“Are you going home now?” Shiba asked.
“Well, actually, a few of us are going to Naima’s parents’ house. You’re welcome to come.”
“I’m okay,” Shiba said. “But before you go, can we talk privately?”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s find somewhere quieter.”
We made our way to the garden at the back of the shaadi hall where some of Naima’s hippy friends had a fire going. People were gathered around it, laughing and chatting, many holding steaming cups of chai. One of Naima’s cousins, waving around the now-empty hip flask, kept initiating games of antakshari, and though people would offer input from time to time, it was basically just him playing against himself. Then a boy started singing Leonard Cohen into the fire, as if serenading it. The young woman next to him adjusted her hair and discreetly moved closer. Shiba and I stood some feet away from the scene, taking it all in.
“So, you’re still at the Centre, then?” I asked.
“I am.”
The flames crackled, releasing waves of black smoke into the air. My thoughts returned to David.
“It’s so unpredictable, isn’t it? How life can suddenly take you?” I reflected. “He was still so young.”
“We’re receiving him tomorrow,” Shiba said.
“Receiving?” I asked. She gave me a meaningful look. “Oh.”
I remembered. Of course. He was a Storyteller. This had been the intention all along.
“I wanted to invite you to join us,” she said.
“Join you?”
“At the Centre. To receive him,” she answered. The fire spat and fizzed. “That man contains a treasure trove.”
“Yuck, Shiba. No.”
“Just hear me out. The first step in changing anything is to truly understand it. We have to consume it if we want to transform it. This is what I’ve been trying to explain to you. It’s the only way to really take charge.”
I laughed sarcastically. “Take charge? You know it’s all an illusion, don’t you? They’ve got you thinking you’re running the place, but they’re pulling all the strings.”
“It’s not like that.”
“The day you invited me up to your flat, the night we watched Undone and I read that email on your laptop, I opened the locked door downstairs on my way out, the one with the keypad.”
“What? How? You need a code.”
“I’d seen you type it in earlier.”
“Oh—”
“I didn’t mean to, but when I saw the email, I had to know more.”
“So … you knew all along?”
“No, I didn’t, because they found me. The staff. And they drugged me or something and dragged me back to bed. They made me forget what I had seen, made me feel like I was basically losing my mind. Did you know that?”
“What? Of course I didn’t!”
“Well, your dad knew. He’s probably the one who made them do it. This is what I’m saying. You’re just their pawn, Shiba.”
“Fuck. Anisa, I’m so sorry that happened. I promise you, I had no idea.”
“It’s okay,” I said, relieved that she’d played no part in it. “But you realize that you can’t just take over, right? That’s not how it works. It isn’t yours. And thank god it isn’t. You can still walk away from this.”
“I know it isn’t mine. But it will be. I’m going to consume them, Anisa. Do you understand? I want to consume them all, and I want you, I need you, to do this with me. Then we can have access to whatever it was that allowed them to create what they did. But with that knowledge, we’ll make our own thing! Everything can be transformed. It’s on me, on us. There is no running away.”
“But what you’re describing isn’t transformation, it’s … extension. You’ll just end up reproducing whatever they came up with.”
“You know that’s not how it works. There’s choice involved. It would be like … like smuggling dynamite into the epicenter of power. We could remake the world in our own image,” she said. Her eyes lit up as she spoke.
“It’s too much,” I said. “To participate unknowingly was one thing, but to do it voluntarily? I’m not cut out for that.”
“But you’re doing it anyway, Anisa. We all are. It’s how the cycle of life works. This is just a way to opt in consciously. To have more control. Listen, life is short. We have, what, another … fifty, sixty years left? We need to stuff more into our little lives. I know you think so too.”
I wondered what a repurposing of things once thoughtlessly imbibed would look like, and something my mother used to say came to mind. Amma would say to me, when I was a young teenager, “Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable being printed in the headlines of all the newspapers the next day.” At first, I had taken Amma’s words as a warning. I thought she was telling me, “Keep it clean.” But later, I reconsidered her words, converting what I’d previously internalized as a call toward shame into an argument against it. Amma wasn’t saying to keep it clean, I decided. She was saying, let the dirt be known. She knew, after all, that things could never stay clean. Amma had tasted the blood. She’d meant, I decided, that I should own my life. Claim it. Every last drop.
I thought of Naima then, and S, her publisher friend. Is that what ownership looked like? But the fire roared, drawing me back toward it. Toward the possibilities Shiba spoke of—absorption, transformation, change. To smuggle dynamite into the epicenter of power. To remake the world in our own image. I couldn’t tell whether the picture Shiba painted was reality or fantasy. Was it pure narcissism to imagine we could consume the Centre itself? Would we end up being consumed by it instead?
It’s hard to know what the answer is, dear Learner, but Shiba and I kept the conversation going deep into the night, and as the fire burned, we tried to make out the outlines of a future still smoky and vague, and nearly indecipherable.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my Ammi tummy, who taught me to laugh, to forgive, to resist, to negotiate. To not be scared of sharp pencils and to not let people sew your mouth shut. To stretch, to heal, to affirm. To live with grace and not care for material things.
Abbu tabbu the father hen for teaching me—although it took me long to learn—discipline, hard work, humility, generosity. Who showed me material things can be important too, and for our recent family journey where he has truly demonstrated what it means to stay strong, to persevere, to “be positive.”
Thank you, Mama, my nani, Nabila Manazir/Bari. For the stories and laughter, the food, the advice, the gossip. Every day I feel that you are still here.
Thank you to my siblings. Sara, my first reader and cutest poopy, forever pointing out all the narcies and lucies, the clumsy choices and unremembered wins, ferociously loving, hysterically laughing. Bilal, my life-long editor, cheering me on even though I’m no Dosto, giving me confidence and perseverance, support and care, and reminding me to forget the perfect offering. Saba, inspiring me by stepping into the uncomfortable places and showing me I have permission to do the same. Moiz has been consistently solid and kind and Anya, uff, Anya is the light of our lives msA. May she be protected always. Ameen.