The Sweetness of Tears (23 page)

“Are you tired?”

I had a hard time looking at him, focusing instead on the bangles on my wrists as I shook my head and said, “No.”

“Neither am I. I know I should be. But I’m not. Does your foot hurt? Stiletto Auntie should be banned from all wedding stages in the future.”

I laughed, remembering the friend of his mother who had unknowingly planted the pencil heel of her shoe in my foot, offering hearty congratulations as I tried not to wince. Akram had heard my soft sigh of relief as the woman turned to leave the stage, had leaned close to ask me what was wrong, and smiled sympathetically when I mumbled my complaint under my breath.

“Let me have a look,” he said now, lifting my foot, gently unbuckling the strap of the golden sandal I wore, before setting my foot on his lap to examine it carefully. “Oh, Deena. You didn’t tell me she made it bleed!”

The touch of his hand on my foot made me breathless. I looked at his fingers, noting the track of dried blood that they traced, a darker shade of red blending in with the fiery henna patterns on my feet. He stood up to get a damp towel and cleaned the wound. When he was done, he sat up, suddenly straight, and said, “This is what I’m supposed to do anyway, isn’t it? Where’s the basin? Ah, here it is.” He had found a steel bowl on a table beside the dresser, which he took into the bathroom to fill with water. When he came back, he bent to lift my other foot, removed the sandal, and washed my feet. “Now, what am I supposed to do? Save this water? To sprinkle in all the corners of the house?”

“That’s the custom.”

“Yes. For
barkat,
they say. For blessings and prosperity. Well, I must say—I, for one, enjoyed it. What’s next? Shall I wash your hair? Scrub your back in the bath? I like these traditions!”

I laughed. “No. No more washing or bathing.”

“Did you have the
mehndi
lady hide my initials in the pattern of henna on your hands?”

“Of course.”

He took my hands in his, but didn’t begin the search. Instead, he leaned his head in close to my face. “Does my hair smell like
biryani
? One of the aunties came and put her hand on my head to bless me after dinner. I don’t think she had washed her hands after eating,” he said with a shudder that made me laugh.

“No. I don’t smell any food.”

“It was a grand wedding, wasn’t it? Giving all the old gossips enough to talk about for weeks to come. Did you see Gulnaz Auntie? The way she bent forward to gape at your jewelry and then reached out to touch your necklace, to lift it and gauge its weight and value? I thought she would fall into your lap!”

I fingered the necklace, part of a diamond set that had been sent over with the clothes I was wearing, on the day before the wedding. I wondered what my mother’s wedding jewelry had looked like—part of what she had sold off to finance my father’s business. Normally, the gifts I had received from Akram’s family would have flowed both ways. But no explanation was needed in our case. Everyone knew that our source of income was dry. The only gift my family had given to Akram was my father’s old watch, polished and shined, to be sure, but secondhand nonetheless. I had been surprised to see it on Akram’s wrist when he’d slipped the ring on my finger, never imagining that he would actually wear such a modest piece when I knew, from having seen them, that he owned far more expensive watches already.

Suddenly, Akram was on his feet, pulling me up along with him. “Did you look around the room? While I was paying the kids off outside? No? Do you like the furniture? I ordered it myself.” He ran his hands along the dresser and then began to open drawers. “Come, see what’s inside. Beautiful clothes for you.” He opened the doors to the wardrobe and pulled out
sari
s and
jora
s. “I chose most of them myself. And you should thank me! You should have seen the old-fashioned stuff my mother would have liked.”

“It’s all lovely.”

“And the bathroom? Did you see that?” He led me to the door of the attached bathroom, our own private one, pointing out the fixtures, all imported, which he had chosen, the high ceilings, the intricate tile work. “You like it?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful,” I said, thinking of the long walk across the courtyard at home to the one bathroom we shared, with its rough, cement finish, the antique geyser mounted at the top of the wall that worked less often than it failed, which Macee or I had to climb on a stool to relight, and the rusty chain-pull that operated the flush suspended from the tank overhead.

“One more thing—a matter of business before pleasure,” Akram said, reaching into a drawer of the dresser. “It is tradition, also, I believe, for me to give you your bridal settlement before I make any demands of you over there.” He jerked his head, with a charming wink of his eye, toward the bed.

“What? What’s this?” I asked, fingering the little book, the size of a passport, that he handed me.

“It’s your bank book. For the account we’ve opened in your name. You’ll see the balance is in order.” He was all business now.

I didn’t say anything, didn’t open the book.

“Deena. It’s your
meher
.”

“But— I— an account?”

He laughed. “Didn’t you read the
nikkah-nama
?” That was the marriage document I had signed before the wedding.

“No. I didn’t.”

“Shame on you, Deena. No one ever taught you that you should never sign anything without reading it in full? All the fine print.”

“But—” I didn’t know what to say. I had not read the document for our marriage before signing it. The traditional
meher
—a prenuptial settlement that is supposed to be a bride’s security against the possibility of a failed marriage—was often, in our culture, only a symbol. There were exceptions. I had even heard of weddings aborted over haggling, which turned to feuds, between the families of brides and grooms, about definitions of what was fair and what was extravagant. Among the people I knew, girls were encouraged to “forgive” these settlements, to tell their husbands on their wedding nights, “Never mind what you owe me.” This—an account in my name—was not something I had expected.

Akram took the book from my hand and opened it, pointing to a balance that made me gasp. “My father is a stickler for these things, Deena. He believes that these laws of religion should be taken seriously. That money is yours. To do with as you wish.”

It was enough money to pay off Abu’s debts. Enough for Ma to live on—if she was frugal—for years and years. I was thrilled at the thought of it. That this money was mine to give to her if I wished.

“Thank you, Akram.”

“You can’t thank me for what is your due,” Akram said gently, his hand on my shoulder, his eyes holding mine for a moment before I dropped them, overwhelmed. He let go of me and walked to the record player in the corner of the room, which I had not noticed before. He picked up the stack of albums there and shuffled through them for a moment, found the one he was looking for and held it up, saying, “You like Presley?”

I nodded and watched him flip a switch, put the record on the turntable, and carefully place the needle to fill the room with the sound of “All Shook Up,” making school and the reverend mother seem suddenly a lifetime ago.

Then Akram came back toward me and held his hand out, like a hero in a movie, an unmistakable gesture that made his next words unnecessary, “Would you care to dance, Mrs. Mubarak?”

I took his hand and let him take me in his arms, dancing with a man for the very first time, fast, then slowly, and then fast again, matching the pace of the rhythms and melodies that filled the room, an unexpectedly lovely prelude to what followed. As the record ended, he led me to the bed and lay down next to me.

“What is your favorite Elvis song?” he asked me.

“ ‘Love Me Tender.’ ”

“Can you sing it for me, Deena?”

I did, while he kissed and caressed me and began the journey of consummation. How overblown had been my fears of that first time! Akram was sweet and soothing and gentle through the whole of it, holding me in his arms afterward.

Falling victim to the illusion of closeness that such moments foster, I asked, “What is yours? Your favorite Elvis song?”

“ ‘Wooden Heart,’ ” he said, before singing it to me—the words of the song seeming a heartfelt plea, from Akram to me, to safeguard his heart, making my own fill with tender, protective urges.

How overrated physical intimacy is; the more preciously guarded—virginity and chastity sacredly preserved—the more false its promise. Physically, I had never been closer to anyone else in my life until that night. It made me believe what wasn’t true—what could never be true—that I understood something of the man I married, that I had begun to know him, his mind and his heart, as a wife should. It made me able to put aside Sharif Muhammad Chacha’s words, releasing the breath I had held since he’d uttered them. I knew that what he’d said had been untrue.

But I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing.

For the days that followed, a strange routine was set. Mornings, when Akram and his father left for work, were excruciating. There were too many servants for any work to be left for me to do. My mother-in-law spent the mornings in her room, breakfast and tea delivered there daily. I should have been happy with all that time to bury myself in books, the way I had scarcely had time to do since Abu’s death. But I wasn’t. Leisure is only fun in contrast to its opposite. In the afternoons, I joined Akram’s mother in visiting or receiving visitors—there were condolence calls to be made, and congratulations to be offered for engagements and weddings, duties I had never had to perform before, because my mother’s social circle was smaller and, until I was married, I was exempt from such grown-up obligations. Every day, there were petitioners who came to seek a share of the Mubarak bounty—mostly former servants and employees who had fallen on hard times.

It was the evenings I looked forward to, when Akram came home bearing even more gifts for me—flowers, chocolate, perfume, and jewelry. At night, we were the guests of honor at dinner parties all over town, where I wore the outfits and jewelry that Akram enthusiastically laid out for me. After the parties, our bedroom was a sanctuary from the strangeness of becoming part of a new household, a rich household in which I wondered whether I would ever feel comfortable. There, it was just Akram and me, in retreat from others, resuming what had begun on our first night of marriage. Music and dancing and pillow talk filled those nights, pleasantly at first. Eventually, exhaustion would overtake me and I learned to fall asleep to the sound of his voice talking or singing along with the records he played. It took a while for me to notice that there was something wrong. That after I was asleep, Akram would get up and pace the room. As the nights passed, when we measured the time of our marriage in weeks instead of days, his pacing became frantic. He stayed awake, drawing up itineraries for the honeymoon he was planning for us, a trip to Europe, a few months away. On more than one occasion, he woke me up, dragging me out of bed to go out and look at the stars, or go for a drive, so late that even the nocturnal streets of Karachi were deserted.

I didn’t understand the clues that my in-laws eventually noticed, casting looks at their son filled with more and more worry as the days passed. The accelerated rate of Akram’s speech turned into frenzied monologues. When I was too tired to dance with him at night, he danced by himself, long after I pretended to be asleep. Within three months of our marriage, I knew two things. I was pregnant. And what Sharif Muhammad Chacha had said about my husband was true.

V
ery quickly, I was educated on the technical terms to describe what ailed him. He was a manic-depressive—what they call “bipolar disorder” today—now flying high in a hyperexcited state that his father finally challenged in a conversation I overheard from the hallway outside of the lounge.

“What do you mean? You stopped taking your medication?!”

“I mean what I said.”

“But— why?
Why,
Akram? You were doing so well!”

“I was dead, Papa. My heart was dead.”

“But, Akram—you heard what the doctor said as well as I did—it’s dangerous to stop your treatment this way. You know what can happen, Akram, please. Be reasonable.”

“Don’t you see, Papa? I was dead! A puppet! Made of wood, with a wooden heart. No joy, no life in me. That is not the way I want to live. It was my wedding time, Papa, and I had to experience it. Fully. Alive. With a heart of flesh and blood. Alive and beating, not numb from drugs. Dangerous? What is life without danger? Without risk?”

“Akram, stop it. Please! You know where you are headed. You know what will happen.”

They
knew. Akram and Abbas Uncle. Sajida Auntie and Asma. But I had no idea. How low Akram would fall from his heights. When it happened, it was so bad that drastic measures had to be taken. For Abbas Ali Mubarak’s son, the psychiatrist made house calls. He came, with his machine, his wires, his rubber bands, and his assistants. He gave Akram electroshock therapy. Again and again, over the course of a few weeks. By now, no one pretended any longer that this was something they hadn’t known about.

“We had hoped,” Abbas Uncle said, “that this would never happen again. He was doing so well.”

Sajida Auntie sniffed. “I thought his marriage would be the end of these episodes.” There was an accusation in her tone. The line was drawn between her and me—never to be erased. I was somehow responsible, in her eyes. I was to have been the cure for her son—one of a series she had tried over the years, from herbal medicines to
hakim
s, faith healers, and quacks. In her eyes, I had failed him just as all the others had.

After I lost track of the number of electroshock treatments the doctor administered, Sajida Auntie said to her husband, in tears, “Enough! We have tried all these doctors. None of it works. This time, we will do as I say.”

“As if we haven’t tried things your way already,” Abbas Uncle said, without looking at me.

“We will take him to Karbala. On
ziarat
. We will go on pilgrimage, to give our
salaam
s to Imam Husain, who will cure him. I know he will! If we have enough faith.”