The String (on being loved, and belonging, and how the two fit together)
unfinished letters #17
We used to ask Baba how Mama and he first met.
His face would draw open in a smile before answering. Lines around his eyes crinkling in mischief.
“There was a string,” he would say.
“A long string that was tied to my little toe, with the other end tied to Mama’s little toe.”
Baba’s voice is the opposite of booming. It is barely a whisper. He clears his throat often as he talks, and he would clear it now.
We girls would lean forward, stop whatever we were doing.
“Over the years, the string kept shrinking. Until one day I looked up and Mama was standing right there.”
Baba is a romantic. Whatever we do, his mind is on Mama. His life. His wife.
Last fall as we toured the Grand Canyon, as Soraya and I oohed and aahed at the sunrises and sunsets, at the black sky twinkling with constellations, Baba kept saying, “Mama would love this. Remember to tell Mama how beautiful it is here so she’ll come.”
I have a portrait from my parents’ wedding. Sepia. My mother is the picture of elegance. A hijabi Grace Kelly. My father is Carey Grant. I remember looking at this picture as a child, shocked at their youth and glamour. Would I ever be these people? Had they felt like these people, even on that day?
Baba has had a thick, luxurious beard for as long as I have had memories. First shock-black, then gray, now white. In the wedding portrait, he is clean-shaven, his square jaw Ken-like and his hair brushed straight.
As I grow older, I look more and more like Mama, but I have never looked like her in her 20s. Never had her easy grace.
I am comfort food and sweats. I am hoodies. I am standing at the clothing racks in a fancy store, sifting through clothes I keep thinking I should buy for this other version of me that doesn’t exist. I take outfits to the dressing room to try on. Then I shake my head in the mirror.