Untitled Novel : [Chapter 7 : If You're Leaving and No One's Home]

Niaz starts speaking, rather reluctantly.

“Forget it, I have no intention of relationship chit-chatting with you.”

“You want to talk and you know it.”

He takes a deep breath.

“Fine…"

His voice is steady but he fumbles with words. He wants to say more but recedes into hesitance. It seems that he is either unwilling to open up to me about the matter, or hasn’t spoken to anyone about it and hence, doesn’t know how to say it. He begins:

"It’s just- I don’t know… the two of us live together but… but there’s a strange sort of distance between us… we don’t talk anymore.”

“So… you two don’t talk anymore, is that the big issue?” I ask.

“We’re fine. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that she’s projecting all her confusion at me and it’s not helping.” He says, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Don’t give me puzzles. What confusion?” I ask, irritated by his vagueness.

“I’ll be back in a minute.” He says, standing up and raising his pinky finger.

Nicely timed intermission.

I recline back against the sofa.

I watch Niaz rushing towards the bathroom like a kid, and for some reason, I’m reminded of the good-humored, lively, high-spirited person he used to be. What could possibly be wrong with the two of them, I had always thought they were doing pretty great.

It was twelve years ago when they got married. I was studying at New Delhi, and had come home to stay for the ten-day summer vacation. It was my first semester and I clearly remember feeling homesick most of the time (surprisingly, I don’t feel that way now). I was talking to Pa and Ma about how a bunch of weirdos in the college hostel had started calling me ‘Pakistani billa’ among other interesting nicknames.

While I was still talking, Niaz had entered the living room, shaking nervously and announced to Pa and Ma with the air of a royal messenger, that he wanted to marry Shazia, a girl he had met in college.

He was only twenty then, and it was his first year in college. Taken unawares, Pa and Ma both burst into a fit of laughter and I joined them, with Niaz just standing there, awkwardly, looking flushed and cursing at me under his breath for laughing at him like that. Of course, I had known about the two but I didn’t know he was in such a hurry. They had been ‘dating’ for a while, as he would put it. In a conservative society that didn’t really like a boy and a girl roaming around town unless they were married, it was the farthest you could go before people started gossiping.

Over the days, the humor of it started waning, which was followed by a series of long family conversations in which Pa and Ma tried explaining to a stubborn Niaz was that he was still too young.

“It’s a big decision. In my grandfather’s time, people used to marry when they were seventeen. But that was a different time, son. It’s not the same anymore. Today, you have to stand on your feet first. What is the hurry, anyways? What about your studies?” Pa would say to him.

“What family will give their daughter’s hand in marriage like this?” Was Ma’s attempt at trying to make him understand.

“I’m not a kid.” Niaz would reply, trying not to talk too loudly to his parents while at the same time, trying desperately to convince them.

To get them to soften their stance, Niaz promised them that he would continue his studies after getting married, and manage to balance the two somehow. But the day I left for Delhi again, nothing had been decided conclusively.

By the time I returned home later that year during the semester break, they had finally given in to Niaz’s stubborn persistence, concluding that if the two liked each other so much and knew each other so well, there was nothing else to be said.

But it hadn’t been the same for Shazia.

Her family was a specific variant of the ‘khaandaen-type’ families who fret a lot about last names and caste when it comes to marriages.

It had been a simple nikah ceremony. Only a handful of guests, mostly from our family, showed up on the day. The bride’s father and two other relatives came for the vows, reluctantly. That must’ve hurt her, even if slightly.

I am brought back to the present as Niaz enters the room smelling of handwash. He still has that worried look on his face, but it looks like he wants to talk this time. He sits down, looks at me, closes his eyes and begins.

“She thinks that I am to blame for the fact that her family cut off ties with her twelve years ago.”

“Did she say that?” I ask, with genuine surprise.

“No, but I see it in that look she gives me. That look. I don’t believe her, for almost a decade now, everything was fine and we were getting along perfectly. Now she misses mommy and daddy and chachi and kaki. Now. Great timing!”

“A look?”

“Yes… and sharp words like ‘at least your family didn’t cut you out of their lives, stop whining about your job’ and… and… ‘dinner’s ready, no one’s going to beg you to eat’… or sometimes, when I’m reading a novel or writing something in my study, she just stands at the door and sighs and doesn’t say a word… things like that. My life’s fast turning into a soap opera.” He says.

I roll my eyes.

“Go home, Niaz.”

“What?” He says, looking surprised.

“I thought it was something serious. You almost scared me there for a while.”

He bites his lip, then starts biting his nails. “I swear man, that look, wallah, it scares the living hell out of me!”

“You know what you’re problem is? You’ve been reading into these ‘looks’ too much. You need to go get some fresh air. She’s probably giving you that ‘look’ because you’re turning into a pile of needless worry that smells of handwash.”

Niaz tries to pour himself another cup of tea but the kettle is empty.

“I thought it was something serious.” I shake my head.

“Well, it did seem serious to me.” He replies, in his defense.

“You base your conclusions on a look? Seriously? You told me that you two don’t talk anymore, right? I now know why.”

“Why?” He asks, waiting for a miracle answer.

“Because you don’t talk. You see, you have to talk in order to talk. It’s an effort. You have to talk about stuff to get a conversation going.”

“I do... yeah, it’s like I don’t make that effort anymore.”

“Big surprise!”

“I don’t like your tone, Zaid.”

There’s the sound of footsteps in the corridor as Shahid enters the room with a book in his hands.

“Can I borrow this?” he asks me, opening it.

“Let me see it.”

It’s a five-hundred page book titled Short Stories from Around the World. I don’t remember buying it, or borrowing it. There’s a name written in black ballpoint ink on the title page:

Shirin

September 1996

When did I borrow this?

In a corner, there’s another, seemingly out-of-context scrawl:

“Alpenliebe”

Alpenliebe what?

“Make sure you return it.” I say as I hand it back to him.

“Be khyame ne, I won’t eat it up, trust me.” He says.

The book reminds me of Shirin but I’m soon distracted by a series of conversations. Time seems to fly by as we sit there for about an hour or more, talking about our childhood, about the house, about the neighborhood and Niaz updates me on where some of the neighborhood kids from twenty years ago are today and what they’re doing. Unlike me, he has managed to keep in touch with them over the years. We talk about Shahid, about the economy, politics, about where the Kashmir conflict is headed. We talk about really ordinary things like what we do during the day, and what we do on weekends. I notice that it is mostly me doing all the talking, as if a mountain of unsaid words that had gathered up inside me was slowly finding release. I even talk about my patients to him and he pretends his best to be interested, while, surprisingly, Shahid listens keenly, occasionally asking the meaning of the medical terms that I use.

It is 4 PM when they get up to leave.

“Pari Mahal?” Shahid asks his father.

Niaz shakes his head resolutely. “No, not today… not even jinns go there in this cold, the road is slippery and besides, I’m tired.” says Niaz raising both his hands to emphasize his aversion to the trip. “We have to get going now.”

Shahid closes the book, he looks disappointed by the straight “no” from his father. He doesn’t insist further, and walks slowly towards the door.

I clear my throat loudly. As he stands up to leave, Niaz catches my eye. He takes the cue, frowns. He shakes his head at me first, but I give him a blank look. He glances out the window and then nods painfully to himself.

“Okay, we’ll go.” He shouts at Shahid.

I think I hear the sound of a faint ‘Yes!’ downstairs.

“See you.” He says and leaves.

I lie down on the sofa, listening to the metal screech of the gate as it is opened, the sound of the car’s ignition, then the sound of car tires screaming against the snow on the driveway, a moment later the gate is closed, and then there’s distant thump of a car door closing, and off they go.

As if by impulse, I quickly reach for my phone, unlock it and call Niaz. Shahid picks up after a few rings.

“Hello.”

“Tell him to stop, I’m coming too.”

“Uh-okay… we’re right outside, near the masjid.”

“Yeah, stay there.”

I stand up and head upstairs to my room. I can’t decide whether to change or not, I look like a runaway thief in this creased pheran, but since I don’t want to keep Niaz and Shahid waiting, I just reach for my camera, grab the big lock and key on the shelf, head downstairs put on a pair of boots, lock the main door, put the key beneath a flower pot near the door in case Pa or Ma return while we’re still away (To my surprise, I do this as if by reflex: this used to be the unspoken family rule – put the key below the flower pot if you’re leaving and no one’s home.)