Chapter 2: Asma (1989) - The Daughters of Rosebud

The mosque didn’t look like a mosque at all. It was just an old storefront in an outdated strip mall, sandwiched between the Lucky Dragon Chop Suey and Ray’s Donuts. There were no turrets or domes or embellishments of gold. Simply a deep-green sign announcing Movement of Islam in nondescript white lettering followed with Arabic script in barely decipherable letters. The green, diffused through the late-September fog, looked like a traffic light signaling “go.”

Asma pulled into the largely empty parking lot and sighed. She was early. She had come to tell her parents her news. But now that she was here, all she felt was that old familiar sense of being out of place. She turned up the cassette player, let Robert Smith’s melancholy voice lull her, and wondered what kind of music Ruby listened to. Finally, she exited the car.

The smell of fried food and caramelized sugar hung heavy in the air. She passed who she assumed to be Ray standing sentinel in front of the parking spots reserved for his donut shop. With arms the size of small tree trunks crossed over his chest, he patrolled for errant prayer-goers. He glared at Asma. Asma met his glare and lazily sauntered past.

All of her prior, infrequent trips to the mosque had been via highway, traveling with her family from their home in Rosebud, more than an hour away. Today was the first time Asma had driven there alone. The ten-minute drive from her university had been harrowing. It had been impossible to not notice graffitied plywood covering the windows of formerly stately, two-story brownstones, sidewalks erupting with weeds, and trash lying all around. When an old man had materialized in the street pushing a shopping cart brimming with his life belongings, she had hit the brakes so hard that her tires screeched. Her legs still felt weak from the adrenaline rush.

In a normal family, her news would register as a positive, a cause for celebration. But in their upside-down family, it would mean something different, somehow more and less at the same time, with its own implications and baggage and signals, only some of which Asma understood. Salma was better at charting a course through the unseen eddies of their parents’ expectations. Their mother used to say that Asma and Salma were actually one person, born fourteen months apart, the only one the other needed. Until Asma had started university, they had spent only one night apart.

“Salaam aleikum, sister.” A man with sparkly eyes and a wide smile with jumbled teeth walked toward her.

“Salaam, brother.” Despite her anxiety, Asma couldn’t help but feel welcomed by his friendliness.

Originally two storefronts, the mosque had maintained two distinct entrances, the easier to segregate the population by gender. He walked into the men’s entrance, leaving Asma outside to stare at the door marked Women. She wondered if the different entrances, dictating who could or could not enter, evoked dark memories for the friendly man or whether the sting of exclusion was felt only by the people being excluded.

The mosque had been founded twenty years ago by two Black families who had left the Nation of Islam because that type of Islam felt too political. Eventually, as a handful of Pakistani families arrived and the congregation grew, they had rented and connected the adjacent storefront. The families that made up this community had few similarities other than their shared belief in a holy book and a reform prophet. One group was comprised of striving dreamers, educated and stupid, fearless enough to leave their homeland for a myth, and unprepared for the life that awaited them. The other, a group of striving dreamers, still trying to find their place in a country that went to great lengths to not see them.

Inside the women’s entrance, it was the same as it ever was. A big, open room with a few framed pictures of Haj and flat white sheets that covered the carpet. Someone was cooking the meal for after prayers.

A few women were setting up. They greeted Asma warmly. Coming to mosque always triggered a confusing mix of feelings. She was known to everyone. She wanted to think it was because of her height but knew it was because she was Pakistani. Like all converts, there was a real or perceived hierarchy between those who had adopted the religion and those who had not. The Black families treated the Pakistani families like they were special, as though being born into the religion made them more Muslim or more devout. Asma existed to prove otherwise. After a lifetime of not feeling Pakistani enough for Pakistanis or American enough for Americans, she felt simpatico with the Black congregants. She, too, was just on the other side of belonging.

Asma asked a middle-aged woman buzzing about if she could do anything to help. She needed to keep her hands busy. Otherwise she might falter and leave, her desire to see her sister grounding her only so much. At the woman’s request, Asma went to the back of the room and took out folding metal chairs from the closet and started setting them up in a few clusters around the room. Old women, heavy women, and pregnant women were excused the prostrations required by namaz and permitted to sit while they said their prayers. Asma wondered who set up the chairs for the old and fat men on the men’s side. Undoubtedly, it was the women—that’s why they came early. She smiled wryly.

There was nothing left to do, so she sat on the ledge and looked out the front window and waited for her family to arrive.

One by one, they started emerging from the slowly dissipating fog. The women, in bright-pink salvar kameezes trimmed with metallic thread and deep-blue silks embroidered with small mirrors, dazzling as peacocks, each outfit matched with a sheer head scarf, a dupatta, one or two shades lighter. Two women wore African-inspired fabrics, with children whose fabric matched their own.

It made Asma think of Rosebud, where each night the bells of the Lutheran church rang at 6:00, calling the faithful to prayer. Growing up, Asma had felt a deep sense of well-being when she heard them ring. In winter, the notes, sharpened by the cold, pierced the gloom of the early night, warming her insides. In summer, mellowed by the day’s sultry heat, the bells drowned out the loudening crickets. The predictability of that call to prayer gave her a sense of belonging and security. As a child she had liked to think that everyone within hearing distance was bound to each other, even those that didn’t have a German last name or believed that Christ was God’s son. The ritual playing out before her was really no different other than it took place on a Friday afternoon and almost everyone here was some shade of brown.

Except now she believed in the pomp playing out before her as much as she believed in the Lutheran church, which was to say, not at all. She had already come to understand that all religions existed primarily to keep women in their place and compliant with the desires of men.

The station wagon with the dented driver’s door pulled into one of the parking places in front of Ray’s, and Asma felt her ire rise. Why could her parents not comply with the most basic rules? Her father drove taxis for a living. He understood there were rules for parking. Why didn’t they just read the signs? She slipped on her shoes while scanning the lot for Ray. He did not seem to be a patient man, and she would need to help smooth things over. As much as it infuriated Asma that her parents’ cluelessness inexplicably made all events about themselves, she wasn’t about to let some American intimidate them. For as long as she could remember, it had been her and Salma’s role to protect them and intercede on their behalf.

Fog stubbornly clung on, making things visible one minute and appearing distant the next. Her father swung his legs out of the driver’s seat and took a minute to hoist himself out of the car, slowly putting weight on his right hip before pivoting. At home, when he got out of the car, he would immediately stretch his arms over his head and lean over to get a cross-body stretch. But here, where others could see him, she could see he was holding back, afraid of looking foolish. She hated how she knew his every habit. Her mother, diminutive and round, wore a dun-colored salvar kameez, always seeking the opposite of drawing attention to herself. Her parents seemed to have aged in the short time she’d been away. Either that, or she simply had new eyes.

And then there was Salma, only slightly taller than their mother, holding a paperback in one hand and clumsily trying to gather the slippery fabric of the dupatta as it slid off her wavy hair with the other. She seemed so young. Salma wasn’t shy, but she preferred the edges of the room from where it was easier to observe. Asma could only imagine what it was like for Salma living at home with no one to hide behind. In a way, she felt as though she’d abandoned her.

Asma hurried down the sidewalk, but before she could get there, Ray had already reached her father and extended his hand. She heard him say, “Musharraf! I haven’t seen you in a while.” They knew each other? They shook hands, and Ray clapped her father’s shoulder. She couldn’t hear her father’s response but saw him flash one of his rare smiles, hesitant and uneven. Ray waved his hand at the car, like it was okay to stay there. What moral failing did this man possess that had escaped her father’s notice or he had chosen to ignore in the name of male kinship?

Her mother, her hair in a messy braid, stood off to one side. She glanced at Asma’s approach and did a double take, clutching her chest with one hand and flailing in the direction of her father with the other. It’s not that she expected overt warmth or welcoming affection—that wasn’t her parents’ way—but still, she wasn’t prepared for the expression on their faces. She had left for college in late July to participate in a one-month jump start program and, over those two months, had forgotten that look of disappointment.

Asma stopped.

“What did you do?” her father asked as he stared at her head.

She had been so focused on meeting them to tell them her news and get it over with that she’d forgotten that they hadn’t seen her new hairstyle, although hairstyle didn’t quite do it justice. Her long, glossy mane was now gone and replaced with a tousled, ear-length cut, gelled into carefully careless disarray. “Oh yeah.” Asma fingered the spiky tips of her hair, willing it to grow. She looked like a member of a boy band, and she loved it. At first, glimpses of herself in a passing mirror had caught her by surprise and delighted her. But by now, it felt natural, ever closer to the version of herself that she was striving to become. She laughed nervously. Their reaction stung, and she silently berated herself for caring what they thought. It was a lesson she had learned a long time ago and had apparently forgotten in her time away from them.

Salma quickly stepped between their parents and Asma. “You cut your hair.”

Asma leaned down to hug Salma and heard the hurt in her sister’s flat affect. They knew each other’s every tone. This was not how she had seen this unfolding. She hadn’t thought to tell her sister on one of their near-nightly calls. Salma, who had the ability to calm her parents and buffer Asma from their worst instincts. If she had known, she could have helped manage the situation.

She avoided her parents’ eyes but felt them inventorying her face, her head, her jeans and T-shirt, as though checking for other lurking dangers.

“You came,” her mother said, stroking her eyebrow.

“I told you I would,” Asma mumbled.

“You say a lot of things.” Her mother’s eyes flitted about to see if anyone was paying attention to them. She opened her handbag and started rummaging through it. “I brought a dupatta for you.”

Her father stared hard at Asma, and she could sense the instinct that had inhibited her father from stretching out after the long drive was the same one making him hold his tongue now. He wasn’t a yeller. He had other ways of making them feel small.

“I have one, Ami. I brought one.” Asma shrugged herself into her jean jacket so her arms would technically be covered and, like a magician, pulled out a dupatta from the inside pocket. She shook it loose with one hand and set it loosely on her spiky hair.

Her mother frowned. “You can still see it. Maybe you should use another one. Here, tie this one . . .” She reached up like she was going to place it on top of Asma’s head.

But Asma was too tall, and by stepping back just one step, she was out of her mother’s reach. Salma took the dupatta from her mother’s outstretched hand nonchalantly and put it around her own neck.

“Listen, I have something I have to tell you,” Asma said.

The call for prayer, haunting and ancient, came from inside the mosque.

“Later,” her father said and disappeared into the men’s entrance.

The men’s and women’s areas of the mosque were joined by two things. A one-way speaker system, so that whatever was broadcast from the men’s side could be heard by the women, and an industrial-size kitchen so the women could cook for the men. By the time Asma, Salma, and her mother had taken off their shoes, the men were making their presence known. The sound system crinkled with static, deep voices, and cleared throats. It was a different kind of background noise, one that acted as a reminder of whose needs had primacy. Women briskly greeted them as they snaked their way through the assembled lines. There was no time to talk. Prayers were about to start. Silky fabrics rustled like autumn leaves as the women lined up in their habitual spots. Asma led them to the far side of the room where her mother had always preferred to sit, her back up against the wall.

Asma went through the ritualized motions for namaz. With no conscious effort, the specific prayers corresponding to each turn and bow appeared on the tip of her tongue. When she was little, she and Salma would pull out the prayer mat—really just an old sheet—and spread it at an angle on the living room floor so that the long edge faced east. The four of them would stand close together, their folded arms tight against their bodies, bumping elbows. Asma had loved the way it used to feel in those moments of quiet darkness, the whole family huddled together like penguins on an icy tundra. She remembered how her father’s anxiety drained from him and her mother seemed sure about at least this one thing.

That was before she had started claiming, regardless of when she was asked to join, that she was menstruating and, therefore, under religious law, exempted from saying namaz because she was considered unclean. It was the ideal get-out-of-jail-free card, one that couldn’t be disproven. But now, this practice of collective, private praying brought her no comfort or peace. It was the opposite. It annoyed her that she was reciting words she didn’t even understand. But she couldn’t come to the mosque and not say her namaz. She reminded herself that she was simply acting out her programming and she could walk away from it at will.

After prayer, the loudspeaker was turned off on the men’s side, and a hush fell. The women visibly relaxed and scooched into more comfortable seating positions and came back from whatever meditative place they visited. A whisper here, a rustle there, until, finally, their voices rose and mingled like an orchestra. Asma was acutely aware that she had been transported nowhere. Her mother wandered away and sat at the feet of the old women, her head tilted up like a child.

Asma and Salma sat side by side, leaning against the back wall. Together, they people-watched, knowing what the other was noticing without a word being exchanged. Asma elbowed Salma lightly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Salma asked.

“About what?”

“You know what.”

Asma kicked herself again for not telling Salma in advance about her hair. “Sorry, Sal. I just forgot.”

“How could you forget that?”

“I don’t know. It’s always so busy. Classes and labs and then there’s always something going on on campus or someone to meet up with. I mean, I tell you everything. I make a lot of time to call at night, you know?” She forced herself to stop talking. Her words were having the opposite effect than she’d intended.

Salma remained silent.

From a long way away, thunder sounded. Women gathered in small and large circles, cross-kneed on the floor. Babies and children ran around. A young teenager sat in the corner reading. It reminded her of Salma who, for as long as she could remember, had always kept a book on hand as an escape plan. She wondered where Salma was hiding her book now. An elderly woman stood up from her chair and rubbed her hip. And with that small, innocuous motion, Asma and Salma fell against each other giggling. Asma put her head on her knees to hide her face, and Salma leaned behind Asma’s back, to hide her shaking body.

Once, many years before, their mother had one of her migraines. She was prone to them. In response to a question about how her head felt, she had said, “My headache has moved to my hip.” And since then, any passing reference to hips had become an endless source of hilarity.

An older Pakistani woman walked up to them and said, “You two are having fun, aren’t you?”

“Salaam aleikum, aunty,” Salma murmured.

Asma wiped away her tears.

“Nadia left early because she’s not feeling good. Go and help set up the kitchen.”

After services, the men walked through the kitchen and served themselves. Once they were done, the women ate. No matter how expected it was and how many times Asma had seen this process unfold, it never failed to roil her. The younger women moved bright and quick, trying to manage their children and their elders, seemingly in multiple spots at the same time. The older women sat, slow and heavy, finally having earned the right to not be bothered. How many of them had gotten to pursue their own interests, seek mastery in something other than their husbands’ favorite meals? How many of them even knew what their interests were? Everything they had was due to their husbands and fathers and brothers. Every pleasure or happiness stolen from life was on loan or at the mercy of men. Asma already understood that it was a luxury to even be permitted dreams.

“Okay, aunty,” Salma said, standing up and wiping her tears.

Asma didn’t move. “Sorry. I’m not doing it, Sal.” She was suddenly, deeply grateful for college.

Salma lightly kicked Asma’s feet and said in a contrived accent, “We send you to college, and you get all these strange ideas.” As she walked away, in her regular voice, she cackled, “I’ll tell them you have your period or something.”

Asma snickered. Her old standby for getting out of everything religious. She could take on anything if Salma was by her side.

She watched her sister enter the hallway to the kitchen and out of view. Even that hallway, built to obstruct the view between the men’s and women’s areas, annoyed Asma. Any pleasure at Salma’s leveraging their inside joke disappeared. She knew what the Islamic teaching was: Women were so treasured that they needed to be protected. But all Asma saw was that they were second-class citizens, sequestered away and always receiving less. Less education, less and lower-quality food, less attention. Her sociology class had her wondering how many undiscovered female Galileos and Einsteins had been born but died washing their family’s underclothes and taking care of their aging parents.

She hated coming to mosque because it brought up these thoughts. Recognizing the truths underlying her religion and culture became less avoidable the older she got and made her sour. She had no ability to control what others expected of her or how they saw her. And the things that were so important to her seemed not to matter to anyone else. She felt like an object, a mere receptacle, into which her family and her culture poured their dictates and norms. Sometimes, she wanted to break it all and shatter their expectations.

Her mother returned to their spot and sat down. Before either could say anything, a young boy came over and said shyly, “Aunty, uncle wants to know if you have his medicine.”

What medicine was her father on?

Her mother reached into her handbag and shifted its contents around, the clickety-clack sound of jostling items strangely comforting. Asma remembered being a child and the mystery of her mother’s handbag captivating her. She and Salma would carefully empty and catalog the contents, searching for clues, anything that might reveal the secret life of their mother. But all they ever found were things like a long-forgotten lipstick of some nondescript shade of brown, an old makeup compact with more silver than powder, a bundle of safety clips, a roll of tape, a wallet of promotional or reward cards from various gas stations and fast-food places, a gum wrapper, an empty Tic Tac container, small pieces of paper with random writing, a needle and thread, and a broken nail file.

Finally, she pulled out a bottle of pills. “Do I give it to you or meet him at the kitchen door?”

Classic. Her mother was most comfortable taking orders, preferring a just-doing-what-I’m-told existence, so different from her own do-what-you-want-and-apologize-later. But asking a nine-year-old for permission seemed a bit much. Asma took the bottle from her mother’s outstretched hand. “Here. I’ll take it.”

“Maybe Salma should . . .” her mother said, looking around.

Asma paused, willing her mother to look at her. “Short hair isn’t a sin, Ami.” She told the boy to tell her father to meet her at the kitchen door and then followed him as he darted like a minnow through the sea of women.

As she walked into the kitchen from the women’s side, she noticed several new Pakistani men in their twenties who she’d never seen before. Had new families joined the congregation? As they passed the door in which she stood, she could feel their eyes settle on her. She didn’t care whether it was with judgment or admiration. She understood the currency traded on in her culture. Here, women were supposed to keep their eyes lowered and play coy, be above reproach, and indicate nothing. If a girl was interested in a boy, after reciprocated glances, she was supposed to tell her parents, and something that passed as courtship would begin and lead to marriage. Even before she’d started college, that whole process of indirect and diluted signaling felt small and stupid. The elusive thrill of seeing a new male of eligible age, a newcomer, meant nothing to her. She could have anyone she wanted at college.

She stood in the doorway, pleased that her unapologetic presence was causing consternation among the men. She felt like an eyesore, the men’s eyes trained on her as she stood solid and unmoving. Her father walked into the opposite end of the kitchen from the men’s side, his face turned to the men next to him and behind him. He must have been telling a joke because the men all burst out laughing. He turned and saw Asma, and blanched. There was nothing in her feminist-theory class that gave guidance on how to practically challenge the patriarchy. She was unsure of what to do. Should she step into the kitchen and hand her father his medicine? Should she withdraw to the women’s area? Instead, she drew herself to her full six-foot height, emissary of the faces and burdened bodies next door, and looked boldly around the room, meeting the eyes of any man that dared meet her gaze. Her father’s eyes darted around the room quickly. She could tell that he wanted her to disappear and was weighing whether to ignore her. Instead, he walked over, snatched the bottle from her hand, and merged himself into the food line without a word.

Asma didn’t move, unsure of how to exit on her own terms. She noticed at the drink table that there were small bottles of mango juice, a prized commodity that would be gone by the time the women started serving themselves. Asma sauntered over, took two bottles, and leisurely started back toward the door. The men and the boys gave her a wide berth as though she were radioactive. She paused, liking the power she was able to wield in this room without even trying, turned back, and grabbed a third bottle for her mother.

After the meal, Asma saw her father standing outside, his signal that he was ready to leave. He was not one to dawdle, especially with a storm coming. If her family was leaving, so was she. There was nothing for her here. Besides, she needed to tell them what she had come to say. Maybe the timing was perfect. If it didn’t go well, they could get in their respective cars and drive away from each other, no awkward and barely concealed hostility to avoid. She held her mother’s bag while she put her shoes on. She could hear the sound of clanking dishes and activity coming from the kitchen, aware that she was leaving having neither helped set up nor clean up the kitchen and, in that way, was no different from the men.

Increasingly, there were moments when Asma believed she was beyond empty gestures like coming to mosque as an appeasement strategy, beyond the reach of her parents’ muddled expectations. Life at college was exactly as she’d dreamed. She had found people with whom she could be her true self, wear what she wanted, come back early in the morning wearing the same clothes she had left her dorm in, and not worry about being questioned about what she did, where she was, and whom she was with. She was friends with women, men, gay, straight, Black, brown, Asian, and white. She had no limits and didn’t have to pretend to be anything for anyone. She was free to figure things out in her own way without the ever-present sense that she was being watched and judged.

But now, being in this parking lot in a decrepit part of town, seeing the mix of lower-income whites, Blacks, and immigrants, she remembered where she actually came from. After witnessing the careless affluence of people at college, for whom ordering a late-night pizza or sharing their Budweiser seemed to be so easy and without consequence, Asma thought her surroundings seemed even more shabby. It didn’t embarrass her or make her feel ashamed. It just made her acutely self-aware.

She took a deep breath and stopped in the middle of the walkway. “Abu, I have to talk to you. Ami, you too.”

Close at her side, Salma breathed, “Not here, Asma.”

Her parents kept walking, her father tall and thin and her mother short and round. The space they took up in the world reflected in the space maintained between them. A weak sun pierced the gloom. What would it feel like to want to turn to her parents for guidance or comfort? She felt that she was meant for another life, or maybe other parents.

“Abu,” Asma said again.

He wheeled around. “Have we taught you nothing?”

“I . . . I wanted to let you know that I, um, got a pretty substantial part in the school’s production of Pippin.” It sounded scripted because it was.

They stood rooted in spot, waiting for something to happen so they could all react to it. Her father gazed into the donut shop. Her mother looked at the ground. Salma stared at the slow trickle of people leaving the mosque. It was almost as though no one heard her.

“Did your mother give you permission? Or was that your Mamoo?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Asma saw her mother flinch. She didn’t know if he was referring to her hair or the play. It didn’t matter; the answer to both was the same. She was an adult and didn’t need someone to give her permission. She remained silent.

“It was so beautiful,” he said. “It was one of the few things about you that . . . look at you now. You look like a boy.”

For the first time, Asma sensed there was something in her father’s response beyond anger or derision. She couldn’t remember the last time he had paid her a compliment. It was as though he was experiencing a type of loss and, to her surprise, sitting side by side with the sting of his words, she felt a deep well of empathy for him. Had he been proud of her because of her long hair? Because it meant there was still some part of her that cared about traditions and conformed? Because he was still hoping that she would be someone that she could never be?

They paused to give stiff, obligatory salaams to a young couple with a little boy from the mosque as they walked into Ray’s. The bell on the door tinkled, and the happy smells of cinnamon and oil wafted out.

Asma looked to her mother for help, even though they all knew that there was only one person to convince. But she was looking longingly into the interior of the donut shop. Exasperated, she said, “Why do you care? It’s my body.”

“We are not like these Americans, shaming yourself and your family,” he spat.

“It’s hair! It’ll grow back. What is the big deal?”

“Let’s go home and talk there,” Ami said.

“Home?” Asma scoffed. “I’m not going home. The way you go on about Americans, Abu, it’s as though you hate this country.”

“I love America. We bring you so you have . . . have chance. So I have opportunity.” When he was angry, he was left without language, unable to fully access any one of his.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing! I got a full ride to a top university. Do you have any idea how competitive it was? Would I even have been allowed to go to college in Pakistan?”

“We’re proud of you. And keep your voice down,” her mother said beseechingly and glanced behind her.

“For once, just understand, this has nothing to do with you. I love acting. I’m not trying to shame you.”

He shooed her away. “Not that stupid thing again.” Over the top of his car door, her father said to her mother, “It’s Javed and his American wife. Nothing of this would happen if she’d stayed home.” He jabbed his finger in Asma’s direction. “She thinks she can do whatever she wants.”

Dots danced in front of Asma’s eyes. She was so tired of being disregarded. “You’re going to blame Mamoo for why I am the way I am?”

“Abu, that’s not right,” Salma said quietly behind her.

Mamoo was off limits.

Her mother said, “Baitay, what your father’s trying to say is that this just isn’t proper. It was one thing to be doing these childish things when you were in high school. But you’re a young woman now. People might talk.” There was no real anger or admonishment in her confrontation. She was speaking to an audience of one.

“Who are these people that I’m supposed to be living my life for? Who are these people that care so much about what I’m doing?” She pointed behind her to the mosque. “Other Pakistanis like you? People who chose to come to this country—supposedly to give us choices, but now won’t let us make any?”

“Well. You’re at an age . . .” Ami’s voice faltered. She had run out of lines.

Asma walked up to her father slowly, eyes narrowed. People always said that she looked exactly like her father, but until that moment, she’d never thought so. She just felt like herself. But here, facing each other, almost the same height, pale skin, and almond-shaped eyes, aquiline noses almost touching, she felt like she was looking at her own reflection. Even their thatches of thick, red-black hair looked the same.

“This is what taking advantage of opportunities looks like. You made nothing of yourself in this country. I’m doing something. You drive a cab. That’s why you came.” As she said it, she felt her words make contact with the soft tissue of her father.

“You want to stand on stage and let men look at you? Show your body and act like a hooker? This is why we come to this country?”

“Hooker?” she said incredulously. “I am trying to be more honest with you. You don’t like it when you find out about things. So this is the other option. Me telling you. In advance. But you can’t take the truth.”

“It’s not about how you tell us. We just don’t want you to do these things,” Ami said.

They stood still for a long moment, uncertain about how to disentangle themselves from each other and afraid of making any moves that showed weakness or could be construed as a concession.

Finally, Asma said lazily, “Do you know that my scholarship doesn’t cover room and board? Mamoo pays that. You didn’t know that, did you? You have no idea how to do anything in this country. It’s left up to us to figure out how everything works, and then protect you from it because you can’t handle it.”

Her father’s face lost all expression, the tiny pulse in his temple the only visible sign of his internal state. “All I ask is for you to be good girls. The Quoran says that heaven lies at the foot of your parents. What kind of an example are you setting for your sister?”

Asma looked at Salma and saw that long-familiar conflict of emotions play across her face like an advancing weather front—empathy for their parents run aground with loyalty for each other. God knows she understood that feeling; it popped up when it was least wanted or expected, like an old injury that refused to be forgotten. “Feet.”

“What?”

“Feet.” She turned her gaze back to her father, the only one who, with his acceptance or rejection, mattered. However he reacted, her mother would fall in line. “Heaven is at the feet of your parents. Not the foot.” The truth was that there was nothing she could ever do or say that would make them happy. “This isn’t disrespect. You don’t always get your way only because you’re a man.”

Abu got in the driver’s seat and slammed the door. He was done.

“You just can’t handle me having my own mind!” Asma yelled loud enough for him to hear through the closed window.

Asma grabbed Salma’s hand before she got in the back seat and squeezed it. “Come visit me at school.”

She stepped away from the car and watched her family pull away from her. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered to be honest.