Homeland Elegies(20)

2.


The Prophet’s beloved Ayesha had two half sisters, Umm Kulthum—a name some will recognize as belonging to the most famous Egyptian singer of her era—and another named Asma. I had an aunt Asma—a great-aunt on my mother’s side. Asma taught literature and critical theory at UConn until her untimely death from a stroke in the early aughts and was the first person to tell my parents, after hearing that I wanted to be a writer (and after she read a story I sent her when she wrote to ask me if what she was hearing from my parents was true), that writing was not quite so far-fetched a career as they might think.

That, anyway, is what she told my parents; what she said to me was different.

We met in Providence in the spring of ’94, a few months after our exchange of letters and weeks before I was to graduate from Brown. She took the train up from New Haven, where she lived, and we met for dinner at a swanky seafood restaurant not far from the station. I found her in a booth overlooking the river in a dark brown kameez with a cream-colored dupatta slung across her shoulders. She was reading, her head tilted down, the angled edges of her gray bob falling forward and anchoring her thinking face to the page. Her large brown eyes looked even larger and browner through the lenses of her thick black-framed reading glasses, which she pulled off as she rose up and enfolded me in her arms. I was surprised by the welcome. Though we’d met many times—she and my mother had grown close when we lived in New York City during the 1970s—I’d never been treated to anything like this display of either affection or familiarity.

We sat, and she asked what I wanted to drink: “Because if you want wine, I’m happy to get a bottle and we can drink it together. Do you like red or white?” Her accent was strong and sonorous, the rounded vowels and pointed consonants shaped with ease and sophistication, an aural marker not only of her education—Kinnaird College, in Lahore, and Cambridge after that—but also of her lingering pride in the glories of the Raj, under which her family had produced a slew of journalists and university professors. I noticed the not entirely empty martini glass at the edge of her setting.

“I don’t drink,” I lied.

She smiled wryly. “I won’t tell your ammi. What do you like, red or white?”

I shrugged. “Whatever you want, Auntie.”

“Red it is, then. And I know the one,” she said, slipping her glasses back on to peruse the wine list. “This Saint Emilion from Tertre Roteboeuf is brilliant. Rich and racy.” She waved over a waiter and indicated her selection. He nodded, eyeing me briefly, then cleared my salad plate and left the wineglass. “Always better just to point it out,” she said once he was gone. “Half the time they don’t have the first clue what they have on the list. If you had any idea how many times they’ve brought out the wrong bottle!” She reached for a bag on the seat beside her and pulled out a stack of books tied together with twine. “These are for you. This is where you need to begin if you’re going to be a writer.”

“That’s so nice of you, Auntie. Thank you.”

“It’s a hard life. It’s thankless. If you can do anything else with yourself, anything more certain, you owe it to yourself and to everyone you love to do that. But if you can’t, if you need to be writing, well, then, one of the joys of the lonely journey ahead, beta, is the comfort of reading. A day spent reading is not a great day. But a life spent reading is a wonderful life.”

I thanked her again as I picked up the stack and read the bindings:

Orientalism.

Pride and Prejudice.

The Muqaddimah.

Death Comes for the Archbishop.

The Wretched of the Earth.



“It’s a hodgepodge, I know. And I’m sure somebody has made you read the Jane Austen already. But I do think it the most wonderful novel ever written. I don’t think you can read it enough times. And not just for the pure, unending delight. Her analysis of the world is not to be underestimated. You’ll find more wisdom about the way the world really works in those pages than in a million more pretending to tell you. Money, money, money. That’s all it ever comes down to.” She looked up with a smile at the waiter who’d returned and stood now, pulling the cork, a napkin draped over his forearm. He poured briefly for her to taste. She swirled and smelled, then brought the glass to her lips. “Hmm, it’s good. But it needs to breathe. Pour us both half glasses, and we’ll wait. Thank you.” Once he was gone, she resumed: “Of course, before you read or write another word, you must read Edward Said. What a brilliant man. And gorgeous. He moved like a leopard. I met him at a conference ten years ago. If I hadn’t been married, beta, what I would have done to get into that bedroom! Anything. Anything! Don’t tell your ammi I said that. You don’t tell her about me and Edward, I won’t tell her about you and this Saint Emilion.” She sipped from the glass again. “Better, but it needs time. Edward’s book is indispensable, Ayad. There are very few books you can say that about. But Orientalism is one. You won’t know who you are until you’ve read it. Whatever you think you are now, when you finish that book, you will be something different. What are you reading currently?” she asked as she bit on a piece of bread and started to chew.

“Rushdie.”

“Midnight’s Children? Brilliant book. Just brilliant.”