Affable mask on tight, Aydin answered my aunt. “Most people tell me I look like my dad, but thank you for seeing my mother in me,” he said. I wanted to cry at that most Aydin of responses, at his instinctive need to calm everyone down after his father had rampaged into a room. He hadn’t figured it out either.
Aydin couldn’t remember his mother’s funeral because there hadn’t been one. She hadn’t died when he was five years old. In fact, I had met her several times. We had shared chai and eaten her potato pakoras, the ones her son had loved, and I had watched her avoid questions about what she was doing in Toronto. Afsana Aunty was there to see her son, Aydin, who had absolutely no idea his mother was still alive.
Junaid Uncle’s mouth opened and shut. Then, after one last glare at Kawkab Khala, he turned on his heel and bounded up the stairs. Withan apologetic glance towards me, Aydin followed his father out of the BOA meeting, into the dark night.
It was Rashid who broke the silence. With great dignity he brushed cracker crumbs from the front of his sherwani. “Shall we continue? I have an update on the street festival. I have a strong suspicion this year’s event will be the best one yet.”
Everyone settled into their seats and Brother Musa called the meeting back to order.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ihope you will forgive me for hijacking your meeting, Hanajaan. It was time to deal with my friend’s unfinished business.” Kawkab Khala was perched on the edge of my bed. We had walked home in brittle silence and I had followed her upstairs to demand an explanation.
I had so many questions for my khala, but mostly I was burning with fury at once again being left in the dark. “Why didn’t you just tell Aydin the truth?” I asked tightly.
“I meant to warn Junaid only—that we were here, and ready to tell his son if he didn’t do it first. I am not a monster, Hana. I only want justice for my friend.”
“What justice is that?” I asked.
“I told you before that Afsana and I are close and that she married too young. Her parents were pleased with the match; Junaid Shah came from money, and Afsana was lucky to get him. After the nikah, they moved to a city I had never heard of—Vancouver.”
My aunt was silent for a few minutes. Outside it had started to rain, a light sprinkling that tapped against my bedroom window. I took a seat on the wooden chair by my desk.
“She was happy at first,” my aunt continued. “It is hard to lie in letters—too easy for teardrops to mark the page. It is easy to dissemble online, but paper doesn’t lie. Shaky handwriting doesn’t lie. He treated her well, she said. But she was lonely, and Junaid was busy growing his empire in Canada. When she became pregnant with Aydin, he let her return to her mother to have the baby. Two months of being coddled at home should have made her happy, but when I went to visit her, I knew something was wrong.”
There was another silence, longer this time. My aunt dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.
“What was wrong with your friend?” I asked, my voice gentle now.
“You would call it postpartum depression, but back then it was seen as a woman’s weakness. All I knew was that she was not herself, not during the pregnancy or afterwards. She didn’t want to hold the baby and she cried often. If it wasn’t for her mother taking care of everything, I am sure she would have deteriorated quite badly. The neighbourhood women claimed it was normal, and as the weeks passed, she seemed to improve. I visited her once when she was nursing Aydin. She had the sweetest expression on her face; it told me how much she loved him. After two months, her family sent her and Aydin back to Vancouver.
“The letters came less frequently after that. I told myself she was settling in, that she had a child to fill her days. Perhaps five years after Aydin was born, Afsana’s mother told me she was pregnant again. Not long after, Afsana called me long distance. She was crying so hard I couldn’t understand her, and I grew frightened. The very next day I spoke with Junaid.” Her voice warmed with anger. “He said his wife was simply upset because he had refused to send her home to have the second baby. A week, maybe two weeks later, I heard there had been an accident. She lost the child.”
I tried to imagine Afsana Aunty, how desperate she must have felt, how hopeless in an unfamiliar country, isolated from family and with only her young son and a cold, absent husband for company.
“Junaid brought her back to India a few months later, and he was a changed man. It wasn’t until much later that Afsana confided she had tried to kill herself. I suppose Junaid thought their son would be better off without his mother in his life. By then she was so broken, she actually believed that too.” My aunt’s words were sharp as glass. She was disgusted, and I was horrified.
“He gave his wife money and made her sign a piece of paper she barely understood. She showed it to me once. It was a legal document that awarded sole custody to him. Aydin was five years old at the time.”
“He abandoned Afsana when she was at her most vulnerable, and took away her son?” I said.
My aunt’s voice was venomous. “He excised her like an infected boil. He refused to allow contact between them, and today she is a stranger to her son. It took her years to recover. Afsana was lucky; she married again, to a kind widower, and she loves his daughters. But she has never forgotten. I made it my business to keep track of Junaid and Aydin. She was so afraid of returning, but I finally persuaded her when we learned that Aydin had made plans to move to Toronto. When I found out that he meant to open a restaurant in Golden Crescent, I knew it was a sign.”
My aunt’s words left me chilled. I knew she meant every syllable, but all I could think about was Aydin. How would he react to the news that his mother was still alive, that she had been banished from his life and that his father was responsible? Junaid Uncle was a hard man, but I knew Aydin loved his father. What would this do to their already strained relationship?
And how would he feel about the person who told him the truth? I knew I couldn’t keep that secret from him. “Who else knows about this?” I asked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Everyone does, back home. Why do you think Aydin has never visited India? His father didn’t want the information to slip out through some busybody relative or neighbour.”
Another thought occurred to me. “Is that the real reason you came back? It wasn’t for my mother or the restaurant at all, was it.”
She didn’t answer for a long time. “We are so far away in India. You didn’t even know my real name when I arrived. Tell me, Hana, how strong can blood ties remain when they stretch across an ocean?”
Chapter Forty
Ididn’t sleep well, and the next morning I dressed automatically, my attention scattered. I needed to find Aydin and tell him.
Hurrying, I pulled on a plain blue hijab and ran out of the house, rounding the corner towards the Golden Crescent strip at a dead run and nearly colliding with a man who stepped into my path. Junaid Uncle.
