The Sweetness of Tears Read Online Free PDF

earnestly resume the task of lifting and turning tomatoes, checking their ripeness, always careful to regulate these familiarities according to unspoken rules of engagement between men and women, between lower and upper classes.
    When we came home, after cooking and showering the smell of spices and onions out of her hair and skin, my mother prayed, putting aside her chiffon scarf to don the thicker white chadar of prayer that veiled her hair and the shape of her body. When she bowed for sajda, I would sometimes climb up onto her back, my arms encircling her neck tightly, a passenger on the journey of her prayers. She would stay prone, her forehead pressed to the prayer rug, waiting for something else to distract me off my perch, before rising back to the sitting position of her namaz . Her patience was boundless—I was everything to her, I knew.
    The only other outings we had were visits we paid, every week, to a giant fortress of a house—the home of Abbas Ali Mubarak and his wife, Sajida, my paternal grandparents, who sent their car for the ride every Friday. Their driver, Sharif Muhammad Chacha, who was also the brother of our servant, Macee, would announce his arrival with the honk of his horn before knocking at the door to visit with his sister while my mother combed my hair and washed my face in preparation for our departure. When we were ready, I would eagerly climb into the backseat with my mother, my hand tucked in hers, my eyes drinking in the sights of the city streets that lay between the house that I called home and the mansion to which the car belonged. Once there, we would sit, my mother and I, close together on one of four sofas—ornately carved, all of them, upholstered in blue velvet, in a grand living room lit with chandeliers that sparkled and gleamed. There, my grandmother—Dadi is what I called her—would have special food laid out for me, along with toys and candies, gift-wrapped, like it was my birthday, every week. Dada, my grandfather, would speak to me. But I spent most of the visit stuck close to my mother, hiding my face in her lap whenever anyone tried to coax me away.
    This would annoy Dadi, so the purse of her lips would tighten further than it had at first sight of my mother, her eyes narrowing as she gazed at this woman, the mother of her grandchild, who she clearly disliked, and said, “Surely he’s old enough, now, to get to know us outside of your presence, Deena. It is not healthy, the way he clings to you.”
    Dada would interrupt, saying, “He’s only a little child, Sajida. Leave them be.” My shyness never abated, no matter how hard my grandmother smiled at me, no matter how many gifts she tried to bribe me with. Many times, my cousin Jaffer would be there with his mother—my father’s sister, Asma, who I called Phupijan—and they would join in Dadi’s effort to entice me away from my mother. I would watch him play with the toys laid out for me and tug at my mother to come join me on the floor. She always obliged, so that I made friends with Jaffer, silently, in the shade of my mother’s shelter. I would talk about him all of the next day, but I was too shy to ever speak to him myself.
    Every night, my mother would lie down beside me on the bed we shared and sing me to sleep—Urdu songs and English—in a voice that I knew was the most piercingly beautiful in the world. I would struggle to keep awake to hear it, her fingers running through my hair, my body cradled in the curve of hers, a nightly battle where defeat was sweet, a total surrender to sleep that only small children enjoy.
    I was amazed to hear one of those favorite nighttime battle hymns on the radio one day—“Love Me Tender”—in my grandparents’ car, on the way home from one of our weekly visits to the big house.
    “Amee, that’s your song,” I whispered, too shy to let Sharif Muhammad Chacha, the driver, hear me.
    My mother laughed and put her hand on my cheek. “ My song? No, Sadee. That’s