Ameena was 15 when she married Munir. “Got” married, to be precise. She first laid eyes on him at the Nikah (wedding ceremony). Munir’s parents claimed they were ud dins, descendants of some unnamed sultan. That was more than enough for Ameena’s parents. The fact that Munir had a well-paying job as a welder in a big factory in the big city was more a bonus. And the fact that he will be making ten times his current income when he takes up a new job in Muscat in less than a month was an added bonus.
Neither Munir ud din’s ancestry nor his income potential was of much interest to Ameena. How odd, she thought, that their royal lineage was a selling point when the exalted ud dins lived in a shack similar to their own in the same slum with open sewers and piles of garbage. Besides, is there any one in the whole wide world who is more regal than her mother? Her fair skin, bright red lips and shiny, ornamental nose rings made her look as dazzling as the mughal queens Ameena had seen in the movies. She commanded attention even when covered in a burka head to foot. Her gait alone signified a royal bearing. Of course, Ameena kept her thoughts to herself.
Tragedy struck two weeks after the wedding. It started with reports of a “disturbance” in some village somewhere deep in the countryside. A muslim boy was seen with a Hindu girl, so Hindu men beat up some Muslim men and some Muslim men beat up some readily available Hindu men and soon it escalated to the village level where Hindu villages and Muslim villages came under attack by mobs of men. As it so often happens, the conflagration soon spread to the cities where Hindu slums came under attack by Muslim men and Muslim slums by Hindu men. The spreading fire inevitably reached the slum Ameena and her family lived in. When they heard shouts of ‘Jai Bajrangabali’, they knew Hindu hordes were at the gate. Everyone started running for their lives, Ameena’s mother tripped and fell and was crushed in the stampede.
There was no time to mourn her loss. Ameena’s husband, with her father’s help, got busy with paperwork for their move to the foreign land. Other girls at the refugee camp consoled Ameena saying she was lucky to leave her precarious existence behind and move to a land of promise. All Ameena wanted to do was die.
In Muscat, she coped with the tragedy drawing sketches, recording scenes and people she saw from her apartment window. She had always loved sketching. Her skill had made her popular among her friends and it was a big part of her relationship with her mother. One day, when she was maybe 8 or 9, she did something to make her mother mad. When her mother stayed mad, she went to a secluded place and drew her mother’s angry face from memory. She left the sketch near her mother’s prayer mat. One look at the sketch, her mom’s anger melted away. She scrounged up pennies here and there to buy her daughter sketching supplies. So, for Ameena, sketching was more than a hobby, better than a passion.
Oh, along the way, she also had two children in two years. The third was on the way when it was time to move again. In a dispute with the Indian government, the Oman government cancelled the contract with the company Munir worked for. Knowing Munir’s reluctance to go back to his home country, his boss, a devout Hindu man – a Brahmin no less – put in a good word for him with his counterpart in a British company that did business in Iraq. So off they went to Mosul not knowing anything about Mosul or Iraq. It was vilayat (foreign land); that’s all one needed to know.
Promised land it wasn’t. During the day, American planes rained bombs and flattened every standing structure. At night, ISIS fighters came in their pickup trucks shooting indiscriminately at anything and everything all the while shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The incongruity of the invocation and their actions reminded Ameena of the Muslim mobsters who ruled the slum she came from. The mobsters who assaulted and raped women were also the ones enforcing “Islamic” customs in the slum.
Ameena and her family ran from shelter to shelter until they ended up in a refugee camp. Rain and heat, flies and mosquitoes made life a living hell. Ironically, the only thing she liked was the overpowering smell of rotting garbage and open latrine which brought back memories of “home”. Amid the chaos, she gave birth to her third child. Through the help of an American doctor, they were able to finally find a sponsor willing to help them resettle in Canada. Dr. Khan, the American doctor, told them that the sponsor was a Catholic church. Ameena later learned from her husband that Catholics were Isayees except Canadian catholics were goray (white) Isayees.
They landed in Montreal on Christmas eve. Ameena was stunned when she saw Sister Jane who was waiting to receive them. She looked so much like Ammi! The sweet face, the fair skin and, wait, is she wearing a chador? As Sister Jane walked towards them, Ameena almost fainted. Even her gait was the same as her mom’s. The only difference that stood out was the large, shiny cross that hung around her neck. Through Dr. Khan, she let Sister Jane know how much the Sister reminded her of her mom.
The next day, Sister Jane came to their temporary shelter with some parishioners bearing gifts. After the children’s excitement died down, Ameena wished the Sister “Christmas Mubarak” and handed her a sheet of paper saying “tohfa (gift)”! Sister unfolded the sheet and saw a sketched likeness of her. All the details (the habit, the cross, the glasses) were faithfully sketched. But there were two embellishments. Her lips were redder and she had an ornamental ring on her nose. The Sister hugged Ameena and Ameena hoped the tight embrace would last forever.
