American Dervish: A Novel (2 page)

“What’s to feel? The truth is the truth. Better to know it than not to.”

“Absolutely,” she said, studying me, “but it doesn’t mean you can’t have feelings about it, right?” Her question was softly put. There was tenderness in it.

“Honestly? It makes me feel free.”

She nodded. And we walked awhile in silence.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” I finally asked.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“What you want to know.”

“Did you really have to study last night, or were you just saying that?”

Rachel laughed, her lips parting to reveal her small square teeth. She really was lovely. “I have an organic chemistry exam tomorrow, I told you that. That’s why I’m going to the library now.” She stopped and put her hand on my arm. “But I promise I’ll go with you to the next game…Okay?”

My heart surged with sudden joy. “Okay,” I said with a cough.

When we got to the library’s steps, I had the urge to tell her what had happened to me the night before. “Can I ask you another personal question?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you believe in God?”

For a moment, Rachel looked startled. And then she shrugged. “No. At least not the
guy-in-the-sky
type thing.”

“Since when?”

“Since ever, I guess. My mom was an atheist, so I don’t think I ever took it that seriously. I mean, my dad made us go to temple sometimes—Rosh Hashanah and stuff—but even then, my mom would spend the whole way there and back complaining.”

“So you don’t know what it’s like to lose your faith.”

“Not really.”

I nodded. “It’s freeing.
So
freeing. It’s the most freeing thing that’s ever happened to me… You asked me how I feel about the lecture? Hearing Edelstein talk about the Quran as just a book, a book like any other, makes me feel like going out to celebrate.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said, smiling. “If you wait ’til tomorrow, we can celebrate together…”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Rachel lingered on the step above me just long enough for the thought to occur. And when it did, I didn’t question it. I leaned in and touched my lips to hers.

Her mouth pressed against mine. I felt her hand against the back of my head, the tip of her tongue gently grazing the tip of my own.

All at once, she pulled away. She turned and hopped up the steps, then stopped at the door and shot me a quick look. “Wish me luck on my exam,” she said.

“Good luck,” I said.

When she was gone, I lingered, in a daze, barely able to believe my good fortune.

That night, after a day of classes and an evening of Ping-Pong at the Union, I was sitting in bed, trying to study, but thinking only of Rachel…when the phone rang. It was Mother.

“She’s gone,
behta.
”

I was quiet. I knew, of course, who she was talking about. A month earlier she and I had gone to Kansas City to visit Mina—not only my mother’s lifelong best friend, but the person who’d had, perhaps, the greatest influence on my life—as she lay in a hospital bed, her insides ravaged with cancer.

“Did you hear me, Hayat?” Mother said.

“It’s probably better, isn’t it, Mom? I mean, she’s not in pain anymore.”

“But she’s gone, Hayat,” Mother moaned. “She’s gone…”

I listened quietly as she cried. And then I consoled her.

Mother didn’t ask me that night how I felt about Mina’s passing, which was just as well. I probably wouldn’t have told her what I was really feeling. Even the confession I had made to Mina while she lay on what turned out to be her deathbed, even that hadn’t been enough to assuage the guilt I’d been carrying since I was twelve. If I was reluctant to share how aggrieved I was with my mother, it was because my grief was not only for Mina, but for myself as well.

Now that she was gone, how could I ever repair the harm I’d done?

The following evening, Rachel and I sat side by side at a pizzeria counter, our dinner before a movie. I didn’t tell her about Mina, but somehow, she sensed something was wrong. She asked me if I was all right. I told her I was. She insisted. “You sure, Hayat?” she asked. She was looking at me with a tenderness I couldn’t fathom. “Thought you wanted to celebrate,” she said with a smile.

“Well…after I left you yesterday, I got some bad news.”

“What?”

“My aunt died. She was like…a second mother to me.”

“Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

All at once, my throat was searing. I was on the verge of tears.

“Sorry,” I said, looking away.

Feeling her hand on my arm, I heard her voice: “You don’t have to talk about it…”

I looked back and nodded.

The movie was a comedy. It distracted me. Toward the end, Rachel pushed herself up against my side, and we held hands for a while. Afterwards, she invited me back to her room, where she lit candles and played me a song on the guitar that she’d written. It was something longing and plaintive about lost love. Only three days ago, I couldn’t have imagined myself being so lucky. And yet I couldn’t push away thoughts of Mina.

When Rachel finished her song, I told her it was wonderful.

She could tell my mind was elsewhere.

“Still thinking about your aunt, aren’t you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She shrugged and smiled. “It’s okay,” she said, setting her guitar aside. “My grandma was really important to me like that. I went through a lot when she died.”

“But the thing is, it’s not just that she died…it’s that I had something to do with it.” I didn’t even realize I’d said it until I was almost finished with the sentence.

Rachel looked at me, puzzled, folds appearing along her forehead.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You don’t know me very well…I mean,
of course
you don’t. It’s just…I don’t think you realize how I grew up.”

“I’m not following you, Hayat.”

“You’re Jewish, right?”

“Yeah? So?”

“You may not like me very much if I tell you what happened…”

She shifted in her place, her back straightening. She looked away.

You barely know her,
I thought.
What are you trying to prove?

“Maybe I should leave,” I said.

She didn’t reply.

I didn’t move. The fact was, I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay. I wanted to tell her.

We sat in silence for a long moment, and then Rachel reached out to touch my hand.

“Tell me,” she said.

Book One

Paradise Lost

1

Mina

L
ong before I knew Mina, I knew her story.

It was a tale Mother told so many times: How her best friend, gifted and gorgeous—something of a genius, as Mother saw it—had been frustrated at every turn, her development derailed by the small-mindedness of her family, her robust will checked by a culture that made no place for a woman. I heard about the grades Mina skipped and the classes she topped, though always somewhat to the chagrin of parents more concerned with her eventual nuptials than her report card. I heard about all the boys who loved her, and how—when she was twelve—she, too, fell in love, only to have her nose broken by her father’s fist when he found a note from her sweetheart tucked into her math book. I heard about her nervous breakdowns and her troubles with food and, of course, about the trove of poems her mother set alight in the living room fireplace one night during an argument about whether or not Mina would be allowed to go to college to become a writer.

Perhaps it was that I heard it all so often without knowing the woman myself, but for the longest time, Mina Ali and her gifts and travails were like the persistent smell of curry in our halls and our rooms: an ever-presence in my life of which I made little note.

And then, one summer afternoon when I was eight, I saw a picture of her. As Mother unfolded Mina’s latest letter from Pakistan, a palm-sized color glossy tumbled out. “That’s your auntie Mina,
kurban,
” Mother said as I picked it up. “Look how beautiful she is.”

Beautiful, indeed.

The picture showed a striking woman sitting on a wicker chair before a background of green leaves and orange flowers. Most of her perfectly black hair was covered with a pale pink scarf, and both her hair and scarf framed an utterly arresting face: cheekbones highly drawn—gently accentuated with a touch of blush—oval eyes, and a small, pointed nose perched above a pair of ample lips. Her features defined a perfect harmony, promising something sheltering, something tender, but not only. For there was an intensity in her eyes that belied this intimation of maternal comfort, or at least complicated it: those eyes were black and filled with piercing light, as if her vision had long been sharpened against the grindstone of some nameless inner pain. And though she was smiling, her smile was more one concealed than offered and, like her eyes, hinted at something mysterious and elusive, something you wanted to know.

Mother posted the photo on our refrigerator door, pinned in place by the same rainbow-shaped finger magnets that also affixed my school lunch menu. (This was the menu Mother consulted each night before school to see if pork was being served the following day—and if, therefore, I’d be needing a bag lunch—and which I consulted each school morning hoping to find my favorite, beef lasagna, listed among the day’s offerings.) For two years, then, barely a day went by without at least a casual glance at that photograph of Mina. And there were more than a few occasions when, finishing my glass of morning milk, or munching on string cheese after school, I lingered over it, staring at her likeness as I sometimes did at the surface of the pond at Worth Park on summer afternoons: doing my best to catch a glimpse of what was hidden in the depths.

It was a remarkable photograph, and—as I was to discover from Mina herself a couple of years later—it had an equally remarkable history. Mina’s parents, counting on their daughter’s beauty to attract a lucrative match, brought in a fashion photographer to take pictures of her, and the photo in question was the one that would make its way—through a matchmaker—into the hands of Hamed Suhail, the only son of a wealthy Karachi family.

Hamed fell in love with Mina the moment he saw it.

The Suhails showed up at the Ali home a week and a half later, and by the end of their meeting, the fathers had shaken hands on their children’s betrothal. Mother always claimed that Mina didn’t dislike Hamed, and that Mina always said she could have found happiness with him. If not for Irshad, Hamed’s mother.

After the wedding, Mina moved south to Karachi to live with her in-laws, and the problems between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law began the first night Mina was there. Irshad came into her bedroom holding a string of plump, pomegranate-colored stones, a garnet necklace and family heirloom which—Irshad explained—had been handed down from mother to daughter for five generations. Herself daughterless, Irshad had always imagined she would bestow these, the only family jewels, on the wife of her only son someday.

“Try it on,” Irshad urged, warmly.

Mina did. And as they both stared into the mirror, Mina couldn’t help but notice the silvery thinning of Irshad’s eyes. She recognized the envy.

“You shouldn’t,
Ammi,
” Mina said, pulling the stones from her neck.

“I shouldn’t what?”

“I don’t know…I mean, it’s so beautiful…are you sure you want to give it to me?”

“I’m not giving it to you
yet,
” Irshad replied, abruptly. “I just wanted to see how it looked.”

Bruised by Irshad’s sudden shift, Mina handed the necklace back to her mother-in-law. Irshad took it and, without another word, walked out of the room.

So Irshad’s enmity began. First came the snide comments offered under her breath, or in passing: about how headstrong the “new girl” was; how she ate hunched over her plate like a servant; or how, as Irshad put it, Mina looked like a “mouse.” Soon to follow were changes to the household routine intended to make Mina’s life more difficult: servants sent up to clean Mina’s room when she was still asleep; the expunging from the family menu of the foods Mina most enjoyed; the continued flurry of mean-spirited remarks, though now no longer offered sotto
voce. Mina did all she could to appease and placate her mother-in-law. But this only stoked Irshad’s suspicions. For as Mina tried to ply Irshad with submissiveness, the elder woman felt the change of tack, and read it as evidence of a cunning nature. Irshad now started rumors about her daughter-in-law’s “wandering eyes” and “thieving hands.” She warned her son to keep Mina away from the male staff, and warned her staff to keep their valuables under lock and key. (Neither Hamed nor his father—both terrified of Irshad—did anything to address the growing conflict.) And when the pleasure of verbal abuse wore thin, Irshad resorted to the physical. Now she slapped Mina, for leaving her dirty clothes strewn around her bedroom, or talking out of turn in front of guests. On one occasion, hearing an insult in a comment Mina made about dinner not being as spicy as usual, Irshad grabbed her daughter-in-law by the hair and dragged her from the dinner table to throw her out into the hallway.

Fourteen months into this growing nightmare, Mina conceived. To escape the abuse and bring her pregnancy to term in peace, she returned north to her family home, in the Punjab. There, three weeks early, unaccompanied by her husband—who would not join her for fear of suffering his mother’s wrath—Mina gave birth to a boy. And as she lay in the hospital bed exhausted from her daylong labor, a man in a long dark coat appeared at the doorway just moments after her mother left the room to fetch a cup of tea from the canteen. He stepped inside, inquiring if she was Amina Suhail née Ali.

“I am,” Mina replied.

The man approached her bedside, an envelope in hand. “Your husband has divorced you. Enclosed are the papers that make this divorce official. He has written in his own hand—you will recognize the writing—that he divorces you, he divorces you, and he divorces you. As you well know, Mrs. Suhail—I mean, Ms. Ali—this is what the law requires.” He laid the envelope across her belly, gently. “You have just given birth to Hamed Suhail’s son. He has chosen the name Imran for the boy. Imran will stay with you until the age of seven, at which point Mr. Hamed Suhail has the right to full, undisputed custody.” The lawyer took a step back, but he wasn’t finished. Mina squinted at him in disbelief. “All that I have shared with you is in accordance with the law as it stands, this date of June 15, 1976, in the land of Pakistan, and you are entitled to a custody trial by law, but I would advise you to understand, Mrs. Suhail—I mean, Ms. Ali—that any fight will be a useless one for you, and will simply cost your family resources it does not have.”