will give me a clue to unpack later. Her pager beeps. It is time to wheel me into the room where Dr. Edwards is waiting, but I have not taken my eyes off her.
“No,” she tells me finally, “we are not.”
I feel my shoulders relax, or maybe they are sighing, or maybe they are collapsing. Maybe they are just giving up. I was not afraid before but now I am afraid. Afraid that if I wake in a few hours or do not wake, if I recover for years or just for a few more months, I will not be any closer to knowing if you are well in the world. Hadia stands. She reminds me again of the plan and procedure and I nod along. This is the easy part. This is nothing. Before she takes the handles of the wheelchair, she kneels in front of me so we are face-to-face. An entire streak of her hair is gray. We have changed. Now she knows I think of you, now she knows I wonder. I have given away the only power I had in this situation at all, the power of appearing unaffected. She seems aware of this as she studies my face, her eyes very big, copies of your mother’s, ready to welcome anyone they look upon. One side of her mouth lifts into a smile so she looks like she almost pities me. She leans forward with her index finger and begins to trace a shaky Ya Ali on my forehead, as your mother would do for each of us, when we were vulnerable and in need of reassurance. She means to prepare me for what I am about to face, to give me a shield of protection and strength. But instead of strength I feel a wave of gratitude so overwhelming I am weakened before it, and I know that I did try my best to be a father to my children, I did, and I did fail, in some instances so completely that I do not know where my own son is, and he does not know I am here, moments away from being wheeled into my surgery, but I have also been successful, I have passed down to Hadia what I have known to be valuable, and when she pulls away her finger I open my eyes and blink at my own hands, so helpless in my lap, unable to look up at her.
3.
TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY SINCE THE SURGERY I HAVE TO MYSELF. Layla has been relentless in her care for me during the months of recovery: she has come along on every walk, accompanied me on every errand, interrupted any stretch of sweet silence to ask how I am, no matter how clearly Dr. Edwards and Hadia assure her that all is well. But she had been invited to a ladies’ jashan today and I urged her to go, and the moment she drove away, I snuck from our home as well. The sun is setting when I turn onto Hadia’s street. Soon, I will have to explain my absence, but for now I enjoy the freedom, the familiarity of the route, and the promise of seeing my grandchildren and presenting Abbas with the gift I bought him earlier today.
You would like Abbas. He looks like you. Sometimes the resemblance is so striking I can’t take my eyes off of him. It is not just his features that alarm me, but his mannerisms are also shockingly yours, though he has never met you to copy you. I know your mother realizes it too. I can tell by the way she reaches out to touch his hair. How she glances over at him when he has fallen asleep on the couch.
He asks about you sometimes; he is the only one who does. He will point to photographs of you that your mother, years ago, insisted on leaving there, untouched unless to be dusted, and ask a question. Only if he and I are alone will I attempt an answer for him. He asks the kind of questions you used to ask me, odd and pointless, questions I would often be too busy for, or find too silly to answer. But I’ve found my patience for him is boundless.