But is it possible that in twenty-five years there was never a moment when they were simultaneously nostalgic for everything they’d left behind, for every voice they could no longer hear? The truth may be that it was easier to make one swift break and swear never to look back. The truth may be that Dadi loved Akbar too much to allow him to begin to think of everything he’d lost.
But what of everything she had lost?
I stood up and walked over to Mariam Apa’s hibiscus. After Mariam left, the mali asked Ami what should be done about the hibiscus. Ami told him to look after it as Mariam had, and never, never to snip off the branch which curved in front of the dining-room window. I sometimes think Ami was the one who missed Mariam most of all. She wasn’t haunted by her absence, or angered by her departure, or disturbed by all she had failed to see. She just missed her. If Mariam were to come back, Ami would be the only one who’d say, ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ and consider the conversation ended. But suppose Mariam were to come back with Masood? That could never happen, so I don’t even speculate.
Speculate, I demanded of myself. Go on, speculate.
But I couldn’t.
I ran my fingers along the hibiscus plant, scoring the bark with my fingernails. When Mariam was around it hadn’t mattered, but now I felt so terribly the need to have her explained. I had thought Taimur could lead me to her, if I only asked the right questions about him, but he grew more and more elusive. To leave your home and never go back — to commit yourself completely to making another place home — that I could understand. Dadi and Akbar’s story doesn’t baffle me, though it sometimes saddens me. But to leave home, alone, and then to return just once, for one night, that I cannot comprehend. Somehow he must have followed the lives of his family. How else would he have known his mother was sick? How else would Mariam have known that, other than Dadi, who was in Paris at the time, the closest relative she had to turn to was Aba? Her closest relative in Pakistan, that is. Why Pakistan and not India? Was she in Pakistan already? Had Taimur ended up in Pakistan, as Sulaiman claimed Akbar believed he would? Or was Pakistan simply closer than India to wherever Taimur and Mariam lived? Did that mean she came from Iran? Afghanistan?
Turkey?
When Samia first went to college in London she fell in with a strange arty set who spent their Friday nights watching foreign films and ordering out for meals which, in their ethnic origins, complemented the movies. The group fell apart over an argument about whether hamburgers were suitable accompaniments to a German film, but by then Samia had developed a taste for subtitles. She came back to Karachi over her Easter holiday and demanded that Sameer and I scour the video stores for foreign films. She wasn’t amused when we returned with a pile of Hollywood flicks.
So Sameer and I set off again and returned with a Turkish film, which the man at the video store told us we could keep since he had so little use for it that he really couldn’t understand what it was doing in his shop to begin with. I don’t remember what the movie was about beyond the fact that it involved chickens, a three-legged dog and a man named Murat. We would never have sat through the whole thing if Sameer and I hadn’t been too frightened of Samia’s wrath to suggest turning it off, and if Samia hadn’t been too proud to admit she’d rather watch low-brow Hollywood fare. But halfway through the movie Mariam Apa entered the TV room and laughed at the subtitle, ‘You want to rent a room?’ Then she laughed at, ‘Is that the sun?’ and almost fell off her chair at, ‘You look very pretty.’
Three months later Samia sent Sameer a postcard:
Guess what Sam 2! Remember the Turkish movie? Well, I mentioned it to my Turkish friend, Omër, and he says it’s a great comedy. Very subtle humour! He knows chunks of it by heart — translated some dialogue for me and it really was funny, though it didn’t ring any bells at all as far as my memory of the subtitles was concerned. Guess we got a lousy translation. Must go — there are strawberries.
Love, Sam 1.
P.S. How come Mariam understood the humour?
In the days that followed the arrival of the postcard I tried casually mentioning Ataturk and Istanbul and Turkish delight around Mariam Apa, but she didn’t show even a flicker of interest. Still, I never quite forgot about it.
Why would Taimur have gone to Turkey?
Back again to Taimur, that inexplicable man.
It’s true that there were relatives aplenty in the family who had been part of the Khilafat Movement just before the triplets were born, and throughout Taimur’s childhood those relatives spoke often of that political movement which tried to show the British that Muslims around the world would not accept the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. One of the uncles even stayed in Turkey for a few months, just before Ataturk declared Turkey a secular state, and after he returned he made a point of teaching all the children of the family the rudiments of the Turkish language. So it’s not inconceivable that Turkey should have had a certain hold on Taimur’s imagination. It certainly had a hold on the imaginations of most Indian Muslims of his parents’ generation, and Taimur always loved to listen to his elders’ stories. But even so … What was Taimur’s story?
Mosquitoes had begun to buzz around me so I pulled my dupatta close like a shawl, using it to shield my bare arms from the onslaught. As a child I would tell myself things like, If I stay outdoors and brave the insects for a whole hour then tomorrow the boating plan will work out. If, subsequently, the boating plan didn’t work out, it would be because I stayed outside only fifty-nine minutes, or because I cheated by lathering on calamine lotion afterwards, or because mosquitoes died in my dreams that night.
Was that childhood logic so different from my way of thinking now? If I ask the right questions the answers will come. If the answers don’t come it’s because I haven’t asked the right questions, haven’t pried out the necessary details from those who feel no pleasure in remembering, haven’t recalled that one lift of an eyebrow which changes everything. But what about the silences that can’t be retold in stories? What about the forgotten commas which shape us as much as the exclamation marks? Masood once said to me, ‘Why is it that when people exchange recipes they so often forget to mention salt?’
I had laughed then and Masood, uncharacteristically offended that I shouldn’t take him seriously, served unsalted food to the family that night.
‘What is this?’ Aba had said, staring down in horror at his plate, after just one morsel. ‘What is this?’
How the absence of a single ingredient can alter the meal before you. How the absence of a detail can alter a story. How much salt had been left out in all the stories I’d ever heard from, and about, my family? How much salt did I leave out when I turned my memories of Mariam and Masood into a story? Well, I knew part of the answer to that. I left out my own reactions. Of late I’d been telling myself that eventually, when everything was resolved in my mind, I’d put myself in the story and say that at first I’d reacted terribly. Then I went far away and allowed myself time to think about it and my mind accepted the marriage. Then, one day, so did my heart. And so I went to visit Khaleel in Liaquatabad.
If only it were that simple.
I imagined Khaleel before me, laughing. ‘Salt? How déclassé. I’d have thought you’d season your metaphors with nothing less than saffron.’