“Shut up!”
“It’s the truth. You come here now and want to recover some century-old debt from his children? Get out of my house. I don’t care if you are my cousin. I’m not going to let a drunk torture my nephew!”
Fareed brought himself within an inch of Ama Tamina’s face. It took every ounce of resolve she could muster not to step back.
“You crazy woman,” he said slowly. “You can’t talk to me like that!”
Basir stood next to his aunt. All this felt too familiar. It was the same tension he’d experienced in his own home on a thousand occasions.
“It’s my home and I’ll talk as I please!” Tamina responded.
What Fareed would have done next would remain unknown, for at that precise moment, Kaka Mateen emerged from the house. He’d heard the shouting and seen the way Fareed towered threateningly over his wife’s slight frame. He grabbed Fareed by the back of the neck and shoved him toward the door.
“What are you—” Fareed blurted.
“Get out of our house!” Mateen roared. Fareed threw his hands up in defeat.
“You deserve these children of dogs.”
Basir had never missed his mother as much as he did in that moment, in his aunt’s dark courtyard, the air thick with resentment and anger.
Fareed was gone. The girls were peering out the door, half faces looking out to see what had happened.
Ama Tamina cleared her throat.
“Girls, get back inside. It’s late and you should have been in bed already. Let’s go.” She shooed them back into the house. “There’s nothing more out here.”
“I. . I’m sorry, Ama-jan,” Basir said hesitantly.
His father’s sister turned to face him, her lips drawn tight in anger. She had every reason to hate them. Kaka Fareed was right. She had lost her brother and their mother had been locked up for his murder. How could she not resent Zeba’s children?
“Stop,” she groaned. “That’s enough for tonight.”
Kaka Mateen put his hands on his hips.
“What was he so worked up about anyway?”
“This boy,” Tamina said quietly. “Coming in at this time of night and not saying where he’s been.”
“I. . I just wanted to go for a walk,” he mumbled. “I should have told you, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone.”
“Fareed hated Kamal, and he’s taking out his anger on the rest of us now.” Tamina sighed. Her voice had steadied some.
Basir felt the urge to say something. His aunt had stepped forward on his behalf and he needed her to know that he appreciated that. If she decided to see him and his sisters as Zeba’s children and not her nieces and nephew, they would be in dire straits. He could not provide for his siblings. “Ama Tamina-jan, I. . I just wanted to say sorry. I’m sorry this happened because of me. I know you’re upset with my mother but. .”
“You don’t know anything,” Ama Tamina blurted in frustration. “You think it’s that simple but it’s not!”
Basir took a step back. It was exactly as he feared. Ama Tamina was the only person who’d offered to take them in, but even her kindness would have limits.
Kaka Mateen put a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“Don’t get so worked up about it, Tamina. I’m going inside.”
The girls in the doorway parted so that he could pass. He barely looked at Shabnam and Kareema, touching only his daughters’ heads before telling them all to go to bed.
“You don’t understand,” Ama Tamina said in a voice that Basir heard only because the courtyard was stone silent. “You couldn’t possibly understand what your mother has done.”
Basir waited. Even when Ama Tamina had disappeared into the house, he stood unmoved. She would return, he anticipated, and tell them all to leave. Or maybe she was waiting for him inside the house. Maybe she was bundling their two sets of clothes by the light of a lantern so that she could rid herself of their presence by morning.
Basir sat on one of two plastic chairs.
What was Madar-jan doing now? Was she thinking of him and the girls? Did she have any idea how tenuous their situation was?
Why didn’t you tell everyone what happened, Madar-jan? There has to be a truth that will explain all this.
Truth. Basir knew more truths about his father than he cared to admit.
They tried to save each other, mother and son, but their mutinous efforts were rewarded with broader bruises, louder shouts, and harsher curses. Recalling the futility of it, Basir sometimes chose to shrink away when he felt the chilling wind of his father’s presence entering their home. It may not have felt like the most honorable action to take, but it did minimize the damage.
In the year before his father had been killed, Basir had tried new tactics. Instead of allying himself with his mother, he began to reach out to his father. If his mother couldn’t figure out how not to rile his father’s anger, perhaps he could show her. Basir took it upon himself to dust off his father’s shoes in the morning, as if he were going to a city office instead of a blacksmith’s shop. He would bring his father a cup of tea and scrounge up whatever he could from the kitchen to place before Kamal as soon as he came home.
And Basir’s plan worked. Though he was barely an adolescent, he celebrated each peaceful day as a general would celebrate a strategic victory. He would smile at his mother and could not understand why she did not mirror his cheer. She looked wary. They did not talk about the delicate balance of power in their small home. It was the same in so many other homes dominated by heavy-handed fathers. Periods of peace were calms between storms.
It never lasted very long. Kamal was one of those men who needed to exert his strength to reassure himself he was capable of something. He needed to see his wife and children react to his presence to confirm he was in command. A man’s might was right because no one had ever told him otherwise. And Kamal had secrets, filthy shameful secrets. When he was inebriated or angry or preoccupied, he was quite able to forgive his sins. But there were rare moments, small awakenings of a deeper conscience he didn’t much care to face. In those moments, Kamal’s face would flush with shame, his spine would hunch with horror. It was unbearable. Kamal could not tolerate anyone pointing out even the smallest of his shortcomings because he sensed that it would undo him completely, in the way that pulling on a stray piece of yarn just so can turn a sweater back into a pile of string.
Kamal was not an easy father to love, Basir admitted. But he might have changed. Maybe things would have gotten better.
BASIR WAS UP AT FIRST LIGHT, SHAFTS OF YELLOW BREAKING through a hazy, purple sky. He sat cross-legged in the living room where he slept at night, away from his sisters and cousins. The house still breathed collectively, a slumbering clan. He could almost feel the walls bend and bow like the rise and fall of a chest.
Basir remembered his box, the experiment he’d left outside. He thought of his little cousins and his sisters and decided it would be best to get rid of the scorpion immediately, before it or its babies found a way out of their cage. Basir slipped out the front door and made his way to the back of the home. He would let the scorpions free before someone stumbled upon them.
The box was precisely where he’d left it just a few hours ago. With the tip of his sandaled foot, Basir kicked aside the rock he’d placed on the lid and then used a twig to lift the top. Basir the captor jumped back, his foot knocking the box onto its side. He gasped with disproportionate horror as he learned a bitter truth.
Out ran the unencumbered scorpion, leaving two dozen half-eaten, lifeless young in her wake.