A Place for Us

“[Amar] could convince them all—the familiar faces, his mother who he sensed checking on him as he moved about, his father who maintained his distance—he could even convince himself, that he belonged here, that he could wear the suit and play the part, be who he had been before, and assume his role tonight as brother of the bride.”

Amar has not seen or spoken to his family in three years, and he feels as much a stranger at Hadia’s wedding as he did in the months before he left home. For him, being present here means playing a role, being someone he’s not, since Rafiq told Amar he was not his son in their last fight.

“One summer they had pushed out their screens and connected their rooms by a string attached to Styrofoam cups at each end. Hadia assured [Amar] she knew what she was doing. She had made one in school. He wasn’t sure if he could hear her voice humming along the string and filling the cup, or carried through the air, but he didn’t tell her this.”

This is an excellent example of how close Hadia and Amar were as children. However, it foreshadows their later communication issues as well as the phone calls Amar makes to his nephew Abbas. Everyone thinks the calls are from him but they can’t be sure.

“Soon they were standing side by side. [Amira] set a single samosa at the center of her plate. When she opted for the mint sauce, [Amar] felt an unexpected sadness at having predicted it. She turned to face him. Her hair fell across her face and formed a curtain over her eye. He wanted to reach out and tuck it back into place behind her ear. But he could not touch her anymore. He signaled to his own forehead, and she, perhaps also remembering how often he would move her hair from her face, immediately mirrored him and swept it away. A light color rose to her cheeks. He had missed this. A heavier silence ensued, both now painfully aware they still shared a language they should have long since forgotten.”

This passage establishes just how deep the bond between Amar and Amira truly was when they were younger—and that it has not diminished, not even after several years apart. It signals that they have continued to think of each other.

“That night Layla repeats his name in her mind: Rafiq. Will she go with him to America? What will the roads look like there, and the people in their houses? She cannot sleep. She tries to recall his visit, how he wore a light brown button-up shirt that did not suit his complexion. All evening she studied her own hands in her lap, the one knuckle redder than the rest, the unevenness of her fingernails. Mumma had advised her before he came: do not dare look up unless directly spoken to. But even then, Mumma said, do not look at him. She had stolen one glance just long enough to note the color of his shirt.”

In this flashback, Layla is nervous about her arranged marriage to Rafiq, but her adventurousness and curiosity shine through. This also shows the traditional background that Amar’s parents were raised in.

“Seema Aunty let Hadia play with her son’s video games. Amar threw a little ball that squeaked at [Seema Aunty’s] baby girl and the baby girl laughed. Hadia liked to pick her up and point to things and name them, and the girl repeated the words back to her: light, fire, tree. Amar pointed to his nose and said his name, and the girl tried to say it, but said mar instead, and that was the first time Hadia and Amar laughed, knowing it was the Urdu word for hit, or hurt.”

Although the narrative does not make it clear at this point, we later understand that the baby girl in this passage is Amira. It foreshadows both the relationship that develops between Amar and Amira and the pain they feel when it ends.

“One glance informs [Amar]: Amira is sitting with them, in the center, dressed in a midnight blue shalwar kameez, sipping Coke from an orange-and-white-striped straw, her hair cut shorter than he recalls. She is one of the few young women who does not wear hijab, does not even pretend to during gatherings. The young women are all laughing, as if trying to get his attention in obvious ways. He sees only her. The girls whisper among themselves and she looks up at him. She blushes. Looks away. He turns to the thin telephone wires cutting across the sky, focuses on the little birds perched on them to avoid looking at her, and puts his headphones on and begins to play a song.”

This is our first glimpse at the attraction between Amar and Amira as teenagers. The theme of hair and covering/cutting is evident here, as Amira’s choice not to wear hijab and her short hair draw Amar’s eye. Amar looking at telephone lines to avoid looking at her echoes the theme of miscommunication.

“Then [Rafiq] pulls back his sleeve to look at his watch, and it is his father’s watch. He had worn it on their wedding day. And on the day they had flown together to America. Her heart pinches to think she has glimpsed what he did not verbalize: that this [work trip] is not nothing to him, either, that perhaps he is nervous for the new position or wants to take a piece of his father with him.”

Rafiq’s watch is a token that consistently changes hands as a gift within the family. His father gave it to him, and he in turn gives it to Hadia when she goes to medical school. Amar steals it, likely with intent to sell it for drug money, but cannot bring himself to part with it—a detail we discover only when Amar’s wedding gift to Hadia is revealed to be the stolen watch. It was lost but later resurfaces—much like Amar himself.

“When class is over everyone stands, no one faster than Hadia. The eldest Ali boy turns to her, nods toward Sister Mehvish, and rolls his eyes. That drum in her body again. Sister Mehvish has her back turned to the class and is erasing the words that look like scribbles from the board, creating a cloud of white dust. Hadia looks back at him. He has not looked away from her. He pulls an almost empty packet of gum out from his pocket and removes the last piece, a stick wrapped in silver foil, and extends it to her, his palm open, his eyebrows raise. Hadia reaches for it, her fingers lightly graze the surface of his palm.”

This is one of the first moments in which we see attraction forming between Hadia and Abbas. Later in the narrative, we see that she has saved the gum wrapper—drawn on it and taped it to the ceiling of her bedroom. The teacher’s turned back is indicative of the contrast between Hadia/Abbas and Amar/Amira; the former pair interacts largely without detection or observation, whereas the latter is constantly under scrutiny even though they think they’ve conducted their meetings in secret.

“Hadia enters the kitchen, dressed in a baby blue shalwar kameez that drags to the floor. She looks nervous, knowing that the event is for her; she twists her watch on her wrist. Home is home when Hadia is in it. Amar offers her a cup of lassi and she takes it. Whenever Hadia visits, Huda and Amar remember that they are friends, too, and the three of them gather in her bedroom, stay up late talking, or they take their homework to a café, just to be near her.”

Huda and Abbas do not seem to relate to each other amicably or easily unless Hadia is there to act as a binding agent, an intermediary. This dynamic is seen even during the wedding, when Hadia is largely the only reason Huda and Abbas interact with each other at significant length.

“[Amar’s] father with his beard and his skin a little darker than Amar’s. His father did have a temper, one that was undetectable until it erupted, but his anger was hardly ever directed anywhere but at Amar, and even then Amar instigated it. When the sun began to set his father took walks at a slow pace, pausing at hedges with flowers, and some evenings Amar peered down from his bedroom window and thought his father looked like a peaceful man, his hands crossed and resting behind him. Amar wants to tell them: no, my father points out the stars in the sky to us if we haven’t looked up in a while, he teaches us how to look for the new moon to mark the new month, he reads books he underlines with a faint gray pencil. My father always says excuse me if he passes someone too close in the street. My father has never lost his temper at a stranger.”

This is Amar’s thought process in his school’s locker room several days after 9/11, when several other boys mockingly ask him if his father is a terrorist. Even though Amar is often on the receiving end of his father’s anger, he still thinks of his father as a peaceful and admirable man.

“Layla watches her son shiver through the sliding glass door. His hands in his pockets, his shoulders raised. How he likes to complicate what is simple—warmth easily acquired, an argument easily avoided. She smiles. He is focused on something in the dirt of her garden and presses the toe of his shoe into it, as though he is a child of seven again and not a young man of twenty.”

Even as Amar grows older, Layla continues to regard him as she did when he was a child. His fragility never goes away, and she is conscious of it even in moments when they are not directly interacting with each other.

“When [Layla] looked through [Amar’s] journals and the photographs, the letters and the trinkets, she felt ill. Tickets to concerts he had never told them about. Neon wristbands to places she did not want to picture. For a moment, Layla glanced at Amar’s journals, but she could barely make sense of his handwriting. Each deciphered sentence threatened to unravel her understanding of him and carried with it the threat of more secrets. It did not matter that she was his mother. What she could ever hope to know of him was just a glimpse—like the beam of a lighthouse skipping out, only one stretch of waves visible at a time, the rest left in the unknowable dark.”

Layla is hurt by evidence that Amar’s life contains many hidden depths and dimensions that she isn’t part of. Her view of him as the fragile child she must constantly safeguard is challenged by this evidence.

“And [Hadia] offered the tangerine whole to her brother, did not demand a piece in return, then peeled one for her sister before she even asked, and Huda rose to say, I’ll throw the peels away, and maybe it was the same thoughtfulness that touched me that made Huda want to do something in return. Huda cupped her hands and Hadia let the peels fall like little petals into her sister’s palms, and I thought, these are my children, mine, laughing together, and that is when I met Rafiq’s gaze and he looked like I must have, swelling with so much pride it was apparent on his face, on mine, so apparent that we both had to look away, made shy from the force and depth of a feeling we did not expect.”

This is perhaps the most poignant demonstration of how deeply Layla and Rafiq love each other, how fortunate they are that their arranged marriage worked out so well. It also demonstrates the depth of their love for the children they raised together and the bond their whole family shares.

“[Amira] maneuvered through the crowd unaware that Layla was watching, and Layla was hit with the strange sensation of realizing she had left something behind and forgotten to turn back for it. But what was it, she wondered, as Amira Ali reached up to tuck her dark hair behind her ear, revealing that heavy, ornate jewelry of Hyderabad, the circular gold earrings with the emeralds and dangling pearls. It would be impossible now, years later, to retrace her steps, and find again what it was that had slipped her mind, what she had forgotten to turn back for.”

Layla is haunted by guilt that she caused Seema Ali to prompt Amira to break up with Amar. She cannot confront the mistake she made, one she should have turned back and corrected. She cannot do so now because it is many years too late.

“Hadia felt at ease with [Tariq’s family]. She wanted Tariq to feel it too, she wanted him to meet Amar and think, as she did now with Isra, that this family will be mine, that any brother of my wife is a brother of mine.”

Hadia hopes that Tariq will love her family as much as she loves his, but she hopes he will love Amar in particular. She hopes that if Amar forms more bonds with extended family, then he might stay this time.

“The reciters began an old poem [Amar] knew by heart as soon as he heard the first line. He could not deny how happy hearing it again made him. He thought Huda would walk away, having said what she needed to, but when he turned he saw she had stayed beside him.”

Given that Hadia’s presence has almost always been required for Huda to interact with Amar, he is surprised when she remains by his side instead of immediately leaving. The moment is an intensely poignant one between them.

“Tariq had a strong handshake, sharp features, and a calm presence; he seemed relaxed even onstage in front of everyone. He would be good for Hadia. Hadia was prone to anxiety, an obsessive planner; she was not one to easily change plans at the last minute or know how to relax. Tariq had gone out of his way to be nice to Amar. He was the one who had waved at him when he saw him approaching, said to him: you must be Amar. Tariq asked him questions that came from a place of genuine curiosity and interest, and he did not avoid questions in an obvious way. Amar looked back now at them on the stage, Hadia with the red cloth held up like a canopy above her.”

Amar recognizes that Tariq is a good man and a suitable partner for his sister, but he still holds himself at a distance. Though Tariq genuinely tries to get to know him, Amar is afraid to accept the offer of friendship and brotherhood.

“[Amar] looked at [Huda]. He felt bad. It seemed as though an explanation was being asked of him but he had none to offer. He was depleted. He had made Mumma cry. He hadn’t seen her for years, missed her all the time, and then on the one day he did see her, he had made her cry. He had kicked the stupid guest book stand. Some kid had even yelled it out loud. He was ready to go home, and that thought came with its own ache: where, exactly, was home? Huda led him gently by the arm to the parking lot, as if her were a child that had thrown a tantrum and was now being escorted out. But this was not a tantrum. He was justified in his anger. They had meddled in his life.”

Amar feels intense guilt for so publicly confronting Layla over what she did to him and Amira. However, he feels entirely justified in his anger and hurt, as his mother did something that had profound negative effects on his life. His sense of never belonging with his family, never having a home, resurfaces here.

“Soon the spinning would steady. He would find his way to a place where he could rest until morning. Maybe there was no God. But maybe the God of his parents was there, watching him tonight as on all nights. And if He was there, He had revealed ninety-nine names for them to understand Him. Here was the Avenger, the Firm, but there was also the Forgiving, the Patient. […] Maybe it was the exceptions we made for one another that brought God more pride than when we stood firm, maybe His heart opened when His creations opened their hearts to one another, and maybe that is why the boy was switched with the ram: so a father would not have to choose between his boy and his belief. There was another way. Amar was sure of it. He wanted them to find it together.”

Despite his drunkenness and despair after Rafiq leaves him alone in the courtyard to go inside for the family picture, Amar reveals that he holds onto the same hope that his father does. There may be another way for them to reconcile, and he hopes that they reunite and find it together one day.

“Your mother regards it as our miracle from God, that soon your lungs were emptied and you began gasping for air, crying even. And I too thanked God, knelt in sajda-shukr once the nurses and doctors took you and gave us privacy. But when my forehead touched the cold floor, I wondered if it had been an omen, though I have not told Layla this, have not told anyone.”

The fact that Layla and Rafiq almost lost Amar moments after he was born foreshadows that they lose him later on. It also reiterates Rafiq’s typical habit of withholding his fears from Layla and everyone else.

“But every few months, before you turned five, you and I had a day alone together. I would come home to find your mother had taken it upon herself to cut your hair again. The sight of you with a jagged and uneven haircut never failed to irritate me. Maybe it felt like a game to you both. Your mother lifting you up to the bathroom countertop, wrapping a towel around your neck to catch dark tufts of your hair. Layla, I would tell her, trying to control my annoyance, why do you always do this, make him look silly like this? The following Sunday, we would go together to get a haircut.”

Haircuts, grooming, and presentation resurface late in the novel. Rafiq hopes to bond with Amar more effectively by taking him to get a haircut. He worries that he isn’t there enough and that Layla’s well-intentioned interventions make his son seem silly and weak.

“Now both my daughters work, and it is not so much that I have relented and accepted this, but that these are the very things that have become a great source of pride for me. They have shown me what to value that I did not know before them to value. […] If I do go, I know that my daughters will be fine, as they are not only cared for but also completely capable of caring for themselves, providing for themselves, and also for Layla, and also for my grandchildren.”

Time has demonstrated to Rafiq that his traditional views on women’s roles are not necessarily the only way his daughters can make their way in the world. Hadia is a doctor, and Huda is a teacher. He notes with wistful irony that it’s not his daughters he constantly worries about but his son.

“‘Amar, God is so merciful that on Judgment Day He will forgive so many souls that even shaitaan will have hope for his own salvation.’ ‘That’s sweet,’ you said. You gestured ‘all done’ to the bird but the bird did not go. I lightly hit my own cheek to say tauba. ‘Only you would find the devil sweet.’”

There are few interactions where Rafiq and Amar show affection and even a gentle sense of humor toward each other. This flashback conversation suggests that there were more moments like this in Amar’s childhood and teenage years, and it also reinforces that Rafiq’s adherence to his beliefs was not always as strict as it seemed.