The Sweetness of Tears (20 page)

“How did you get so far ahead?” he would complain as he rustled the pages of his book to catch up.

We read books in parallel fashion, sharing passages out loud from terrace to garden and back again.
Alice in Wonderland
was one of the first. Umar refused to read
Little Women,
though he listened to me read quite a bit of it out loud before shutting me up with a taste of my own medicine with Stevenson’s
Treasure Island
. Beginning with Arthur Conan Doyle and moving on to Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner, we outdid each other with wild guesses and reckless bets on whodunit that changed as we twisted and turned our way through mysterious plots until unlikely culprits were revealed by Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Perry Mason, Umar with his copies of the titles we read and me with my own, both of them rented from the book man who came to our street every week, on bicycle, renting comics for two annas and paperbacks for four—that is an eighth of a rupee and a quarter—knowing us well enough to make sure he kept two copies of books by authors we liked, because we couldn’t wait for each other to finish and had to read our selections together, at the same time. We laughed out loud, in concert, at the antics of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, saved the world from outlandish villains out to dominate it with Ian Fleming’s James Bond, which we read at Umar’s insistence, and for which I had my revenge with
Gone With the Wind
. Somerset Maugham kept us busy for a while. And then we ventured into Russian literature.
Anna Karenina
first, whose title character I could not forgive for having abandoned her child in pursuit of a passion that proved to be so self-destructive. Then
Dr. Zhivago
. That one we loved so much we were compelled to buy our copies instead of renting them.

With
Zhivago,
we talked, as we had on that first day of our friendship, about whether Yuri was a hero or whether he just happened to be always in the right place at the right time—or the wrong one, depending on your point of view.

“So you think that Yuri’s infidelity was all right? And Anna Karenina’s was despicable? That won’t do, Deena On The Wall. To sympathize with one and condemn the other.”

“How can you compare the two, Umar? Yuri was the victim of history and fate. Anna was nobody’s victim but her own.”

“So—Anna is less of a heroine because she chose the direction of her life? And Yuri is a hero because he didn’t? And what kind of choice did she really have anyway? She was no less a victim of circumstance than Yuri.”

“Come on, Umar. She wasn’t separated from her family because of war and chaos.”

“But she was a woman. The life she left behind was predetermined for her. Her passion for Vronsky was the first time she ever had a choice to make for herself.”

“The same was true for Yuri. But he didn’t make that choice. To walk away from his duty and obligation to his family. Even when passion arose, he turned away from it. At first. Until there was nothing else left—no choice but to surrender to fate. He did the right thing, the honorable thing—until every other road was closed to him. And when that happened, he didn’t let himself be devoured by selfishness and self-involvement. He wrote poetry. His passion for Lara became the source of something great. He created something and left it behind for others. Even then, he made his life about something more than himself.”

“This is heavy talk. Too heavy to be had at such a distance.” My father had made his way up to the terrace so stealthily that I had not heard him behind me. This had become a new habit of his, instigated by my mother, worrying enough now that I was well into my teens, to send my father up to the terrace for tea, to keep an eye on things and try to avert potential disaster. It was the wrong move on her part. Instead of dampening our discussion, Abu did what Ma would never have allowed.

He invited Umar up from the garden. “Why don’t you come up for some tea, Umar? This is an interesting discussion, better conducted at conversational volume, rather than having to shout up and down at each other in this unseemly fashion. The hawkers in the streets have a hard enough time as it is, making ends meet, without having to compete with the sound of your disagreements.”

Neither Umar nor I said anything for a moment, both of us surprised, the distance between us one we were used to and hesitant to bridge. I saw him shrug off the significance at the same time that I suppose I did. Within minutes, Umar had gained entry into our home and was up there, on the terrace, with Abu and me. The literary argument that had flowed so naturally before was now stifled, both Umar and I suddenly shy in light of the formality of my father’s presence.

I sought ease in the familiarity of teasing and said, “This is the first time that you and I have been so close, Umar, since my fall seven years ago. No wonder you are so quiet. You must be afraid of what happened last time—that I’ll be the cause of a broken bone or two at least!”

Umar smiled, his eyes sparkling, at close range, in a way I would not have been able to notice from the usual perspective of terrace to garden.

Abu sent me down to call for tea. When I came back, tray in hand, the conversation was flowing, Abu and Umar immersed in politics, my copy of
Dr. Zhivago
held firmly in Abu’s hands. I knew that it was a good thing I was finished with it, because he looked like he had every intention of reading it himself.

I poured Umar’s tea and handed it to him, only to watch it grow cold in his hands as the afternoon wore on, he and Abu moving easily from politics to history, reliving Partition and the decisions it had occasioned, and worrying if war was imminent with the country in which both had been born. It was almost dinnertime when Abu said, “I believe you two were on the subject of poetry when I interrupted your argument.”

“Yes,” I said, my hand brushing Umar’s as I reached out to take his copy of
Zhivago
from him. I flipped to the last section, to the poetry of
Dr. Zhivago
that Pasternak had included after the epilogue. “You see, Umar. This part. This poem, ‘Parting’—it’s my favorite. It tells exactly what I meant when I said that Yuri’s love for Lara is something that happens in spite of himself, outside of his control. Especially this verse:

In the years of trial,

When life was inconceivable,

From the bottom of the sea the tide of destiny

Washed her up to him.”

I sighed.

Umar said nothing for a long moment. Then, quietly, he said, “My favorite poem is ‘The Wedding Party.’ It’s not a romantic poem, like the one you read. It’s about life and what it means.” Umar reached toward me to reclaim his book, found the page he was looking for, and said, “Here’s the verse I like:

And life itself is only an instant,

Only the dissolving

Of ourselves in all others

As though in gift to them.”

“
‘ . . . the dissolving of ourselves in all others . . .’
Hmm. Lovely. That is lovely,” Abu said. “I think I like Umar’s verse better than yours, Deena.”

Neither Umar nor I said anything, falling strangely silent. Soon after, Umar left.

Predictably, Ma fumed to find that the battlefield had shifted and that the enemy had been invited into the gates. She bypassed Abu—who she believed had crossed over to the other side, and focused her fury on me.

She sat me in front of the mirror in her bedroom, the only one in the house that wasn’t too splotchy with rust to still serve, as she did every night, combing out my hair to braid it with rough yanks that were unusually fierce. “What am I to do with that father of yours?! Inviting the boy up instead of—instead of—
oof!
—instead of doing what I sent him to do.”

“Instead of scaring him off?”

“Exactly!”

I had to wince at her emphasis, my head snapping back as it suffered its way through the stroke of the comb in her hand. “But—Ma—ouch!—why does he have to be scared off? He’s just a friend!”

“A friend? There’s no such thing between a girl and a boy. Besides, we cannot confine ourselves to worrying about what he is and what you are—we have to worry, also, about what people will make of these things. It would be bad enough as it is. For word to spread about you being friendly with a boy. But the boy is a Sunni. And not just any Sunni. His mother is one who hates us. Whatever I think, and your father,
she
would
never
approve of her son marrying you.”

“Ma! I don’t want to marry him!”

“You be quiet! You don’t know what you want! You are only a child—you don’t understand the way that the world works! And your father?! He’s no better! Acting no better than a child himself.” I watched her in the mirror, muttering to herself as, mercifully, the work of the comb was set aside and her fingers wove their way down the length of my hair. When she was done, she put her hands on my shoulders, lowered her face so that it was next to mine, and gave me a little shake, loving but stern. “Look at you, Deena.” She paused to do what she asked me to do, studying my face, putting her hands on my cheeks, her thumbs cradling the nape of my neck. “You have grown up into a woman. Right before my eyes. No longer a child.”

“But you just said that I was.”

“Yes. A woman who is still a child. Think, Deena. Think about who you are. About who you will be. You cannot remain friends with him. With that boy whose very name stands for who we are not. Sooner or later, you will be married,
Inshallah
. What will you tell your husband? That you are friends with another man? No. That is not the way things are. Nor the way they should be. Men and women cannot be friends.
Bas
.”

Bas,
she said. Enough.

And what did my father have to say? That night, after my hair was braided, when I went to him to say good night, he said, “I like this boy, this friend of yours. Umar. He’s a gentle soul.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of what my mother had said.

“Your mother is upset?”

“Yes, Abu. Absolutely livid.”

It turned out that Ma’s fury was in vain. The next day, when I went up to the terrace, Umar was nowhere in sight. Nor the next. Weeks passed.

Abu, who still made his way up to the terrace daily to stand guard with renewed vigor in light of Ma’s fervent chastisements on his unforgivable lapse, observed, “It looks like your mother was wrong. I did drive him away after all.”

I put down the teacups I was carrying, sat on the chair where Umar had sat, and began to cry, softly, to myself. “Why do you think he is angry with me, Abu?”

“What makes you think that he is?”

“Why else would he avoid me?”

Abu had no answer for me. After a while, he said, “Perhaps it’s for the best, Deena. Perhaps his mother has convinced him of what yours has failed to do. That this friendship is impractical. That it will have to end eventually. Better now, before it is too late.”

“Too late?”

“Yes. You are nearly grown. A young woman. Be practical,
Beti
. As it seems that Umar is trying to be.”

“
You
are saying that, Abu?”

“Keep it a secret. Just between you and me. That perhaps there is
one
practical bone in my body—contrary to all of your mother’s assertions. The fact is, Deena, that you and Umar are no longer children. Your mother is right. You have gone from sharing fruit to sharing poetry. It is time to set this part of your childhood aside, before you also move from broken bones to broken hearts. It seems that Umar is wise enough to realize this. You should, too.”

After a while, I stopped looking for Umar at the wall of the terrace. I learned to read my books without his company, alone, as perhaps books are meant to be read. But poetry, I knew, was not the same. Poetry was something that had to be shared. Out loud. Something I left behind. Except in Muharram, when I began to recite
noha
s, the rhythmic poetry of sacrifice and tragedy that cannot be translated from one language to another because it is too specific, too much a matter of the heart and faith.

A
year later, while I was on the terrace reading a book, my father climbed the rickety stairs, Umar following closely behind. “See who I found knocking on our door, Deena? Your old friend has come to see you.”

I closed my book. I remember what I was reading at the time. Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

“Sit, Umar.” My father didn’t join him, his eyes moving back and forth from my averted face to Umar’s. Instead of sending me down to ask for tea, he said, “I’ll go and have some tea made and brought up.”

When Abu was gone, Umar asked, “What are you reading?”

I held the book up in silence, so he could read the title himself, my eyes forcefully focused on the roof of the house across from ours.

“Won’t you talk to me, Deena On The Wall?”

“Why should I?”

“You’re angry.”

I didn’t answer.

“I don’t blame you.”

I still said nothing, wondering why he was there and why he had disappeared from sight for a year.

I didn’t have to wonder for long.

“I’m going away, Deena.”

That brought my eyes up to his face. But only for a second. Enough to see that he had changed—the shadow on his face the shadow of a man’s beard, the lines of his jaw and brow hardened and wide.

“Won’t you ask where I’m going?”

I shrugged.

“I’m going to America. To study. But I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye.”

“When someone stops saying hello, I don’t see that there’s any need to say good-bye,” I said, my eyes firmly fixed, again, on the house across the street.

“Won’t you look at me, Deena?”

Reluctantly, my eyes met his.

What I saw there explained everything—the reason he had stayed away, why he had come to say good-bye. I can only describe what I saw by its effect on me. Every woman should be looked at in such a way, at least once in her life. With a longing that cannot be contained—with love that goes beyond mere feeling because it transforms and—like the verse of the poem he had read—it dissolves, as an offering, a gift. I felt my face flush and waves of knowing suffused every pore, every cell of my being. I was loved. And in that love, I felt beauty—my own, unrealized until that moment, suddenly rising to consciousness in a way that made everything in me come alive to the beauty all around me. Nothing more needed to be said.