“Go ahead. Get it all out of your system now.”
I wouldn’t have imagined I’d marry someone from our community; I’d heard too many stories from my Bohra girlfriends about men who started out as good boyfriends and transformed into fifties husbands after the wedding. Dinner on the table when I get home, keep the baby quiet, all that nonsense.
On our first date, Murtuza picked me up five minutes early in a car that smelled of pine. During our dinner at Mirchi, he scooped rice with his fingers while discussing the work of Audre Lorde and Zadie Smith. We shared our mixed-bag identities; we both grew up in towns near large cities — Edison, New Jersey, for me, and Brampton, near Toronto, for him — with liberal parents.
He can be absent-minded, the stereotype of a professor who, when engaged in his work, manages to tune out my calls. But he also is a rememberer of anniversaries, of my dislikes, of shopping lists. And when I was pregnant with Zee, he accompanied me to each prenatal class and read books on birth coaching. Because Zee was born the last week of April, when his academic duties were waning, he was the one to sacrifice sleep so I could catch up. I rarely changed a diaper. That sort of devotion, during the most tender period of Zee’s life — and mine, too, as I learned to become a mother — sealed the deal for me; I truly knew he would be my partner for life.
Of course, we’d already been committed for two years by then, in a civil ceremony. Our choice not to also partake in a nikah disappointed my parents, who harboured secret and misplaced hopes for a sliver of traditional respectability. Murtuza rebuffed his parents’ more persistent requests with “I thought you’d be happy that I married a nice Bohra girl!” And they were, for we’d both only dated white people before that.
Truthfully, I was ambivalent about the nikah — it takes exactly seventy seconds and approximately five hundred dollars — but Murtuza felt strongly about not including religion in our union. He’s an agnostic, bordering on atheist, while I’m harder to label. I like a little tradition and membership in a community, even if I don’t always follow its rules.
Our parents didn’t press the point and paid for a reception under Mirchi’s makeshift tents. It’s still our favourite spot, but it’s not the same these days, now that the place has grown popular among non-Indians and they have real plates and cutlery and ask if you’d like the food cooked mild, medium, or hot.
When I announced I was pregnant, both our mothers suggested that Alifiyah, Murtuza’s sister, email the Syedna, the religious leader of the worldwide Dawoodi Bohra community, for a baby name. Mariam Fayji, my father’s sister, did the same for my naming, only back then, before computers, she’d sought an in-person audience in Mumbai. Murtuza called the idea archaic, but I supported our mothers’ wishes, arguing that the Syedna’s suggestion wasn’t binding. He acquiesced; I suspect his protest-response is a superficial one, while his Bohra training has the depth and strength of an old-growth tree’s root system.
In the end Murtuza was vindicated. Normally, the Syedna offers a male and a female name, but Alifiyah forwarded us the email that offered a single, unusable name for Zee, or any child growing up in the West: Fakhruddin. Later, an ultrasound confirmed we were having a girl. “Who knows?” Murtuza had scoffed. “Maybe modern technology is wrong and the Big Guy is right. And it has a nice ring to it. Fakh-ru for short.”
During the chhatti, the naming ceremony, Alifiyah whispered the surah into Zee’s tiny ear:
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil ’aalameen
Ar-Rahmaanir-Raheem
Maaliki Yawmid-Deen
Iyyaaka na’budu wa lyyaaka nasta’een
Ihdinas-Siraatal-Mustaqeem
Siraatal-lazeena an’amta ’alaihim ghayril-maghdoobi ’alaihim wa lad-daaalleen
Zee opened her eyes wide, as though her wise old soul knew Arabic and was finally hearing words she could comprehend.
“Arre waah! Zeenat is a very smart girl!” my mother gasped, which caused a collective murmur, like a gale through a stand of trees, to rustle through the room. I wondered about my daughter’s future right then. Would good luck bless her? Would she be protected from danger, from society’s ills, temptations, cruelties? When she was handed back to me, I held her tightly and uttered God’s name. Murtuza heard me, met my gaze, and reached for my hand.
“Don’t forget we’ll be in Mumbai for Ashura. It might be difficult to avoid all the functions. You might need more than one saya kurta.” I fold my new polka-dot red dress into my bag.
“Will we be allowed into those functions? I mean, they’ll know we aren’t even red card holders,” he counters. He’s referring to the now defunct system of cards that was used to regulate access to religious services, based on an assessment of a person’s orthopraxy.
“It’s a universal card now, Mom told me. I think she said it’s called an ITS, or something like that. No more green, yellow, and red tiers.”
“Oh, but you know that they’re tracking everything and grading everyone: whether a man grows a beard or a woman wears a rida, whether they pay their dues, drink alcohol. It’s Bohra Big Brother.”
“Ha!” His sacrilegious talk tempts me. “If they had a card for sinners like you, what colour would it be?”
“Leopard-spotted, tiger-striped?” He laughs and I grab his arm and pull him into a hug. I love his quick wit, his ability to play with language. After a moment, he looks away, shyly.
“Shari, there’s something I want to pack, but I’d like to talk with you first.” His voice is a half whisper.
“What? What’s wrong?” I sit on our bed.
“No, no. I just don’t want Sleeping Beauty to wake up and overhear us.” He gestures to Zee’s room next door, then places a pleather case in my lap.
“Before you open it. I want to say that I’m looking forward to spending time with you in India.… And I thought this would be fun.”
“Okay …” The zipper’s metal teeth unlock. I pull out a black blindfold and handcuffs.
“They’re soft, made of leather,” he says, taking them from my hands and pointing out the workmanship. There is a slight tremble in his voice. “Do you think you might like to try them?”
“I thought you hated Fifty Shades,” I tease, deflecting my own discomfort. He discarded the book after the first twenty pages, claiming it had no literary merit. His face falls, and I drop the joke. “Sure, let’s try it.”
“Really?” He bounces a little on his feet, nervousness leaking out of him.
“Yeah, but listen, I don’t need any bells and whistles.” I grow tense, thinking that this is going to be like the vibrator shopping.
“I think it’ll be fun. For me. For us. If you don’t mind?” He is tentative once more, his face soft, his gaze vulnerable.
“I don’t mind, Murti.” I rezip the case and place it in his bag. “Thanks for getting it.” I look him in the eye and kiss him with my eyes open, watching as he closes his and relaxes into my embrace.
SEVEN
Bombay, 1870
“Abdoolally, sweep up this mess!” Hunaid, the herbalist’s son, was only seventeen, two years older, but loved to act the boss. Abdoolally did as he was told, brooming the leaves and stems discarded after Dr. Chunara had compounded an herbal remedy for cough. He pushed the pile of green out the back door, where another boy, a poorer one, would sweep it elsewhere.