When baba died, he left everything — the apartment, the Toyota, the savings, his portion of the family farm— to my brother, Hashim, and nothing to me or my sister or amma. The only thing me or my sister were left with was baba’s name; my mother went from being known as his wife to being his widow. My sister, Esha, didn’t groan at the will, she claimed it was expected. It certainly wasn’t surprising yet a part of me carried a sliver of hope that baba thought of the women in this family.
During the meeting with the lawyer, Esha said she didn’t care about baba’s will and by extension, baba himself. She’d left the lawyer’s office with her husband soon after the conclusion of the will’s content. Perhaps Esha didn’t need anything. Despite being two years younger than me, she was well-settled in her life and didn’t lack anything. A generous compensation at work; a peaceful home with her husband, Naseem without any in-laws; and last month she had even begun looking for domestic help for their apartment. Naseem , an accountant in a business firm, also provided for her and their one-year-old son.
I wasn’t worried for Esha. I was more concerned about amma and myself.
Hashim, even though he was my brother, wasn’t necessarily good with money or manners. All three of us were raised in the same womb, but none of us carried similar etiquettes. Esha, despite being occasionally rude or indifferent, did care about me and amma, and never raised her voice to address baba or Hashim when they were being cruel to her or us, but spoke calmly and matter-of-factly. Since she opposed baba and argued with Hashim, she was married off before me.
Unbeknownst to them, the man they arranged her marriage with turned out to be a gentle soul. To this day, I thank God for His kindness for bringing Naseem to Esha.
Hashim was our younger brother. Although he was five years younger than me, he acted as an authoritarian figure who worked less and made others work harder. Till this day, amma brought Hashim his daily meals to him, to his table. Never in his life did he stir and bring a glass of water to amma. Baba had spoiled him since a young age – got him all the toys – toys Esha and I never got despite our tearful requests; took him to amusement parks we never even knew; taught him how to drive; bailed him out of jail when he attacked a server at a restaurant. The list went on. Baba never let out an “uff” when Hashim failed multiple times to get admitted into college, but roared bitterly when I expressed interest in pursuing a Master’s degree.
Now that everything was in Hashim’s hand, I wondered how differently he’d treat us from baba. I expected the worst . After all, he had been following baba’s example from a young age.
After the will hearing, Hashim, amma and I got into baba’s Toyota – now Hashim’s Toyota – and we went home. Even though Hashim was loudly chattering to us, rather, more to himself, the entire ride was painfully silent for amma and me . The grief and deception becoming too heavy to bear in silence, held each other’s hand in the backseat in assurance. I was certain amma was disappointed. She didn’t care for much, but she cherished all her children, not just Hashim, like baba always did, something he proved to us with his will, his last words.
*
It didn’t take long for Hashim to show his true colors. It was a Saturday afternoon, five days after baba’s funeral, when his voice echoed across the whole apartment. I was certain that the neighboring houses and the people walking down the streets must have heard him. Amma and I found him furiously standing with something in his hand.
“What happened?” she was concerned. “God forbid, is there another tragic news?” “What’s more tragic than the numbers on this bill?” He thrust the bill in her hand.
She carefully read the electricity bill and turned to me and then Hashim. I took the bill from her and noticed they were charging 12,000 rupees. Last month the bill had amounted to some 10,000 rupees. When baba was still with us, he never complained about the bills, but occasionally told us to make sure the lights of unoccupied rooms remained shut. Amma was especially careful. She would turn off the outside stairway light of our house during a power cut so it wouldn’t burden the UPS or the electricity bill. She sometimes even washed clothes by hand because the machine consumed too much electricity.
“I don’t understand, beta,” she said. “We get such frequent power cuts. You know these people always increase the bill on purpose.”
“Yes, they increase the bill on purpose because they hold animosity towards us, right?” he rolled his eyes in frustration.
“Hashim, that’s no way to speak to amma”, I said firmly.
“Sure, sure,” he gesticulated his open palms in theatrics. “But listen to me, I’m not going to pay bills with numbers like that anymore, understand?”
“You don’t have to,” I said and continued by muttering, “not like you ever did.”
“What did you say?”
I ignored him.
“Also,” he took the bill from my hand and looked over at amma and I, “I think it’s about time you contributed.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Contribute as in contribute,” he sneered. “You and amma live in this apartment, which baba left to me, so you know, you should contribute. Pay your half, is what I mean.”
“You’re going to ask amma, your grieving mother, for rent to live in your apartment?” I had to reiterate his words because confusion and anger clouded my reason.
“I mean, times are tough,” he shrugged nonchalantly, ignoring that amma was silently sobbing beside me.
“So, you make them even tougher by demanding rent from your own mother?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“No, no,” I took the bill back from him and held amma’s hand, “you don’t do anything, you never have in your life. Amma and I will pay you rent every month and contribute to our half of the bills.”
“Not half of the bills.”
“What do you mean? You pay your half, we pay ours. It’s only fair.”
“Yeah, but I would pay if I was living here.”
“What do you mean by that?” my mother asked in surprise.
“Okay, time to come clean,” he sighed exasperatedly. “Baba left me that portion of land in the goth, so I decided to move there for now. I will start working there.”
“Beta, you have lived your entire life here in the city,” amma said. “You don’t know the ways to the goth life. Your father also left everything in the care of his employees or his cousin farmers. Don’t go there. How can you leave your sister and me here?”
“Amma, someone has to manage things, and that person is me. Baba always got large amounts of money from those farms. Now, I want to take care of it.”
“So, you’ll leave amma and me here?” I asked.
“What do you want me to do, huh? If I stay here, you’ll say I don’t do anything. At least there I’ll learn the way of life. I will occasionally send you money, don’t worry.”
“We’re not worried about money, Hashim.” Amma’s eyes welled with tears as she said. “Don’t you realize that Sana and I will be alone here? This is Karachi. One can’t even trust their neighbor.”
“No, amma, let him go. I also want Hashim to do something good in his life. If things go well there, stay, none of us will force you. If not, come back. After all, this is your apartment,” I smiled bitterly.
“Of course, you will get your freedom to stay out for longer hours, isn’t it?”
“Shame on you, Hashim!” Amma scolded him. “Your sister goes to teach. I won’t tolerate your slander against her.”
“Sure. Because she’s a working woman who earns, you can’t bear hearing against her.”
Calmly but finally amma said, “Be quiet and leave. Leave tomorrow, today, I won’t stop you. Go to your father’s farms.”
He scoffed, not caring how deeply he had hurt amma. I wasn’t bothered by his insults because they never meant anything to me. To be so insensitive to amma was what hurt me. She looked so broken as I tried composing her. Defeatedly, she sat on the dining chair and cried her heart out. Before leaving to his room, he reminded us once again of the bill, of the rent, of his generosity to let us stay in his apartment, an apartment we both grew up in.
*
The street outside our apartment building was always clean in the early hours of the day because the sweepers brushed all of yesterday’s dirt. It was also deserted as the city and its inhabitants were still slowly rising. Some rose during the dawn prayer like me, others when their alarm rung, and still others slept on till noon.
Signaling for a rickshaw in the morning wasn’t difficult. I could fall in love with Karachi in the morning. Every place looked neat – the bustling roads, the narrow streets, the dim staircases. A gentle calm hung in the morning air on the roads. Honking of the cars was at its minimum; rickshaw drivers didn’t holler at each other for driving on the wrong side of the road; drivers waited for people to cross the road at the crosswalks. No one could afford to be irrationally impatient so early in the day. Everyone had work to get to.
I sensed the sun kiss part of my right foot at the back of the rickshaw. For a moment it felt warm, and I was touched by the beauty. Under its bright beam of light, I noticed the birthmark on my forefoot. It appeared much clearer beneath the sunshine. When I was young, I was self-conscious of all the birthmarks on my face, their visibility , transparent marks of torment. Girls in my school had one or two prominent ones and they looked pretty on them. I had more than eight of them dotted across my face. Then amma corrected me by calling birthmarks the distinction of a person. I remembered her writing down in her register of multiple uses – cooking recipes, phone numbers of old friends, verses of poems – the spelling of the word in Sindhi: تل.
“How beautiful is that?” she held me in her lap as she wrote. “How gentle is this word – til. Gentleness is nothing to feel ashamed of. Your marks are like stars, and together they form a beautiful constellation. Everyone looks up to the stars and constellations, so why must you look down on yourself?”
I adjusted my feet to the shadier part of the rickshaw when the sun’s glare got intense. When the vehicle stopped by the school gate, I handed the driver my fare. I greeted the guard at the gate, who offered his condolences to me. I let the few students behind me pass and they looked at me as if they saw an apparition.
There was a lot to be done today. I was away for a week but three of the classes I taught were to have their class tests today. I had to evaluate those answer sheets by the end of this week as another two classes had their tests the next week..
The staff room was a place with less staff and more paperwork. All teachers were either severely overworked or underpaid or both. No one took other’s favors, nor made the mistake of giving their work to another for the fear of disorder, and being found out. I had expected sympathetic looks from my peers as soon as I entered the staff room, and I was right. I could almost hear them think: There she goes, the teacher who lost her father. I wonder if I push her enough, would she cry?
The principal was in the room. I knew she was here for me because she stood beside my desk, waiting. I greeted her, avoiding the silent looks from all the other staff members. She told me if I wanted to, I could leave early, and that she would understand.
I thanked her for her consideration and told her I have a class to get to, and left her standing there.
*
As one grew older, they shared less about themselves with the people close to them. None of us knew enough about baba. He rarely shared his youthful memories with us, calling them ‘unrecallable past.’ The bits he did share were to do with how he was at the top of the class in his university batch; the years he worked in WAPDA, an agency I once read of in one of my middle school social sciences textbook, feeling proud; the time he applied too much hair oil during his arranged marriage proposal to amma that he was certain amma would reject him for it.
There wasn’t much. We didn’t know the man who was also the reason why me, Esha and Hashim existed in the first place. Baba was never the person who liked talking about himself. Certainly, we had complaints against him for never treating me, Esha and amma as his family. He always maintained a distance from us, never letting us get close to him, afraid we would open him and leave him vulnerable. He never imagined that we could’ve sheltered him. It must have been a joke to him, a failing – children protecting their parents. In the end, we never got to know him.
I wondered if we ever knew our fathers well or if we ever will.
I was musing this in a park a couple of miles away from the school I taught at. I never told anyone, including amma or Esha, that sometimes after work I took a walk at Clifton Park. It was mainly to release the day’s stress and mull over the events of the past, present and future. I knew it was risky to not tell anyone about this considering the rise of petty crimes in the city. But once a day, for a moment, I wanted to be detached; carry no weight and let my steps release me from my burden.
A couple of weeks ago, the principal called all of the teachers for a staff meeting. It was to improve students’ performances in tests , which meant to work twice as hard even if the students didn’t bother to work hard themselves. Another reason was the silent bullying taking place in the bathrooms. Some student had secretly recorded a video of two girls beating and pulling another girl’s hair. . The video had gone viral on social media platforms, where people criticized the school administration for letting this go unnoticed. The principal called the three girls to her office the next day, and invited their parents for a consultation. I was informed by Farah, who taught biology, that the two perpetrators were suspended from school for a month, and are to write a letter of apology to the girl, her family, and the school administration. The last one was a bit of a stretch, but it was probably to do with the reputation of the school.
I observed that students these days cared less of the consequences of their actions. They thought because they were minors or their well-off parents would pull some strings, they could do anything they like. Some were even rude to their teachers. I didn’t mind if any of my students said anything offensive to me, I found it funny. I found it funny that they thought I would be hurt if they poked fun at my weight or my curls or my tanned skin.
As I thought about all this while walking, I felt a tap on my shoulder, which took me by surprise. I turned around to find a bald middle-aged man, who seemed out of breath. Sweat ringed around the neckline of his shirt and created dark patches under his arms. I looked at the man in confusion, trying my best to recognize him, but I could not.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Sorry, please allow me to catch my breath for a minute,” he said, panting heavily.
I wondered if he ran to catch up to me. When he got his breath back, he held out his hand. I found something small, something dark in the palm of his hand. As I looked closely, it was my ruby-colored earring. I instinctively reached out to touch my ear, and felt my bare left ear.
“I believe this is yours,” he held his hand out to me. “I saw a couple of ladies walking before you. I thought it was theirs until I saw they wore different earrings. But then I found you taking the same path. And now I see it truly is yours. Here.”
He handed me my earring and I thanked him profusely. He then gingerly walked away. I looked at the earring, a family heirloom, something amma entrusted me after nani had entrusted her upon her wedding. I sighed in relief at the kindness of the unknown man. Knowing how some people would brazenly take anything that didn’t belong to them, I was touched by the man’s honesty. Sometimes I questioned if gratitude was too little or enough when met with kindness.
*
The afternoon rush hour was such a torment. Everybody on the road was irritable and eager to get home after a long day at work or school. It became a reckless race to see who would get home first. As the rickshaw was taking a U-turn on M.A. Jinnah Road, the blaring horns from other oncoming vehicles gave me a headache. The traffic wore me out. I desperately needed a cup of chai. A foul stench coming presumably from the river forced me to be alert. After we had passed it, I leaned on the side of the rickshaw and looked out, looked up. Nowhere in this world did birds take over the skies as they did here. They claimed the skies, they leapt, they danced. It was a privilege to see them so proud.
When I saw Bhittai Hall approaching, I told the driver to just stop two streets ahead of it. I needed to buy some apples and tomatoes. The rickshaw stopped where I had directed and I paid the driver 500 rupees for the ride. It hurt my soul to spend 800-900 rupees daily on transportation. I walked two streets down and found a crowd of people — men, women, bikers, school children — all around the sabzi mandi. First, I went to the stall I regularly bought vegetables from. I managed to buy some good ripe tomatoes, amma’s favorite okra , fresh spring onions and a kilo of small potatoes. The fruit stand beside had some good-looking bananas that attracted even the flies.
“How much for this, bhai?” I pointed at the bananas.
“Baji, 200 rupees a kilo,” he said, handing a couple of mandarins to a customer. “200? Wasn’t it 180 just last week?”
“Baji, it’s inflation . What can I do? If you want, I can give you half a kilo for 100 rupees.”
“Okay, and please add a half a kilo of mandarins and a kilo of apples.”
After paying him 430 rupees, I walked away carrying the fruits and vegetables in a spare tote bag I always kept for such purchases. The smell of fried samosas and rolls filled the air of the narrow street and brought an onset of uncontrollable craving and ravenous hunger within me. I ended up getting four samosas, three vegetable rolls, and a little bit of suji for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Carefully walking home, minding all the potholes and oncoming bikes, I felt dirt at my feet. They felt sandy and vulnerable. I reminded myself to not wear sandals from tomorrow, and just stick with shoes. When I climbed the dim stairs to our apartment building, I sighed in relief at being home. I rang the bell and a few moments later, amma saw me, and I saw her. She opened the gate and greeted me. I greeted her back. I shut the gate and the door.
The heat outside was so oppressive that as soon as I returned home, I immediately felt composed and appreciative of the coolness from the ceiling fans. Fully recharged and active, I placed the purchased items on the dining table. Removing my sandals, I told amma how the prices of bananas have gone up. I looked at the clock on the wall and found it funny how sometimes an hour-long errand in the city can take you three hours because of the traffic.
“There is no consideration of how poor people manage in this place,” she said.
“Ah, I got samosas and suji. You can keep the suji for tomorrow,” I said, removing my shawl and hanging it on the coat rack.
“Don’t get too much oily and fried food from outside.”
“It’s just once a while, amma, it’s okay. I’ll wash up and then we can start eating.”
I had gathered my clothes and towel from my room when amma called me over. She held the samosas and rolls on a plate with a look of confusion.
“Sana, why did you get so much ?”
“What do you mean? For all of us.”
“One samosa is enough for one person, seeing their size.”
It only clicked when amma said one samosa for one person. I told her I’ll be careful next time. I went to the bathroom to take a quick shower. How silly of me to forget that baba can no longer join us at the dining table.
*
“ Naseem has been worried.”, said Esha.
“No, no, everything will be okay, God willing. I’m sure he will get the position, he’s capable and competent.”
“He doubts himself so much,” she sighed. “No matter how much I encourage him, he feels even more anxious.”
“Let me talk to him next time, maybe he will understand.”
Esha laughed, “I wonder.”
Esha’s voice broke over the phone, and I asked her to repeat her question. As I increased the volume on my phone to hear her clearly, she asked again.
“Does Hashim call ?”
Hashim. He called us once he reached the goth, and only sent occasional voice notes to amma on WhatsApp. He said he was working and learning how to manage the farm from baba’s brothers and cousins. I wonder how much truth was in the message. He never quite told it as it was.
“He talks to amma mostly,” I bit into the pericarp of a sunflower seed and ate the pocket-sized seed within.
“He worries me.”
“He worries us all.”
“No, I don’t just mean that he troubles us with his antics,” Esha’s voice was laced with concern. “I mean, he was closer to baba than all of us. He must’ve taken his death hard.”
“Hashim doesn’t care, really. Before leaving, all he talked about was money.”
“It must be because he sees himself as the head of the family now. Maybe he wants to provide for you guys, I don’t know.”
“If he didn’t change from a young age, do you expect him to change now? After baba’s passing?”
“Grief changes people, Sana. I know you and I may be bitter towards baba, but Hashim cared for him. I may be wrong, but maybe he wants to be better now that he’s gone. Call him next time. He doesn’t pick up my phone when I call, but you talk to him. He must feel lonely.”
Hashim was certainly close to baba. He was with him almost every moment. He had learnt how to walk from baba, went together with him to the mosque, and even watched the same series as baba to discuss with him. In a way, he was just as desperate as us to get to know baba. He was successful just because he was our family’s only boy. So, I wondered if Hashim’s going away to the farms was him trying to keep baba’s honor or to run away from the apartment that carried too many memories of him, or both. I did not see him cry at baba’s funeral or at the will hearing, instead he chatted a lot. But if I judged him for the way he grieved baba, how different was I from the peering eyes at the school staff room?
*
After work, it was a relief to walk, and rest after a long walk by one of the benches at the park. I just sat there sometimes devoid of any thought, and full of feelings. Occasionally, nostalgia crept up on me when I came here, but I turned away from it and focused on the trees. Their timid sway against the gentle breeze warmed my heart. The singsong of the robins and sparrows in the park was the reason I kept returning sometimes. One can barely hear the birds amidst the thick urban chaos. We often heard the cooing of pigeons on our balcony but never heard the chirps from sparrows or doves among the thicket of apartment buildings, shopping malls and corporate buildings.
I could see one such concrete structure right before my eyes – the Icon Tower. Tall, proud, entirely defiant. I turned to look at the trees before me, lifeforms that shared their stories by their every movement and stillness, every transparency and shadow. When the trees resoundingly reeled in the wind, I closed my eyes to listen to their stories. They were content, blessed, and grateful. But we’re made too busy to take a moment and listen to the nature around us. From a distance, the loud horns could be heard. But I was here listening to the trees… please share your undergrowth wisdom with me so I can stay rooted.
I looked at the fearless dancing birds in the sky and the hungry ones in the park. Their home was in the skies, on the land. I smiled at their fortune. I noted the time on my watch and realized I must get home now. Amma must be waiting, she must be alone. We’re supposed to do laundry today.
Today, Farah had lent me two novels – Jazz by Toni Morrison and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Since Farah was the only other teacher who read English fiction like me, I occasionally borrowed books from her, or asked for recommendations of good contemporary novels. I usually returned the borrowed books in a week’s time, but considering the beginning of mock exam season, I could return them in a month.
I hadn’t touched a book for a while. After baba’s passing, I lost interest in all those things that previously intrigued me, like reading, watching TV dramas, and home gardening. The books gathered dust on my shelf while the television remained covered under the sheet. No one watched anything on it, only baba used to watch the news on high volume; the potted plants in our balcony had long shrunk, discolored, and dried. Sorrow reigned in our home, silencing its already quiet inhabitants.
I silently got up from the rock bench and remembered to get some milk for tea from the store.
*
Amma was massaging my head with coconut hair oil in her bedroom. I had complained of the dryness in my scalp despite washing my hair regularly. Amma claimed that it was because I refused to apply hair oil. Even though I disagreed with her, I let her use the oil on me; it was nice to feel amma’s warm fingers stroking my hair gently. My heart ached at the sight of the dressing table against the wall before me. Baba’s hair brush was still untouched, in its place beside amma’s; his half-used bottle of attar next to amma’s perfume bottle; his Swatch that Esha gifted him when she got her first pay; amma and baba’s framed wedding photograph, and a family photograph of when all of us were young. His bedroom slippers remained intact by his side of the bed. I felt overwhelmed at these relics that were once in daily use.
“Amma?”
“Hm?”
“What eventually happens to the things of people who leave us?”
I felt her hands slow their movements but not entirely cease. A punctuated stillness lingered between us, which was occasionally broken by motorbike blares from outside.
“What happened? Do you miss your baba?”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes, but I am reminded of him every day,” her voice sounded heavy. “His toothbrush is still inside the bathroom, so are his towel and his razor and other small items. Whenever I enter the bathroom, my eyes always seem to track his toothbrush first.”
“Don’t you feel like throwing it all away after how he treated you?”
“Sometimes,” she laughed, but it sounded so sad. “Even though we spent most of our lives arguing over things that I no longer remember, at some point we did like each other. In a way, I feel like I learn and relearn about his death every day by seeing his leftover things. I know someday I have to give most of his things away, but for now I’d like to leave them how they are.”
I sometimes wondered if I grieved baba properly. Amma seemed to be coping well. Esha too. I don’t know if Hashim was doing well. He never spoke about baba when we talked to him about it. He remained private, somber. Baba did make me angry when he cherished his son more. He did make me upset by looking down on my profession, and comparing it with Esha’s. He did break my heart when he couldn’t keep up with seven-year-old me as we raced in the park, the same park I visited regularly. At the same time, he made me optimistic about his love when every week, he silently placed green apples in the fridge, a fruit only I loved and ate. Bile engulfed my mouth and for the first time since baba’s passing, silent tears welled my eyes.
I cleared my throat and asked, “Amma, how do you grieve someone who hurt you with their words and their actions?”
“By forgiving them.”
“And if that becomes difficult?”
“Then by letting them go.”
The street outside was loud as usual. The vendors called aloud on their speakers for cheap cauliflowers and tomatoes. The boisterous laughter of children is heard in the alley as they beat a tire with a stick. The motorbikes roared, not bothered if anyone in the apartments above was sick, or elderly or an infant, or a pair of women still mourning.
Image credit: Adil Sher