Affirmation of the day: The more I let go, the better I
feel.
CANAL STREET, 10:30 P. M.
Sher Khan House today was a real shit show.
Ali ignored me at lunch, and then later, when I was chatting with Kyle,
he burst in, acting like a jealous boyfriend. After I blew up at him and
stalked off, I didn’t know what to do. My impulse was to find a car and
drive back to the city, but I had to stick around and talk to Papa about our
financial arrangements. He was still in the library with the cousins, holding
forth: Even from a distance, I could make out his fake British accent, his
booming social laugh, the cousins’ titters of sycophantic approval.
I decided to kill some time and visit Mian. He is the only person in this
family who does not judge me. Being in his presence calms me.
Mian’s quarters are all the way at the back of the house. Every time the
family gathers to eat biriyani, a portion is delivered to Mian’s room, and he
eats alone. Even after a lifetime with Papa, Mian considers himself a social
inferior and would die of embarrassment to share a table with the family.
His room is as spare as a monk’s cell: A hard bed, a table by the window,
and two chairs. A window looks out onto the swimming pool and the dark
forest beyond, and at dusk, deer emerge to lap water from the pool. Mostly
we just sit in silence and drink tea, which is nice. Other times, if he’s in the
mood, he will tell me stories about the old days in India: famines, bandits,
poisoned wells, missing diamond necklaces, ghosts that take on the shape of
humans. These stories have the cadences of fairy tales, and even now, they
entrance me.
On my way there I saw Mama in the corridor. She looked a decade
younger than her true age: flawless skin, hair up in a high bun, clad in a
cream silk salwar embroidered with small pearls. She was rearranging a
bowl of lush pink peonies, carefully placing each stem into a cut - glass vase,
I don’t know why; we have an in - house florist who takes care of the flower
arrangements. I started to back away — after my run - in with Ali, I didn’t feel
like dealing with Mama — but she saw me and waved, and there was no
place to hide. I approached her, bracing myself for her usual lectures. She
has told me many times about the benefits of sitting zazen and has insisted
that if I were to embrace meditation, it would cure my “anger problems.”
Today Mama was not wearing her usual weak, watery smile. She
regarded me keenly, and when I came close, her nostrils twitched, and she
said, “Have you been smoking?” I braced myself for a monologue on the
dangers of nicotine, but Mama flapped her hand and said, much to my
surprise, “Well, even if you have, that’s your prerogative. You’re an adult.”
What the hell did that mean? Was it an implicit criticism of my lousy
judgment? I wanted to argue with Mama, but she turned her back on me and
went on arranging the peonies, putting the taller blooms in the back of the
vase. “Farhan,” she said abruptly, “I need you to listen to me. Are you
listening?”
Something about her tone alerted me. It was not Mama’s usual chipper
“buck up, Farhan, you can do better” voice but resigned and matter - of - fact.
The voice of an adult, and for my entire life, I have viewed my mother as
stuck in helpless girlhood, stunted by the sheer force of my father’s outsize
personality.
I did not make a flip r eply. I said, “Okay, yeah, sure, I’m listening.”
To my shock, Mama then apologized for being a bad mother, for not
protecting me from Papa’s wrath. She said she had been a girl when she
married and was frightened to death of him. I tried to speak, but Mama’s
narrowed eyes and down - turned mouth indicated that she would not tolerate
interruption. “Farhan,” she said, “I am going into the monastery for good.
At this time in my life, I don’t have a lot of options. And your father cannot
stop me. He can only manipulate those who want money, and I no longer
care about that. With me gone, well, I’m going to be frank here — things will
shift within the family.”
I wanted to ask her exactly what she meant, but I just nodded, fascinated
by this new, determined version of my mother. “And you,” she continued,
“will have to grow up. Without me here as a buffer, these idiotic rebellions
of yours — the drugs, the endless boyfriends, and, today, these ridiculous
dungarees — will no longer be tolerated by your father. He will crush you.
So my advice to you — and this is mother to daughter — is to get away. Take
the money he has promised you and go somewhere else, start your jewelry
store, live an ind ependent life. Stop acting out your distress — nobody in the
family cares. You must save yourself. Do you understand me? Hanh?”
This was the first time ever that Mama had spoken to me so directly, and
I was stunned. She had just admitted that it was not Zen and yoga — about
which I had mocked her for years — that was attracting her to a monastic life
but an es cape into a world where Papa could not control her. And before
making her es cape, she was warning me to do the same. I wanted to ask her
questions: What had Papa done to her? Was it the mistress I heard rumors
about? I wanted to put my arm around Mama’s slim shoulders and comfort
her, but that was never our way. Instead, I just stood and watched this
woman, my mother — still attractive in her late fifties — arrange pink
peonies. When the flowers were to her satisfaction, she picked up the vase,
nodded goodbye, and walked away down the corridor.
Mama had delivered a warning. Without her presence, things would shift
within the family. To my detriment. My mother, whom I had regarded as a
fool, a child, had told me explicitly that she had been, all this time,
interceding on my behalf, and without her here to petition for me, I was
about to be destroyed. I looked down at my paint - spattered T - shirt, my
faded denim overalls with holes in the knees, and saw myself through my
mother’s eyes. The rebellion of a perpetual adolescent, a constant clamoring
for attention: Look at me, look!
I had to get away. That was the bottom line, and it unnerved me. Perhaps
Mian could explain what Mama meant when she said, “Things will shift
within the family.”
I needed Mian’s calm, pragmatic company, and I rushed to his room, but
it was no good; he was not there. Panic grew within me, and I needed fresh
air. Pushing open an exterior door, I stumbled out into the gardens, but a
cold, stinging rain was falling, and a walk was not possible. Nearby was a
glass greenhouse that Papa had built to house the tropical palms he rotated
through his solarium, and the door was unlocked. Inside, the air was thick
with the warm, moist fug of decaying vegetation. Hidden by a cluster of
ragged palms, I dug through my purse to find the bottle of ketamine. I’d
taken some earlier during the car ride here, but it had worn off, and I needed
another hit.
I waited for the K to chill me out. To distract myself, I concentrated on
my earlier encounter with Kyle Nowak: skinny little Kyle, now all grownup and
handsome. A junior VP in development at Tiger Corp. Of course
Kyle had flirted with me. Good - looking guys like that always flirt; it’s not
personal. And Kyle has had to charm his way through life. He’s had it
tough: I think his father died when he was four or five? At least he inherited
his dad’s dark good looks. His mom was a real piece of work — a frumpy
Polish woman, our long - term bookke eper at Tiger Corp. She was always
sick, and Kyle had spent his life attending to her. As Kyle and I chatted,
he’d moved closer, and I could smell his aftershave, feel the warmth of his
body. My mood had lifted — and then Ali came barging through the glass
doors, acting like he’d caught me doing something naughty ... To hell with
Ali. He’s such a loser.
The K finally kicked in. The panic I felt after encountering Mama was
r eplaced by a tremendous calm. I left the solarium and walked down the
corridor all the way to the library, where Papa was still holding court,
surrounded by the male cousins. They were all sitting in a semicircle around
Hamza, whose face was bright red. Apparently, he’d been busted for
charging escorts to the Tiger Corp company credit card and should have
been fired right away, but Big Mike thought it was funny. The big lug was
sitting on a tiny Louis XIV chair, tilted back on two legs, ripping into
Hamza. Papa just smiled and enjoyed the spectacle. He likes a good blood
sacrifice now and then — it ke eps the cousins in line. And Big Mike was
doing all the dirty work, tipping farther back in his delicate little chair —
he’s broken a lot of chairs, but he never learns.
Finally, Papa said, “Baas, Munnavar, enough,” and Hamza fled the room
in tears. I walked over to Papa, but he didn’t even glance up. He said, “Not
here. Wait in my study.” I was happy to leave the library and head down the
corridor, away from the cousins and their blood sports.
Still, Papa k ept me waiting for fifteen minutes.
The air in his study was thick with the old, rancid stink of cigars. It is
some masculine thing — leave your spoor to mark your territory. Made
worse by an interior decorator’s idea of manhood: a massive mahogany
desk, crimson leather club chairs, a dim banker’s lamp with a green glass
shade. British hunting prints hung on the wall, packs of salivating hounds
chasing foxes, men following on horseback. I have always hated those
prints: death and dismemberment, all in the name of wholesome fun.
I could not help thinking of the past: For many years, before Papa had
the money to restore the interior of Sher Khan House, this room had
standard office furniture, fluorescent lighting, and bare walls. That’s what it
looked like the day my life fell apart. I was sixteen, in high school. Papa
summoned me, but he didn’t make me wait that day — he was already in
here, tense, leaning on his desk with balled fists. He asked if what the
school nurse had said was true — that I was eight weeks pregnant. I said I
did not know how it could have happened, but I was lying, and I’d
unconsciously wrapped my arms around my belly.
I could not believe that fooling around in the back seat of Ivor
Hutchinson’s parked BMW would lead to this. Hutch had been fumbling
and hesitant the whole time, and my thighs made squelching noises on his
leather seats. The entire episode was de eply embarrassing, and the only
reason I went through with it was because the cool girls at Brearley were
talking about how amazing it felt.
That day in his study, Papa pounded on his desk and demanded to know
who the boy was, but I refused to tell him. He exploded and screamed, “Are
you trying to destroy my name? How do you think this will look?” And in
that moment, I understood that Papa did not give a damn about me. All he
cared for was the approval of the Ismaili elders whom he met every week at
Friday prayers at the Manhattan Jamatkhana. These canny millionaires
invested in his projects without question, supplying ready capital on
favorable terms — but all this would change if Abbas Khan had a grandchild
out of wedlock. A man who could not control his daughters — could such a
man be trusted to successfully manage multimillion - dollar projects?
Papa put me on a plane to Switzerland. A sanatorium outside Zurich:
white walls, white nurses, white food. It was there, in the bleached rooms of
that sanatorium — no sun, just the white walls, the snow capped Alps in the
distance — that they scraped the child out of me, and the fear entered my
body. I was sixteen years old. Sixteen.
Before Switzerland, I had been Papa’s favorite. I was driven to Tiger
Corp after school, and Papa personally wrote out math worksheets for me to
complete. He took me to meetings at jobsites, lunch with city planners, golf
outings with the d eputy mayor. He introduced me as the heir to Tiger Corp,
saying, “She may be a girl, but she’s tough.” After I came back from
Zurich, Papa ignored me. Gone were the afternoons in his office. Now
Maryam was the new favorite. “She will be a great doctor,” Papa started
saying. “The kind of doctor who wins the Nobel Prize.”
At sixteen, the fear entered my body. I am thirty - four years old now, but
the fear lives there still. I feel it constantly, like a window left open, letting
in a chilly draft. If I’m not careful, the fear will build, my heart will start
hammering, and I’ll pass out. Today, as I waited patiently in Papa’s cigarstinking study, I
told myself, “It’s not you. Papa has done terrible things.” I
allowed myself to remember the names of the dead girls:
Shilpi Sharma
Anandita Bose
Salma Nawaaz
Asiya Mirza
Priya Kumar
If not for Papa, these five girls would be walking this earth. Instead they
had ended up butchered, their hearts ripped out, bodies left to rot in the
summer heat. How could Papa ignore what he’d done? He paid for all their
funerals, gave their families large amounts of cash — and then moved on.
Only a sick man could act as if nothing had happened ...
Just then, Papa sauntered into his study, calm, cool, collected. Can no
one see him for what he is? A predator. Able to sniff out weakness in any
situation. This afternoon, he found mine straightaway. He said, “I’ve been
told that you’re getting along very well. With him.” I tensed. So he’d found
out about Ali, and now punishment would be meted out. Then Papa said, “I
believe you were chatting with Kyle. Do you have the papers for me?
They’re confidential.”
Kyle. I could have swooned with relief.
I dug out the manila envelope from my handbag, passed it over, and
said, “Of course I didn’t look. And Kyle’s not my type. Too slick, too
corporate, too much like you.” Papa chuckled: “Don’t underestimate that
young man. He’s going places.” Interesting. So Kyle was in Papa’s good
graces, but he was not grateful in that she eplike way of the cousins; he
maintained a critical distance from the family. A possible future ally. Of
course, I did not say any of this.
Papa launched into the subject he had been avoiding since we came back
from Mumbai: his promise to fund a jewelry store for me. He said it was
not a good time; there were no new developments in New York, retail space
was astronomically expensive, blah, blah, blah. “I k ept my part of the
bargain,” I said calmly. “I went to Mumbai and put on a dog and pony
show. Now you ke ep your end of it.”
“Maybe there is one option,” Papa said, pretending to think. “It’s not
ideal. A property in another city.” And for once, I knew what he was talking
about: Big Mike had mentioned a new high - end shopping complex nearing
completion in Beverly Hills — which meant LA, and I hated that city:
Superficial skinny people. Bikram yoga. Smoothies. Papa thought he was
screwing me, that I would decline when I found out it was LA, but I had
outsmarted him.
I thought about what Mama had said to me earlier: “Things will shift
within the family ... get away.” Hell, I could handle LA. I would get a
personal trainer and drop thirty pounds. I would even do downward dog.
Still, I played dumb. I stood there, frowning, and waited for Papa to
speak.