‘We’ll just go, Khalla,’ Aisha said. ‘Two minutes.’
Ammi left, but not without a warning glare at Sharmeen. Aisha gathered up her things, and herded Sharmeen through the kitchen and up the stairs to the back room. Even the heavy smell of Ammi’s cooking couldn’t hide the grim reek of old age, that shut-off closeness which smelt of camphor and bitter medicine and however slightly – this is what made Sharmeen gag – of urine. Though the room was warm, from the heating ducts and the kitchen just down the stairs, Daddi lay under a thick covering of quilt and blankets. Sharmeen sat on the chair next to the door, and tried to breathe very lightly. Aisha marched up to the bed, and plonked herself down on the couch next to it. Even though Daddi was by now little more than a lump under the blankets, Aisha professed an interest in her. She said Daddi changed every time she visited the house, got smaller and more creased and pickled. Sharmeen thought this was true, that what was left in this room was not the tall, loud, sarcastic woman with huge dark eyes that she remembered vaguely from early childhood, but she preferred not to look. She would prefer to leave this smelly body alone, at the back of the house.
‘She’s got two more hairs on her chin,’ Aisha said. She leant in, closer. And then, in her hip-hop voice, whispered, ‘Hey, Dadds, how you doin’?’
She jumped back.
‘What?’ Sharmeen said.
‘She spoke.’
‘So what? She does sometimes. She thinks she’s in Rawalpindi. Talking to the butcher.’
‘No, idiot. She spoke in English. She said, “I am very well, thank you.”’
‘She must have heard it somewhere. Come here.’
But Aisha pulled the couch closer to the bed, and turned her face sideways to look into the opening in the quilt. Sharmeen had seen her get this way before – when Aisha got obsessed with something, she focused so hard that she really couldn’t hear somebody trying to talk to her from two feet away. It was very annoying, and if she got fixated on Daddi they would have to come up here every day for the next week. Sharmeen got up, went around the bottom of the bed and put a hand on Aisha’s back. ‘A-isha,’ she said.
‘Quiet, na. She’s talking.’
‘She jabbers all the time.’ Daddi muttered away morning, noon and night, she spoke to the walls of her room and told stories and occasionally cursed, which made Ammi laugh and Abba frown. All this frightened Sharmeen, these purblind eyes, this stringy white hair and the flaky flesh underneath. She could hear a voice under the quilt, reedy and brittle. She wished she was somewhere else, outside in the crisp American frost.
‘It’s English,’ Aisha said.
‘Don’t be silly. Daddi doesn’t know English. And Dadda couldn’t even read anything. They didn’t speak English, that’s certain.’ Daddi’s husband had been illiterate, and Daddi could read Urdu, everyone in the family knew this. But Daddi had sacrificed and scrimped to educate Abba, she had said her youngest son was going to be a professional man, not a tempo-driver like his father. And Dadda’s first wife and her children had laughed at her, and thrown her out of the house right after Dadda’s early death. Daddi had been out on the street, with three children and no money, nothing, and she had still managed. She had managed to make Abba something other than a tempo-driver. All this was the family history, which Sharmeen had known ever since she could remember, but through her own life nobody had ever mentioned Daddi speaking English. That was just absurd.
‘Come here,’ Aisha said, and reached behind and pulled Sharmeen down. ‘Listen!’
Sharmeen found herself face to face with Daddi. The pale skin was blotchy now, disfigured by spots, but Sharmeen knew that once it had been legendarily glorious and resplendent. Dadda had married Daddi because he had been dazzled by her Punjabi beauty, and his first wife had despised her, had called Daddi a prostitute, had hated having her in the same house, had fought against it. Dadda used to call Daddi a rose, a zannat ki hoor. Looking at Daddi, this was hard to believe, but this is what everyone said. Daddi’s breath was now rank, like old adhesive. Sharmeen was sure that she would never ever let herself become so repulsive. She would rather die first. Sharmeen made a face. ‘That’s not English.’
‘Now it’s not. Now she’s saying something in Punjabi. What is it?’
What Daddi was saying had the cadence of a chant, a prayer, but it was unfamiliar. ‘I don’t know,’ Sharmeen said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘I’ve heard it somewhere. It’s a song.’
‘Yes, yes, now she’s singing some Daler Mehendi song for you.’
Aisha wasn’t about to rise to Sharmeen’s weak sarcasm, not while she had this new mystery to investigate. She had her head cocked close to Daddi’s. ‘She stopped.’
‘Good. So come over here. Then after five minutes we can leave.’
But Aisha insisted on sitting next to Daddi and waiting for her to speak again. There was no budging her. She watched Daddi intently. Sharmeen turned away from that wet, wrinkly mouth, and tried to talk to Aisha, to get back to some other subject, anything. She tried Chandrachur Singh, Brad Pitt, school, strict teachers. Aisha remained distracted, and answered only in haans and naas. Sharmeen, as hard as she tried, couldn’t quite push away the chip-chip sound that Daddi made with her lips every few seconds. Finally she fell silent, and they both waited for Daddi to say something.
Sharmeen jumped when she did, even though she knew it was coming. This time Daddi’s voice was louder, stronger, but it still sounded as if it was coming from somewhere else, from somewhere far away. It was the chant again, ‘Nanak dukhiya sab sansaar,’ and this time it was familiar to Sharmeen too. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ Aisha said.
Daddi broke off. In that terse silence the Punjabi words fell together in Sharmeen’s head and she knew what they were. She didn’t want to react, but she stiffened against Aisha’s side and Aisha instantly knew that she knew.
‘What is it?’ Aisha said.
Sharmeen didn’t want to say. None of it made any sense. She shrugged. ‘It’s Punjabi.’
‘I can hear that also. But your Punjabi is pretty good. What is she saying?’
Aisha wasn’t going to let it go. Sharmeen whispered, ‘It’s some kind of song. Like those sardars sing at their temple or whatever.’
Aisha shook her head. ‘Your daddi is saying a Sikh’s prayer?’
Sharmeen nodded. ‘Nanak, that’s from the sardars, no?’
‘Yes,’ Aisha said. She was holding Sharmeen’s hands very tightly, and now she asked the crucial question. ‘But why?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sharmeen had no idea. Dadda was a Punjabi, and Daddi was a Punjabi refugee from the other side. Her family had all been killed by Hindus. Dadda had rescued her and brought her home. He had married her, and his first wife had raged, and after Dadda died the chudail first wife had thrown her and Abba out. Dadda had loved Daddi, and if he had lived, everything would have been different. But Daddi and Abba – who was then only a boy – had suffered, and finally Abba had triumphed. Nowhere in all this old history was there any reason for Daddi to say Sikh prayers.
‘Find out.’ Aisha was all aflush with the drama of the moment, with the possibilities of the mystery.
‘How?’
‘Ask questions.’
Ask questions. That was easy for Aisha to say. Sharmeen didn’t want to ask her parents questions about Sikh prayers. Aisha wouldn’t quite understand, but Sharmeen knew in her bones, in her very blood, that asking about this would be a disaster. Abba hated Sikhs only a little less than he hated Hindus. He said the sardars were a barbarous, uncultured people, full of violence and hate. Hindus were worse, of course, they were unscrupulous liars and cowards and idolaters, but Sikhs were half-way to Hindus. Abba had spent his life fighting against both, and had been decorated and promoted for his dedication and his successes. Sharmeen wasn’t going to start talking to him about Sikh prayers in his own house. She loved him, but he was an austere, disciplined man with an unforgiving temper. He went to wo
rk at the embassy and spent long hours, and the home he returned to had to be clean, quiet and peaceful, and full of godly grace. Sharmeen knew better than to provoke an upset with stupid questions about the mutterings of senile old Daddi. So she finally managed to get Aisha packed off home, and retreated to her own room, and tried to calm herself down. But she was restless, and after lunch she went back to Daddi’s room.
Daddi was still curled up in exactly the same position, with her head to the left. Sharmeen knew that Ammi got her up in the mornings and evenings to feed her, and give her medicines, and sometimes Daddi was even carried down by Abba to the drawing room, to sit with everyone. But mostly she spent her whole life here, in this one room, dozing and talking to herself. Sharmeen shuddered, and swore to herself again that she would never be this horribly old, and waited for Daddi to say Sikh stuff again. Daddi was mumbling and muttering now, though, and it was hard to make anything out, and although it was Punjabi, it wasn’t any kind of prayer. Sharmeen sat patiently. She had a maths textbook with her, and she made herself comfortable on the low green chair and read. She was curious now herself, not as excitedly as Aisha, but with a strange, uneasy flow of anticipation and dread and nausea through her abdomen. She wanted Daddi to say that thing again, that prayer, but she didn’t.
Sharmeen came awake slowly, her cheek against the wooden arm of the chair. A faint smog of snow drifted against the window, and the light had changed to a luminescent slate that reminded Sharmeen of a dream she had once had, of walking across a vast plain, towards high mountains. When had she had that dream? She couldn’t remember. She pushed herself up and rubbed her face. There must be a nasty pattern there, from the wood. Sometimes, when she and Aisha napped in the afternoons, they giggled with glee over the impressions left on their faces and arms, and pretended that these were permanent marks, scars. Aisha hated sleeping too long in the afternoons, though. She said that waking up after a long daytime sleep made her feel lost, like she didn’t know where she was, or who she was. Sharmeen liked to sleep any time, day or night, and she slept when she felt like it. Although she would never say it to Aisha, she thought that despite all her outrageousness and her risk-taking, Aisha was peculiarly delicate in some ways. She got really nervous about tests and papers, and was afraid of lizards. Sometimes Sharmeen felt like she was protecting Aisha, not the other way around.
Sharmeen started. Daddi was sitting up in bed. The covers had fallen around her waist, and under the white sweater her collarbone was very fragile. She was looking at Sharmeen. ‘Nikki,’ she said. ‘Take me home.’
‘What, Daddi? What?’ Sharmeen gathered herself up and knelt next to the bed and held Daddi’s hand. It was as light as nothing. ‘Daddi, what did you say? Who is Nikki? Which Nikki?’
Daddi said, ‘Nikki, where is Mata-ji? Take me home, Nikki.’
‘Which Mata-ji? Do you mean your Ammi?’
But Daddi had retreated into her customary absence. She was looking through Sharmeen now, through the window and out beyond. Sharmeen wasn’t sure now if she saw the snow, or the trees, or anything at all. She sat with Daddi for a while, then made her lie down and covered her with quilts. At dinner that evening, Sharmeen asked Ammi, ‘Where did Daddi come from?’
Ammi shrugged, ‘Ask Abba.’
That was as much as Sharmeen was able to get then, much to the frustration of Aisha, who had been appraised over the telephone of Daddi’s command to Nikki, whoever that was. But Abba wasn’t at home that night, he was working late again, and all questions had to wait until the next morning. ‘That’s so bizarre, that you can ask only him,’ Aisha said. ‘My mother can tell you everything about Papa’s whole family.’
Sharmeen protested only mildly. She didn’t like thinking of her parents as bizarre, but now it did seem odd that Amma talked so much about her own family and their ancestry, but never about Daddi. There was no getting around her silence, though, so Sharmeen waited until morning, waited for Abba to finish his bath and fajr prayers and breakfast. They had a little chat before she went to school, every day, and mainly he liked to talk to her about her studies. They discussed the proper religious view of many of the topics that came up in the classroom, and he gave her his opinions on events in the world. He was an expert on international affairs, and had been nearly everywhere – or so it seemed to her. She loved to hear him describe the jungles of Myanmar, and the steppes of Ukraine. He stroked his greying moustache, and told her in his deep voice about the tigers he had seen in Nepal, and the horses in Sweden.
Today, they talked about Afghanistan and Iraq, and then, gathering up her books, Sharmeen asked, ‘Abba, where is Daddi from?’
Abba straightened the mats on the table. ‘From Punjab. Other side of the border now.’
‘Yes, but from where exactly?’
‘Near Amritsar.’
Abba was very relaxed, but Sharmeen knew that asking anything else right now would seem too curious. She went to school, pacified the impatient Aisha and bided her time. Over the next three days, she asked Abba what she hoped were innocent, casual questions about family, natural for a young girl to ask. She learnt that before her marriage, Daddi’s name had been Nausheen Sharif; that yes, Daddi had brothers and sisters who were all lost as they tried to flee towards Pakistan; that there were no living relatives on her side, at all and anywhere; that she had gone to school but did not have a college degree; that she liked jalebis and khari lassi. ‘And,’ Sharmeen finally asked, ‘who is Nikki?’
‘Nikki?’ Abba said.
‘Daddi said something about some Nikki, when I was sitting with her.’
‘You spend a lot of time with her nowadays.’
Sharmeen and Aisha had been going up to Daddi’s room every afternoon, maintaining a vigil for more Sikh prayers or English or mentions of this Nikki. Ammi had been very pleased by Sharmeen’s new devotion to homely duties, but Abba seemed very neutral. It was hard, a lot of the time, to tell what he was thinking or feeling. He would say something, make a statement in a voice that gave nothing away, and then a quiet would descend. He could outwait you or anyone, and when you spoke you felt like he was seeing right through you. Sharmeen felt anxiety rise through her spine like lava, and she said as calmly as she could, ‘She’s so old. She must be lonely.’
He softened then, and made Sharmeen sit beside him, even though she was running late, and told her about the moonlight on Himalayan peaks.
‘But he didn’t tell you about any Nikki?’ Aisha said later that afternoon. ‘No yes, no no, no nothing?’
‘He said nothing.’
‘This “Mata-ji” stuff is from sardars also, I think. You have to find out about this Nikki.’
‘I am not going to ask him again.’
‘Yes, yes. He can be quite scary, your Colonel Shahid Khan, with that big moustache and that voice. Even when he says, “Good night, beta,” he makes me feel all shivery.’
There was a lurch inside Sharmeen’s head, a quick, dizzying movement of perspective – she had always seen Abba as Abba, who was tall and strict and baritone and smelt of leather and Arnolive hair oil, who was as permanent as the sea. Now she saw him suddenly as Aisha saw him, or others might see him, dour and dangerous and with his own secrets. She felt suddenly older, as if something about herself had really changed, and she didn’t like it. ‘He’s not scary,’ she said quietly.
Aisha had had one of her sudden shifts of attention, and wasn’t listening to Sharmeen any more. She was peering at Daddi. They were in Daddi’s room, poised close to her in case she said anything mysterious or shocking or revelatory. But Daddi was talking in chaste Urdu and Punjabi – as she had been for days – of nothing but butchers and horses and long-ago journeys. ‘She’s being very boring,’ Aisha said. ‘Nothing new, no?’
‘Yes,’ Sharmeen said, ‘nothing new.’ There had been no Nikki, no prayers, nothing. If there even was a mystery, they were no closer to solving it. Maybe there was nothing to be found out. Sharmeen wasn’t even sure she wanted to find out
anything any more. The wall of Abba’s evasiveness – and yes, it was that – held back a gigantic, crushing weight, something that threatened even him. Sharmeen couldn’t explain this to Aisha because she didn’t know how she knew this, but she was frightened by this and wanted to leave it alone. Looking at Daddi now, at the sharp arc of her nose, which both Abba and Sharmeen herself had inherited, Sharmeen wished that Daddi would just stay quiet, that she would shut up and not say anything surprising or dramatic or explosive. She wanted Aisha to come away, leave this room and whatever broken memories it contained, but she knew better than to say anything. Telling Aisha not to do something often meant that she did it anyway, even if she didn’t want to in the first place. So Sharmeen made herself wait, she had patience and endurance. It was only a matter of time.
Aisha’s interest in Daddi lasted longer than Sharmeen expected. Through the winter holidays, she kept dragging Sharmeen up to that dim room every other day, made her sit next to Daddi while they talked about actors and music and boys and school. Daddi had lapsed into an almost constant silence now, broken only occasionally by sniffles and coughs and a deep gargling sound at the back of her throat. Over three weeks, she spoke only once, and that was to ask someone when the train would leave. This became something of a joke between Sharmeen and Aisha, for some reason it was very funny to randomly say to the other, in a strong Punjabi accent, ‘Arre, listen, when does the train go?’ By the time school began and their bags were full again, and Aisha was shocking Sharmeen with her shameless talking to boys, even this one Daddi line was forgotten. And now Sharmeen had to go up to Daddi’s room only when Ammi reminded her. Aisha no longer insisted on afternoon visits, and Sharmeen was glad of this.
Daddi died at the beginning of spring, on a day when the newspapers were full of the early blooming of the cherry blossoms. Sharmeen came home from school and found Abba seated at the table in the kitchen, holding a cup of steaming chai. Ammi stood at the counter, her hands held over her stomach. Sharmeen knew instantly that something bad had happened. Abba was never home this early.