Chapter 13
"I wonder what happened to her?" Aaliya asked.
She and Zain were sitting in the backyard at the picnic table, eating from several white paper cartons of Chinese food that they'd had delivered.
"Happened to who?" Zain asked, although he knew very well who she was talking about.
"If my grandmother didn't leave my granddad Zubair to go to Mr. Taha Hussain, where did she go?"
"That's what your father wanted to know," Zain mumbled, looking down at his plate. Something was bothering him, and he wasn't exactly sure what it was. They had left Taha's house immediately after the old man had finished his long, sad story. All the way into Manhattan Aaliya had been very quiet, looking out the window with a slight smile on her face, as though something had pleased her very much. Now she wasn't eating but making little piles of her food on the paper plate.
"Do you think he lives alone in that huge house?"
"Probably. He seems to have killed most every person he's known over the years."
Aaliya gave him a look of fury.
"Why do you have to say so many bad things about him? I thought that writers were supposed to like the people they're writing about."
"Oh? How about the writers who do studies on serial killers? I don't like Taha and I never will, but the man fascinates me. No one has ever tried to document what he's done in his life. No one actually knows what the man is capable of doing."
Aaliya took a moment before she spoke. "He seemed like a nice man to me," she said softly.
Zain had to swallow before he could speak; he had to take a breath before he could say a word. "What is it about women and their love of a sob story? Some man you've never met hands you a tearjerker about true love lost and you fall for it. I especially loved the Midas part. I wonder if he rehearsed his little speech before he told it to you?"
Standing up, she glared down at him. "And I am sick of your jealousy! From the moment I first saw you, you have acted as though you own me. You have invaded my privacy; you have followed me and humiliated me and, in general, made my life miserable. And I don't even know you. You are nothing to me."
"I'm more to you than Taha is," Zain said, standing up and leaning across the table toward her.
"No you're not," she said quietly. "He's my grandfather, my last living relative on earth."
Zain drew his breath in sharply. Now he knew what had been bothering him about the expression on her face when they had been riding back from Taha's place. She had been smiling in contentment, smiling as though she'd found something that had been lost. "Aalu," he said, putting his hand out to touch her.
But she drew away from him, not wanting to hear what he had to say. He could afford to be a know-it-all about her having found a living relative because he had what appeared to be thousands of relatives all over America. Someone like him couldn't possibly understand what it meant to be completely and absolutely alone in the world. He wouldn't understand the concept of Thanksgiving dinner with no one to invite or Christmas with no one to buy presents for. Someone who had so much family that he could afford to be cynical about them, could happily say mean things about them, couldn't understand. Maybe this man Taha had done some awful things in his youth; maybe everything that Zain knew about him was true, but now he was an old, man and he was alone - and Aaliya was alone as well.
Turning away from this man who was a stranger to her, she started back into the house.
Stepping in front of her, Zain put his hands on her shoulders. "Aalu, where are you going?"
"Upstairs. I do believe I am free enough to be allowed to do that,aren't I?"
Zain didn't release his hold on her. "I want to know what's in your head. I don't like the look in your eyes."
"I don't like the look in your eyes most of the time," she snapped. "Please let me go. I have to pack."
"I'm not going to release you until you tell me where you plan to go after you leave this house."
"As I've told you a thousand times, what I do in my life and what I have done are none of your business. I'll go where I want to go."
Zain bent to look into her eyes, but she turned her head away. "You're going to him, aren't you?"
"It's none of your-"
"Aalu, you can't go to that man! He's a killer!"
She gave him a look of disgust. "He's ninety-one years old, and he's in a wheelchair. What possible reason would he have to harm me? I'm not rich, so it can't be that he wants my money. I somehow doubt that he wants sex from me. Maybe his whole story is a lie. Maybe he concocted the whole thing in an effort to get Masuma's granddaughter to live with him for his last few - very few - remaining years. If that's true, then what's wrong with it? He's a lonely old man and I'm..." She broke off, not wanting to say any more.
"Go ahead and say it. You're a lonely young woman." His voice softened, his hands dropping to her arms as he moved closer to her. "Tell me what you want, Aaliya. Tell me what you want and I'll try to give it to you. Is it love you want? Then I'll-"
She jerked out of his grasp. "Don't you dare tell me you'll give me love. I've had all the love from greedy young men that I can take. What do I have to say to you, do to you to make you realize that I'm serious: I don't want to stay in this house with you. I don't want to go to bed with you; I don't want to have anything to do with you."
Zain stared at her for a moment, his expression changing from anger to bewilderment, then finally to resignation. "I can take a hint," he said
with a little smile of mockery. "You are free to do what you want. In the morning I will go to the bank and get your money for you. Is a cashier's check all right with you?"
"Yes, fine," she said quickly, then turned away and started for the stairs toward her apartment. Stopping on the first tread, she looked back at him. "Zain, I do appreciate what you've tried to do for me. I sincerely believe that your heart has always been in the right place. It's just that you don't know me, not really. I think you have an image of me that I'm..." She took a breath. "That I'm one of your wounded birds. I'm not. I know what I want."
"Taha," Zain said tersely. "You want that old man because he says he might be related to you. He's never-" He didn't say any more because Aaliya ran up the stairs.
When she was upstairs, she closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock. Not that locking the door would do any good, she thought with disgust, because he had his own key.
She dragged her big suitcase out of the closet, put it on the bed, and began to pack. With each of her new, heavenly garments she folded away, she felt sadness at leaving this apartment, at leaving this house that had become familiar to her. But she did her best to strengthen her resolve and kept packing.
When half of the suitcase was filled, she sat on the edge of the bed. Where was she going to go? It wasn't as though Mr. Taha had asked her to come live with him, although she had seen that he very much needed a good housekeeper to take care of his neglected house. And it wasn't as though Zain Abdullah wanted her for anything except sex. It always amazed her that men though if they couldn't "conquer" a woman, then they had failed. Sometimes she thought that when a man was pestering her without ceasing, she ought to just lay down on the bed and give him what he wanted so he'd go away. Maybe that's what she should do with Zain. After he'd had what he wanted from her, he wouldn't care whether she stayed in his house, whether she went to live with a former gangster, or what she did.
Standing up, she continued packing.She didn't want to give Zain what he wanted, didn't want to hear him say all the things that men say when they're trying to get under a woman's skirts: that he loved her and wanted to live with her for the rest of his life, that he was nothing without her, that she was everything to him. No, she didn't want that from Zain, because up until now, he'd been a friend to her. He'd been kind at times, if a bit autocratic. If she were honest with herself, she found his jealousy flattering. Zain had spent time with her. The day they had gone shopping had been one of the most joyous of her life. He had made her laugh, and at times he'd made her forget all the death that had followed her in her life.
She started to slip a pair of shoes into her bag, then stopped. All her life she would remember this time with Zain, remember the arguments they'd had, remember how he'd made her angry at every turn. She'd remember the way he looked after his shower, his hair wet, wearing only a pair of jeans, his feet and chest bare. She'd remember every touch, every look. She'd remember the way he smiled, just slightly out of one side of his mouth, as though his smile were tinted with sarcasm and disbelief that there was something to smile about.
She jammed the shoes into the case. Maybe she'd move to Seattle. Living around the rain forest might be nice. After the dryness of Santa Fe, her skin could stand living where it was foggy and cool.
She finished packing and set the suitcase on the floor. In the morning she would leave. What was she going to do? Have a taxi take her to the airport then go to an airline counter and say she'd like a ticket on the next available plane?
"Not exactly well thought out, are you, Aalu?" she said aloud, then smiled at having called herself Aalu. When she'd turned eleven and three-quarters, she had become aware of herself as a female and had declared to her family that she was no longer to be called a vegetable's name. From then on she was to be called Aaliya. Her father and grandfather had readily complied, but her mother had infuriated her by laughing and continuing to call her Aalu. After her mother died, no one had called her Aalu - until she'd met Zain, that is.
Looking around the room, at her father's furniture, at her father's colors, for the first time she thought that maybe she'd like different curtains. Maybe rose-colored damask, she thought, and maybe she could put a matching spread on the bed.
She began unbuttoning her blouse, her nightgown over her arm, as she walked toward the bathroom to take a shower. In her next place of residence she could do whatever she wanted with the curtains and furniture.
* * * * *
There was no warning. One minute Aaliya was asleep and the next there was a hand around her throat and she was fighting for her life.
She clawed at the hand that was cutting off her breath, but even when she felt her nails tear his skin, he didn't move.
"Where is Half Hand's money?" the man whispered.
The moonlight coming through the window allowed her to see that he wore a stocking over his head.
"Where is Half Hand's money?" he repeated, but he didn't loosen the pressure on her throat to allow her to answer.
Aaliya tried to kick him, but he was beside her in such a way that she couldn't reach his body. Besides, with no air getting to her lungs, she was losing strength. Zain, she thought, then used what little strength she had remaining to hit the wall with her heel. Once, she hit it. Twice. Three times. Then she began to fade out of reality as the pressure on her throat continued.
When the pressure was abruptly taken away from her throat, at first she still couldn't breathe. It was as though parts of her throat had been crushed beyond usefulness, and when she gasped, no air entered her lungs. Even when she sat up in the bed, her hand to her injured throat, she still couldn't breathe.
Turning quickly to the sound of a loud crash, she saw the shadow of Zain as he fought the man who had been trying to kill her. Zain was bigger than the man, stronger, and when Zain's fist plowed into the man's face, he hadn't a chance to survive the blow. As the man fell to the floor with a thud, Zain was beside her, his arms around her.
"Breathe, baby," he commanded her. "Goddamn you! Breathe!"
Hitting her on the back, he held her as Aaliya gasped for air. Zain's strong hands clutched her shoulders, giving her a little shake as his eyes bored into hers. It was as though he were commanding her to do what she couldn't, yet she found herself wanting to breathe, if for no other reason than to do what he wanted. After what seemed to be hours, the air entered her lungs in a painful, jerking gasp.
Pulling her into his arms, her head on his bare shoulder, he stroked her back. He put one hand on her head, cradling it as she struggled with breath after breath, her chest heaving in little spasms.
Feeling Zain turn away when he heard a crash, she knew without looking that the intruder had regained consciousness and had leaped from the balcony.
"I hope he breaks his bloody neck," Zain whispered, but they both heard the man as he ran away across the garden below. No doubt he had leaped from one balcony to the next to reach the garden, then vaulted over the fence.
Still holding her, Zain reached for the bedside telephone and punched the buttons. "Banu," he said into the phone. "I need you. No. Strangulation. Get here quick." He put down the phone.
"Zain," Samantha tried to say, but he told her to be quiet and continued holding her.
He felt her shaking against him, felt the fear in her as she clung to him, clung like a frightened child to its father, as he soothed her, rubbing her back, stroking her hair. When she continued to shake, he slid down in the bed with her, then wrapped his arms about her body, pinning her arms against his chest. He moved a leg over her, as though to completely encase her in a cocoon of safety.
"I'm here, baby," he whispered, frowning into the darkness as she seemed to try to get closer to him.
A wounded bird, she'd said. She'd said that she wasn't one of his wounded birds, and he was sure she'd heard that particular bit of idiocy from Nafeesa. If Zain were into "wounded birds," he would have been madly in love with Nafeesa.
Aaliya intrigued him; she'd intrigued him since before he'd met her.
After he found the newspaper clipping of aaliya and Masuma in his uncle Zain's belongings and had searched out Ghulam Haider, Zain had spent some time with Ghulam. Zain hadn't meant to stay in Louisville, but he and Ghulam had liked each other. Ghulam was lonely, what with his only child all the way out West and, as Ghulam said, happily married. Maybe Zain was a little lonely too since the death of Uncle zain. Together, the two men had come up with the scheme to live together in New York in zain's town house, where Ghulam could spend his retirement looking for his mother and helping Zain with the biography of Doc. Zain had liked the idea, liked having someone help him with the research.
Then, after Ghulam had commissioned Zain's sister to decorate the apartment just as Ghulam wanted, he had called Zain and said he wasn't going to be coming to New York after all. He wouldn't tell zain what the problem was, but Zain knew something was wrong, so he got on the first plane to Louisville and appeared at Ghulam's door, suitcase in hand, and demanded to be told what was going on. Ghulam had blurted what he'd been told only a few days before: He was dying of cancer. Zain had wanted him to call his daughter and tell her, but Ghulam had said no, that Aaliya had had enough death in her short life and she didn't need to see any more.
So Zain had moved in with Ghulam for a month. Ghulam had said he was fine, but Zain hadn't been able to leave him, for he couldn't bear to see the man alone when he knew he had so little time left.
For some odd reason, Ghulam had insisted that Zain stay in Aaliya's room, not in the guest room. When Zain saw the room, he had laughed, for it was a child's room.
"Aaliya and her mother picked out everything together," Ghulam Said with a smile and a fond look about the room.
It was on the tip of Zain's tongue to point out that Aaliya's mother had died when Aaliya was twelve, but he hadn't. He'd set his suitcase down on the rug that had little pink and white ballerinas dancing across it and looked at the bed: a white four-poster draped in gauzy pink cloth tied back with big pink bows. There was a little dressing table against one wall, draped in white-dotted swiss, the top of it covered with a child's dresser set. Looking about, zain expected a ten-year-old girl to walk in the room at any moment.
Yet he knew Aaliya had lived in this room until she'd left with her husband. Opening the closet door, he expected to find frilly little dresses, but instead there were adult clothes: boring, shapeless, obsessively neat clothes, but clothes sized for an adult.
Over the next few weeks, Zain's curiosity about this daughter who grew up in a child's room increased. Ghulam had pain pills that made him sleep a great deal, so Zain had time on his hands that he used to explore Aaliya's room. At first he did so tentatively, knowing that what he was doing was none of his business, but as the days followed and he had little else to do, he grew less embarrassed at looking through drawers and cabinets.
Ghulam described his daughter as a feisty, opinionated, go-getter. If that was so, why had she spent all those years living in a child's room?
When Zain found a scrapbook kept by Aaliya, he looked through it with interest. She'd cut out pictures of movie stars and rock singers; there were a couple of pressed flowers. It all seemed normal for a twelve-year-old - except that ten pages from the back of the book was a clipping from a newspaper: an obituary of her mother. After that there was nothing else in the book. Search as he might, he could find no scrapbooks that dated after her mother's death.
He found five diaries written by Aaliya, all of them written in a child's round hand, all of them full of whispered secrets with other girls and who she loved at the moment and who her friends loved. She wrote of fights with her mother and how wonderful her father was.
Smiling, Zain remembered how, as a child, all his fights had been with his father. His mother was a saint, and he couldn't understand why his sisters sometimes got angry at her.
There were no diaries after 1975, after Shabana Haider died.
By the end of his month's stay, Zain was more puzzled than ever by what he'd found in the Haider house. Sometimes it seemed as though Aaliya and her father had stopped counting time on the day Shabana had died. Ghulam talked about Aaliya as a child, telling stories of her only during her first twelve years. He never mentioned what she had done during high school or when she'd lived at home and gone to the University of Louisville.
Zain had asked questions about Aaliya, pointed questions, about her life after her mother's death, but he'd never been given any direct answers. Ghulam had been vague, often changing the subject.
It had been Zain who had insisted that Ghulam allow him to tell Aaliya that he was dying. Zain said it wasn't fair to Aaliya not to know about her own father. At last Ghulam had agreed, but then, oddly enough, Ghulam had insisted that Zain not meet Aaliya. He said Aaliya could be told, but he didn't want Zain to do it, didn't want Zain calling her, and he wanted Zain out of the house when she arrived.
Zain couldn't help being hurt by this pronouncement. It was as though Ghulam thought Zain was an unsavory character, not good enough for his precious daughter. But Zain had done what Ghulam wanted and asked a neighbor to call Aaliya, then Zain had boarded a plane and gone back to New York.
Two weeks later, Ghulam had called Zain and told him he was sending Aaliya to him to take care of after he was gone. The way Ghulam sounded, he could have been talking about an orphaned child - or an express package.
Reluctantly, Zain had agreed to turn Ghulam's apartment over to Aaliya, but truthfully, Zain had been dreading dealing with her. She must have a case of arrested development if her little-girl room was any indication of her personality.
But the woman he had met and the girl he'd been expecting were two different creatures. One moment she was hot and full of passion; she was the little girl in the diaries who wrote of arguments and escapades. The next moment she was terrified of her own shadow. And the next she was cold and hard, shutting the world out, not allowing anyone near her.
Yet, he thought, she wasn't cold and hard. She fought him; she pushed him away at every opportunity, but sometimes she looked at him with such need and longing in her eyes that he didn't know whether to reach for her or run away.
The day he'd bought her those clothes, she had looked at him with such gratitude that he'd almost been embarrassed. Most women would have been happy about the clothes, but Aaliya had been more than happy. In fact, it wasn't the clothes that had delighted her, but... the attention? he wondered. It was almost as though she were grateful that someone had acknowledged that she was alive. He wasn't sure what had given her so much pleasure that day, but something had.
What happened to her after her mother died? he wondered. What had changed her from a normal, outgoing, gregarious child who had friends and went to parties to a young woman who could spend weeks sleeping?
Now, she was clinging to him in a way that he'd never seen or felt in another person. Yes, she was frightened, and, yes, she had every reason to be, but there was something more to the way she clung to him. It was as though she needed him.
Maybe wanting to get away from his hometown was one of the reasons Zain had moved to New York, that and wanting to go to a place where he wasn't "one of the Abdullahs" but a person in his own right. A place where he could be an individual, not part of the pack.
Smiling, Zain stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. When you grew up in a family as large as his, feeling that you were needed was not something you experienced very often. Early in life you found out that if you didn't do something, there were others to do it. If you didn't feed the horses, someone else would. If someone was upset there were at least a dozen people to offer comfort. As far as he could remember, no one had ever said, "Only Zain can do this job," or "I need Zain and no one else." Even in school girls had been as content to have one of his brothers as to have him. It didn't seem to make any difference to them.
But Aaliya needed him, he thought, trying to pull her closer. She didn't need his money; she didn't need his body; she needed him.
He clutched her to him. Before he'd met her, when he thought of her living in his house, he'd thought of her as an obligation, a burden, actually, rather like a permanent blind date. Then, for a while, his only objective had been to get her into bed, and she'd rather forcefully told him she wasn't interested - forcefully, hell, he thought, she had been snide and nasty and downright insulting. He had lost interest in her for a while, letting her stay in her room and sleep. He'd allowed her to do whatever she wanted. Then Nafeesa had made him realize that Aaliya wasn't just sleeping.
Zain put his hand over her ear. She was so small and so alone and maybe it was his vanity, but he felt as though he'd saved her life twice, once when he'd kept her from "sleeping forever" as Nafeesa called it and tonight when he'd had to break down a door to get to her. Tomorrow he'd have the windows measured for steel grills, grills to keep her safe.
"You're going to be safe, baby," he whispered. "I'll keep you safe." And I'll make you laugh, he thought. And I'll make you stop moving away from me when I reach out to touch you.
* * * * *
It was a while before Aaliya could stop shaking, before she could breathe enough to think. Opening her eyes, she looked out the bedroom door. Down the hall, she could see the hole in the apartment door, the hole Zain had had to make to reach through the door to unlock it.
"How...?" she whispered, wincing at the pain in her throat. She was clinging to him, holding him as tightly as possible, as he was holding her. She didn't want to think about her fear, fear that was making her quiver.
"I heard you," Zain said. "I heard the thumps on the wall and I knew something was wrong. I thought maybe you'd fallen or hurt yourself. I didn't think-" He wasn't going to tell her what he'd felt when he'd seen the bas***d trying to kill her. Now he marveled that he hadn't killed the man on sight, but his number one priority had been to get back to Aaliya, to make sure that she was all right, and he hadn't wanted to waste even a second pummeling the guy.
"Just be still," he said softly. "Banu will be here in a few minutes. I want her to look at you and make sure you're all right."
"A cousin?" Aaliya managed to choke out, pulling her head back to smile up at him.
Zain didn't return her smile. Now that his immediate fear for her was under control, he could think. When he'd seen the man hanging over Aaliya, he hadn't given any thought as to why the man was there or why he was trying to kill her. Zain's only concern had been to save Aaliya, but now he wondered why the robber had been trying to kill her. Why couldn't he have taken what he wanted from her jewelry box or whatever without trying to commit murder?
"Aalu?"
She moved her head against his chest. A few minutes ago she had been fighting for her life and now she'd never felt so safe.
"Did the man say anything to you? Did he call you by name or say anything to you?"
She shook her head no. Vaguely, she remembered the man saying something, but she didn't want to remember what it was. Right now she wanted to forget everything that had happened.
Her answer seemed to please him because she could feel Zain relax against her when she told him no. When he put his hands on the side of her face and looked at her, she smiled at him and he smiled back.
"I wouldn't like for anything to happen to you, Aalu-girl," he said, kissing her on the forehead as he put her head back down on his chest.
A moment later the doorbell rang, and Zain gently laid her back against the pillows as he ran down the stairs. Soon a pretty young woman carrying a medical bag came into the room, then professionally, expertly, she examined Aaliya's throat. As she did so, she talked to Zain who stood behind her, wearing only his very small cotton underwear, seemingly unconcerned at being nearly nude before two women.
"What happened?" Banu asked as she ran her fingers along the back of Aaliya's neck.
"Some creep came in through the window," Zain answered. "Maybe Aaliya woke up and caught him rifling her jewelry box, I don't know."
Aaliya shook her head. "I was... asleep," she said, frowning because it hurt to talk.
Zain didn't like to hear that, but maybe Aaliya had moved or turned over, something to give the creep a reason to try to kill her. He didn't want to think that the man was a new serial killer. The Town House Murderer, maybe. Looking at the windows, he thought of what type of grills he'd order for them, but then he saw Aaliya's suitcase on the floor and knew that there was no reason for grills: She was going to leave in the morning.
Banu finished her examination. "I think you'll be fine. Just rest and don't talk. I'll give you a sedative so you can sleep tonight."
Nodding, Aaliya took the pills the doctor gave her and drank from the cup that Zain held to her lips. Then her eyes widened as Zain scooped her up, blankets and all, and started down the hall with her.
"You spend tonight downstairs where I can watch over you," he said, and Aaliya gave him no argument. She doubted that any sedative in the world would make her sleep comfortably tonight, knowing she'd lie awake imagining every shadow to be a man or men who wanted to kill her.
Downstairs, Zain put her in his bed, tucking her in as though she were a child, then went off with his pretty cousin and Aaliya could hear them talking softly. Aaliya closed her eyes, feeling drowsy.
* * * * *
"How is she?" Zain asked his cousin.
"Fine," Banu answered. "She's strong and healthy, and there was no real damage done. She'll be fine in a day or two, a sore throat but nothing else." Snapping her medical bag closed, she looked up at him. "Zain, it's none of my business, but-"
"Are you going to start asking me what she is to me? That sort of thing? I can honestly say that don't know."
"I had no intention of asking you anything about your personal life," she snapped, making Zain grin. "Doesn't it seem odd to you that Aaliya isn't crying? If someone had tried to kill me, I'd be bawling buckets full. You don't think she's in shock, do you?"
Zain didn't know what to say, but now that he thought of it, maybe it was a little odd that she wasn't crying. His sisters seemed to cry over everything in the world. "I don't know. Maybe she cries in private."
"Maybe," Banu said. "But keep an eye on her. If she doesn't react to this tomorrow, call me. You may want to get her to see someone"
"A shrink?"
"Yes," Banu answered. Then, as Zain thanked her for coming over in the middle of the night, she said, "Let me look at your head. I'll take the stitches out next week." As she looked at his wound in the bright hall light, she said, "You seem to have had a great many accidents in the last few days. First someone creams you with a rock, and now someone tries to kill the young lady who lives in your house. You don't think the two are related, do you?"
"No, of course not," Zain said. But even Banu heard the false note in his voice.
"Mmm," she said as she kissed his cheek, then left the town house.
The frown left Zain's face when he went back to his bedroom and saw Aaliya curled in his bedclothes. Dreamily, she looked up at him, and he went to sit on the edge of the bed and picked up her hand. She was still wearing the engagement ring he had put on her finger.
"The man..."
"Sssh, don't talk."
She smiled when Zain kissed the palm of her hand. "He said, Where is Half Hand's money?'"
It was a good thing her eyes were closed or she would have seen the terror on zain's face; she would have seen the fear that came into his eyes.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
