When We Were Sisters: a Novel, page 14
Instead, I book a hotel for two nights nearby. A shitty one, not much, and when I get there I smash a roach crawling up the wall with my sneaker. I call to the front desk and they give me thirty dollars off. I contemplate bringing some more roaches inside and calling down some more, wondering if I could get the whole room to be free. It seems unfair, that I have to pay money to even be at this fucking funeral. I know that if I had said yes, if he had come with me, we would probably be staying somewhere nicer because he would have helped pay. But instead, he’s half a country away, in his own apartment, maybe waiting for me. Maybe not. I left. He called me a few times. I didn’t answer. He stopped calling. Maybe he’s with someone else now. People move on so fast. And I feel so temporary. I make a list of all the things I could tell him: how I walked to my childhood parks, the yellow door, the shitty receptionist downstairs who talks to you while she’s on the phone so it’s hard to know who she’s talking to. I wonder what it would be like if I stopped pretending to be a girl. If he’d still stick around. Maybe he’d finally let me peg him. Maybe not. But honestly, his ass-cleaning hygiene is a little sus. Nary a lota in sight. We’d have to work on that. I don’t think he’s gonna call back. I pull out a hotel towel and put it on the floor. My fake-ass janamaz. Allah, please forgive me for being janky, I say. I fold my knees.
I didn’t have time to find a white kurta, so I’m in a white dress with a duputta draped around my shoulders. The dress is inappropriate for a funeral, cut low in the back so you can see the soft indent of my spine when I walk. Haraam. But hey. It’s the kind of dress that I can’t wear outside by myself at night because I know it’ll make walking down the street hard. I can only wear it when I know I’m going to be with someone, when they shield the stares. But this is the dress that I’ve shown up to Uncle ██████’s death day in and I’ve never been more confident wearing it anywhere.
When I get there, there’s a few people from the neighborhood, older South Asian people who don’t recognize me after all these years. And Uncle ██████’s wife and the two sons. His oldest son’s round face. His youngest son’s narrow nose. His wife’s stern eyes. Her blond hair, now white. The family he so desperately wanted to love him. They ignore me when I walk in, and I take a seat at the back. A whole city between us. A whole suburb. The PATH. A bus. Fifteen blocks. A watered, flowered lawn. A house and a trundle. I wait, trying to be patient, the sweat in my armpits gathers. Until out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure come in and settle down behind me.
Hey, little one.
* * *
—
I turn and there is Aisha: hair cropped short around her ears, wearing a long white kurta and pants, smelling like rose. Her soft round face, honey radiating off of her. My younger God, cheeks pinked with blush. Our eyes lock and mine instantly water and Aisha laughs, her smile bright, free.
Have you seen—
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence, the lump in her throat swallowing the name.
The casket is open, but neither I nor Aisha has gotten up to look at Uncle ██████. I’ve moved back to the row that she’s settled down in, we’re together, knee to knee, looking at her phone as she shows me pictures. Her partner is beautiful, long black hair that sweeps to mid-back, brown skin, almond eyes, pregnant. Their little apartment in New Jersey, they’re painting the nursery room yellow.
Remember how you painted the bunk bed yellow and didn’t even open the windows? We were high for days.
A thing I don’t remember, but it feels so familiar I laugh anyway. The picture of the three of us, little balloons on no food and huffing paint, in our own orbits. I wonder how it would be if all our memories stacked up together, what would be real and what would be make-believe.
Did you go by the apartment? It’s yellow. I think he painted it for you, Aisha muses, and I look at her, surprised.
He missed you a lot when you left. He always loved you the most, Aisha laughs, gently squeezing my hand. And a thought I never had before: him, in our apartment, missing me.
Are you with someone? You were always with someone.
* * *
—
I think of the person who asked to come with me here. The person I did not let come. The person I left. The person my mind keeps floating to.
I’m with you.
It comes out of my mouth before I even have time to think. Aisha’s eyes glisten for a moment.
We hear a click of a heel and we both turn at the same time. And there, framed in the doorway, is Noreen.
reasons why people stay—
Noreen, in a smart white suit, white heels, straight hair falling just around her shoulders. Noreen with her thin face, with her brown eyes, looking right at us.
Should we go together? she asks, coming up to us.
And like little ducks, Aisha and I join Noreen’s procession, walking up to Uncle ██████ together. And there he is: dead, a little blue in the face, more bloated than he was when he was alive. And suddenly, less scary. Like a stranger. Wrinkled, wearing lipstick. The pink color against his skin. Soft face. His closed eyes. An old man.
Uncle ██████, in the car, looking at something I can’t quite see. His hands on the wheel. The hair on his fingers bold.
Don’t let the small things become the big things.
Noreen’s smile on her thin face is the same, as always. She could be in high school. She could be four. She could be in a nursing home. Aisha’s rounded cheeks, the dimple by her lip. Sisters. The word sounds foreign. Not what we are. Not what we ever were. A small word. Trying to hold us together. Brown eyes to brown eyes to brown eyes. The slight curve of Aisha’s lips, moving upwards, a smirk. Make it last, make it last. The light in Noreen’s eyes. Make it last, make it last. The laugh, brewing there, just beyond her eyes. Daring one of us to break first.
•
Before we worshipped one God, we worshipped trees. Yes, there was the moon. Always, the moon. But don’t forget about the trees. The banyans, their winding, weeping, walking ways. Where our ancestors live. They grow in the crevices, in the places we overlook. A single tree in a maze of branches, making a whole forest of itself, a family all on its own. Ribbons dangle from stems, blowing pink in the wind. Prayers stack on prayers, a million prayers over thousands of years, prayers that sing when you touch the bark. The trees sing to each other, across the borders, across the villages. Their constant chatter, their gupshup. They family each other. Even when a border is drawn between them. Even when one tree lies. Even when one tree wants space, a galaxy of their own. Even when a djinn takes hold of one tree’s leaves. They love each other—the trees. They root down. They root towards each other. Their boughs, digging into the ground below, feeding the earth. The young replacing the old, a loop that loops forever. All the siblings, wrapped around each other. Sister branches, stealing each other’s clothes. Brother branches, snuggled against the parents. The parents, annoyed and tired. Complaining about money. The fuckup Uncle, on his same fuckshit. The not-quite-brother-not-quite-sister branches, venturing outward. The elder branches, holding the frame in place, before dying off, before flowing back into the earth, before becoming something new.
for my parents
for ru & keke
& for myself
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Allah: Great Creator, Great Story, Great Mystery, for my life. Thank you to all my teachers. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell this story, this work of fiction, to remove pain from my body and yoke it into this book. Thank you for showing me there’s a greater story, beyond pain and isolation.
I pray this book heals. I pray this book is a healing in my family, in my lineage, in my ancestry. I pray this is a healing in myself.
Ameen.
I started this book in isolation, when the sadness was so unbearable I couldn’t remember who I was. I started writing it in secret, letting what came come. I didn’t know where it was taking me. I didn’t know what it was. I let it come. I continued this book in isolation. I made a mistake: I convinced myself that I could do it alone.
It’s a trick of the orphaned mind to believe you were born into aloneness. That there is no escaping it. It’s the trick: that you can build a home by yourself, where you won’t need anyone, because then you won’t lose anyone again. It keeps you there. It kept me there for too long. It crept into my mind, shadowing so that I couldn’t see who was there around me, the long lines of them, the ones who had been shaping me all this time.
Nothing is done in isolation. I am not alone because they are dead. I am not alone because my life is so full with people, so full with books, so full with love and ideas that I can reach out and touch. I can’t be alone when every person in my life is a galaxy, a world on a world in themselves. I can’t be alone when I have never been, when they’ve been with me this whole time. When they make me, when they shape me, when actually it feels as though every breath I breathe and everything that I write is actually so deeply shaped by everyone around me, by the world, and by the authors who I am molded by and in conversation with.
What hope—that we exist in such interconnectedness. How silly I feel for the moments that I thought anything other than that. There’s no part of me that would ever want us to detangle ourselves from each other. Because there is the reason to live. Each other. The ones who left and the ones who’ve stayed. Ya Allah, how lucky I am. I am so grateful for my dead. I am so grateful for my living. I am.
As Ross Gay writes in the beautiful acknowledgments of his book Be Holding, “This joy-ning is not without a little ambivalence sometimes in the world-destroying capitalist nightmare fantasy of the individual. Oh shit, I’ve never made anything by myself! Oh shit, I maybe am not a myself! Oh shit, I definitely am not a myself! Oh shit, it’s all been given to me! It’s all been given to me. Oh. O. Thank you.”
So, here is a brief, and completely incomplete, accounting of the things that have been given to me, without which this book would never exist. For this book is after you all, and so many more:
Thank you to Douglas Kearney, whose bright and luminous work has always shown me how to make visual what is emotional. Thank you for the study, for the rigor, and for how lucky I feel to spend so much time reading your work.
Thank you, William Golding, for your work Lord of the Flies. For the boys who are stranded. For the stranding. For the book that I return to over and over, when I am stranded, to remember.
Thank you to Justin Torres. Thank you for We the Animals. When I read your book it gave me permission. It gave me vignettes. It gave me lyric. It hooked into my heart and made it feel as though I could write fiction, as though it could be possible for me to venture forward in my own discoveries. The best writers give permission. Thank you for your work, which permissions me.
Thank you to Paul Auster, for City of Glass. The Tower of Babel. Language never being enough and yet, being my whole world. Thank you for closure. For what is said and what is not.
Thank you to Haroon Khalid, for your book In Search of Shiva: A Study of Folk Religious Practices in Pakistan. Thank you for your book’s insistence on remembering. It insists on holding what the state tries to forget. I found your book, or it found me, when I needed it most. When I felt broken & afraid. & then—your words. Your documentation. How much of a gift it is. It filled me. It made me see. It made me hope. And it helped reach me towards an ending for this book. Your chapter on sacred trees, and when you talk about the banyans, is the only reason this book could be concluded. The last section of this book is both influenced by and dedicated to you. Thank you.
Thank you to Akwaeke Emezi, for your exploration of being and spirit in Freshwater. Thank you for languaging all the selves. Reading your description of moments of dissociation was incredibly powerful and helped open something inside me, and carved a path for me to write about dissociation. Thank you for shining a light that bounces, and allows and allows. Thank you for the permission of that book, for the great opening it allows. And thank you for the term brothersisters, which helped me so much.
Thank you to Carmen Maria Machado for In the Dream House. Thank you for breaking silence, and allowing so many others to do the same.
Thank you to Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things. Thank you for all the Gods. Thank you for all the small things. Thank you for that book, my copy of which is so battered that all the pages are falling out.
And thank you to Khudejha Asghar and Ruquia Asghar, whose words, lives, love, and ideas have always influenced me. Thank you to my sisters for protecting me, for loving me all the beautiful ways that are so specific to us. Thank you to Aunty Kaniz and Uncle Fuzzy, whom I am eternally grateful to be loved by.
Thank you for all the language wherever I have found it. It is through you that I can try to explain my me. And I am so grateful.
Some books cut so close to the heart that you are reborn after. That you can’t be the same. I don’t know how this book will resonate with the world. But, this book has done that for me. Cut me open and rebirthed me.
Thank you to my guides and ancestors. Thank you to the lineages who made me and the lineages who hold me. Thank you to the lineages that are not mine but who have made space for me, who have invited me in as guest, who I have learned and continue to learn so much from. Thank you for keeping me guided and grounded. Thank you for showing me my next step. Every step of the way. Thank you for showing me my next word, my next sentence. My next move. Thank you for gently bringing me towards my truth, even when I couldn’t bear to touch it.
For privacy I won’t name you, but thank you to my therapist. And all my healers. Y’all are the realest. Thank you for guiding me. Thank you for all the readings. Thank you for tapping. Thank you for the help.
Thank you, Jamila Woods, for your friendship. For how at ease I feel around you. For how you’ve helped me with this book. I could not have written this (or, let’s be real, anything) without you.
Thank you to One World, Nicole Counts, Oma Beharry, and Rachel Kim for believing in me, for supporting me, and for helping me birth this book forward. And to our little LA One World coven and our beautiful retreat—Safia Elhillo, Donovan Ramsey, and Jay Ellis.
Thank you to my cousins: Sarah, Charlotte, Sara, Farhan, Amina, Fauzia, Neelo. To all my aunts and uncles. To my niblings: Emani, Zain, Aadam. Nuala and Kiyan. Adan.
Thank you to Dark Noise, my faithful loves. How lucky I am that you are mine. That I am yours. Aaron Samuels, Franny Choi, Jamila Woods (yes! I am naming you again!), Danez Smith, and Nate Marshall. Thank you for being my family in writing.
My other family in writing and also in faith, thank you, my dearest Mashallahs: Kaveh Akbar, Angel Nafis, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Safia Elhillo (yes, bb, you too get named twice).
Thank you to everyone who helped me navigate the terrain of this book, who read it, who I spoke to it about, who offered me love and words of insight, who read drafts and gave notes: Krista Franklin, Franny Choi (a double name!), Randa Jarrar, Fariha Roisin, Danez Smith (yes, another double!), Perry Janes, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Chani Nicholas, Sonya Passi, Fran Tirado, Vincent Martell, Jordan Phelps, Eve Ewing, Rachel McKibbens, Hollis Wong-Wear, and Sam Sax.
To my team: Jonas Brooks, Lauren Holland, Tara Dorfman, Carter Cofield, Stephanie Smallings, Amy Nickin—thank you. Gratitude to Tabia Yapp and the whole team at Beotis: Vanity Gee, Irena Huang, Tayler Lord, and Morgan Howard. Tabia: thank you for believing in me, for always showing me my worth, and for fighting to defend that.
Thank you to Troutbeck, for letting me write. Thank you for giving me space and food. You have no idea how much of an aid it is.
And thank you to the vast terrain of people who have had their lives intersect with mine, who have taught me so many lessons, who I feel blessed to know: Teodora Kaltcheva, Marilyn Paschal, Jaspreet Kaur, Nabila Hossain, Rehan Siddiqui, Mo Browne, Cam Awkward-Rich, Diamond Sharp, José Olivarez, Shira Erlichman, Justin Phillip Reed, Laura Brown-Lavoie, Jess Snow, Sarah Kay, Phil Kaye, Amina Sheikh, Ceci Pineda, Marco Lambooy, Jasmin Panjeta, VyVy Trinh, Dimress Dunnigan, Kush Thompson, Raych Jackson, Britteney Kapri, Zarif Wilder, Jacqui Germain, Amy Sewick, Mina Zachkary, Fawz Mirza, Laura Zak, Bisha Ali, Yolo Akili, Andria Mirza, Pidgeon Pagonis, Clint Smith, Matt Muse, and Dominique James.
To everyone else I have met, who has influenced me, and who has been there—you have my gratitude. Thank you.
By Fatimah Asghar
If They Come for Us
When We Were Sisters
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fatimah Asghar, author of If They Come for Us, is a poet, filmmaker, educator, and performer. They are the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Along with Safia Elhillo, they are the editor of Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender-nonconforming, and/or trans. They wrote and were a coproducer on Ms. Marvel for Disney+.
fatimahasghar.com
Twitter: @asgharthegrouch
Instagram: @asgharthegrouch
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Fatimah Asghar, When We Were Sisters: a Novel
