Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

When my mother teased him about his pronunciation, he would threaten to teach her “horrible Russian words and you would not know what you are saying.” My mother had taken up learning Russian around this time — she’s a superb linguist, fluent in French and German, as well as in South Asian languages, of course. Sergey would declaim in Russian—“unspeakable words”—with riveting melodrama. My mother’s hand would jump to cover her mouth and, taking a step back, she would feign horror.

Sergey was also something of a handyman around the house. He put up shelves and even did a bit of plumbing, replacing the taps in the kitchen sink, as I recall. He helped me make a sled for the winter snow and hung a swing in the garden, a tire at the end of a rope tied to the branch of a tree. Then Sergey suddenly left. I remember asking my father if Sergey was going to bring back my bike, which he’d taken away to mend, to be told that he’d already left for a professorship somewhere. My father was cross that Sergey had failed to return the bike, but within minutes we set off to replace it, and, after my initial distress, I was rather pleased by the whole deal. The new bike was a lot better than the old one, and I remember that my father insisted we also buy a chain and lock for it.

In Princeton, our circle of friends included graduate students and professors, people from the four corners of the world, as I say, and our house was always an open and friendly place. But I see now that in the absence of all things Pakistani, an aspect of my parents’ lives was kept at arm’s length. For Friday prayers, my father did not attend a Pakistani mosque, as he does now on the Cowley Road in East Oxford, for there were none in Princeton, nor did he meet with other Pakistanis to pray. Instead, he would drive to Lawrence, outside Princeton, where a small Arab Muslim community would assemble in someone’s home, an immigrant outpost clustered around one family.

There were rare episodes when I sensed what might be pictured as a tiny hollow space within me, along some inward edge, a sensation that I have struggled hard to describe in my own mind. To borrow language from my father’s world of physics, a black hole might make its presence felt by its gravitational effects on something nearby. The black hole itself is by its nature incapable of being observed because nothing can leave it, not even light or any electromagnetic radiation. It is the feeling of missing something without conscious awareness of what it is you’re missing, though even this, I think, rather overstates it. Perhaps that’s what friendship can do: the presence of another indirectly giving us better access to the hidden parts of ourselves.

I remember an assembly at the beginning of the school year when I was seven or eight. The teacher explained that our grade was going to stand up on the stage, and one by one we were to say “Welcome” in our mother tongues. When the teacher asked me to speak in Pakistani, I certainly didn’t know what to say. For that matter, I didn’t even know to correct the teacher and say that Pakistanis might speak Urdu or another language but never Pakistani, just as Belgians might speak French or Flemish but not Belgian.

We left Princeton for the U.K. in 1981, and my parents slowly began to express again their Pakistani heritage. Then, entering my teens, I sensed their transition, while at the same time I grasped that during the years in Princeton my parents had shut something out. There was, I understood later, a reason for it all — for holding Pakistan at arm’s length: We had been ostracized.

Would you care for a Bath Oliver? said Penelope Hampton-Wyvern.

In a restaurant in Knightsbridge, Zafar related his first encounter with the Hampton-Wyverns — with Penelope and James.

I’m sorry? replied Zafar.

Would you like a biscuit? she asked.

You should try one, said James — that is, if you haven’t had one before.

I took a biscuit from the plate. Very nice, I said.

A bite crumbled in my mouth.

They’re made, said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern, to the same recipe William Oliver of Bath confided to his coachman in 1750.

I’ve never had such an old cookie before, I replied.

Do you like the books? asked Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern.

I’m sorry?

You were looking at the books. Some marvelous first editions. Trollope, Thackeray, and Eliot among them.

T. S. Eliot?

No, George.

Yes, of course, I said weakly.

The conversation fell away, as if my error had marked a precipice. Of course it’s George Eliot, I thought. You idiot. Those three were contemporaries. T. S. Eliot came later. And he wasn’t even British — at his end maybe, but not at his beginning.

Have you read Daniel Deronda ? I asked, breaking into the silence.

The tale of the Jew, replied Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern.

Only he discovers he’s Jewish much later, chimed in James.

These days every man’s discovering the Jew in himself, said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern.

I liked it, said Emily.

I did not ask what Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern meant; I didn’t want to risk finding out.

Wasn’t he illegitimate? said James.

The Victorians, said Emily, were obsessed with illegitimacy. Bleak House and Little Dorrit and The Woman in White are all about that — illegitimate children with maids and fallen women. It was quite personal for some of these writers — some of them had illegitimate children themselves.

Oh, yes, now I remember. The Bastardy Laws, said James.

This drew a smile from everyone.

Illegitimate children inherited nothing, Emily said.

Emily sat with her knees pinched together, her hands resting on them, fingers interlaced, and her heels backing up against a foot of the couch. Her elbows were pulled in, almost touching.

They had no legal standing, continued Emily, unless the father made some specific provision for them.

Yes, but when he did, said James, it made for excellent drama at the reading of the will!

Don’t forget, I interjected, the drama of someone trying to bridge the class divide.

I preferred Middlemarch , said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern. It’s always nice to learn a thing or two from a novel, don’t you think?

The Great Reform Bill, which broadened the electoral franchise, said Emily.

The Act, not the Bill, Penelope pointed out.

But not to women, added James.

Even so, the Tories were quite resistant to the Bill, I interjected.

Yes. I suppose I should declare a family connection of sorts, said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern. A great-uncle of mine, Lord Launceston, was one of the few Tories who supported it.

James snapped up from the sofa, plucked a book from the shelf, and handed it to me.

The hard cloth-bound cover fell open, like the lid of a cigar box. I drew the tips of my fingers over the coarse paper and let the pages leaf out until the title sheet appeared. Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life, By George Eliot .

It’s lovely, I said.

Thank you, said Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern. It’s rather a nice collection, if I say so myself. Took some time to put together. My grandfather was quite a bibliophile, you know.

Zafar is incredibly well-read, said Emily.

I was actually admiring the bookcase itself — I mean the furniture.