Fazil and Fatima

Fazil Ali didn't realise it but he was walking faster now. It was a short five minute walk from the metro station. He was at the end of an hour and half long journey and now the bottom dropped out of his patience. He cursed the scores lining up on the escalator and took the stairs instead. 

“Why do they allow the young people on them?” He said out loud to no one in particular. “Fat youngsters who cannot be bothered to move for the elderly.” 

Now he was weaving his way through the crowds coming into the metro station. There had been some talk of rain today on the TV and Fazil didn’t want to be stranded. Of course there was a chance Fatima would not make it but he didn’t let that thought bubble up into his consciousness. 

“It would be terrible.” He told himself. Perhaps he would finally cry. 

Isn’t that what everyone wanted him to do? The other day, what was it, Thursday, his daughter had called to check on him. Shaheen was the busy one, raising two boys and holding a job. She told him that Fatima was doing ok, having moved away from crying in the bathroom and had begun to join the family when they went out to shop for groceries. 

“But you still haven’t cried, have you?” She asked. 

“What do you mean?” He asked. “Did you expect me to breakdown in the bathroom?”

There was a moment of silence before she answered. “I expected something. Yes.”

“Have I disappointed you?”

“No daddy.” She said. “That is just what we thought you would do. Get up, dust yourself and go on pretending nothing happened.”

It was his turn to be silent. Their children had rushed to Fatima’s aide and even now, almost three months in, no one believed that he too might be hurting. Cursed with the ability and the reputation for stoicism, he was left on his own. He could have told Shaheen on the call that he had been smelling Fatima’s clothes in the closet. That he set dinner for two everyday and played ghazals she enjoyed. That he followed her awful soap operas to be able to talk to her about them when she got back. 

Instead all he said was “Alright.” 

Shaheen said something intended to hurt him. “You know daddy, when I was younger I confused your indifference for strength. My daddy was the strongest, the man-to-have in moments of crisis, the one who always kept his cool. But you didn’t care. You never cared. You were cool because you were distant.”

Later, Fazil realised it was intended to jolt him, so that Shaheen could see some emotion in him and convey it to her mother. “Daddy is miserable too.” But at the time it was metal that twisted around in his heart. 

“I am what I am beta. Unfortunately you don’t get to choose your parents.” He said and hung up. 

He had reached the place. A coffee shop at an unexpected corner among hardware stores and places selling industrial equipment. There were kids inside sitting with their laptops open, the smell of coffee and baking. Fazil found a place by a large window, table with two chairs but he wasn’t sure if Fatima would be alone. He wanted her to be alone. As soon as he had settled, a young man appeared to take his order. 

“Oh I am waiting for someone else.” He said. 

“Sure I will come back.”

Was this the most number of humans he had seen in months? Since Fatima left, yes. There was no one left to drag him out, no one insisting they had to go out to change the serving cups. He looked around. Every table had coffee cups and sandwich plates with French fries on them. Very unlike Fatima to pick a place that served unhealthy stuff. May be she would get someone else along. Shaheen probably, or that husband of hers who always hijacked conversations describing his day in excruciating detail. 

There were so many couples around, some holding hands. 

“Do you think these people know what it takes to be in love?” He often asked Fatima when they saw younger couples. It could have been after watching a romantic movie, or after they attended a wedding. 

“Why do you always do that?” Fatima had asked. 

“Do what?”

“You always come out of a wedding and expect that this happiness isn’t going to last. Why?”

“Well it won’t.” He said. “Show me one marriage that hasn’t had to deal with problems.”

Fatima was silent, looking out the window on the passenger side. He wondered if she was going to cry. 

“It’s like you do not want to be happy Fazil. You have to temper any happy moment with the prediction of something bad.”

Fazil looked at the couples on the other tables. He still felt that way. These happy faces actually made him sad for what the future held in store. Look at him and Fatima. They had been in love, married before they were twenty but even now almost forty years and two children later they let it come down to this: meeting in a yuppy coffee shop filled with grandchildren. There was a time when their fights meant going to bring her back from her parents place, apologising before a room full of uncles and aunts with advice on how to run a marriage. How many times? It happened every five years, a big blowout with both of them swearing never to get over it, screams of get out, get out. 

The time between fights this time had been fifteen years. Coincidentally, it was also fifteen years since her parents died and Fatima had no place to go. Until the children got their own places.

Fazil called the young man and ordered a coffee. That was the clock, he decided. If she didn’t get here by the time he finished his coffee, he would leave and send her the papers. 

Outside the window he noticed there were no hardware stores. That was strange. He went through each store name. Fashion, shades, electronics, mobiles… and on and on. Whatever happened to the hardware stores? He had been to this part of town before. He had been here many times, when was it, back when he was working for his father. His father used to send him here to pick up stuff. It used to be filled with traders who brought their stuff in rickshaws. He got here on a cycle, bought whatever it is that his father wanted, loaded it in a rickshaw and followed it home. That was forty years ago. Even now, his memory remembered this as a hardware place. 

He sipped his coffee and saw someone move outside the door. They were wearing white. Not something Fatima would wear on a rainy day. She was now more than 15 minutes late. His coffee was half done. 

Fazil didn’t like working with his father. He had been recruited when he didn’t have a choice. One day his father asked him to stop school and get to work. He spent all day on his feet at the shop, handing things from the top shelves to the customers who spent a lot of time arguing about the price. They all knew his father and they all thought it was an excellent idea that he put his boy to work at a young age. Let him learn the business. Coming to this market had been one of the only time he was allowed out alone.

“I remember this place.” He decided to tell Fatima when she got here. “I used to come here to buy stuff for the shop.”

She would know. He was coming here on his cycle for years after they got married. Wasn’t there that one time he brought her here too. She got out of the house telling his mum she was going to buy something and met him at the bus-stop. They got on his cycle and he brought her here. 

“You took me to a hardware market.” She had said many times over the years. At the time, they were only a few months into their marriage. “I came ready to go to a movie and you brought me to see hardware stores.”

Perhaps she had chosen the place herself after all, he wondered. The coffee was three quarters done. 

Fazil never remembered his wedding day, he was so nervous that he had forgotten to notice Fatima. But that day on the cycle was clear as water. Fatima was in a lemon green dress, with eye-liner as dark as her hair which was left open. He worried if those long strands would get caught in the front wheel. She laughed and laughed, throwing her head up at each imitation of the shopkeepers he made. They were not unlike these kids here around the shop.

His coffee was done. He should be getting up to leave now. Comon Fatima, he thought, please don’t let me do this. 

It was Fatima who had first fought his father. That first fight when she had walked out was not because of him, but his father. He had flung a plate of kheer she had made. It was not the first time, but this time she walked out and refused to come back. Fatima was stubborn, his parents had decided. They would get him a Talaq. The day she left she had asked him to chose. Fazil spent days agonising about the decision. He left his father’s home and business the night his parents decided to separate them. When he got to her father’s place, Fatima heard the commotion and came out to balcony. He was standing there with his suitcase and with tears in his eyes. 

“I want only you Fatima.” He said before her parents, uncles and aunts. 

The coffee was done but he decided not to leave. He would never leave. He called the young man over and asked him for another coffee. 

“Sir” asked the young man. “Any chance she might be the one you were waiting for?” 

Fazil looked in the direction where the boy pointed. He smiled with tears in his eyes. 

“I figured you were together.” The young man said. “She’s been here almost as long as you have.”