The Writing on My Forehead Read Online Free PDF Page B

auction. Before they are old enough to understand what the world is about and what it has to offer. That there is more to life than breeding and birthing.” The frown faded into a smile. “But not for you, that same old story. Not for my Saira. From you, I expect big things.” She tweaked my nose and challenged me to a race home. I remember feeling glad and proud of myself, too. As if in advance for all that she hoped I would accomplish.

THREE
     
    I N THE FACE of my rather traumatic, tantrum-filled railing against Ameena’s refusal to accompany me, Mummy arranged for a way to let me go to Pakistan alone. Almost. As far as London, at least. From there, I went on to Karachi in the company of Razia Nani, a distant relative of my mother’s—I tuned out when my mother tried to clarify the exact nature of the connection and have no idea of whether the tie was by blood or marriage—whom I vaguely recalled as a somewhat elderly lady. It was a compromise that I could live with, if reluctantly. The same was planned, in reverse, for my return three weeks later, when I would stay with my father’s brother and his family for a three-day visit before coming home. I was nervous about this, because it had been several years since I’d seen my paternal cousins, Mohsin and Mehnaz—eighteen-year-old twins whom Ameena and I had always tried to avoid, finding them more than a little frightening and exceedingly weird.
    Razia Nani would, my mother said, take good care of me. “Besides,” she’d added, probably to try and avert the objection I was about to offer regarding the need for anyone to take care of me, “she needs you, too. She’s a lonely old woman. It will be good for her to have your company on the plane, poor dear.”
    As it turned out, I found Razia Nani’s company to be highly educational. She was a bona fide gossip, talking nonstop for the duration of the ten-hour-long journey from London to Karachi—with no regard for the tenderness of my young age; with no notice of how close or far my relationship was to the people that she tore through with a generous impartiality that included people she considered to be friends as well as foes; and with no care for the possibility that I may repeat the sensitive and potentially dangerous information that she shared with me.
    But for one detail, it would have been a perfect trip. The volume of Razia Nani’s voice—quite unconsciously, it would appear—seemed to increase in direct proportion to the delicacy and sensitivity that her subject should have commanded. While I was thrilled to get the lowdown on so many family secrets, I have to admit that I was quite mortified at the sinking certainty that everyone on the plane seated even remotely within our vicinity would be privy to the same information. I remember spending much of the early part of the flight slumped down in my seat, desperately balancing the need to keep these secrets in the family by urging Razia Nani to “shhhh” against the knowledge that such a “shhhh” would, in my mother’s estimation—and, more important, in Razia Nani’s—not be acceptable behavior toward an elder. Whenever the impulse to hush her became overwhelming, I entertained nightmarish visions of Razia Nani cozying down to tea with my other relatives and making loud declarations about how rudely I had behaved with her on the trip to Karachi, saying, “how ill-mannered and disrespectful that Saira girl is,” and “how badly Shabana has brought up her besharam daughter.”
    My fear of being overheard was compounded by my childish belief in the degrees of separation between people who could trace their heritage to the Indian subcontinent. That there were, essentially, very few of them. It was an irrational belief, I know, but one that I have never really outgrown. Perhaps, originally, it was born from the curious perspective that growing up as part of a very small minority population afforded me. When we were children, my mother always