I press the keys on the pad: 9989. I hear a sound, a little beep, as the door closes behind me. I enter a common room, a laundry room, a linen cupboard. Then, at the end of the corridor, I see a pair of large silver double doors. I push them open. I am in a kitchen. Here, I stop in my tracks. Right in front of me, hanging from a meat hook by the industrial-size fridge, is the bottom portion of a human leg.
A calf, with the foot still attached. The top of it, skewered by the S-shaped hook, is red and muscly. The rest, pink and mottled. Red and blue veins bulge from its length, and the toes, tinged purple, are slender. The nails have turned a gray blue, and one has been punched through with some sort of tag. “It’s not real,” I say aloud to myself, trying to calm my racing heart, but I can’t take my eyes off it. Sometimes the body has a mind of its own, and my body knows. My skin turns cold and fills with goosebumps. My stomach churns, and my throat fills with bile. I start to shake, and my eyes water as my gaze moves over the pale veiny skin, its marks and bruises, the tiny hairs covering it. Suddenly, I feel a sharp prick on my right shoulder. My knees go wobbly, and my vision darkens, as the grotesque sight in front of me fades from view.
I narrated the whole incident to Naima as I relived it, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that her face had gone white. I stood, rushed to the toilet, and threw up, heaving and retching painfully.
“Was that real?” I asked her afterward as we lay on our backs on the living room floor. “Did that actually happen?”
“Memory retrieval is a tricky thing,” she said. “But it felt real to me.”
“So they must have drugged me then, right? And taken me back to my room? That’s basically what Arjun was implying too.”
“It sounds like it,” she said. “And it’s important that you saw what you did, Anisa. This isn’t just some abstract thing. These are real people. Real bodies. We need to go to the police.”
Naima and I got into a long and heated discussion then. She shared my skepticism about the police and my negative views of the punitive justice system, and we both understood the dangers of playing God with someone else’s life. She still felt, though, that I had to share.
“You can’t keep it inside. Trust me. I see this every day in my job. Things fester when they’re left inside. Secrets, Anisa, can ruin lives for generations. And they can cause real, actual illness. You have to find a way to speak out,” she urged. I’d made her swear on the Quran that she wouldn’t tell anyone, and I reminded her of this now. “Of course I won’t. But you need to. I’m sure there’s a way to do it while keeping both you and Shiba safe.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll figure it out.”
A little while later, as Naima was putting on her coat to leave, she turned to me. “Um, there’s one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“The … thing that happened in Arjun’s study.”
I offered an exaggerated shrug in response and said, “You know how it is.”
“Yeah, actually. I do.”
She leaned in close and hugged me, and I felt the feathers of her ridiculous coat caress my cheek. We spoke then of soft and tender things, damaged and frightened things. I’ll keep our exchange between us, for now, as I continue to learn how to care for these very fragile things, and how to translate into words that which has not yet been spoken.
May God heal all that is wounded in us and restore all that appears lost. Ameen.
·
Naima and I spoke frequently about the Centre after she’d heard the tape, but decided to hold off on taking any action until a clear path emerged. Also, we were entirely caught up in wedding prep over the next few months. The joyful dance practices, the noisy dholkis that went on until the early hours of the morning, and the decision-making about food, decorations, music, and outfits couldn’t not get me excited about the wedding, but my views on Azeem had, unfortunately, remained the same. If anything, I’d grown even more convinced of his inadequacy, and the scary thing was, I felt like Naima was seeing it too. I noticed her strained smiles and stilted laughter when the topic of their relationship came up and saw subtle shifts in their interactions that made it increasingly obvious she was making too large of an effort to sustain warmth and love between them. I felt that theirs was a story that she needed to be true, and now that events had been put into motion, she was allowing herself, basically, to be swept up in the ceremony of it all, by the excitement of her family and his. Before we knew it, her wedding day was around the corner. And there I was, fireworks in one hand and dustpan in the other, ready to deploy whichever the situation demanded.
Then, about a week before the wedding, Naima pulled me to the side during dance practice, her eyes shining with excitement.
“I know how we can share the story.”
True to her word, Naima had continued to think up ways in which I could unburden myself.
“Huh?”
“You see that girl?” she asked, pointing to her friend S, who was dancing clumsily on the other side of the room to “Aankh Marey.” “You remember her, right? From ceremony?”
“Yeah …？”
“Guess what her job is? She’s an editor. At a publishing house.”
“Okay. So what?”
“So give her your story! Just transcribe the recording and change all the names and pretend it’s fiction. You can even use a pseudonym.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“The point is that you’ll be releasing it from your energy field. You can finally let it go.”
I looked again at S the editor. She was both self-conscious in her movements and overly performative, as if she wanted both to be the center of attention but also, to disappear.
“How do you know she’ll publish it?”
“’Cause I know her. She’ll like it. And anyway, it’ll make for a good read, I can tell. We should at least try, no?”
“I don’t even know her.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Anisa. If you want to hold on to this for the rest of your life, be my guest. I’m just saying here’s a chance to finally move on.”
“Maybe if your friend publishes it, Shiba will read it, and then she’ll see herself. Like, really see herself.”
Naima gave me an annoyingly sympathetic look. “Yeah. Maybe. And maybe you’ll see yourself differently too.”
“Adam might not like it—”
“Okay, babe, enough of your agonizing. I’ve found us a way, but I’m not going to talk about it anymore. I have a mehndi to plan.” She walked away in a huff.
Maybe it would help, I thought. A confession. A final testimony. I went back to Naima. She was practicing dance moves with her sister.
“Listen—”
“Anisa, look, it’s up to you. Take it or leave it. This is your story, after all.”
“Our story,” I corrected. She smiled. Already, I felt lighter.
“You still need an ending,” Naima said. “Don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “It ends when it ends, right?”
“Well, definitely keep going in the meantime. As if you’re still recording for the Centre, you know? Oh my god, you know what? You should end with my wedding. They love that shit.”