I could never explain that to my family because there was, within all of them, nothing that would allow them to believe such a monstrous act was possible.
She never deceived herself about the brutality of what she was doing. That’s why she wept as she did when Rabia confronted her with her selfishness. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she kept on. That’s why she had never come back. Because she knew what she had done was unforgivable. She realized it even before she left. Those days she was reduced to an almost coma-like state, lying in bed, her eyes fixed on nothing. Those were the days she was paralysed by the horror of her own decision. She knew exactly what she was doing, and the price she was exacting from all of us who loved her. And she knew, also, that the price she was exacting from herself was this: that she couldn’t change her mind. She couldn’t come back and say, sorry for what I put you through, but here I am and everything’s OK.
But here’s the thing, Mama: you can. I’ll forgive you.
I pulled the shawl closer and for the first time in my life I wondered if I could really do that. Could I forgive her who I had become since her departure?
Would I forgive her if she came back for Omi after all those years in which she didn’t come back for me?
This habit of blame, had it become an addiction, the defining feature of my character? If she came back, would I find it impossible to rein in the momentum of my incessant accusations? Would I find it necessary to interpret her every act as a sign of betrayal or desertion?
Questions without answers. My life seemed filled with them these days.
But Omi would give me all the answers. He’d come back and teach me how to be the girl I could have been. He’d teach me how to step forward instead of circling old wounds. He’d teach me that — and I’d teach Ed the same.
The door-bell rang, and I smiled. Dad was notorious for discovering, halfway to the airport, some crucial item he’d left behind.
But when I opened the door there was an unfamiliar man standing there. His hands were much too small for his body. I noticed this right away and I can’t say why but it struck me as threatening.
‘You live alone,’ he said.
With a quickness I didn’t know myself capable of I slammed the door shut and locked it.
There was no sound from the other side of the doorway, but when I stepped back I could see, in that slice of space beneath the door, his feet, unmoving. Then, there came a gentle rapping on my door, of knuckles that knew they didn’t have to exert any strength to achieve their effect.
‘Madam,’ said the soft voice. ‘I only want you to see this.’
A paper slid beneath the door and stopped at my feet.
I picked it up. Amidst columns of words, a colour picture of a man lying on the ground, his head cradled in blood.
I knew, right away, that they’d intercepted Omi’s letters. Intercepted them, and killed him. And now they were here just to tell me what they had done. That was all they needed to do to me.
The caption beneath the picture said: DON’T LET THIS BE YOU.
The voice behind the door warned, ‘Madam, it won’t take long.’
‘You bastards.’ No fear, only rage.
‘Madam?’
And then I looked down at the paper in my hand again. SECURE-CITY SECURITY said the words at the top of the page.
It was a newsletter from a private security company, one recently hired to manage the block of flats. A circular sent around the building had said representatives of the company would be stopping by to speak to all tenants, on an individual basis.
There was suddenly no strength in my legs and I had to lean all my weight against the wall.
‘Madam?’ And now the voice was concerned.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. My lips felt numb. ‘Please come back later.’
‘Sorry to bother.’ Footsteps moved away from the door. Then they stopped and the man’s voice said, ‘Be assured, we will be watching at all times.’
The footsteps started again — towards, and down, the stairs.
Just the security man, I told myself. But why hadn’t he stopped next to knock on Rabia and Shakeel’s door? I leaned over the balcony and looked down. Ten, eleven seconds went by. He was talking to the downstairs neighbours, no doubt. But then he stepped out of the stairway, into the driveway, his small hands lighting up a cigarette, and walked towards the gate, without stopping at any other flat along the way.
I ran inside and called one of the neighbours.
‘The security man?’ she said. ‘Oh, there’ve been many of them through the day. I got my visit this afternoon while I was asleep, 9D was woken up at seven a.m. to get her briefing. What nonsense is this? Why not just have the whole block get together and tell us in one shot?’
This is not sinister, I told myself, putting down the phone. None of this is sinister.
I lay awake at night repeating that thought over and over, and when I finally slept I dreamed of pushing my way through tangled weeds in murky water, ahead of me a bend in the river which would lead to sun-dappled waters and herons in flight if I could only swim clear of the little hands which wrapped themselves around my limbs.
XX
The following morning, when I walked into STD, there was a palpable air of victory about the place. Telephones, e-mails, websites, internet chat rooms, newspapers — praise for Shehnaz Saeed’s comeback had choked all mediums of communication. So today, the first day most of us were back after the Eid holidays, the ground floor had the air of a school hallway in the intense flicker of time between lessons. All the previous night’s fears seemed absurd.
‘Did you see, yaar, that moment? Oh my God, that moment.’
‘The one when Shehnaz…?
‘Yeah, yeah. Man, wow.’
‘Who taped it? I need to see the whole thing again. That look when she sees the daughter.’
‘Taped it? Taped it? Oh, ehmuk, we work for STD. We’re in the building with the original tapes.’
And then the knot of people dissolved into near-hysterical laughter.
How had Shehnaz played the moment when she sees the daughter?
A door opened and Kiran Hilal held her fingers up in victory. ‘Pulled it off, didn’t we?’ She danced, unexpectedly sinuously, across the floor. Then she stopped, mid-gyration, and turned to me. ‘Any idea why Ed’s taken a rough cut of the second episode? He’s not going to start interfering, is he? They say he’s a little strange when it comes to his mother.’
I shook my head, shrugged and then ran to find Ed. At some point in the middle of the night I had woken to realize, for the first time, the full impact of what it meant for Omi to be watching Boond. It had taken every atom of self-restraint within me not to call Ed and demand to know his plan but instead to do what he had asked and give him until the morning.
As I rounded into the hallway, I saw Ed standing outside his office watching Boond’s director stalking away from him. Halfway down the hall, the director turned around — as though she’d just thought up a punchline — and said, ‘It’s prostitution.’
‘No, it’s a box of tissues,’ Ed replied with elaborate patience, and the director stormed her way past me.
Ed came down the hall towards me, caught me around the waist and waltzed me down to his office.