Fear was the real excuse for putting off Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. Somewhere in the course of the novel, a rash of alarming incidents outside his control would invade the idyllic life of an Afghan child, and I would have to face the dreaded words once they arrived. The demon came on Page 112 as the boy and his father evacuated Soviet-occupied Kabul and his home as “tapestries still hung on the walls of the living room and my mother’s books still crowded the shelves in Baba’s study.” At two in the morning, with the rest of my New Orleans neighborhood blissfully asleep, a soundless wail worked its way in and out of my lungs as all of the memories flooded back as I fought to breathe.
Do the tapestries and carvings still hang in the walls of my living room? Do my books still crowd the shelves of my study? Do the evergreen Dieffenbachias still thrive by my piano? Of course, they don’t. The bastards did not leave even the wall-to-wall carpeting. Hundreds of saris. All gone. How she organized them and cared for them as she would her own patients. Loss is horrible enough at the end of a life. Why must we experience it before the time has come? Gorgeous, colorful, expensive, tastefully collected silk saris. Where are they now? How inappropriate it is for something as ugly and damaging as war to prevail, to win over the silken glory of something as constructive as a sari collection. Blasted concrete and gnarled girders over the multicolored, multifaceted beauty of delicate couture that took decades to put together and seconds to rip apart, off and down.
Blasted limbs and gnarled sinews over the multifunctional, multifaceted beauty of complex organic matter that took a lifetime to put together and seconds to rip apart, up and to shreds.
Would I give the entire sari collection to get back one human who was taken away from this world by an act of irrational violence? Yes, yes, for you, a thousand times over.
With a last plea for solace spoken into my tear-drenched pillow, I slept.
***
Every morning, at 6:30 sharp, stepping foot from a hot shower, my mother turned six yards of supple cloth into a vestment fit for royalty, like no other Indian woman I know could. With every finger gently yet assuredly gripping an aspect of the intricate sari, the many-time winner of “Best Dressed Indian Woman in Kuwait” deftly wielded the material onto her blithe frame, as I unblinkingly took it all in. When I grow up, will you teach me to wear one just like that, ma? Of course, I will, my darling, you’re my only daughter. The saris are a symbol of the dignified and self-disciplined manner with which my mother comported herself at all times, at work, at home, with relatives and friends alike. More than that, they signify the number of years my parents lived in Kuwait, plugging away at each of their jobs, while educating younger siblings, caring for parents, and ensuring better lives for their children. In the face of the things my mother did and endured for other people, her saris and their accessories were the only indulgences she granted herself.
My mother’s saris are what I fail to save in my dreams. I realize it is her dignity and life’s hard work that I cannot bring back on waking. Unlike the protagonist of The Kite Runner, our family had the good fortune not to face monetary hardships on leaving Kuwait in a hurry, thanks to my father’s wise global investments. However, a home and a life once built up are now gone, as they did for Hosseini’s Baba and scores of Afghans like him. Left were the sense of violation and helplessness that accompany invasion, theft, hostage crises, humiliation and the myriad other symptoms of war.
Every time such weeds of thought creep into my consciousness, I go at them with this set of shears, a rationalization borrowed from Mom herself: Never mind the stuff, our family is now safe and sound within the lives we were going to enjoy regardless of an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. We have our health, knowledge, most of our wealth and each other. What more do we need? Yet, when I attend desi parties or shop for Indian clothing, be it in this country or back in India, my head plays host to the ghosts of my mother’s irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind works of art in silk and gold. What can I do as they barge their way into my judgment like aunties demanding tea, while they scoff at today’s wares? Humph, can these frauds ever come close to those classics your mother commissioned in Kanchipuram and Benares by artists who are no longer alive?
Praise be to the power of human resilience – each member of my family has found a way to move on. The Iraqi Interruption of 1990 led me to a time of meditation and enquiry, an emphatic rejection of medical school and community mores, discovery of the American west and with it the gift of geology, and lately, Wisconsin and New Orleans. What treasure troves of wonderful people and experience these last two places have been in themselves. My brother is a successful physician with a loving family of his own; there is absolutely no reason for him to look back on his past with the responsibilities that face him now.
But, what of my parents? What have they accomplished and discovered since that troubling time 15 years ago? Mom writes books from her copious notes on Hinduism, and translation work will keep her occupied for the rest of her days. Dad is a realized soul who communes with his plants for hours, days even, turning suburban lawns into temperate paradises. Yet, how have my mother and father truly folded their past into the vagaries and joys of the now and the tomorrow? What do they look forward to in their retirement, when all that remains of their past is a fading hull of memories and a few physical keepsakes snatched from the greedy clutches of time? I would give a lot and much more to go back in time and get back for my parents what they earned. And what they earned and deserved was the right to close the chapter of Kuwait, and never, ever to have a pitiless phantom do it for them in so hurtful a manner.
The anger. The need for retaliation against those who wronged us. And then the conscience. Blind vengeance is an empty gesture with no knowledge of the exact culprits. Even if I do know their collective identity, what would revenge effect besides more sadness? Perhaps it is the need to walk up to the thieves to tell them that I forgive and forget. But they are now a part of the amorphous past, which increasingly blurs the farther we hurtle into the future. How does one forgive such a past? Whom does one forgive? My guess is that my family waits to release ourselves with the epiphany that Hosseini’s hero craved. The moment when the internal messiah arrives bearing a jeweled scepter that banishes all remorse and hindsight. Such an absolution will not arrive without the work and introspection required. The fanfare is unnecessary — it will be more than sufficient for the pain to leave quietly one day, losing all of its immediate meaning, “packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.”
***
As I get along in adulthood, the longing to acknowledge and appreciate my parents’ past may explain my renewed interest in the culture and ways of my ancestors. My language and culture have always been second nature to me. Now, I want to know it more. I want to wear a sari well in under five minutes, to cook South Indian dishes without looking at a book of recipes, and to know the difference between Thuvaram Parupu and Ulutham Parupu. I want to know who my ancestors were and how they lived, take care of my parents, watch out even more for my nieces, and invoke a sense of self and pride in any future children as my parents did in me. When these efforts bring joy, where is there room for the often blinding pain remembering what we lost?
I can’t help but smile at myself. Old enough to realize that one cannot dissipate despondency at the flick of a switch, the loss will continue to affect me as it does people much older and wiser than my years. It is in me. Is it a part of me? What role will it play in my future, how big of one and when? I do not know. Until then, I continue along the path known best, trying to keep in mind that the obstacles are my life. Even the parts where the fingers of my right hand splay awkwardly and struggle to hold the frontal folds of that utterly feminine ensemble known as a sari. Whether the bumps make a better person or not is in the details.
