Marrying Ameera Read online

  ‘He must be still asleep.’ Don’t ask me about last night, please.

  It was Mum who saved me. ‘Hassan, can you pick up some things from the market?’ She put a list in front of him.

  Papa seemed to relish doing things like this for Mum. He’d told me that in some areas of Pakistan, the women never go outside the house. The men bring everything from the bazaar for them, even bolts of cloth and shoes to match. How awful would that be? I like choosing my own clothes. Poor Papa, if that was the way he’d grown up, he’d had a lot to get used to in Australia with Mum working three days a week teaching English.

  Just then my phone rang. It was Raniya. ‘Just checking you got home okay,’ she said.

  I left the table. I couldn’t tell her what had happened with Papa’s ears flapping. ‘Maryam and Tariq brought me home in the end.’

  There was a silence, then, ‘Her brother?’

  ‘Yes, it was fine.’

  ‘You want to be careful there. He’s not Muslim.’

  ‘Why should that matter?’ I felt like saying that Mum wasn’t Muslim either.

  She must have caught my tone. ‘All I meant was he mightn’t have the same code of behaviour as our boys.’

  ‘He was no different at all.’

  Was I telling the truth? Actually he was better than ‘our boys’. Look how my own brother had left me to find my way home alone.

  Raniya didn’t linger. We made arrangements for coffee the next day in the mall. ‘Let’s shop for shoes after, okay, Ameera?’

  ‘Sure.’ I made an effort at enthusiasm and her ‘bye’ sounded relieved.

  When I returned to the kitchen, Papa was at me again. ‘What will you do today, beti?’

  I stared at him. Would I have to account for every minute now that school had finished? ‘I’m not sure yet. Tomorrow I’m meeting Raniya.’

  I expected him to object but he didn’t. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He respected Raniya’s family: her father was friendly with the imam at the mosque.

  ‘You can come with me to the shop today and be useful,’ he said.

  ‘The shop?’

  Why not Riaz? But then Riaz didn’t share Papa’s passion for carpets, not like I did. What would I do though? Roll up the carpets after a customer had viewed them? Papa pulled out dozens at once and spent most of his day rolling them back up. His shop looked like an art gallery, with special pieces hanging on the wall and from the ceiling. Papa sat on carpet cushions while he talked to the customers, and he always rang for coffee and cake from the deli next door. It surprised people but he was just fulfilling his Pushtun duty of hospitality. One customer had said the shop looked like a harem. Papa laughed about that when he came home, but I guessed it would look exotic to someone who had never travelled.

  ‘It’s about time I showed you how to do the books,’ he told me. ‘You can help me right through your holidays.’ He paused and glanced at me. ‘Then I may have a surprise for you.’

  I looked at Mum. I could tell she didn’t know what he was referring to either. He didn’t enlighten us, just rubbed his hands together as he went out of the room.

  ‘Mum, do I have to go? I could make up that green silk Aunty Khushida sent from Kashmir.’

  ‘Just humour him today, love.’

  I took a novel with me because I knew that Papa’s idea of me helping wouldn’t entail me speaking to customers or doing anything interesting. He would closet me in his stuffy little office fixing up his invoices on his business software.

  I wasn’t wrong about the office work but Papa did surprise me at lunchtime. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We’ll shut the shop and eat at the café.’

  He took me to an Italian café, one of my favourite foods. I was so touched. It had felt lately as if he’d forgotten who I was and what I liked, but that lunch was special. He spoke a lot about his family in Azad Kashmir and how they were getting their business back in order after the earthquake. I knew he telephoned them often at night.

  ‘They asked after you,’ he said.

  I smiled. ‘That’s nice. Did Meena too?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Meena too.’ Then he put his hand on mine. ‘Ameera, you are my only daughter and I want the best for you.’

  I blinked at him. He sounded so serious.

  ‘Parents make decisions for their children because they love them. You understand this?’

  I nodded slowly, even though I had no idea what he had in mind.

  The next day I managed to slip out to the mall without any questions from Papa. I met Raniya and we went to a café.

  Raniya was wearing a short Indonesian scarf covering her hair. I’d noticed she was wearing short scarves more lately. I still just wore my long Pakistani dupatta around my neck. Papa hadn’t insisted I cover my head though he’d be proud of me if I did. Mum felt that covering your head in a non-Muslim country defeated the purpose. ‘Isn’t it so as not to draw attention to yourself?’ she’d said one day. It was true that Raniya got more attention than I did when we were out together.

  ‘Papa took me out yesterday,’ I told her. ‘It was nice but it wasn’t the same as when I was young. He and I used to get on so well. Now, it’s like he’s noticed that I’m growing up and he’s keeping his distance but still has to protect me. We’re in Australia—there are no terrorists, no war, and who’s going to kidnap me? He’s overprotective—it’s annoying.’

  ‘All Muslim fathers are the same. Even Natasha says her father’s paranoid about her and they’re Australian.’

  ‘What’s their problem?’ I didn’t mean to sound so grouchy.

  Raniya gave me a measured glance. ‘You were brought up Muslim—you understand.’

  ‘Morality,’ I said with a sigh. ‘We have to be good, be hospitable, pray. I agree with those ideals, but why does it have to be so difficult? Papa’s stricter than your father. Why can’t he trust me? That old movie we saw recently, The Go-Between, remember? The fiancé said that nothing is a lady’s fault. Well, my father thinks the opposite. I bet if he’d caught Tariq bringing me home, he would have blamed me, not Riaz. It’s not fair.’

  Raniya stirred another sugar into her cappuccino. ‘We gain favour in God’s eyes if we submit. It’s more important to impress God than to please ourselves.’ She kept her head down as she spoke.

  I was speechless. I was just letting off steam; I didn’t need a sermon.

  Then Raniya dropped another bomb. ‘Maybe it’s because of your mother.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe your father’s stricter because he thinks you’ll be influenced by your mother’s faith.’

  Any mention of my mother like this made the blood rush to my head. I bet they all thought Mum was a bad influence on us. ‘But Riaz and I have been brought up Muslim. Mum agreed.’ It was hard to keep my tone even.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Amie. It’s just a possible explanation.’ Then she smiled. ‘How about we check out the shoes in David Jones?’

  I nodded and finished my coffee. Maybe Raniya was right about Mum. It was easier for her as both her parents thought the same about everything. Mum had tried not to let her world-view influence Riaz and me, but it was impossible not to see the flickers of disbelief that crossed her face at times. It had been much easier when I was younger, when life simply involved following Papa’s rules. It was Mum’s Christianity that had seemed harder then. ‘All you have to do is believe,’ she’d tried to explain to me one day—one of the few times she’d ever discussed her faith. ‘Even the believing is a gift. Just be yourself—the special person God made you to be.’ Papa said it was important to follow the rules, then we’d have a chance of paradise. Mum acted as though she already knew that was where she was going.

  Shoes were usually my passion, but it was difficult to find the enthusiasm today. Raniya was deciding between a pair of black or red high heels when I heard a squeal. ‘Amie!’ It was Maryam. With her were Seema and Natasha. I looked behind them to see if anyone else was there and realised P
apa may have a point. If I wasn’t allowed out at night I would never have met Maryam’s brother.

  ‘Let’s have coffee,’ Maryam said.

  Raniya and I looked at each other and shrugged. We could have said we’d just had one but that would have disappointed Maryam.

  Off to Billy Baxter’s we went. Natasha was telling us about her latest trip to the beach with her boyfriend when I saw Tariq in the café too. He sat apart from us but had the air of an older brother told to keep an eye on his sister and her friends. When I looked at him again I found his gaze on me. He smiled gently. I glanced at Raniya; she was listening to Natasha’s story. When I looked up again Tariq was walking away. This time Raniya caught me staring. She followed my gaze, then raised her eyebrows at me. I could imagine what she was thinking: Muslim girls don’t acknowledge a guy’s attention. My problem was that I wanted to acknowledge Tariq. I wanted to speak to him, to find out what he was like, to talk about normal things as I had done with boys when I was younger. Would Tariq want to talk to me though? He must have been twenty-two at least, even older than Riaz. He was doing his Masters at uni, Maryam had said, in social work. At least at uni, people of any age could meet as equals, I thought. My stomach did a flip at the idea of sitting in the café with Tariq and discussing our studies. I had the feeling Tariq would be a free spirit. One of Raniya’s brothers would never have smiled at me, they were much too predictable.

  ‘What do you think, Ameera?’

  ‘Pardon?’ I missed what Maryam was asking me. Raniya was still watching me.

  ‘Let’s go to the movies,’ Maryam said. ‘Tariq can come back with us on the train to keep us safe.’ She laughed and I thought how life seemed so simple for her.

  ‘I’m in,’ Natasha said.

  ‘Cool, me too,’ said Seema, who always managed to do whatever Natasha did. She even bleached her hair and wore blue contacts. Probably the kids at school had no idea her parents were Pakistani.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I murmured.

  I glanced at Raniya; she too was weighing up the pros and cons. Then suddenly I knew I wanted to go. Why shouldn’t I see a movie with my friends? No point asking Papa. In Pakistan, good girls didn’t go to movie theatres. I rang Mum instead.

  Mum was hesitant. Years of asking Papa everything had taken its toll. ‘I wonder what your father would say.’

  I knew what he would say. ‘What about you, Mum?’

  She sighed. ‘What movie is it?’

  Papa only liked me watching old movies on DVD or ones from Bollywood. He didn’t realise there was a sex scene in The Go-Between.

  ‘Which movie?’ I asked Maryam.

  She shrugged. ‘The cleanest and most classic.’

  Finally Mum agreed. I bet she’d gone to the movies whenever she felt like it when she was my age. Still, I could imagine the tug of war going on inside her before she gave me permission.

  ‘Okay.’ Maryam and I gave each other a high five. That meant Raniya had to come whether she liked it or not as she wasn’t supposed to walk home by herself.

  ‘Are you okay with this?’ I asked her.

  She nodded. ‘I’ll come. Besides, someone has to look after you.’

  I hoped she was joking.

  3

  The movie was fun: a romantic comedy. Most Bollywood movies were romantic comedies too, though some, like Veer-Zaara, portrayed years of sacrifice and much crying (Shahrukh Khan was the best crier, Papa said) before their love was finally realised. Others had tragic endings if a girl fell in love with a man she shouldn’t marry. Then the lovers had to die, like in the romantic folk tales Papa told me. The story about Hir and Ranjha was his favourite. It had been written as a poem by the famous Waris Shah and sung for centuries. But living in Australia had lulled me into the Hollywood fantasy that everything would turn out fine and the lovers would have a happy ending. I forgot that the entertainment industry doesn’t tell the truth.

  Tariq turned up at the railway station. Maryam had lost her mobile so she must have messaged him on Natasha’s but he didn’t seem annoyed to be summoned like a genie. He had been shopping—I noted the Officeworks bag. He looked at us amiably, maybe counting how many girls he was responsible for. This time he didn’t smile at me and I was glad; it would have been too obvious.

  The train ride was uneventful, but the walk back to Maryam’s house wasn’t. Tariq was ahead and turned to check on us once or twice. It would have been hard to lose us: Seema and Natasha were giggling about scenes in the movie. ‘Wasn’t it cool when he first saw her tattoo?’ Seema said, then swore and laughed. She was so different from Raniya. I wondered if she was trying too hard to fit in, but who was I to talk? Sometimes I felt my life was in fragments that were too hard to fit together.

  I didn’t notice the two guys until they were in front of us. They deliberately didn’t make way and pushed through our group.

  ‘Hey,’ Natasha shouted.

  One was wearing baggy jeans that exposed his underpants. He said to Maryam, ‘Dirty wog, where’s your scarf?’ The other one ripped my dupatta from my neck. I thought he’d give it to Maryam, but he stuffed it in his jeans pocket. Gross. I watched in horror. Maryam cried out, but Tariq was already there.

  ‘Give back the scarf,’ he said.

  Tariq was older and bigger than the other guys. The one with my scarf said, ‘Keep your shirt on, mate, we’re just teasing.’ He handed my dupatta to Tariq and he and his friend crossed the road, giving each other high fives.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Tariq didn’t seem to know whether to comfort Maryam or me.

  Maryam nodded but then Tariq touched my cheek with his finger. When he brought it away there was blood on it. The guy who’d ripped off my dupatta must have caught a ring on my skin.

  ‘Oh, you’re hurt.’ Maryam pulled out a tissue and dabbed at me.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  I was watching Tariq. He hadn’t wiped his finger yet. Then Maryam turned to him with the tissue and she wiped it clean. For an instant I wished he was my brother and I could touch him like that. He held out my dupatta. I watched it fluttering between his fingers and hoped I didn’t take too long to retrieve it.

  At Maryam’s house I rang Mum to get me, but it was Papa who arrived. He noticed my scratch since Mrs Yusuf had put a bandaid on it. Tariq spoke to him about what had happened. Tariq probably thought he was doing the right thing; and, truly, he was looking after us all—I wasn’t alone with him. But I could tell from Papa’s frosty stance that he wasn’t happy. He thanked Tariq curtly and motioned for me to go.

  Papa was quiet on the way home but as soon as we walked in he had a go at Mum. ‘Look what happened. She goes to the movie theatre and is accosted on the way home.’ He turned to me. ‘Why didn’t you ring Riaz? Isn’t that why I gave you the mobile phone? He could have brought you home and you wouldn’t have been with the Yusuf boy.’

  ‘But, Papa, Tariq helped us.’

  That was a mistake. Papa’s eyes narrowed, impaling me. ‘You know this boy’s name?’

  ‘He’s Maryam’s brother. Everyone knows his name.’

  Papa sighed noisily.

  ‘Papa, I’ve done nothing wrong. Just some guys were rude to us, that’s all.’

  ‘Things are not what they should be. In Pakistan, girls do not know boys’ names. It is a morally deficient country we live in.’

  ‘Hassan—’ my mother began.

  ‘And you, Marelle, did you give permission?’

  I cut in. ‘Papa, we only went to the movies, just us girls.’

  ‘You go to your room. I will discuss this with your mother.’

  I could hear Mum remonstrating with him as I skulked up the stairs. I phoned Maryam from my room.

  ‘Amie? You okay?’

  ‘Yes, but Papa’s being difficult. He’s acting like it was my fault.’ I didn’t mention that he thought it was Tariq’s fault too.

  ‘That’s too bad. Tariq feels responsible. He’s sorry it happened.’

  ‘It wa
sn’t his fault either.’

  ‘I know but he likes you. He wouldn’t let anything happen to you.’

  My next sentence died in my throat.

  ‘Amie? Are you still there?’

  ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘Tariq wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.’

  Maybe she meant as a sister, yes, that was it. She meant that Tariq would protect me just as he would protect Maryam.

  ‘That’s nice,’ was all I could manage in reply.

  ‘Let’s do something tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll ring.’

  That night by some miracle Riaz was home. He gave a rhythmic knock on my door—our private code—and strode in. ‘Heard some guys roughed you up.’

  ‘Not really.’ I told him what had happened.

  ‘So what’s Dad in a storm for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He had a go at me for not bringing you home, but I didn’t know about it this time, Ames.’

  I didn’t point out that he might not have come even if I had rung. ‘Maryam said her brother would escort us home on the train. He didn’t seem to mind.’

  Riaz nodded. ‘Tariq’s a good mate.’

  I stared at Riaz and tried to stay with the subject I had in mind. ‘Something’s bothering Papa and it’s not just this. Do you have any idea what it is?’

  Riaz shrugged.

  ‘He’s not the same,’ I went on. ‘He used to play with us and laugh, tell jokes and stories. You must remember all those stories at bedtime. Those awful videos he took everywhere we went.’

  Riaz hugged me. ‘Hey, Ames. We’re not little kids any more.’

  Was that all it was? Papa was uptight because we were older and getting harder to bring up?

  Riaz pulled back to look at me. ‘Thanks for not blowing my cover.’

  When Riaz was like this I could forgive him anything. ‘You owe me one.’ I smiled at him. ‘Honestly, it’s okay, but I hope you’d come if I was in real trouble.’

  ‘You better believe it. I would have smashed those guys’ faces if I was there today.’