Threads - Part 2

How much longer? We've been driving for hours." The clouds had cleared. The rain and lightening vanished into a dry beating heat. The Texas sun was cooking
Zainab's patience.

"I don't know. An hour, hour and a half? And don't get mad at me, you're the one who told me to slow down."

"Sorry. It's just the heat. An hour then? I think Ali needs to be changed and I don't want to smell up the car."

"We can stop on the side or at the next gas station. At least one hour to go. You want the AC."

"Haan. I have a huge headache." Zahid switched on the AC. Streams of thick coldness hit Zainab's face. Zahid turned off at the next exit ramp and they headed into

Franklin, a 'town' with little more than a gas station, diner, and motel. The Exxon was closed but Mama's Pancakes and Sausage was open. Blinding yellow and
green neon stretched around the massive frame of a beastly woman with fire red hair and a cannonball belly. Her mouth ballooned, "No one does sausage like
Mama."

Zahid parked near the back. They got out of car. Zahid headed inside to check on the bathroom. Zainab leaned against the car window and stared at the highway.
Cars and trucks sped by leaving clouds of diesel and gas exhaust. Zainab devoured the dirty metallic smoke that, like a drug, always filled her with Karachi. A city
so alive.

"You're late." It was said simply and without any type of emotion. Like the way someone might say, 'The sun is yellow.'

"Yes I am. Thank you for noticing." They'd been meeting at Hisham's every Wednesday for almost six months and Asad, she thought, was getting a bit possessive.

"And Salam to you too, darling."

"I didn't mean it that way. I am just under a little pressure with exams coming up." He hesitated. "Salam. So how are you today?" He tried again, his tone hesitant and
weak. She smiled her disturbing-over-happy-smile and blurted out, "Wonderful." The ephemeral smile faded and she looked away, disinterested. And so they sat for
a few minutes each completely confused by the other.

Zainab was still upset with the way Asad had said, 'You're late.' Like they were some old married couple. Asad was completely at a loss so he decided to keep
quiet. Zainab was waiting for an apology, the anger growing steadily.

"So why were you late? No real problems I hope?"

"And why should I tell if there is a problem? Why must you know everything about me and my life?"

"Ok then. I think one of us is being a little bit unreasonable. I'm just a little curious and a little concerned. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to." He
really didn't know what else to say.

"You want something to eat?" He spoke like a parent to a child. She looked up and saw his face eager as if his life depended on
whether she was hungry and she smiled. Not the disturbing-over-happy-smile but the I-know-how-to-melt-your-heart-smile. And he melted like he had every week
for the last six months.

"I want papri chat. Alot of masala!... please." He headed to the ordering counter inside Hisham's and came back a few minutes later with a couple of chats and a
kettle of tea.

"Be right back with the glasses," he sang as he walked away from the table. She sat back, listening to the cars whiz by on the other side of Hisham's. Giving off the
diesel exhaust that was Karachi. She loved the smell and sound of the city. She'd walk through Chorangi or Sadr just smelling and listening to the air. The mix of oil
and hot spices and sugar cane juice and the newness of the cloth hanging from stalls in the market and dry sand and the perfumed sweat of the crowds and the dusty
filth of the mutilated fakhirs asking for money in the name of Allah. The put-put-puuuut of the motorized rikshaws drowning out the lazy creaks of mule drawn fruit
carts and the buzz of customers negotiating angrily with leather and cloth merchants through the heavy creaks of bad leather sandals on the unpaved alleyways. But,
for Zainab, it was all subsumed by the smell of the exhaust. Forever linked in her mind with the city she would greedily crave for after she left.

"Here we are." Asad sat down and poured the tea.

"You haven't even started eating!" He pushed a plate of chat towards her. She snapped back to reality.

"Mehrbani." And she took a bite.

"So how was your day? If it's ok to ask?" Asad looked scared. He'd loosened up lately but today he seemed almost as bad as that first day six months ago. She
decided to ignore it and explained her day in vivid detail from the banal conversations with her friends to sleeping through another Psychology class to her mother's
bhiryani ('arguably the best in Pakistan'). She stopped right there, keeping the reason for her tardiness to herself. A matter of principle.

"Would you like to marry me?" She almost choked on her chat and saw, in Asad's tortured expression, that it wasn't a joke. She sat motionless. Her mind on fire.

"What?" It was the easiest thing to say.

"Well... you know it's just that.. I've been thinking... and we get along... and as long as we don't hate each other... do you want to get married?" A drop of sweat
hung on the tip of his nose. He looked down and then up and then down again.

Fork in hand. She was still frozen. "Look. I'm sorry. This was a bad idea. You don't
want to marry me. We're just friends. Forget it, I don't know what I was thinking..." He went on but Zainab stopped listening.

She could feel her dead father watching from above or below or wherever he was. His soft wooden eyes touching her face. His last words fixed in her mind like a
brand. Sitting up with an IV in his arm. The chalky light of the hospital hitting his thin face. Her mother was outside with Zahid, and she sat crying silently without
tears. He was holding her hand tightly. The doctors said he had a good chance of surviving the open-heart but her father knew better. His face told her that it was the
end. Zahid would always remember him on the fringe of memory. Like a ghost. Created and fit into his conception of a father. Zahid was only 10. But she would
preserve the reality of her father. The soft eyes and the thin twiggy hair. The wrinkled hands and the protruding front teeth. The way his left ear itched when he ate
spicy food. The cigarettes he'd started smoking when she was born 15 years earlier. And the strength in his mind. The intelligence to become one of leading
architects in Pakistan and the will to hold her mother's fragile psyche together. And he knew her better than she knew herself at that moment.

'Don't cry baiti. I
expect you to be the strong one if anything bad should happen.'

And then the tears came out uncontrollably, and he cradled her head in his chest. And she cried loud
and hard. Breathless violent waves of tears and pain. When she regained her composure, he said, 'There are going to be times in your life, baiti, when you will be
scared of the decisions you must make. If I am not around, remember that the right path is usually the hard one. But you are strong.' And then he kissed her
forehead. Squeezed her hand tightly and let go. Her mother and brother walked into the room with the nurse who checked the IV and took him away forever. She
didn't cry when he died. She didn't cry at the funeral.
Asad was still talking when she started crying. He stopped short.

"I'm sorry..." She blinked the tears out of her eyes.

"I need to go..." The words were wet and choked. She got up and began walking away quickly. "Please don't follow." And she was gone.

"Half hour?" she whispered to her brother. Ali and Abbas were fast asleep. The sound of their quick deep breathing cutting through the silent noise of the car's
engine. Zahid nodded and turned the air conditioner down a notch. The traffic had picked up as they approached the city. Cars and trucks passing and being passed
in a complicated system of rules that new drivers could only learn by experience. Zahid had found a friendly red Toyota Camry and, together, they weaved through
the traffic.

The game appealed to Zahid but Zainab was bored and searching for interesting license plates was fun for about five minutes. She petted Ali's head combing his little
fuzz of hair to the left with her fingers. The car jerked and Ali opened his eyes and started crying noiselessly. His mouth wide open and frozen. Tears streaming out of
his eyes. But no sound. Just one huge breathless moment. Then he took in air and out came the first wave of sound. Zainab picked him up and put his head on her
shoulder, muffling the sound. Her eyes met Zahid's, and she gave him a nasty look.

"I'm sorry..."

"That makes me feel so much better." He didn't respond. "Just drive carefully."
Zainab started whispering into Ali's tiny ears, and he stopped crying. The sound of her voice comforting his baby nightmares. She refused to just say motherly things
like "Nice baby" or "Don't cry" because, she believed, kids learned from everything.

She'd talk to Ali in Urdu about Pakistan and Karachi and her trip to Mri and
Sawat, north of Islamabad, just before she got married and college and the war in 1972 when three of his great-uncles were captured by the Indians in East
Pakistan. And she'd talk about how the doctor told her she would never be able to have a baby and how special he was just to be born and the way his father had
fainted in the delivery room after he was born and walked around for days after like he was stuck in a dream hoping no one would wake him up and spent an entire
day deciding what professional sport he would play when he grew up. And she spoke about his grandfather, her father, who "was the only thing she ever wanted, the
most important thing she ever lost, and the one thing she'd never forget."

"I want to get married." The words came out in an excited rush. Her mother was looking out onto the street from the balcony of their home in Rizvia Colony. The
street was full of packs of children wandering aimlessly in the heavy summer sun. A couple of heavy old men sat in front of the local cornerstore taking drags of flat
sugary Master Cola from dirty glass bottles. The sing-song cries of vegetable peddlers flowing slowly through the weighty air. Her mother's eye focused glassily on
the leathered face of the peddler, pushing his flat wooden cart through the sanded street.

"Ami… I want to get married." Zainab didn't raise her voice. That could only lead to a fight and she was determined to win her mother's approval. But again her
mother remained silent, sipping her tea and gazing into the street where she'd grown up and lived for over forty years. Her hand instinctively scooping up pieces of
sweet bread soaked in milk from the metallic plate on the table in front of her. They had eaten breakfast together on the porch for as long as Zainab could remember.

On the same wooden table and snowy plastic chairs. From the second floor, they would look into the city, content in the silence and their tea.
When she was a little girl, Zainab hated the morning ritual. Forced to sit quietly while the mazed diesel city rang with oily laughter. Her friends running through the
backalleys to beg weathered store owners for a two pie piece of candy. The hitting of leather sandals on sandy street pavement. Old women sitting on rope bed
frames yelling in mock anger for little girls to stop acting like boys. And the smell of the spice shops and the little bags of chalky chunai that dried her mouth into
pleasant hunger. As she grew older, she learned to love the morning silence. The anonymous sounds of the city flowing through her in meditative blankness. And she
learned to think through the calls of the peddlers and the laughter and the rikshaws and the distant gunfire and the shoes on the sand and the diesel.
It was not always chai and toast. Sometimes her mother would buy some malai to eat with fresh nan or fry some eggs in the pure ghee that old Pakistani men swore
extended life.

Today Zainab had made Shahitukra and her mother had accepted with a kind concerned look.

"It is time for you to get married. I have thought about this a great deal... There is a man from a good family in Defense. He is a doctor and your uncle says he is very
handsome. He will make you a good husband."

"No ami. I have already chosen a husband." Defiance broke through calm steady voice. Her mother met her eyes for the first time... frail body suddenly erect. Her
mouth was tight with concealed anger.
"Bati. Don't talk this nonsense."

"I am not talking nonsense. I am serious. He is a psychology student at the University like me and soon he will finish his degree. His name is Asad." Her mother's
eyes glistening like sad puddles.

"Do you hate me? You do not love me?" The irrational guilt Zainab had expected.

"Ami I love you. But this man. I want to marry him."

"Kaya kairee ho? Damaq kharab hei?" A wildness was growing in her mother. "What would your father say to this 'love'?" The tone of the last word cut Zainab
deep. The mention of her father almost brought her to tears.

"He would tell me that the most important things in life are worth the pain in the end. He would tell me to go talk to my mother and convince her of my sincerity. He
would tell me that if she forbids it, it is forbidden. And he would tell me that because my mother loves me, when she sees that I have thought about my decision, she
will support me." Her eyes were glass.

"You know nothing about your father! And you are not my daughter if you marry this man!" Her mother stood up unsteadily, spilling her tea in anger, and walked into
the house.

Her hard contorted face frozen in Zainab's mind. A peddler struggled past. He caught Zainab's eye and smiled through his wrinkles. She stared through
him into the city's silence, sitting in her chair, relaxed and quiet, sipping her tea intently. She thought of the vultures that ruled the skies of Karachi rising until they
became little black lines in the distance, and then spiraling down towards the Parsi District of North Karachi where the ancient religion was still practiced.

Where the
dead were placed on metal gratings at the top of temples. Offerings to the Divine. Where vultures picked the skeletons clean until they fell through the grating into a
huge cage of bones. A gathering, they believed, of the fiery essence of the dead. And the vultures circled night and day. Brooding.

"My God Zahid! What are you doing?" Her voice was drowned by the screech of burning rubber. The tires smearing blackness on the dark grey road. The horn of a
diesil rig blaring behind her. And Zahid struggling with the steering wheel frozen at an angle in desperation as the back of the car skidded left. Towards the rig. Ali's
mouth wide open anticipating sound. Abbas still struggling with sleep. And the impact from behind. A numbed succession of abrupt images ending in the constant
blare of the carhorn and empty vacant eyes staring at the clouds. Lifeless.