I am eating a quick and very late lunch in a place that is closing all around me and I am their last customer. Coming here always brings me in proximity to him and all the times gone by.
Fleetingly I think of buying a meal for him but discard the thought as soon as it comes, he would not eat open, unsealed food, due to his OCD. I get up and find myself driving toward the lane of nightmares, and arrive at the dungeon of memories.
His car is standing outside, clean and looks better than it ever has. His door is open and it seems light and airy inside. I alight from the car and approach the entrance to the apartment. Inside the TV is blaring and he seems to be organizing his kitchen. It is not piled high with things like when I last saw it.
He seems to have shrunk, and aged like the reflection of my mirror tells me I have. He looks small over all except his head. His head……. I notice the two healed scars on his forehead, and my memory spins to the past.
In my minds eye as a young child, I distinctly remember my mother reading the telegram and becoming visibly distraught, while remaining calm, something only she did. I pick up the telegram, it is from Lahore “Hz uncontrollable, come at once” this is from my grandmother. I know he is staying with them and is in first year of college.
She leaves to make a phone call, and returns. I am staring at the telegram “uncontrollable” it is a word that I have never witnessed in the vocabulary of my family, if anything everyone is excessively controlled, of course that was only the beginning of my introduction to the roller coaster of a life that was uncontrollable.
When she returns I ask her “what does she mean” pointing to the telegram. My mother averts her eyes, which means she is avoiding the facts,” well…….” she says “he has hurt his forehead by diving in the swimming pool at college and he is refusing to take antibiotics” I immediately know there is more to the story, firstly he had been sent to a very upper class college in Lahore, living for free in the old mansion with his grandparents, …….why was he swimming and not studying” I had thought to myself, condemning his behavior in my youthfulness as irresponsible. He was having fun…it almost seemed like a crime to me to be having fun when he should studying to ace his exams. This in view of how much difficulty my mother had getting him out of his previous predicament.
As it turned out when he dove into the water, hearsay is that he was “showing off” to some girls and thus had water damage to his sinuses, by landing in a way due to his inattentiveness.
The saga unraveled as my mother returned from Lahore with a very angry teenager who was acting out, badmouthing my grandparents, and would stand in front of the mirror and squeeze what looked like pus to me from the wound in his forehead, and would look at me maliciously.
Meanwhile my mother cajoled and pampered him till he got well and all the while he lorded over my youngest brother and me maliciously as we were the only ones in the house.
All this flashes in front of my eyes and I feel empathic towards him.
He is standing in the doorway his eyes are hard and his expression detached as he regards me. I make my salaam, and I do not remember if he replies. I ask how he is and how is his health. He does not invite me in and starts to semi close the entrance door.
He says “I am not telling you anything, you took me to court”. I am no longer stunned by his below the belt blows like I used to. It just registers as a surprise in my memory bank as I realize he is talking about my brothers trying to get guardianship for him so as to take care of his needs if the situation arises.
I tell him that I had nothing to do with it, but he stops me in mid sentence as always. It is like old times with one difference. My stomach does not clench with nervousness and my anxiety level does not rise. I feel like I am at peace and his behavior arouses no animosity in me. (In retrospect, I am amazed and thankful for the change in me).
I ask him if there is anything I can do? He brushes me off and turns on me with cold, detached anger and starts a tirade of personal, demeaning, punishing statements all aimed at hurting me. I realize I am different than before, Tariq’s death and the ensuing circumstances have encased me in a cloak of grief and something else through which very little passes.
When he sees that all the arrows have gone askew, he throws in the final Molotov cocktail “ I know what you did to my mother” and it hits home.
Guilt raises its ugly head within me. What he means and he knows that I perfectly understand what he means is that when my mother was alive and sick and was living with him, he wanted me to move in with him to take care of my mother 24/7 and give up my home, my children and my husband and profession to do so.
He also means that I only offered my mother my personal nursing care for three half days a week and one weekend day, engaging an outside nurse to cover the rest of the time, leaving the rest of the time for my patients and my family.
He had rejected that offer, it was all or none, and to punish me had tried to prevent me from seeing my sick mother.
Despite all the changes that have occurred within me and despite the fact that I have forgiven him for the torture he put me through when my mother was alive, I find that I feel guilty. Perhaps I did not do enough for my mother in the eyes of Allah, if so may He (SWT) forgive me.
He then says: “I pray that God keeps me away from you all” I guess he means my brothers and me.
It is getting close to Asar time on this beautiful crisp fall afternoon; the irony of this visit hits me. I had gone to offer him a home cooked meal or to take him out or buy him a sealed meal, which might be acceptable to his OCD personality, but he responded as he always does.
Any further hopes or plans for sharing the few rays of our joy with him after the long dark night of grief, slammed shut like a door. I was glad that I had not made the assumption of thinking he had changed and thus made the error of including him again in my life, and allowing him to use my loved ones to torture me.
I have withdrawn from almost all that has been toxic in my life; Allah SWT today led me yet to another door so that it too can be shut without hard feelings, leaving the spectre of my past in my past.
If he prays to God that I stay away from him then all I can say is Ameen.
Please keep me in your prayers for peace of heart.
