Nano chose one of the most inconvenient times to pass away. Eid was right around the corner. We were going through a heat-stroke-studded Ramzan. Not to mention half the city didn’t even have electricity. And I was, until fifteen minutes ago when my brother had picked me up from my coaching centre, in the throes of physics calculations and formulae. Though I was grateful for the distraction, I was already getting agitated about the hours of studying I was losing.
Good God, it was hot outside.
I discreetly tried to fan my face with my hand without making it obvious that my top priority at the moment wasn’t to comfort my weeping sister but to dry the perspiration rolling down my temples.
Baji’s bawling was only a trailer for what was about to commence at Nano’s home. I dreaded the evening ahead; yowling women slapping their chests while the men stared ahead stoically. Nano would’ve rolled her eyes at them.
“Half of these people just come for biryani. When I die, serve daal chawal for three days straight and then kick everyone out the minute they stop talking about me.”
Of course, no one actually followed her instructions. They were too busy pleasing the living to care about the dead.
“Haye, Allllahhhhh!”
I looked up and saw my aunt half leaning, half falling onto her sister. Nilo khaala took in shuddering breaths and collapsed onto a nearby sofa reserved for ladies with knees too weak to allow them to sit on the floor. One woman fanned khaala’s face with her dupatta, another shook her head and cried silent tears. You had to give it to her. That woman could cry.
It was hard to tell whether they were tears of relief or shock. Yesterday she was the common enemy of all nine sisters and their families, today she was the brave daughter who had performed ghusl on her mother.
She was a weird choice for an act so holy and intimate considering that the last time we saw her she was burning Nano’s kameez on her rooftop that she swore up and down was for religious reasons only and definitely not related to her increasingly frequent visits to a certain Badshah Baba.
My cousin sitting beside me began to sniffle. I used my finger as a bookmark for the sipara I was reading and reached out to give her an awkward side-hug. I stared blankly at the small pile of washed tamarind beans spread on the white sheet beneath me and forced myself to cry with Aliya. Thankfully, she pulled away soon. I tried not to make a face when I saw she had unknowingly wiped her snot all over my kurti. The same kurti Nano had handsewn for me. Perfect.
Crying is a hellishly dehydrating task. I desperately wanted a chilled glass of water. I looked at the wall clock opposite me. Just ten more minutes until iftar. I flipped my sipara to the last page. Thirty-five more pages left to go. I couldn’t just leave the sipara. I was my family’s fastest Quran reader, famously finishing off siparas in 15 minutes easily.
I’m sorry, Allah Ta’ala, but I have a reputation to uphold.
Moving my finger across the lines, I made sure to keep humming some distorted form of Arabic pronunciation. My eyes darted down the page, barely even registering what letters I was seeing until I was done. I kissed the sipara’s cover thrice, promised Allah I would properly read it once I got home (I never did), and rose to join others gathered at the dining table.
Everyone was stuck in some stage of grief. Hina khaala would tell anyone who’d listened that her mother was still in the hospital waiting for them, why wouldn’t anyone go get her?
Anila was seething as Nilo khaala began a new round of howling. “God took the wrong person out of this khandaan.”
Sonia sat with her arm crossed against her chest, giving the whole scene a thousand-yard stare.
I wondered what stage I was at. Probably acceptance. Or more like pre-acceptance. When a month ago little droplets of water had begun appearing on Nano’s unconscious body plugged into a machine, I had made peace with the fact that she was about to leave us. Three weeks later, when she suddenly became talkative and alert, I began planning all my future engagements around her eventual funeral. My timing was off by only a week.
After a prolonged Fatiha that was graciously cut off by the siren signalling iftar, the house became less of a funeral home and more of an after-party venue. Trays of fried items were being pushed out from the boiling kitchen. Aunties were gossiping with plates of biryani in their hands. Kids were chasing each other around the house, their mothers too tired to stop them.
Mourning, apparently, takes a break at meal times.
The ride home was quiet. Bhaiyya didn’t blast his speakers with songs from 2014. Baji was exhausted from crying all day and lay slumped beside me. I laid my head back and watched Karachi zoom by in a flurry of lights. A thick blanket of rain-filled clouds was cooling down the blistering pavements outside.
I closed my eyes and saw Nano sitting on her lawn reading a newspaper. She and I were wide awake while the rest of the house slept snuggly. Birds chirped in a nearby birdbath. Everything was awash in honey-yellow light. I approached her shyly and settled down in front of her. A leaf plucked itself from the custard apple tree above our heads and swooped down gently. Nano peeked up from her newspaper and smiled at me.
“That’s my good daughter, waking up so early.” She patted my head. Pushing her weight onto her cane, she got up. “Let’s make a special breakfast just for us. Come on.”
I opened my eyes and squinted at the rain, my face wet and my throat choking.
Ramsha Farooq Raja is an emerging South Asian writer from Karachi, Pakistan. Her work explores culture, religion, and the blurred lines in between. She has been published in Dawn Young World magazine, Tasavvur magazine, and is an alumni of the LUMS Young Writer's Workshop. She is currently working on a manuscript that is on its hundredth stage of development.