In the library I read article after article. I stayed away from the books. The pictures of the needles and spoons and bruised arms made me queasy. I rushed once to the bathroom and knelt on the tile floor by the toilet seat, thinking I was about to throw up, but I only breathed heavily. But this was very new behavior, I told myself. We had noticed just in time. I researched facilities that could help us. I even imagined that if you did not trust us, we could send you to live with Hadia. I could give up all hold over you, all expectations, just to keep you. I wrote a list titled PLACES, I did not want to think of it as rehab. The best ones closest to us. I called after a price. It would be a dent. One that made me sweat. Layla and I could sell the house earlier than we intended. I could keep working for a few extra years. Fine, it was all fine, it would all be well.
That night, that last night, Hadia told me she would call her attending to say she would miss Monday and Tuesday. She would tell them she was having a family emergency. The word emergency made me again feel as I had in the library, like the world was spinning around me and I was going to be sick. I told her my idea. She did not agree with me right away, but she did not disagree either. I could tell she could not decide if I was a part of the problem or trying to solve it.
“You didn’t knock,” you said, when I went to your room. I had knocked. I took a seat on your bed and watched you look for something.
You raised your eyebrows. There was something harder about you. We had often disagreed, but now there was a layer of coldness, a shield you had formed against me. It was as if you were not there, or the part of you that was there was not affected by anything I could do or say. I would be careful about this, I would not, as Hadia expected, get angry. I had spent my life getting angry at you and look at where that had gotten us.
“Mumma’s making dinner,” I tried, wanting to offer something neutral.
“I’m not hungry.”
You had your back to me.
“Amar, can you sit next to me?”
It was the last thing you expected. You paused your search, considered my invitation. You were still there, I thought, I could still reach you, you took a seat by me. I took out my paper. My hands shook.
“We do not have to talk about it. But we can send you here, it can help you stop.”
“Stop what?” you said. You glanced over the list.
I did not want to say it. I found I could not. My mouth became dry. You shook your head as if I had insulted you and you jumped from the bed.
“You went through my stuff,” you said, and screamed cuss words.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, holding my hand out to you, “I’m not angry. I want to help you.”
You kicked your desk chair and it fell over and crashed against the wall. You had begun yelling.
“Amar, I’m not angry with you,” I said it again.
You walked out into the hallway. I followed you. I stuffed my paper in my pocket. I stepped ahead, and stood in front of you, to block you from going downstairs. I reached out and put my hand on your shoulder.
“You can’t control me,” you shouted.
“Amar, you can’t do this. It is bad for your body, for your soul. It is haram.”
“I don’t care about haram or halal.”
You had acted that way but you had never said that before. I did not understand. One could be a bad Muslim, but one could not disregard, so totally, what was right and what was wrong.
“How can you say that? You do not care if you go to hell?”
I was yelling. I knew I was.
“I don’t believe in heaven or hell. I’m not a Muslim.”
There it was. Of all the things I thought might be possible when I stood in the hallway of the hospital and watched you, wrapped in a blanket, of all you might do or become, this had not even occurred to me. It was the farthest outcome from my mind. The most chilling of verses—We will send them signs and they will still deny—had become my own son. Amar, I know what I said next. You know what I said, and we both know what followed.
You stood there as in shock as I was. Your eyes were wide. You looked so afraid. It’s okay, I had the impulse to reach out and tell you then, it’s okay. It will be okay, I promise you. These things happen. You went to your room. I went to mine. Hadia looked at me like she despised me and Layla did not speak to me. It would be another forty days before she spoke to me again and even longer before she could look me in the eye. She fell asleep at the farthest edge of the bed and I lay awake blinking at the dark ceiling. I had done a terrible thing. I had disowned my child. I had been shocked by your words and out of cruelty I threw back my own, the worst I could muster. I never asked you to leave. I know that now. I remember that much.
I lay awake wondering if I should go to you. You were not Muslim. The thought pained me greatly then, and for years after, and even sometimes now, but there was no compulsion in Islam. I took comfort in the verses that expressed it. Everyone has free will. In time, I knew, we could work our way around it, I could become accustomed, even on that night I told myself there was nothing the human heart could not grow to endure, that the miracle of the human heart is that it expands in its capacity to accept, to love.
I used the wrong words, Amar. Or, I should never have spoken them at all. But I have only ever thought of you as my son, my only. I decided that in the morning, when things had cooled, I would go to you again, I would try again not to be angry. I would say to you, if you are not Muslim, fine, I accept, but I am still your father, you cannot get rid of me, you might not care if you sin and that is fine too, but I am concerned for your body. But by morning you were gone, Hadia fast asleep in your place.
* * *
HADIA HAS COME to our home to ask if we will watch the kids for her and Tariq next week. It is their nine-year anniversary. Of course, we say. As soon as we have answered, I make an excuse to leave the house, to go and check the mail. Outside, alone in the driveway, I think of how long it has been since we last saw you. The door opens and Hadia steps out. The magnolia tree is in full bloom and Hadia admires the petals, wide open as they are. I wonder what she is thinking when she says, “Mumma says you’re having a hard time.”
I am fine so I say nothing. I pretend to study the envelopes in my hand. Hadia takes a seat at the edge of the driveway and then looks up at me and says, “I know you hate when I do this. But join me.”
She is right. It always bothered me. It would make the neighbors wonder why we were acting strange. Still, I take a seat.
“When I was younger and mad at you, I would sit out here and wish for a life where I could just step out.”
“Did your wish come true?”
“Everything I ever wanted has become mine.”
It is a blessed sentence but she has spoken it sadly, picks up a pebble and pinches it between her fingers.
“And are you still mad at me?” I ask her.
I look at my hands and clasp them together. Hadia does not say no but from the corner of my eye I see her shake her head. In the months since the surgery I have repaid all debts I owed. I have drafted a will and dated it.
“I remember asking you about Amar,” I tell her.
She sighs.
“I wish I had some information I could give you,” she says.
“You don’t know where he is, then?”
She shakes her head.
“Do you think it’s my fault he ran away?” I ask.
The sky is so vast and clear. I look up to no sun and still squint.
“There is no way for us to know that. I’ve thought about it for years and every time I do, there is a new cause to consider. Do you think it was your fault?”
I nod.
“I told him he wasn’t my son.”
“Baba. We said all kinds of things. Even he did. I think Amar convinced himself he did not belong, and he was waiting for any reason to go.”
“I talked to him at your wedding. I was the last one who did.”
She looks at me then with a look that says, please do not tell me if it will change things between us.
“I haven’t even told your mother that.”
“What did you say?” Hadia whispers.
“Every single day I have tried to remember that conversation. There was so much happening that night, and so little stayed here.” I point to my head. “He was upset. He had been drinking heavily. I could smell it. His words were slippery.”
Hadia’s eyes fill. I place a hand on her shoulder. She leans into me and rests her head against my arm.
“I told him that Inshallah, it would be all right one day. I didn’t say to him: never come home again. I didn’t say that.”
“I believe you.”
Behind us, the leaves of the magnolia tree rustle.
“I lied,” she says.