Static
by Ibrahim Nadeem
“It’s not that.” Noor knew what he’d ask next.
“Then what is it?”
“Not that.”
“Exactly. You’re upset you weren’t consulted.” Shehryar said, the full stop in his voice. “She isn’t a child — you have to let go.”
The familiar yellow street signs cooed against the wind outside the car windows; the air conditioner at a soft blast mimicking it. Noor didn’t take notice. It was the regular route home.
“It makes my feet go cold,” she finally got out. “Seeing her makes my feet go cold.”
“What?”
“Mom used to say that whenever she felt like something was off — she had the best sixth sense. Whenever her guard was up, or someone else’s, or the energy shifted in a room, she would say it made her feet go cold. The uneasiness. I don’t know why her feet. Same thing happens to me, but only when it comes to Mi.”
“I remember once she said something made her teeth crawl,” Shehryar offered.
“It was always a temperature thing. But her teeth only crawled if someone did something disgusting, or corny.”
“I think Haris was drunk when she said it to me.”
“Of course.”
“Kind of on the nose. It’s the way he lingers honestly. Did you see him tonight?”
“It’s so close. Zero personal space. And the smell.”
“She instantly went like ‘he makes my teeth crawl,’” Shehryar said in a high pitched drawl. “What does that even mean?”
“It’s like ice cream. The teeth crawling.”
“Only ammi could say stuff like that and have it make sense.”
“I wonder what she would have said about tonight,” the thought crackling in the crisp air conditioner air.
“Probably would have said I’m not sleeping enough, or working too hard because we came late.”
She straightened her spine against the curved car seat. “You know she once told me ‘good lawyers make for bad people, but Sheru is a great lawyer and a good person.” Noor flexed her index finger out and spoke to a glazed face in the windshield fog. “You know why? Because after a whole week shaking hands with those men practically blue from the cheap gold watches they handcuff themselves in, lawyering away nine-to-five-all-day at that firm that eats up all those people in their goths, poor people, he comes over for dinner — and no appetite. And that’s a decent man Noor, because he has the decency to feel guilty.” She dropped her wagging finger onto her lap, like a miniature bolt of lightening that had done it’s job: theatre.
Shehryar let in air.
“Didn’t mince words there, did she.”
“When did she ever?”
“Wait, when did she say this?”
“Before we got married. After you’d been coming over for a while and I told her we had been talking about the idea of it.”
“It doesn’t sound like she was excited. You know, not exactly like a vote of confidence.”
“You know how she was in those days, with her reiki drenched speech. All mystical. Something always meant something else, meant something else.”
“You never told me she felt so strongly about that job.”
“It felt mean to repeat. It was just one of those mother-daughter conversations.” Noor shrugged.
“Yeah.”
“It was a compliment in her way.”
“I guess.”
“Should I not have said it? It was so long ago.”
“I can picture it now. You two having that entire conversation in her study, with Chiku sitting in her lap.”
“All official business ran through Chiku.”
Shehryar took a sharp turn into a lane next to a nursery, it’s entrance fringed with rows of neatly laid out baby portulaca pots growing in the dark.
“That’s why she’d always quip about how little you eat.” Noor offered.
“And make my dessert helping herself. Soup bowl of syrup with my gulab jamun every time. Was that like some kind of test to see if I’d lost my moral compass yet?”
“No, I think she just felt bad. She thought it was a heavy way of living and that one day you’d realise. She was happy when you quit, kind of like she’d called it. What happened?”
“Nothing. It’s just new information. I wish she hadn’t felt like I was selling out or something, or that I wasn’t good enough.”
“She didn’t think that at all. She actually said you reminded her of Mi.”
“That’s high praise from ammi.”
“Yeah.”
“In what way?”
“Mi was also a work in progress to her. Ammi treated her like a car on some endless highway that kept needing to stop for directions, even if the problem was just that she didn’t know where she was going. I think she applied a similar logic to you, that you were on your way or something.”
“That’s a very patient approach to life. If I thought like that I probably would have kept working at the old firm, waiting.”
“It’s what irritated me about her actually.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was pretty patient with you too.”
“I don’t know if it was patience. I think at some point I tried to not bother her.”
“Bother her with?”
“Just things, in general. Growing up with Mi meant the view from the window was only so wide. I wanted to be easier.”
“I’m sure she saw you. You know she loved you.”
“I know she did.” Noor swallowed. “She was wrong about you though. Mi and you are nothing alike.”
“I see what she meant actually.”
“No. At least you put in the work, or cared.”
“I don't think that’s fair. I think Mi tries very hard.”
“Mi could get away with murder, and she still does. I would’ve never gotten away with what she did tonight.”
Shehryar turned the radio on quietly, flicking the little button glowing blue on the console.
“She doesn’t do it on purpose.”
“She never thinks.”
“I think the problem is she is thinking,” he licked his lips. “About a lot of things. It’s just not translating.”
“Please. It’s been months.”
“So she should shut up?”
“She should move on like the rest of us. Everyone is sad, it can’t be your life’s calling.”
“It’s like you don’t even want to acknowledge it.” Shehryar tapped the hard grainy resin of the steering wheel. “She was the only person there. At home; if you could call it a home. You know she told me tonight she still keeps the box of medicine and sponges next to ammi’s bed out of habit. She still has the petrol receipts from all the trips to the hospital in her purse. I asked her to give them to me months ago. The bag was stuffed to the brim.”
As the car skidded over gravel Noor's mumbling spiked and flattened like a jagged pulse line underneath her breath.
“What?”
“She didn’t let us help.” Noor hissed finally, repeating herself. “That’s not on me.” The words rounded out like the blunt edge of a stone.
“That’s besides the point.”
“Then what is?”
“That she’s been through it.”
“What else is new. The yearly trek ammi and abba made to school to sort her out, the eating, her marriage. Her ‘great depression of the aughts.’ Maybe that’s why she invited the torture in, some kind of karmic redistribution of all the emotional labour she asked our parents for over the years.”
“She’s not a saint for taking care of your dying mother.”
“I’m just saying she’s never made it easy for herself.”
“Fine. Granted. But now? Are you just going to keep waiting for her to come out of it?”
Noor listened to the raspy music on the radio, spitting against her knee from the side speaker, and she followed the words till she found her own.
“Ammi always said she was going to show us all. She’s solid and ‘all the rest is furniture that comes and goes and rusts and reupholsters.’” Noor said, pantomiming air quotes.
“You should go see her tomorrow.”
“I’m the wrong knock at the door.”
“Too bad. There’s no one else.”
“That’s what we’re both sorry about.”
The radio crackled louder.
“Do you remember this song?”
Shehryar bowed his head. He knew.
She smiled a little.
“Every time I would come home late I’d pass her in the study, in ammi’s chair. It was so awkward.”
“Why?” Shehryar asked gently.
“It just was. She had a lot of anxiety, you know. Even as a kid.”
He paused and looked over at his wife. Shehryar took in her heavy lidded stare, cast orange, then white, from the passing lights of the other cars.
“Noor?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s your sister. Its been hard.”
“I know,” Noor clenched.
“Hard for everyone, but different for both of you. She took care of her.”
“No, ammi took care of her. It always fell to ammi. And always gladly. Her baby. So what do you want me to do? I can’t be her mother.”
“I know,” Shehryar said, less like a rock, and more like the warm nook of an elbow.
“Ammi asked me to do it, but I can’t. I can’t when she’s still so in love with being ammi’s child. I can’t fill those shoes. I can’t be her safety net. Not like that. It makes my feet go cold. It makes my teeth crawl.” Noor looked down at her feet and then up. “What do you want me to do?”
“It went both ways.” Shehryar tried reminding her. “She would only take what ammi gave her. But you can’t forget the last few months. That reversal. It was a lot. You know it was a lot.”
“I was there.”
Shehryar felt for her fingers in the dark.
“Take the last exit, they’re doing construction on the Ittehad turning,” Noor interrupted.
“Still?”
“Mhm.”
The air felt like velvet, static. Noor hoped her next words wouldn’t cling to it.
“I wanted it to happen.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I just wanted it to end. ‘Farewells are made.’ I can’t remember which poet said that. I kind of just let her go. Nothing made.”
The car slowed down. Its headlights flashed against the dark wood of the gate in growing patches, like a searchlight honing in, till the rest of the gate grew into view finally like a wall.
“It was hard. I don’t think Mi knew what she was doing either. You both just processed differently, did things differently.”
“It felt more natural to let them do their thing. Ammi and Mi. I always felt like I was interfering.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn't care.”
“Says a lot.”
Shehryar squeezed her hand again, over the gear shift.
“How do you think she’s doing?”
“Asking scares the shit out of me,” she confessed.
“Mi needs someone.”
“It makes me feel so responsible that mom loved her so much. What do I do with that responsibility?”
Shehryar honked.
“I see her and I freeze.” Noor tugged on the loose threads of her kameez. “I know what she wants and I can’t give it to her, or I don’t know how. I don’t know how to ask her if she has enough money, or I hold her, and she’s still using ammi’s perfume, and then I know. She looks so broken. This isn’t how to deal with things.”
“It’s grief.”
“Still.”
The radio hosts voice spoke in excited iambic verse through their pauses.
“There’s no right answer, you know.” Shehryar honked again.
“Can you just call Babar? No one’s opening the gate.”
I told him we’d come back late.” Shehryar honked again, long this time
“He always sleeps after 11.”
“I specifically told him.”
“As if that’s ever made a difference.”
visual by Manal Ahmed.