A Place for Us Read online

  “Slow down and enjoy it,” she calls to him.

  Abbas says to her, “When have you ever known him to?”

  “Never.”

  They laugh together. Then turn to watch Amar crush the plastic cup and drop it onto the ground, as if he were a teenager at a party. Some of the boys clap. Abbas Ali, the eldest Ali boy, the one face she has always sought out in a crowd, looks up at her with his face lowered, so that his eyebrows are raised, so that his eyes look bigger, his expression earnest, and when she looks at him, when she lifts the cup to her lips, when she nods that she will stay, he smiles to himself and looks away, past her, maybe to the magnolia tree, maybe to the street, maybe directly to the setting sun.

  6.

  THE FAMILIAR SIGHT AT LAST IS NOT THE SILVER OF HIS MOTHER’S car, but his sisters walking up to where he leans against the chain-link fence of his middle school. He recognizes them instantly, even though they are still blurred figures approaching. His sisters look like twins, similar strides and same height, except Hadia’s dark hair sways, and Huda’s black scarf frames her face.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks when they are close enough to hear. He stands straight and the fence rattles.

  “Mumma can’t pick us up today. Malik Uncle is coming to this spot as soon as he’s off of work.” Hadia points to the ground.

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Amar groans.

  “But I have an idea,” Hadia says.

  It has been a while since Hadia has had an idea.

  “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “We’ll get into trouble,” he says.

  “And you’re going to be the one to tell them?” she says in Urdu.

  She raises an eyebrow. She smiles mischievously. He cannot help but smile too. Without their parents there, they can go anywhere, do almost anything.

  “Where?” he asks.

  “You’ll see.”

  He grabs his backpack and follows them down the slope. Hadia asks him to keep an eye on their route. He has a knack for directions, according to his father, and Amar prides himself in it. In a few months, Hadia will graduate and move away to college. He does not like imagining their house without her. His sisters appear excited and they laugh loudly at each other’s jokes. They’re speaking in their code and he feels not resentment but love for them. That they thought to include him in this afternoon, when they could have left him to wait behind his school fence. Hadia walks with her back straight. She looks both fierce and friendly. He trusts her to take them anywhere.

  The trees above them are blossoming with white flowers. The sky glimpsed through the branches so blue. How can he not notice as they pass beneath them? When God first began to brainstorm the world did He think to make branches a dark brown and flowers either white or soft pink, and only like that in the spring, so that you are always startled by their bloom? Or were God’s decisions scattered and sudden, beautiful by chance? He considers asking his sisters, wanting it to be as easy for him to speak with them as it is for them to speak to each other, but he stops himself, in case it is rude to imagine God in this way. Perhaps this is what Mumma means when she says not to think about God too much. Perhaps these are the kinds of questions that the moulana calls shirk, blasphemy, among the greatest of sins. He jumps up and tries to tug at a blossom but the branch is out of reach.

  Recently, Amar has begun to feel as though he had been born into a world not made for him. What did it matter that his birth certificate was from a hospital in this very city, that the only house he had ever lived in was here. Where are you from? the kinder question would be. As though he could not possibly be from here. As though it were he and not they who had misunderstood. He had given up trying to explain. India, he would mumble. Even though he had not even been there for more than two weeks total, and that by now both his parents had lived here longer than they had ever lived elsewhere. Sometimes this answer would satisfy them and sometimes he could see their faces twist in confusion, and they might even say, but don’t people from India have darker skin?

  Even at mosque, when listening to the speaker lecturing from the pulpit, he pulled little threads from the carpet and felt that none of this moved him, or was made to include him. There were moments. A feeling he got after praying, but never during, when the men turned to each other to shake hands, and when they settled into holding hands to recite aloud together the dua of brotherhood and sisterhood. Or when some of the boys said they were walking to a gas station nearby and they asked him to come. But then the moment passed. He pulled another thread. Outside, people could not pronounce his name and often asked if he had a nickname they could use, and in the mosque everyone nodded in agreement to speeches that just bored him. But if not here—where? Amar would slip away and wander the empty hallways, stop to drink from the water fountain, thinking to himself, nowhere, nowhere, nowhere.

  Through the glass door one particular evening he saw the eldest Ali boy, Abbas, sitting on the front steps facing the parking lot. He went to him.

  “Why are you not inside?” Amar asked.

  “Pick a reason: Thought it was a nice night to enjoy the outside air. I didn’t like the speaker’s tone.”

  He was surprised to hear someone speak against the moulana.

  “I prefer the stories to the rules about the proper way to shower when fasting,” Amar said and rolled his eyes.

  Abbas laughed a little. It was true. Amar loved the stories. If it were up to him that’s all a mosque trip would be. No praying, no listening to Arabic recitations he didn’t understand, no man telling them what the rules were and how they had already broken them.

  “Won’t you get in trouble?” Abbas asked him when Amar took a seat.

  “I’m in trouble whether or not I sit out here.”

  Abbas laughed again.

  “To ask for forgiveness and never permission, rule number one,” Abbas said, and he lifted a finger up in emphasis.

  Amar nodded, sort of understanding.

  “What if you don’t ask for either?” he asked.

  “To never push your luck too much—that’s probably a rule too.”

  Abbas Ali smelled faintly of cigarettes. Amar did not want to ask him why.

  “You said you preferred the stories,” Abbas said.

  Amar nodded.

  “Which ones? We might as well get something from tonight’s mosque trip. In case anyone asks us what we were doing, why we were wasting time, we could say we were learning and participating in our own way. That could be another rule.” Abbas winked at him.

  It was a specific thrill, someone winking, like a secret handshake or an inside joke, but better. And not just anyone, but Abbas Ali.

  Amar told him the story about the Prophet leading hundreds in jummah prayer. How one day when the Prophet knelt to touch his forehead to the ground in sijda, everyone behind him did the same, and at that moment, Hussain, the Prophet’s grandson, climbed onto his grandfather’s back. Instead of shaking his grandson off, the Prophet stayed kneeling. Amar imagined the sun shifting a fraction in the sky. All the men who were waiting for the cue to rise, confused about why it was taking so long. Mumma said the more hopeful believers wondered if a revelation was a cause for the delay, and the more cynical smiled to themselves, thinking they had finally caught the Prophet making a mistake, and one so public. What kind of believer was he, Amar wondered, if he liked the story so much because while everyone waited, the Prophet remained patient, forehead to the ground, and bent the rules just so his grandson could play a little longer.

  “He waited until Imam Hussain decided he was ready to climb down, and as if it had never been stopped, the prayer resumed,” Amar said to Abbas, copying exactly how Mumma had told them.

  Mumma tried to make the stories about morals but to Amar they were just about what people were willing to do for one another.


  “You’re my protégé,” Abbas said to him after a long silence.

  “What’s a protégé?”

  “Someone who is going to be trained to keep things relaxed around here, so boys like you and me can leave for a bit and feel fine doing it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “What should I learn?”

  “Loopholes.”

  Abbas Ali winked at him again, and Amar nodded and sat up a bit straighter, so Abbas would know he was ready for the lessons.

  * * *

  “HERE,” HADIA SAYS and stops, and the three of them stand still before a tiny street with old buildings and hand-painted signs, pots of flowers decorating the sidewalk. The place is oddly familiar. They have walked for half an hour just to get to it. Hadia explains that the street has an antique store, a barbershop, a stationery store, and an ice cream shop she wants to try.

  “I don’t have any money,” he remembers.

  “That’s okay,” Huda reassures him, “we do.”

  The ice cream parlor door makes a funny “moo” sound when they open it instead of a bell, and a mural of cows in a pasture is painted on the wall. He scans the room to make sure no one they know is inside. They look to each other as if to acknowledge this lucky fact. He remembers what it was like to pretend to be in a jungle when they were little, the bedsheets draped over the kitchen table their cave, and the three of them huddled beneath the table like a pack, alert to every noise outside that could be an animal’s howl. They are a pack again now as they press their faces to the glass and pause to take in all the ice cream flavors. Huda asks for samples and Hadia squeezes his shoulder and says, “You can get anything, okay? Even a sundae.”

  He orders quickly and takes a seat in the red leather booth by the window, while Hadia opens up her wallet and counts dollar bill after dollar bill. She is a great leader for their pack. He will miss her. He licks his pistachio ice cream in his sugar cone, regretting that he opted for a cone and not a cup when he sees his sisters walk toward him with their mature cups and purple spoons in hand.

  “So,” he tells them, “the police came to our school last week, with a dog.”

  He has won their attention. His sisters lean in to listen. The police had come to every class to check for drugs. Hadia’s eyes are wide at this, and she shakes her head and says to Huda, in middle school? And Huda says, come on, have you already forgotten? Every single backpack was lined up against the wall. Amar was terrified. Hadia asks him why he would panic. Amar says that the dog just nudged every bag with its nose but when it stopped at his it sniffed for a while and he thought, oh no, oh no, what if another kid put something in there for jokes? The police stopped the search and opened the zipper of his backpack and began to empty it of its contents. They brought out brown bag after brown bag bunched in the bottom, and with disgusted faces and white gloves they peered in each one.

  “What was in them?” Huda asks.

  “All of my lunches from the past month. Including a really rotten banana and a sandwich that basically looked like a bag of mold.”

  “Amar, that is so disgusting.” Huda sits back in her seat, shakes her head.

  Maybe it had been the wrong story to share with them.

  “You are so embarrassing,” Hadia says, but she is laughing. Then they both are. And soon he is laughing too.

  Hadia pulls back her sleeve to check the time. One hour, she tells them. She is wearing Dada’s watch. It is hers now. She is going to be a doctor. All their life she has made Mumma Baba so happy and she is only going to make them happier. Baba never talks about him to his friends the way Amar has overheard him speaking of Hadia, so he was not surprised when the watch went to her. It didn’t even hurt to see her wear the watch. He wanted Hadia to have everything she wanted. But what did hurt was the feeling that he had always known it would never be his.

  When they step outside the breeze is cool and he wants to tell Hadia he is thankful, and Huda too, but they are eager to rush to the antique store. The lady behind the counter is old and does not look pleased to see them. It is as if she knows that they have very little money and are only curious. He wants to tell her this is his first time in an antique shop, but she resumes the paperback book in her hand after telling them not to touch anything. They disappear into the aisles. He can hear his sisters move through the store together, and he feels safe to leave their side. There are shelves of dolls with glass eyes. Board games he does not recognize. Who buys these things and what do they do with them? A typewriter black and a typewriter blue. No one is behind him so he touches a key. He presses down on the button that says A and jumps back when a metal rod flies up and hits the paper, and when it returns there is a tiny letter, and a little bell rings. He likes the impression the letter made on the page. He wants to put down another letter, m, then realizes it is not his name he is trying to spell, but hers, and he steps back abruptly. What if the shopkeeper follows the sound of the bell and kicks them out? What if his sisters come back to see him, typing her name? He is mortified, even at the possibility of it.

  He leaves the typewriter to sit in a corner where there are boxes piled on the floor. One of the boxes has not been touched in a long time. It is black and old. He runs a finger across the leather surface, wiping away a thin layer of dust and making his fingertip gray. The box has a combination lock but it is open. The inside is deep and lined with soft maroon velvet. There is a zipper in the back and along the sides a bunch of tiny compartments. How much he could fill it with. Drawings. Basketball cards. Maps. Video games, if he ever got one. He snaps the lock shut and studies it. How everything about it suggests a secret.

  Huda’s hand on his shoulder startles him.

  “We’re leaving,” she says, then looks at the box. “What’s this?”

  “I want it.”

  He did not know he wanted it until he said it. But now he feels like he needs it, that he would be happier if he had it in his life, filled it with his favorite things.

  “You like this?” she asks, incredulous.

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Just. I didn’t expect it. The typewriter maybe, but a box?”

  “With a lock.”

  “How much?”

  He has not thought to check. He doesn’t want to leave without it. He would show it to nobody. He would hide it beneath his bed or in his closet. The piece of paper taped on it has the price and instructions for the lock and he sighs.

  “Fifty.”

  “Whoa. Well, we can’t carry it out with us today anyway.”

  He stands up. As he follows her he looks back at it, the streak of darker leather he made.

  “Don’t look so moody. Your birthday is coming up in a month.”

  “So?”

  “So. I’m just saying.”

  Before they step outside the elderly lady at the counter tells them about the soda she has for sale. Hadia looks at Amar and he nods. Hadia pools quarters and nickels and the coins clink onto the glass surface. The lady counts with her fingernail, painted a blood red. They are fifteen cents short but she gives it to them anyway: three sodas in glass bottles. It is so cold in his hand and satisfying to drink under a sun that promises summer is coming. They sit on the sidewalk, their legs splayed out and into the gravel street.

  “Tastes better like this,” Amar says, lifting the glass bottle to the sky and examining it from all sides. He is not sure if it is the bottle that makes it taste better or that they bought it for him. “Thank you,” he says to them, “for everything.”

  “Don’t be so nice,” Huda jokes. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  He has been rude to them lately, to everyone, angry all the time without really knowing why. He should try harder. He loves them. He knows that. It is easier to feel it here, after this walk, drinking soda in the sun, than it is when they are
home.

  “Do you remember how we got here?” Hadia asks.

  “Of course,” he says, and he hopes how he feels with his sisters today will last long after they’ve returned home.

  * * *

  WHEN THEY REACH their street it is packed with cars from the community. Amar looks over to Malik Uncle, who said when he picked them up that their parents had to tell them something. The look on his face suggests he did not expect the cars either. Amar turns to look at his sisters in the backseat. What Hadia sees in his face makes her immediately straighten her posture and lean forward, look out over the dash at the cars parked on their street, and before Malik Uncle has even found a spot, she has taken off her seat belt and jumped out of the moving vehicle. Amar follows her lead. He hears another door slam and he knows Huda is running with them too. He knows it is not Mumma. He knows it is not Baba. Malik Uncle said that Mumma and Baba had news for them. But still. Let them both be all right, he prays. Their home is filled with people he recognizes who try to hug him, but he drops his backpack by the door and maneuvers through them. His mother is in the living room, her face hidden by her hands. People surrounding her read from religious texts. Please don’t let it be Baba. Please let it be anything but him. An aunty who is next to Mumma sees them and touches Mumma’s shoulder. Mumma looks up. She has been crying. She holds her arms out for him, and he goes, and she begins to cry when he hugs her, her shoulders shaking, her face pressed against his neck.

  “It’s Nana,” she says, and she shakes her head. “I was waiting for you three to come. I have been waiting for you all afternoon.”

  When he looks at Hadia’s face he sees not only grief but also guilt, that they had stolen an afternoon for themselves, spent hours exploring under the sun, going against Mumma’s and Baba’s wishes, while at home Mumma waited for them to comfort her.

  * * *

  LAYLA WATCHES HER son shiver through the sliding glass door. His hands in his pockets, his shoulders raised. How he likes to complicate what is simple—warmth easily acquired, an argument easily avoided. She smiles. He is focused on something in the dirt of her garden and presses the toe of his shoe into it, as though he is a child of seven again and not a young man of twenty. The two of them are home alone. Rafiq has taken Huda to visit the graduate school she was accepted in, a university two hours away. Huda will be a teacher. It is a good profession for her. Layla has observed her in Sunday school classrooms, how Huda knows when to be stern or gentle, how she is attuned to what each student and situation demands. Layla is not worried for her. Not as worried as she was when Hadia first left, and, watching Amar pull his notebook from his back pocket, she realizes not nearly as worried as she will be when he too goes.