Untethered
Author: Ayesha Inoon
Date: 2023-06-01 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Contemporary
Description: Winner of the 2022 ASA/HQ Fiction Prize. A finely observed debut novel of a young Muslim woman's experience of immigration to Australia from Sri Lankan-Australian writer Ayesha Inoon. Zia secretly longs to go to university but as a young woman in a traditional Muslim family, she does what is expected of her and agrees to an arranged marriage to Rashid, a man she barely knows. Cocooned by the wealth and customs of her family, Rashid's dark moods create only the smallest of ripples in their early life together. When growing political unrest spurs them to leave Sri Lanka and immigrate to Australi
Publisher: HQ Fiction
Rights: All rights reserved

AYESHA INOON is a Sri Lankan–Australian writer with a unique cultural perspective, which she brings to her writing. Born in Colombo, she travelled widely and worked as a journalist in Sri Lanka before immigrating to Australia in 2013.

Winner of the ASA/HQ Commercial Fiction Prize 2022, her debut novel, Untethered, is partly based on her experiences as an immigrant Muslim woman. Ayesha was a recipient of the inaugural 2019 Penguin Random House Australia Write It Fellowship for an early draft of this novel. In 2020 she was selected for the Rosie Scott Writing Residency in NSW, and in September 2022 she was awarded a KSP fellowship by the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in WA to work on her second novel.

Her feature articles have been published by SBS Australia, The Sunday Times Sri Lanka, Serendib and Explore Sri Lanka.

Ayesha lives in Canberra with her two children.

You can follow Ayesha on Twitter and Instagram at @ayeshainoon.

www.harpercollins.com.au/hq

For everyone who has made the brave journey of
leaving their home in search of another

The angels say, ‘Was not the earth of Allah spacious enough for you to emigrate therein?’

Surah An-Nisaa, Quran

CONTENTS

Arrival

Part 1: Leaving

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part 2: Settling

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Part 3: Winter

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Part 4: Spring

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Acknowledgements

Book Club Questions

Arrival

It was the silence that she noticed first. As they drove, Canberra unfolded in a series of stunning panoramas—still blue lakes, distant mountains wreathed in clouds, fields of dry, golden grass, vivid green branches that rose towards a low-hanging sky, pierced by the sharp tip of the Black Mountain tower. The road was a ribbon that wound its way through the city, cars speeding along its length in silent, synchronised lines.

The streets were empty, rows of brick houses flanked by trees in the bright summer sunlight. The only signs of life were the flutter of clothes on a line, a child’s toys in one of the yards.

It was beautiful, and devastatingly quiet.

All of Zia’s life she had lived against a backdrop of noise that she never noticed—rumbling traffic and beeping horns, barking dogs and screeching roosters, the peal of temple and church bells, calls to prayer from the mosque, the television downstairs, the radio next door. She was used to a litany of voices: peddlers calling out their wares, the laughter and chatter of people in the street, babies crying, the warmth in her mother’s voice as she called out Zia’s name. Now, in the unfamiliar landscape of silence, the soundtrack of the life she knew looped in her head.

She was tired after the full day of travelling, the hours of waiting between the connecting flights from Colombo to Singapore and then Melbourne to Canberra. Farah, irritable from a lack of sleep, had cried for most of the last few hours of the journey, sobbing that she just wanted to go home.

‘We are going home,’ Zia had said, trying to comfort her. ‘Home in Australia with Daddy.’

But how could she expect Farah to understand when she herself was still struggling with the idea of what ‘home’ meant, now that they had left behind everything and everyone they had known and loved all their lives to begin a new life in a different country?

Farah didn’t stir as Zia gently unbuckled her and carried her into the house. She laid her on the sofa in the living room as Rashid carried in their luggage, the brand-new Samsonite suitcases bought especially for this momentous journey.

The midnight-blue bags were heavy with the weight of her decisions, the things they brought with them, the things they left behind. How do you choose the most precious objects of a lifetime when moving to another country? How do you weigh the emotional worth of childhood diaries, favourite books, your framed wedding bouquet, your child’s first teddy bear and countless other mementos that reflected the story of your life, of your daughter’s first four years, against the cost of carrying them across the Indian Ocean?

Once, she’d called Rashid in tears after Farah’s cot had been sold.

‘Don’t worry about all that,’ he’d said. ‘We can buy everything we need here. There’s a website called Gumtree, and people just give away things for free on there or sell them very cheap. You don’t need to bring anything.’

He told her he was collecting furniture and knick-knacks for their new home, and each time he bought something, he would send her a photograph. There was the old-fashioned sofa with the pattern of English roses that he knew she would love, the timber coffee table that wobbled slightly when she placed her handbag on it, the small bookshelf with a few picture books for Farah, the pink tricycle from a garage sale. The TV and the pale blue curtains, he said, were new.

She had seen a photo of almost every piece of furniture in this house, Rashid had even given her a tour of the place on his webcam, and yet everything felt new, strange and unfamiliar, like the country itself.

Rashid brought in the last bag, shut the door, and sat down with a sigh. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard, as though he too had just got off the plane with them.

She’d never stopped wondering what it must have been like for him, alone in Australia, waiting for them to join him. He’d never said very much although he’d called her almost every day, and their conversations had grown briefer and increasingly impersonal, focusing on practical, everyday matters such as whether Farah had eaten her dinner or Zia’s father had been able to find someone to buy Rashid’s old car.

It was the first time in their six-year marriage that they had been apart, and Zia was afraid that a gulf as vast as the miles between them had grown in these months.

She had missed him. She wanted to tell him this, to feel the warmth of his embrace, to know that he missed her too. But he hadn’t touched her yet, hadn’t said anything other than a list of things they would need to do over the next week—register at Centrelink, open another bank account, buy a bed for Farah, visit the local preschool.

‘Well,’ he said, leaning back and closing his eyes. ‘Here we are.’

But he didn’t look at her, and after a while, she looked away also, gazing out the window, where his car was parked next to two large bins, their red and yellow lids gleaming brightly next to the white sedan. She told herself they needed time to get used to each other again, to learn how to be with each other in this new life.

PART 1

Leaving

1

Zia hoped, for Mama’s sake more than her own, that Rashid agreed to marry her. Her cousin Mina had been presented to more than ten families in the past year before Hamdi said he would marry her—he had not minded that Mina was just five feet tall and slightly overweight. Zia couldn’t imagine having to go through this ordeal over and over again, dressing up and being assessed by prospective bridegrooms and their families, never knowing who would say yes.

Everything had happened so quickly in the last few months since a matchmaker enlisted by Zia’s parents had arrived at their door with a resumé and a photograph. Here was an ideal match, said the matchmaker, a middle-aged man who always wore a skullcap and had framed wedding invitations decorating the walls of his small home office as proof of his success.

Rashid had just returned to Sri Lanka after graduating from the University of Connecticut, and his parents were looking for a bride who was educated but not too educated, pretty, and respectable. Of course, this was why her parents had halted her education just after her Advanced Level exams, so that she would meet these criteria and appeal to most Muslim families in Colombo who were looking for a wife for their sons. Every time Zia thought of it, she tried to quell the edge of bitterness to her thoughts—after all there were many girls who never even got that far, who left school at fifteen or sixteen to be engaged and married soon after.

Besides, Zia too wanted to get married—to be a wife, a mother—and she knew that the world she lived in would allow her that dream if not another.

Mama would sometimes speak of one of her friends’ daughters who had gone to Pakistan to study medicine and was now still unmarried in her thirties.

‘They can’t find anyone good enough for her,’ Mama would say, her tone implying that they should have known better than to educate the girl so much in the first place. ‘The grooms are either not educated enough or too young. Such a pretty girl too—she could have been married and settled with a couple of children by now.’

And Zia would think of this girl, who had chosen to follow her own path, whose parents had been unconventional enough to let her, and wonder if the price they paid had been worth it. If a career and independence might not be as satisfying as a husband and children.

Who knew?

When life didn’t give you choices, wasn’t it better not to look at the things you couldn’t have?

If you were loved, wasn’t that more precious than anything in the world?

And so Zia held this hope close to her heart, that she would find love, even as she walked the more traditional path, and that this love would be the light that dissipated the shadows of other disappointments.

*

Mama and Dada asked the matchmaker to invite Rashid’s family for tea that weekend. Mama called her sister, Nazrin Aunty, to help with making the food—delicate savoury pastries, stuffed peppers, sweet coconut crepes and a layered pudding, which they would tell Rashid’s family that Zia had made by herself.

That morning Mama made her a face mask with orange peel and sandalwood, and mixed henna with tea and beetroot juice to condition and soften Zia’s waist-length hair. Mama brushed in the henna paste, her fingers moving gently through Zia’s curls as Aunty went through her wardrobe, finally picking a salwar kameez of turquoise cotton.

‘It’s not too formal, and the colour looks nice on you,’ she said, handing the dress to Zia and going to the dresser to look for jewellery to match.

Mama said she should sit on the grey ottoman, where Rashid would be able to see her as he walked through the door, and the afternoon sun would slant on her skin and soften her complexion and features. It was a day that Mama had been planning for years and Zia felt almost like a character in a play, following Mama’s carefully constructed script.

Through the doorway she saw the matchmaker enter first, his usual white skullcap having been swapped for an embroidered silver one for the occasion. He was followed by a tall young man in a crisp grey shirt whose dark eyes flicked quickly around the house, resting for a few moments on Zia as she realised that this must be him, Rashid, the man who might be willing to marry her. His dark eyebrows were drawn together in a way that gave his face a stern expression, and his skin was that light tan colour that most people considered a hallmark of good looks. He moved with the self-assurance of someone who knew where he was going and what he wanted. When his eyes met hers, she blinked, surprised by the warmth that flared in her cheeks. She lowered her head, clutching the silky blue edge of her shawl until she felt his gaze lift.

He’s too handsome, Zia thought, to want to marry a dark girl like me. What had the matchmaker been thinking?

Dada went forward, greeting the men with salaams and leading them to the veranda while Mama and Nazrin Aunty ushered the women inside to sit on the leather sofa, where on any other day at this time, Zia would have been curled up with a book, drinking tea and daydreaming of other lives she could be living.

She glanced up as Rashid’s mother sat opposite her, glamorous in a ruby silk sari, gold bracelets clinking together every time she moved to adjust the fabric. She studied Zia with a scrutiny that seemed more intense and less kind than her son’s had been a few moments ago. It was a relief to catch his sister Layla’s curious, smiling glance as she sat next to Aunty.

Rashid’s mother—Jamila, she answered, when Mama asked her name—began to question Mama as though Zia was not present. Could Zia cook? Rashid enjoyed good food. Yes, Mama said, Zia loved to cook. Mama didn’t say that Zia only knew how to make pol sambol, with fresh coconut and chilli powder, and delicious cups of ginger and cardamom tea, or that Mama had enrolled Zia in a three-month cookery course starting the following week so that Zia could learn to be a good housewife.

She asked if Zia would inherit part of the house that they lived in, and Mama said yes, of course, as well as the small plot of land in Colombo that was to be Zia’s dowry.

Yes, Zia prayed five times a day.

Yes, Zia got along well with everyone. She had a very accommodating personality.

Yes, she had always been this thin.

No one asked any questions about Rashid.

Zia listened to the words flowing between the woman who might be her Mami and her own Mama, the confidence of one, the humility of the other, and felt as though she was shrinking inside, becoming of lesser and lesser importance until she was almost invisible, reduced to a list of qualities and assets that may or may not be of value to this man and his family.

When Nazrin Aunty suggested that Rashid and Zia move to the dining room, so they could have a few minutes to speak in private, Zia felt her chest tighten, her limbs grow heavy, weighting her to the seat, and for a moment she feared that she wouldn’t be able to move. She had known that this would be likely, and yet she felt unprepared. Although she had been told what to do and how to look her best today, she had no script for this occasion. What would she say? What would he say? What if he didn’t like her? What if—although this thought felt new and unwelcome, as though it had no right to be there—she didn’t like him?

Rising on trembling legs, she followed Mama into the dining room, which was dimly lit by the sunlight filtering through the lace curtains, and sat at the mahogany dining table, her hair stirring in the breeze from the ceiling fan. Her father came in, followed by Rashid, and for a brief, comforting moment Zia saw that Dada was smiling at her in his tender, familiar way, and she felt herself lighten as she smiled in return.

Her parents left them cocooned in that quiet room as the fan hummed and a koel bird sang in the garden outside. Zia’s mouth was dry, and she wished she had brought in a glass of water with her. She reached for her shawl to drape it over her head, then remembered that she had been told to leave it off today as she was meeting her prospective husband. She dropped her hand and settled her restless fingers in her lap.

When she glanced up at Rashid, she saw that he was looking intently at his watch. Perhaps he was just waiting to get back home to tell his family that this was a bad match.

‘What was your favourite subject in school?’ he asked suddenly, still looking at his watch.

‘English,’ said Zia, after a pause. It seemed more like a question to ask a young child, not one’s bride-to-be. ‘I love reading.’

‘That’s good—I don’t have the patience for it myself.’

He looked up then and smiled at her and she found herself smiling for the second time that afternoon, her shoulders relaxing, her breath releasing itself in a gentle rush. The strong lines of Rashid’s face softened when he smiled. She noticed a small dark spot on his cheek that he must have missed while shaving and for some reason she found this small imperfection endearing.

It turned out to be a good start as they talked about their school lives, discovering that they had both gone to well-known private schools in Colombo. Rashid said that he had been a prefect as well as captain of the cricket team at St. Joseph’s, that he had always been good at maths. He’d done well enough to go to university, getting a place at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka and winning a part scholarship at the University of Connecticut in the USA to do his master’s in software engineering.

His casual mention of these things—life overseas, a graduate degree that seemed to her both oblique and impressive, gave him an air of glamour and mystery. He was unlike any other man she had ever known—her father, brother and other male relatives, who rarely spoke of anything other than their day-to-day lives, if they spoke to her at all.

Zia had only left her private girls’ school last year, and so she spoke of it with greater immediacy, feeling as though it was just the other day that she had donned her school uniform with the green tie and been in a classroom at Methodist College, sitting at the worn wooden desks with her friends.

She told him how she loved English literature, that her favourite author was Jane Austen. How she had first read Pride and Prejudice when she was fifteen and that she’d reread it every year since then, but how now she thought Emma might be her favourite book. That she had got one of the few A grades in the country at the Advanced Level exams last year.

She didn’t tell him she’d had to turn down a place at university, that she had cried in her room that night. Girls in Zia’s family did not go to university—they didn’t need to, Dada said. Dada would always look after her, make sure she married well, and then it would be her husband’s responsibility to care for her. Why spend years getting a degree that she was unlikely to ever need?

Zia’s English teacher, who often said Zia had a gift with words, was devastated when Zia told her that her education would end there. Miss Silva offered to come and speak with her parents, but Zia refused, knowing that it would be useless, that she herself would never have the courage to diverge from the path her parents had mapped out for her. That in some strange way she found comfort in these boundaries and restrictions even while resenting that they existed. If she loved reading and writing, she told herself, those were things she could still do despite not going to university.

And yet, now as she listened to Rashid speak of his education, his travels, she felt a yearning rise unbidden, an envy that was born not so much out of jealousy but of the sorrow for experiences that she would never have.

Rashid spoke of how much he’d enjoyed living in the USA and how he was looking forward to travelling more. He’d had several job offers since his return to Sri Lanka, he said, and had just started working at one of the largest IT firms in the city.

‘I’m good at what I do, and I think this company is a great place to launch my career,’ he told Zia. ‘Besides, I want to see more of the world, to have a few adventures.’

‘I’ve never been away from home—not even a single night away from my parents, would you believe it?’ said Zia, laughing a little. ‘But I’ve always dreamed of travelling.’

He listened as she told him how she dreamed of visiting those cities that she had only read about in her books—London, New York, Amsterdam, Tokyo—how she would love to experience the changing seasons, to know what snowflakes felt like on her skin, to see the leaves change colour in autumn. To watch the sun rise and set in a country on the other side of the world.

He nodded as though these things mattered, as though they were not the foolish fantasies of a girl who had never been further than the coastlines of her own country.

His voice was deep, his manner of speaking firm and confident. Whenever Zia hesitated to respond, he quickly moved on to a different topic, and she would forget what she had been meaning to say in the urgency of following the thread of his speech.

He kept his eyes downcast most of the time while he was talking, as any respectful Muslim man would do in the presence of a woman, but when he talked about enjoying the cinema and Zia remarked that she’d never been allowed to go, he lifted his head, his eyes dark and focused on hers. He smiled slightly as he said, ‘Well, we’ve got to fix that sometime.’

Zia felt her face grow warm as she slowly smiled back, caught in the sudden intimacy of the moment, at the thought of the two of them going to watch a movie together.

Soon, Nazrin Aunty appeared and asked them to join the others for tea.

When Rashid passed by the seated women, Layla nudged him and winked at Zia. Not wanting to appear frivolous, Zia bit back a laugh and went to sit near Mama on the sofa. Mama put her hand on Zia’s knee and Layla offered her a pastry as she took the cup of tea that Aunty gave her. It felt as though they were offering her small gestures of commiseration for the test she had just been through.

Rashid’s mother asked Zia if she liked her tea sweet. It was the first time she’d spoken directly to Zia, and she replied yes, always with two spoons of sugar.

Rashid didn’t speak to her again, but later, as he left, he paused by the door to turn and look at her, nodding briefly before walking out to the car with the rest of his family.

Zia held back as the others rushed to the window to watch them leave. She didn’t want Rashid, or more importantly his mother, to catch her staring after them, but Mama and Aunty seemed to have no such reservations, peering through the lace curtains and whispering about whether Rashid and his family appeared happy after their visit.

‘What did you think of him?’ asked Amir, wandering into the living room, his eyes bright with excitement. ‘Posh, isn’t he? Think he’ll want to marry you?’

‘How should I know?’ snapped Zia, irritated by her brother’s enthusiasm.

He would never have to go through such an ordeal. No, instead, when the time came, he would make the rounds with their parents, the tables turned, as they enjoyed the privilege of choosing a bride for their son.

Amir lifted his hands and shrugged, laughing at her as he backed away.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of tension as everyone worried about what the response from Rashid’s family would be, and how soon they would let Zia’s family know. Good etiquette would be within the next day or so, Mama said. If they hadn’t heard by the end of the week, they could assume that Rashid wasn’t interested. Dada agreed and said, in his calm, practical way, that then they could move on to the next proposal.

Zia, moving restlessly about the house, felt sick with anticipation and dread, akin to the days before her exam results were out, and her life had never been dependent on those.

No one would be so unrealistic as to think of love at a time like this, and yet that was the word that whispered in Zia’s thoughts. Would Rashid be the love of her life? Would she be his? How did you learn to love someone that you didn’t choose for yourself?

When Rashid’s mother called that evening to say that Rashid had liked Zia and that she knew someone who could get a booking at the Hilton for a wedding that July, just three months away, Mama cried with joy, and Dada went to the prayer rug, pressing his forehead to the ground in gratitude.

‘Congratulations,’ Nazrin Aunty said to Zia, her kind face wrinkled in a smile, and Zia wanted to ask, For what? I did nothing, I just sat there, I spoke for a few minutes with a man who was a stranger to me. The hum of excitement she had felt in Rashid’s presence was gone and in the wake of the tense hours that had followed, she felt tired, suddenly afraid of the future that was swiftly, irrepressibly, unfolding.

*

She was sitting on her bed and reading after Isha prayers when Dada knocked at her door. She knew it was him by the two firm knocks—Mama never knocked, and Amir only knocked once before turning the brass handle and rushing into the room, usually to ask her to help him with his homework or to convince Mama to let him skip prayers at the mosque.

She rose to her feet and went to the open windows. The cool night air was scented with the fragrance of pale jasmines that gleamed in the darkness outside. Dada would say that she was letting the mosquitoes in, so she pulled them shut and drew the curtains across before opening the door.

Her father stepped into the room, his eyes wandering to the windows as though he knew they’d been open just moments ago. He didn’t say anything for a while, looking now at the small wooden bed that she had slept in since she was five, the framed copy of Ayatul Kursi that hung on the lilac-coloured wall above her desk, where she still kept some of her textbooks from school.

Mama had hung the Ayatul Kursi there when she’d been having those strange nightmares after the tsunami years ago: dreams of the ocean rising and coming towards them in a great wall of water and she would be looking for her family to try and get them to safety. Each time in her dream someone would be missing, Mama, Dada or Amir, and she would grow increasingly frantic, trying to find them as the towering waves sped towards her.

The Ayatul Kursi were the most powerful verses in the Quran, Mama said, and would protect her. Although the nightmares didn’t stop, they grew less frequent, and when Zia woke up, trembling or drenched in sweat, it always comforted her to see the Arabic words in the gilded frame, to recite them softly to herself, to believe that there was an almighty God who reigned over the universe and gave meaning to the chaos.

Zia knew that this was Dada’s way, that he often spent some time in silence when he approached her to speak about something, as though he was finding his way through his thoughts, choosing his words with care. He had changed from his shirt and trousers to the soft cotton vest and sarong that he wore at home, but the heavy Rolex watch that he wore on special occasions was still on his wrist.

‘You are reading,’ he finally said, gesturing at the book on her bed, one of her silver hairclips sticking out from the pages where she had marked her place. ‘You may not have so much time for that when you are a married woman.’

‘I’ll always find time to read,’ said Zia, laughing. ‘You know that, Dada.’

‘Maybe, maybe,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘But you will have other priorities. Mahal,’ he said, using the Tamil word for daughter, an endearment that she loved. ‘You like this boy? He will make a good husband for you. You trusted Mama and me to choose a good boy for you, and we have found one.’

Zia realised that this was his way of asking for her permission, and for a moment it felt as though she had a choice, that she could refuse, that perhaps she could insist on her right to remain unmarried, to go back to Miss Silva and tell her she wanted to go to university after all. For a few seconds an alternate life unfolded in her mind, one in which she was not just her parents’ daughter, but someone else as well—someone whose life she had the freedom to define.

And then she raised her eyes to her father’s hopeful face, his faith in her answer, and the images of that other life dissolved.

She thought of what it would mean if she said no.

She thought of the small dark spot on Rashid’s cheek, of how he had looked at her, that small nod before he left the house. The way he had spoken about travelling the world, and she thought that maybe marriage could be one kind of escape from a life that held you so closely that sometimes it was hard to breathe.

‘You remember the hadith?’ Dada was saying now. ‘The Prophet said we must always ask for a woman’s consent before marriage—and that her silence may be taken as her consent. But if for some reason you don’t want this, you must tell us.’

As he sighed and turned to leave, Zia spoke, because she wanted her consent to be an audible, decisive thing, to take this one small gift of control that her father had afforded her.

‘Dada, wait,’ she said. ‘Yes. I like him. I will marry him.’

Her father smiled and nodded, shutting the door behind him as he left.

2

Rashid could feel their gaze following him from behind the lace curtains as he walked out of the house, and he kept his face impassive, unwilling to reveal the decision he had made in the last ten minutes. He was fed up with the circus, with visiting these girls and their families and seeing the hope in their eyes, with imagining that hope dying when they heard, through the matchmaker, that he wasn’t interested after all, although that choice was usually made by his mother rather than himself.

Zia would be the one.

She seemed smart and attractive, and there was something charming about the way she looked at him, as though there were questions she wanted to ask and things she wanted to say behind that veil of shyness.

He wanted to find out what those things were.

It was a risk, he knew, this decision to spend the rest of his life with a girl he’d just met, but he knew he was ready to get married, and what other choice did he have?

He gestured to their driver to start the car while his father got in the front seat and he squeezed in beside Layla in the back. The matchmaker, who had followed them outside, came over to speak to them.

‘They’re a very good family as you can see, sir,’ he said, removing his skullcap to reveal a balding scalp as he peered through the window at Rashid. ‘She is a very nice girl, no? You will say yes?’

Rashid knew he would say yes, but he didn’t want to say it to this man who arranged marriages for a living, whose only interest in Rashid’s agreement was the fifty thousand rupees that he would be paid by Rashid’s father once the marriage was confirmed. The thought made him feel slightly disgusted, this bartering of two people’s lives, this reducing of potential love to a monetary exchange.

The whole system troubled him, and yet it was the way things had always been done, the way his own parents had been married. They had already started putting together a ‘marriage CV’ for Layla, listing her details, her height and skin colour, her personality traits and education.

When he was in Connecticut, he had been curious about the dating culture of the West, at first appalled and then intrigued by the freedom with which men and women interacted with each other—something he’d seen in movies, something that was even gaining traction here in Sri Lanka among non-Muslim communities—and yet it had been confronting to suddenly be in an environment where people were free to meet and mingle, where indulging in hedonistic pleasures such as sex and alcohol seemed completely natural and one-night stands appeared to be more common than relationships.

Before long, he had created a profile on Match.com and started chatting with a few girls. He first dated a dark-haired South American girl, mostly because her duskiness felt more familiar, then when she said she didn’t think she could be with someone who didn’t smoke or drink, he grew bolder and asked another girl, Julie, whose skin reminded him of the pale frangipani flowers in his mother’s garden, whose hair glittered between his fingers like threads of gold.

She was the first girl he’d kissed, and even now he wasn’t sure if he had kissed her or she had kissed him. She’d told him later that she found his shyness, his hesitation to touch her, charming.

It was strange to think of Julie now, on this hot afternoon in Colombo. Strange to think of how they’d made love in her apartment in Hartford, how she cooked spaghetti and meatballs out of a packet afterwards for dinner. He’d asked her if there was pork in the meatballs and she had laughed about the fact that he wouldn’t eat pork although he’d just committed the greater sin of fornication.

It would be morning in Hartford now. Julie would just be waking up, the sunlight falling on her bright hair as she reached to turn off the alarm on her phone. He wondered if she still thought of him, if she ever checked her phone for his messages as she said she had done first thing each morning for those few months that they were with each other. He had never stayed the night, never invited her to his own apartment in Stamford which he shared with two other Sri Lankan boys, and somehow he thought this might have made it a little easier when the relationship ended.

Like the kiss, he was not sure who ended things. He remembered telling her that he would return to Sri Lanka after graduating, that his parents would expect him to get married. They were already sending him photographs of girls from Sri Lankan Muslim families that they thought he would like. He remembered her saying she wanted to stop seeing him before she loved him too much to let him go.

He remembered that neither of them fought for the relationship, that a life with Julie was never an option, yet it felt like his heart had broken and it was a long time before he stopped driving past her apartment to try and catch a glimpse of her, a long time before he could pick up his phone and not feel the urge to call her.

His memories of Julie now seemed more like illusions, images from a different time.

Perhaps the matchmaker was just a human version of Match.com—except that the weight of commitment was heavier, that the decision to marry someone was what gave you licence to discover who they were, what you were like, together.

‘We’ll let you know,’ his father told the matchmaker curtly, pressing a button so that the glass glided upwards, making the man snatch his fingers back from the window. He put his skullcap back on and raised his hand in farewell as the driver reversed the car onto the street.

*

‘I really liked her …’ Rashid started saying, just as his mother said, ‘She doesn’t suit you, Rashid …’

They both stopped and looked at each other across Layla’s shoulders as she tried to press herself further back into the seat to stay out of this conversation.

‘What do you mean she doesn’t suit me?’ he asked, feeling his jaw tighten the way it did when he knew he was approaching a conflict.

‘She’s too dark, first of all,’ his mother said. ‘People will laugh if you marry her—when you could have any girl in Colombo. And she seems so timid—like she’d fall over if someone tried to talk to her. You need someone a bit livelier, don’t you think? What do you say, Dada?’

She reached over to tap her husband on the shoulder.

‘I don’t know,’ Rashid’s father said. ‘They have money. And she seemed sweet enough to me, even if she’s dark. Let him decide, Ma, it’s his life.’

‘I like her,’ repeated Rashid.

‘Like her, why?’ His mother opened her palms outwards, not understanding, convinced she could make him change his mind. ‘Ask him, Layla,’ she said. ‘Ask him why he wants this girl.’

‘Okay, Naana, tell her,’ said Layla, looking at him curiously, and he knew that she too was thinking of Julie, about the night he told her of the white girl he had loved for a little while, and Layla had cried, saying it was both sweet and sad like a Bollywood movie.

He opened his mouth to answer and then closed it again, unsure how to put his feelings, his decision that Zia was the one that he would marry, into words.

His mother said she was timid, but she hadn’t seen the way Zia’s whole face lit up when he talked about travelling, the way her voice lifted, just slightly, when she talked about the things she loved—her books, her dreams, even the disappointment that she thought he couldn’t see when she spoke of her A Level results. How her shyness came and went, how she had not looked away when he looked into her eyes and spoke of going to the movies, and how her eyes were soft and brown but had grown dark under his gaze.

How she kept reaching for her shawl and then dropping her hands, looking down as though she wanted to make herself less visible, and he had wanted to take her chin and lift it up and tell her she was beautiful, to sit up and let him look at her and be unafraid. The way her nervousness fell away from her when she smiled.

How Zia was everything that Julie was not, and her dark honey skin would never remind him of the only other woman he had touched, and yet how much he wanted to touch Zia, to run his fingers along the smooth brown curve of her neck.

‘It feels right,’ he said firmly. ‘She’s the one.’

His mother kept talking, reminding him about other girls he had seen who were fairer, prettier, with bigger dowries; asking him to at least visit a few more girls before he made up his mind. He thought again of the efforts these girls and their families must go to in preparation for his visit, the food they must cook, the girls themselves, presented to him and his family who would have the privilege of accepting or denying them.

He thought of how he would feel if a man had sat in a room with Layla, the way he had with Zia today, and then told them after a few hours that she would not suit him after all. He wondered that his mother hadn’t thought of this, that she simply took it as their right to visit as many girls as possible.

There was a time when he would have questioned none of this, when it would have seemed perfectly right and natural to be doing these rounds, picking and choosing a wife for himself. But his time in Connecticut had changed him, had given him a glimpse into a world where women were also free to make their own decisions and have agency over their lives, and while he was hesitant to fully embrace that concept or apply it to his own life here in Sri Lanka, neither could he feel comfortable any longer with his own male privilege.

And so he continued to tell his mother no, that he would not go to see more girls just to please her, that he was content with Zia, with accepting her as his bride-to-be.

3

In the days that followed, parties were held to mark their engagement. The men from Zia’s family—her father, Amir, uncles and cousins—visited Rashid’s house to sit together and recite the opening surah of the Quran, Al-Fatiha, to confirm their contract to be married in the eyes of God.

When they returned, they sat on the veranda, drinking tea and talking about their visit. Zia lingered in the living room, trying to learn more about her fiancé and his family from the snippets of conversation. Fazal Uncle, her father’s brother, wondered aloud how pious Rashid was, saying he didn’t notice his lips moving when they were reciting the Fatiha. Dada said something which Zia couldn’t hear, and when she tried to move closer, Amir caught her eye and grinned. He stood up from the cane chair on which he sat and came towards her, something in his arms.

‘Look,’ he said, showing her a red hooded jumper that was far too thick for him to ever wear in Colombo. ‘It’s a UConn Huskies hoodie from the college basketball team—how cool is that? Rashid gave it to me.’

She took it from him and ran her hand over the warm red fabric, the logo of the wolf that meant nothing to her. She felt a pang of envy that Amir had been the first to receive a gift from the man who was going to be her husband.

‘What else happened?’ she asked, returning the jumper to Amir and moving into the shadows again so Dada wouldn’t see her. ‘Did he speak with you? What did he say?’

‘Not much,’ said Amir. ‘We talked about America a bit. He said I might be able to get into UConn too if I wanted to—apparently they have a lot of scholarships open for international students, but I don’t think Mama and Dada would want me to travel that far, do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Zia, looking away from him, not wanting to talk about the things Amir could do that she never would. ‘Go,’ she said, giving him a small push, ‘I can see Dada looking for you. Tell me later if you remember anything else that he said.’

*

When she was washing the teacups in the sink that night, Amir wandered into the kitchen, the red jumper still clutched in his hands.

‘Dhaatha,’ he said, ‘I remembered something.’

‘What?’ she asked, looking up from the white porcelain cup that she was scrubbing.

‘He asked me about you—what you like to eat and what your favourite colours are. What did you guys talk about the other day anyway? I would have thought you’d have covered all that stuff.’

Zia returned her attention to the cup, trying not to smile.

The next evening Rashid’s mother, sister, aunts and cousins arrived at Zia’s house with gifts—large wicker baskets filled with imported chocolates, rich saris and salwars, shoes and designer perfumes wrapped in patterned cellophane and tied with lavish gold and silver ribbons. There was a cake with swirls of buttercream icing and sugar flowers and ‘Rashid & Zia’ written across it in silver frosting.

Layla carried a smaller box wrapped in purple, Zia’s favourite colour. She handed it to Zia and watched while she unwrapped the gift: a box of the Galaxy chocolates she loved, and a brand-new mobile phone, the first that Zia had ever owned.

‘Keep it safe—he said he would call you tonight,’ Layla said, her eyes bright with excitement.

Mama and Nazrin Aunty placed the cake and the baskets on the dining table and when they ran out of space, across the marble floors of the living room, to be admired by friends and relatives, knowing that the more extravagant these gifts, the greater the respect for Rashid as a prospective husband would be.

Layla darted around the room, taking photographs of everything and several of Zia, who was dressed in a peach net lehenga, the wide embroidered skirts spread across the chair where she sat.

‘For Rashid,’ Layla whispered in Zia’s ear, bumping her nose against the heavy bronze earrings that Zia was wearing. Zia’s skin tingled at her proximity, at the thought of Rashid looking at these photographs of her, of hearing his voice on her new phone that night.

When Jamila came over and sat next to Zia, she found herself tensing, remembering the stories she’d been told of how no mother-in-law would ever be fully accepting of her son’s wife, and how it would be up to Zia to endear herself to this woman, by being docile, by making her son happy.

‘You seem a little fairer in that colour,’ Jamila said, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘You should make sure to be careful what colours you wear when you’re with Rashid. You’ll never come close to his colour, of course, but maybe we can make you look a little better with clothes and makeup.’

Stung, Zia opened her mouth to protest and found to her dismay that she could not, that years of obedience to her parents, who had never said anything so unkind to her, had made it impossible for her to contradict this woman who would be the new parent figure in her life.

She was even more unsettled when Jamila’s expression softened and she drew closer to Zia, putting an arm around her and gesturing to Layla to take a photograph of the two of them together.

‘You must call me Mami now,’ she said to Zia, taking her hand and slipping a sparkling ring onto her finger. She kissed her on both cheeks and then on her forehead, sealing Zia’s engagement to Rashid.

4

The rich silks gleamed in the muted light of the shop—crimson, emerald and shades of deep blue—the soft fabrics slithering between her fingers. The walls were stacked with rolls of vibrant handlooms, pastel cottons, translucent chiffons, heavy brocades, creamy lace threaded with silver and gold. A mannequin was artfully draped in brightly patterned satin wrapped like a sari around the waist, and another wore a sarong that looked purple in one light and maroon in another.

Zia was at her father’s shop, where he ran the fabric business that he inherited from his father, and his grandfather before him. The shop was over a hundred years old, and despite the modern furnishings and newly polished cement floors, Zia could still feel the history of her forefathers here, imagine the gleam and weight of the heavy old fabrics that were imported from India, the scratch of a pen as her great-grandfather wrote in the ancient ledgers that her father still kept locked away in the wooden cupboards.

When she was little, Dada would bring her here on weekends, leaving her to her own devices while he was busy giving directions to his small sales team or making phone calls about shipments that they were expecting. She would wander through the shop, much as she was doing now, sometimes rubbing her cheek on a piece of velvet or breathing in the strange smell of new cotton fabric. Later, Dada would find her curled up on one of the bean bags, reading or fast asleep, and before they went home he would take her to the café next door and buy her favourite ice cream: mint and pistachio.

One day this shop would belong to Amir, who already spent most of his afternoons here, telling customers how to make mulberry silk last a lifetime or which linens were likely to keep their colour. Amir, who could go anywhere and do anything with his life, would still choose to be a businessman and shop owner because that was what he had been told all his life, because it was easy, comfortable, the thing he knew best.

‘Will you really try to go abroad?’ Zia had asked him the day after his visit to Rashid’s house. ‘What will you study?’

But by then Amir had already lost interest, saying that he didn’t want to spend that many years away from home. How easily he discarded a thought that was so enticing to Zia, how carelessly he wore the freedoms she coveted.

As she held a printed teal cotton against her arm to see how it looked, a bell tinkled softly and a gush of warm air wafted in as the front door opened. She heard Dada’s voice, the exchange of salaams, and a few moments later her heartbeat quickened as footsteps moved towards the interior of the shop.

Dada appeared, looking flustered as she had known he would, wiping his face with the cotton handkerchief that he always kept in his pocket.

‘Mahal, Rashid is here,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘He says he was just dropping in to get something for his sister but since you are here, he’s asked if he can see you. Shall I say okay? Should we wait until Mama gets here?’

Last night, when he called her, Zia had told Rashid that she would be at the shop today to pick up some fabric to make new clothes for her bridal wardrobe, that she would be there for an hour while Mama visited a friend. Rashid said he would find an excuse to drop by and they had worked out what time would be best.

‘Mama won’t be here for a while,’ Zia said, glancing at the clock. ‘I don’t mind seeing him, Dada. He could look at some of this cloth with me.’

‘Yes, I could,’ said Rashid, who had appeared behind Dada, smiling at her over the top of Dada’s head.

Dada turned and looked from Rashid to her, his gaze thoughtful. Zia could see that he didn’t want to offend his future son-in-law but was also probably worried about what Mama might say when she found out. Perhaps he was also wondering how it would look if one of their relatives dropped by. You weren’t meant to be getting too familiar with the bridegroom before the marriage took place.

‘It’s almost time to close,’ she reminded him. ‘And you’re here anyway, Dada.’

She hoped Dada wouldn’t stay with them the whole time—she had placed her hopes on his discomfort, on his inability to decide what to do in this situation, to leave them alone.

‘Okay, okay,’ Dada said. ‘You both have a chat. I’ll quickly get us some tea. If any customers come in, just tell them to have a look around.’

Dada left, going upstairs to the small kitchen in the storeroom, and suddenly there was silence, just herself and Rashid amongst the colourful fabrics. He walked over to her, standing so close that she could smell his perfume—a faint, spicy, glamorous scent, not the traditional attars that Dada used. His hair was slightly longer than when she last saw him, curling over the edges of his collar, and he had folded up the sleeves of his navy pinstriped shirt. There was a strange tingle in her stomach that she didn’t recognise and she dropped her gaze to his arms, the smooth muscle that flexed between his elbow and wrist, the brown leather watch that he wore.

It was only their third meeting. The last time he’d visited was soon after the engagement parties. They had sat awkwardly on the veranda while Mama lingered nearby, interrupting every now and then to ask Rashid a question. Since the wedding was to be so soon, Mama seemed to think it was wise to limit their meetings.

It was as though Mama thought the more time they spent together, the more chances there were for something to go wrong, for one of them to change their minds. And so she hovered over Zia, talking about the wedding, the preparations, the relatives they would have to visit afterwards as a couple, words and plans that carried Zia in an inevitable stream towards the life that was to come.

‘There’ll be time enough to get to know each other after you’re married,’ she said to Zia.

And yet Zia had wanted this moment, just a window of time when she could be with Rashid by herself before they were husband and wife. It felt like the only opportunity she would ever have to do something both clandestine and romantic, even if it was a few snatched minutes while her father moved around in the kitchen upstairs.

Rashid picked up the teal fabric that she was still holding. Against his lighter skin, the blue seemed to turn a different shade, losing some of its brilliance.

‘This would look beautiful on you,’ he said. ‘Will you get it?’

Yes, she said, she would. She showed him the other fabrics that she had chosen, moving slowly through the aisles as he followed. He commented on the colours and patterns, but didn’t speak of anything else, and she wondered what he was thinking, if he really wanted to be here at all. The intimacy of their nightly conversations on the phone, in the darkness of her bedroom after her parents had gone to sleep, now seemed an imagined thing.

Was it only last night that he had asked her what she was most afraid of? She’d told him she needed to think about it, that she had many fears—that something would happen to Mama or Dada, that Amir would hurt himself during a rugby match, that she would die before she had done enough good deeds to get into heaven. He laughed at this last and asked her when she had done anything bad, but she hadn’t been able to think of anything, had asked him what he was afraid of instead.

She still wasn’t sure if she understood his response. He said he was afraid of forgetting. That his memories made him who he was and that sometimes he was afraid he would wake up one day and no longer remember the things that mattered the most to him and that when he lost those memories, he would also lose himself.

The timbre of his voice was different over the phone at night, softened by space and drowsiness, and it was easier to speak of these things when she was not aware of his dark eyes on her, of how his fingers tapped restlessly on the rolls of cloth as he walked beside her.

Upstairs, a spoon clinked and despair rose in Zia at the sound—Dada would be down soon, and all she had done was talk about fabric and colours and which seamstress would be making her clothes. She might not even see Rashid again until they were married.

They had reached the end of the shop and she stopped in front of the wall-length mirror in the corner, startled by their reflections. She saw how her head just reached the second button on Rashid’s shirt. She met his eyes in the mirror and out of habit reached for her shawl to drape it over her head.

‘Wait,’ he said, gently catching her hand. ‘You look so lovely as you are. Must you?’

She stilled, absorbing his words, the warmth of his hand clasped around hers.

‘Why do you cover your hair?’ he asked, still looking at her in the mirror.

She looked at herself, the dark red shawl looped around her neck. Covering had been such a gradual process—as a child, she wore short dresses like all the other little girls and then as she approached her teens Mama had started making her skirts longer, then insisted that she wear longer sleeves, trousers, shawls, until it became so that only her face and her hands were visible when she stepped out of the house.

The first time Mama asked her to cover her head, she had given Zia a pale pink scarf, showing Zia how to fold it into a triangle and wrap it around her face, fastening it at her chin with a safety pin. Dada had looked at her with pride and placed a hand on her head, on the pink fabric of the scarf, telling her she had made the right choice. Despite everything she had learned and been told about why women should cover their hair, it was this that had made her happy, that convinced her to do it every day since.

She wanted to tell Rashid that she did it because it was the right thing to do but this no longer seemed as clear as it used to be.

‘Because it’s what I’m used to,’ she said finally, adding, ‘now they say I must do as you say.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t tell you what to do. My mother covers her hair but Layla doesn’t and I like that they both made their own choices. I like how you look without the hijab, but if it’s important to you I won’t stop you. What do you want to do?’

She hesitated, and her fingers curled slightly into his fist. She realised that she didn’t know the answer. That no one had ever asked her this question, in quite this way, before.

Cups clattered on a tray and the stairs creaked.

Rashid dropped her hand and stepped away from her, increasing the distance between them. When she looked up at him, he smiled in a way that made her want to reach for her shawl again. It no longer felt like she had lost the potential of this stolen moment.

She wondered again what he was afraid of forgetting, what he meant by the memories that defined him.

She wondered if the reason she was unable to articulate her greatest fear was because she still didn’t know what would hurt the most to lose.

5

The night before the wedding, Mama came into Zia’s room with a mug of warm milk sweetened with a spoon of honey, as she always did. Zia was brushing the dried henna off her hands and feet, the greenish dust falling away to reveal the intricate burgundy patterns that her cousin Mina had painted on earlier that evening.

Zia’s friends had just left, after decorating the room with fresh flowers—bouquets of pale pink and white roses in glass vases on the dresser and bedside tables, small sprays tied to the handles of the gleaming teak wardrobe. The gold embroidery on the mauve silk bedspread glinted in the pool of warm yellow light from the lamp on the bedside table, the fragrance of the roses and the earthy smell of henna mingling with the sharp scent of new furniture.

Mama tut-tutted when she saw the mound of green dust on the floor and left to return with the broom and dustpan as well as a small bottle of coconut oil. After sweeping away the henna dust, she sat with Zia on the floor, gently massaging the oil onto her hands and feet to soothe her skin and allow the henna stains to deepen.

‘Your skin seems a bit lighter after the sandalwood masks,’ she said. ‘You must try to keep out of the sun when you go on honeymoon.’

Mama had always been worried that finding a husband for Zia would be difficult because of her dark skin. Mama herself was light-skinned but Zia and Amir took after their father with his swarthy complexion. As Zia grew older, she’d learned to stay out of the sun, to rub lime juice and tomato pulp on her face once a week, to put a fine dusting of baby powder on her face before she went out in the mornings.

It didn’t matter for Amir—no one minded if a boy was dark—but all the marriage proposal ads in the newspapers stated that prospective bridegrooms preferred a ‘fair, slim, pretty’ girl. Everyone knew that a dark girl didn’t have half the chances that a fair-skinned girl did.

And Jamila continued to make barbed remarks. ‘We always thought Rashid would marry a fair girl, because he’s so fair,’ she had said on her last visit, ‘but for some reason he seems so taken with Zia.’

Zia smiled and pretended to be flattered but later that day she had stared at herself in the mirror and wondered if she would always be a dark shadow next to light-skinned Rashid.

And yet Rashid himself had never commented on her complexion, only telling her several times over the past few weeks that he thought her beautiful. After a lifetime of being told that her dark skin was less than desirable, of enduring comments made by relatives about what a pity it was that she had not inherited her mother’s light complexion, she wore this mantle of attractiveness with uncertainty, and yet she too was slowly beginning to see herself through Rashid’s eyes, to feel more pleasure than disdain when she looked at herself in the mirror, to accept his compliments with grace rather than denial.

There was a burst of laughter from downstairs where Amir and his friends were playing carrom, flicking the small round discs on the board with their fingers. Amir would probably win; he had such an accurate aim when they played, pocketing all of Zia’s carrom men before she had the chance to take even half of his. She wished she was with them now, wondering how long it would be before she could play with him again.

All the rooms in their five-bedroom home were full with family members and friends who had come to stay. Some of the younger guests were sleeping on reed mats on the floor; four of the girls had woken up this morning to find charcoal moustaches drawn on their faces. They still hadn’t caught the culprits but Zia was sure it was Amir or one of the other boys.

Tonight none of them would sleep, talking and laughing into the early hours as they ironed their clothes, polished their shoes and got everything ready for tomorrow, snacking on the sweets that you only got to eat during a wedding—the mango, pineapple and rambutan dosi, pieces of fruit that were tart and sweet from being boiled for hours in syrup, and spoonfuls of seenima, the mixture of milk powder and sugar that dissolved on your tongue. They would pack the small dark, rich pieces of wedding cake, wrapped in oil paper, in the golden favour boxes printed with Zia’s and Rashid’s names and the date of their wedding.

It was a party from which she, as the bride, was excluded.

Her room was the only haven in the whole house at the moment and Mama said she wanted to stay and rest with her daughter for a little while, on the last night before Zia belonged to someone else.

‘What has Rashid been saying?’ Mama asked. ‘Is everything going well on their end for tomorrow?’

‘I think so,’ Zia said, not wanting to tell her that Rashid had not called her tonight as he usually did or even replied to her texts. He would be busy, she told herself. Unlike her, he would be in the thick of things, organising everything himself rather than having to wait on the sidelines and watch as she had to do.

She would ask him about it tomorrow.

Tomorrow, when they were married.

Married. The thought spun around her head until she was almost dizzy with it.

‘You are lucky, you know,’ Mama sighed. ‘I didn’t get to meet or speak with Dada until the day we married—I only saw his photograph. So stern he looked and he was so much older than me too!’

Zia had heard the story many times, sometimes from her father but mostly from her mother, as a reminder of how much things had changed. That couples were allowed to meet and speak with each other before the wedding but also that love could grow after marriage as much as before.

She had never seen her parents be openly affectionate with each other. Still, last year, when Mama had been in hospital for a week with pneumonia, Zia had seen her father suddenly become lost, starting sentences that he never finished, wandering into the kitchen and staring absently at the place where Mama would usually be in the evenings, making tea or cooking dinner.

Mama had been eighteen, two years younger than Zia was now, when she was married. Zia’s father, ten years older than Mama, had not come to see her until the marriage was finalised, Mama said. It was his sisters who came first and returned to tell him that his bride-to-be had skin as pale as milk tea and a voice so soft they had to ask her to repeat everything twice when she spoke.

Dada sometimes joked that the voice had only grown louder over the years, especially when Mama was angry with her children, calling Zia away from her book when she was supposed to be helping in the kitchen or shouting at Amir for clambering up the mango tree when he was supposed to be doing his homework.

And yet Zia had never heard her raise her voice at her father, not even when Zia knew for certain that he had made her angry, like the time he had promised to take Mama to see Amir play in his first rugby match but when the day came he forgot and only came home long after the match was over and Amir had been dropped home by one of his friends’ parents.

Looking at her mother’s face, which was still smooth and unlined by wrinkles, Zia wondered what invisible boundaries kept Mama’s anger in check.

Was it love, or fear, that kept you from speaking your deepest hurts?

She tried to grasp at the thoughts that swirled in her mind, the apprehension that she couldn’t seem to put into words.

‘Mama,’ she asked quietly. ‘Will everything be okay? Will I be a good wife? I’m so scared sometimes, thinking about tomorrow.’

Mama continued absently rubbing Zia’s palms, a slight frown on her face.

‘He seems like a good man, they’re a very good family,’ she said. ‘He will look after you, Zia. You must remember to be a good and obedient wife, to be patient if he gets angry with you, to remember the things he likes and to avoid the things he doesn’t. A marriage is always in the woman’s hands, you know. You can make a heaven out of hell if you want.’

After she left, Zia lay on her new bed, Mama’s words fluttering like small, frightened birds in her chest. In what ways, she wondered, would her patience be tested? What was the hell in her future that she would have to transform? When the time came—if it did—would she know, would she have the wisdom with which to act?

The future seemed wreathed in shadow, her fears deepening in the face of these new questions for which she could imagine no answers.

6

He made his way through the dim garden, towards the old jackfruit tree that grew by the edge of the concrete wall. The rope swing that his father had put up for him and Layla so many years ago still hung from its thick branches, the faded yellow fabric of the seat now threadbare. The branch creaked as he lowered himself onto the swing, bending to his weight as he gently rocked back and forth in the darkness, hidden now from the house, with its incessant noise and chatter, the stream of relatives who kept arriving, some whose names and faces he had forgotten, not having seen them since he was a child.

He had felt his irritation growing all afternoon as he tried to focus on the logistics of the wedding tomorrow, calling the hotel and caterers to make sure everything was in place to host the hundreds of guests from his and Zia’s families, talking to his father about the timing of the nikah and the Imam they had organised to perform the marriage.

People kept interrupting him as he went about the house, asking personal questions as though they had every right to know. How old was his fiancée? Pretty? Educated, English-speaking like himself? Did she come with a good dowry? He was such a good catch—hopefully she came with her own house at least! How much was the wedding costing, and who was paying for it?

It was his mother who had finally made him snap, wondering out loud about Zia’s suitability again, listing out the faults she’d noted the first day they had gone to Zia’s house as she helped him pack his clothes in a suitcase to take with him the next day—that she was too dark, too quiet, that it was a pity Rashid had made up his mind so quickly.

He had felt the darkness gathering in his mind, the anger that always came so suddenly, unbalancing him with its intensity.

‘Will you stop that now—just stop!’ he said, clenching his fists around the shirt he was folding. ‘I’m getting married to her tomorrow—what’s the point of talking about all this now?’

He realised as he said the words that his anger was edged by fear—that his mother was right, that there may have been someone better for him, and then he was even angrier with himself for thinking it. He saw her lips set in a straight line, her eyes narrowing. His mother had a temper of her own, after all.

As a child, he had never been sure what would set it off, knowing only that if he made her angry, she would chase him with a cane, the thin reed whip that stung his skin and left livid red welts along his arms and legs. Their father, a placid man, was rarely home to witness these rages, and even if he was, refused to interfere. Afterwards, it would still be his mother who rubbed oil to soothe his broken skin, who would hold him and comfort him as he cried, saying that if only he had been a good boy, if only he had listened when she’d told him what to do, if only he’d stopped running, she wouldn’t have needed to hit him, and he wouldn’t be in so much pain.

And even as he’d struggled to learn how to please her, to stay away from her when she was in a temper, he had felt an answering anger rise up inside him, and he feared it because it felt darker and murkier than his mother’s, which flared and died in minutes, a strange whirl of rage and fear, resentment and grief, each emotion rising and disappearing in sharp, painful waves. It sweltered for days and drew him in like quicksand and he had learned that it was only by reaching again and again for the memories of times when he was happy, when he was himself, that he was finally able to shake free of it.

Once, when he’d mentioned the canings to Julie, she had been horrified and used words like ‘child abuse’ and he’d been appalled that he’d painted his mother to her in such a light.

‘It wasn’t abuse,’ he protested, refusing to see a counsellor as Julie suggested he should. ‘She loved me.’

And she had looked at him sadly and said that it was still abuse, that people who loved you didn’t have the right to hurt you. He’d put it down to Julie’s Western upbringing, her need to define things and put them in boxes, her lack of awareness of the culture in which he had grown up.

As he grew older, his mother had seemed to grow calmer and less prone to whip a son who was now taller and stronger than she was, and yet, like now, her words could still both hurt and anger him.

‘What—on your wife’s side already? She’s more important to you than your mother even before you marry her? I didn’t think you’d be like that, Rashid, I thought I raised you with a backbone. Aren’t I allowed to have an opinion?’

‘You know that’s not it,’ he snapped, throwing the shirt onto the pile of other clothes. And before she could say anything else he’d walked out of the room, ignoring the relatives who called out to him from the hallway, the cousin who tried to stop him to ask if he knew where she could find a prayer rug. He left the house that felt hot and stale and walked into the cool garden in search of a refuge from his mother’s disturbing words and the weight of his own thoughts.

Moonlight filtered through the tree’s thick green canopy of leaves, falling in silvery patches on the ground. A truck rumbled past on the road on the other side of the wall, its fumes making him cough a little. The pungent smell of the low-hanging fruit wafted down, bringing memories of the times he and Layla would sit on the kitchen floor and slice open one of the huge fruits with its thick, prickly skin, digging into the soft pulp to find the sweet, juicy yellow flesh that melted like honey on their tongues.

Tomorrow night, at this time, he would be married. He wondered what Zia was doing at that moment, what she was thinking, and reached into his pocket for his phone, curling his fingers over it for a few seconds and then letting it go. He didn’t want to speak to her tonight, he decided, not in this mood. She would be wondering why he hadn’t called, but better that than risk his darkness spilling over, possibly turning into sharp-edged words.

He shut his eyes and reached into his mind for the things he knew and already liked about Zia—her laugh, which tinkled like a rush of gurgling water, the gentleness with which she greeted him whenever she answered the phone, the warmth of her skin the only time he had touched her, that day in her father’s shop. He had chosen her for his bride because he knew he could build a life with her, because she was intelligent and beautiful and, really, what else did he need? If he had continued to go on the endless merry-go-round of bride visits as his mother wanted him to, the struggle to make a choice would have only become harder. He’d felt guilty every time he said no to someone. And his mother, he suddenly realised, with the fierce, possessive love and pride she had in him, her sense of him being hers to give away, would have never been completely satisfied with any woman he chose to be his wife.

He felt a strange relief at the thought of moving to Zia’s house tomorrow—they would live there with her family initially, as was the custom, and in the meantime, he would look for a place for the two of them to begin their lives together as a family themselves. There was a freedom, he had discovered, in leaving the place in which you had grown up and the people who had defined life for you until that moment, to live among strangers.

The first time he had left was when he moved to Connecticut, excitement throbbing through him as he prepared for a journey that would change his life, the ways in which he saw the world. That leaving had untethered him and he still sometimes felt that restless urge to keep moving, to seek out those chances to recreate himself, in a new country, a new home, a new life.

Perhaps one day he and Zia would move together to a different country, a Western country, where she too could experience the freedoms of that life. He remembered the way she had shared her dreams of travelling and thought that perhaps this was something he could give her, not just a journey but a life somewhere different. Perhaps, somewhere in the world, there was a place where he could quieten these demons, these tornadoes of thought that he had been trying to escape all his life.

There was a movement in the darkness and Layla appeared out of the shadows, her dark hair gleaming in the moonlight. She had always been so soft footed, he never knew she was there until she would suddenly appear beside him, smiling mischievously if she had startled him. He felt himself soften at the sight of her, releasing his grip on the rough coir rope of the swing—sweet little Layla, who had escaped the brunt of his mother’s wrath but had also never been the focus of her attention. She had grown up in his shadow yet she seemed happy to have done so, looking to him with the reverence that she had been taught by her parents.

‘Naana,’ she called him as she had always done, using the endearment for older brother. ‘I thought I might find you here. You’re lucky that branch hasn’t fallen on your head!’

He laughed and stood up, tugging at the swing.

‘This thing will still be here a hundred years from now—long after you and I are gone, trust me.’

She glanced up at the tree and then reached out and touched his arm.

‘They’re looking for you—you’d better come back in. Mama’s just sitting in your room waiting for you. Have you had a quarrel with her? Ramiz Uncle says everyone argues with each other the day before a wedding, it’s normal. Come on, Naana, let’s go, you need your sleep before tomorrow.’

‘Okay.’ He nodded and let her lead him back to the house although his thoughts were still swirling like sharp fragments that hurt every time he breathed.

7

On the night of the wedding, the house glittered with fairy lights as though covered with a blanket of stars. Zia turned to look at it one more time, the home she had lived in all her life, now transformed into something glamorous and mysterious, familiar yet strange, like herself tonight.

Her uncle’s silver Mercedes, the ritziest car in the family, had been decorated with lavender ribbons and orchids to take her to the Colombo Hilton where the wedding was being held. Her parents sat on either side of her and Amir got in the passenger seat next to the driver.

As they drove through the busy streets of the city, people turned to look at the car, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of her, the bride. The streetlights glinted off the myriad pearls and rhinestones on the cream-coloured silk sari she was wearing, her face that was unusually bright and exotic with makeup, her thick hair coiled into an elaborate hairdo by the beautician who had worked on her all afternoon.

As a child, Zia had loved weddings. She would look at the bride, sitting on the dais in all her splendour as she waited for the groom, and imagine the joy and hope the woman must be feeling, knowing that she was going to spend the rest of her life with the man she loved.

She had imagined that was how she would feel when it was her turn.

She hadn’t known that there would be hope but also fear, that there would be love but also doubt. She hadn’t known that the tools with which she had to build her dreams would be so fragile.

Once, during their nightly conversations, Rashid had sung to her over the phone a song she had never heard before called ‘Beautiful In My Eyes’. He said it was an old favourite, that he had always imagined singing it to the girl of his dreams. That night she had begun to see how she could love him, her hopes for the future finally beginning to take shape. The next day when she had called him at work to tell him how much the moment meant to her, he had been brusque, cutting her off by saying he had meetings to get to.

He apologised later, saying he’d been having a stressful day, yet he hadn’t acknowledged the reason that Zia had called, and this memory still lingered; the dissonance of his tender singing and curt dismissal creating an edge of uncertainty to her thoughts.

They spoke often but there were still times when he felt like a stranger, when she realised that she was about to spend her life with this man whose ways of being in the world were still a mystery to her.

Not for them the slowly unfolding romances in the English novels that she loved to read, the meeting of eyes across a room, the thrill of discovering that the person you were falling for was also falling for you. And yet there was romance, there was excitement, even tonight as she stepped into the unknown, not just into marriage but also into a life that would be different from the one her parents had created for her.

The thought made her sit up straighter, drawing a deep breath as they pulled up to the entrance of the hotel. A photographer stepped forward from where he had been waiting near the hotel doors to capture the moment that Zia stepped out of the car. Dada held the door open as Mama helped her out, carefully lifting the heavy fall of the sari and draping it over her arm.

With her parents on either side, she grasped her bouquet and walked slowly into the ballroom of the Hilton where the waiting guests rose to their feet, the buzz of conversation and laughter muting as they entered. Large crystal chandeliers glittered overhead, golden beams falling on the women in bright saris and salwars on the left, the men in their suits and sherwanis on the right. Creamy tablecloths scattered with gold dust were laid with dishes of samosas, spring rolls and glasses of orange cordial.

At the end of the great hall was a stage with a champagne-coloured seat set against a backdrop of white columns draped in chiffon and decorated with pale gold bouquets of orchids that complemented Zia’s sari.

Cream, white and gold: those were the colours she and Mama had decided on for the wedding theme and now Zia felt as though she was moving slowly through a gilded dream, her limbs weighed down by the sari, the bouquet, the heavy gold jewellery at her throat and wrists, the diamond tiara on her brow.

When they reached the stage, Dada fleetingly touched her elbow and left to join the men while Mama helped her sit on the sofa, arranging the sari so that it fell in soft, neat folds to her sandaled feet. When Mama left, with a reminder to keep her eyes downcast for modesty, Zia thought that this must be a particular kind of loneliness—to be a bride on a stage, waiting for the man who was going to be her husband.

Despite Mama’s warnings, she raised her head and scanned the guests. There were relatives and friends from her parents’ circles, second and third cousins, great aunts and uncles that she hadn’t seen in years, unfamiliar faces that she realised must be from Rashid’s family. Her friends were gathered at a table: Azrah, who had just been married herself a few months ago, Naheed, Ruksana and Amal, their heads thrown back in laughter at something Azrah was saying.

Zia wondered if she was talking about her husband whom Azrah had married for love; the boy who used to wait at the bus stop for her every morning, who had once stopped Zia on her way to school and asked if she could give Azrah the letter in which he told her that he loved her. Azrah had let them all read the letter, had asked them for advice on whether she should respond, and they had all breathed a collective yes, envious yet wanting to vicariously experience this love story.

Azrah’s parents had tried to conceal the fact that it was a ‘love marriage’, conducting all the usual ceremonies and functions, and yet it had seemed to Zia at their wedding that anyone who saw the way the bride and groom looked at each other, the ease with which they spoke to each other as they sat on the bridal throne, must know that this was a couple who had known and loved each other long before that day.

Azrah caught her eye and smiled, the rest of them all turning to look at her and wave, Ruksana giving her a thumbs up and mouthing the word ‘beautiful’.

There was a dip in the murmuring of the crowd. In the sudden silence a child’s voice rang out from across the room: ‘The bridegroom is here!’

More guests poured in through the entrance, scattering about the hall and taking their seats. Through her mascara-thickened lashes, Zia saw Rashid enter with his parents, the red hat with its black tassel that symbolised his Moor heritage at odds with his dark Western suit and tie.

He sat on the sofa at the opposite end of the hall, beside her father and the Imam who would perform the nikah. Dada had wanted this to take place earlier in the mosque but Zia had begged him to let the marriage be conducted on the same night as the reception in the wedding hall. Even though she would have no part in it, she wanted at least to watch her own marriage taking place and Dada had given in since Rashid had also said he would like it that way.

The Imam’s voice, low and melodious, floated across the room as he began the ceremony with, ‘Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem.’ In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. He took Rashid’s hand and placed it on her father’s, asking Dada to repeat the words, first in Arabic and then in Tamil, ‘I give you my daughter, who has been in my guardianship, in marriage, with God as my witness.’

Then it was Rashid’s turn, saying that he accepted the care and guardianship of Zia, that his mahr or bridal gift to her was a gold necklace. He stumbled over the Arabic and Tamil words that sounded less graceful in his unaccustomed tongue; like Zia, he too had grown up speaking English.

The Imam passed them the papers. Dada reached for the Parker pen in his breast pocket and signed with a flourish before handing the pen to Rashid, and Zia watched the nib glide over the page. It was then Amir’s turn to sign. As her brother, he was the second witness to her marriage.

Somewhere in the hall a baby cried, someone coughed, a chair dragged across the floor.

Rashid stood up first. They were married, she was now his wife, and as she looked at him walking towards her with Dada and Amir, there was a curious sense of grief, a yearning for this moment to be something other than what it was.

She had thought that being able to watch her marriage take place would give her some satisfaction, some agency, but instead it felt as though she had experienced an irrevocable loss, to have been an observer to this sacred moment, to have done nothing other than watch while the men in her life made these promises on her behalf.

Her heart pounded as Rashid reached the stage, the bouquet trembling in her slippery, henna-patterned hands. His mother stepped forward with an oblong black box, the gold necklace gleaming in the light from the chandeliers as Rashid lifted it from its bed of red velvet. He bent down, his fingers warm on Zia’s neck as he fastened the necklace. Glancing up at him as he sat down next to her, Zia saw that his face was sombre, that he was not looking at her, and she swallowed the salaams that rose to her lips.

Nazrin Aunty came up to them with the bronze aarti platter, upon which sat a small bowl of water with a thread of saffron, plump green limes and dark red chillies, waving the platter around Zia and Rashid in the age-old tradition meant to ward off evil eyes. She asked Zia, then Rashid, to spit into the bowl. Beside her Zia felt him move with what she imagined was discomfort at the indignity of it, and yet he, like Zia, complied; these were the small rituals that their families believed would keep them blessed. Aunty kissed her on the forehead before stepping away.

Around them, the laughter and conversation began to flow again, voices that remarked how good the bride and groom looked tonight, how they appeared to be perfectly suited to each other.

*

It was past midnight when they returned to Zia’s house after the wedding. This time it was Rashid who sat in the back of the Mercedes next to her while Amir chatted with the driver as they drove back through the city that still hummed with subdued energy, lights blinking in tall buildings, cars speeding along the quiet streets. Although the war had ended several years ago, soldiers still patrolled this area of the city, their dark forms moving in the shadows outside Temple Trees, the Prime Minister’s residence, the Sri Lankan flag fluttering in the pale light from a streetlamp.

The platinum ring that Dada had given Rashid shone dimly as he drummed his fingers on his knee. Occasionally he made a comment or answered a question from Amir but he was mostly silent, staring out into the darkness, and Zia too found herself unable to speak, caught in the strange spell of that dreamlike evening, a space between two lives in which they had gone from being strangers to husband and wife.

At home, they sat together once again while Mama and Dada hurried in and out of the kitchen serving sweets and small china cups of hot ginger coffee to the guests who had come to enjoy the final part of the evening, wandering into Zia’s bedroom to admire her bridal furniture, the jewellery displayed on her dresser, the bright new clothes in her wardrobe.

When they finally began to leave, Mama beckoned Zia to her room to change as Rashid went to say goodbye to his family. Although he would see them often, he would no longer live with them—until they moved into their own home, Zia and Rashid would live with her parents.

It was the way things were and yet seeing Rashid’s mother crying as she embraced him, his father wheeling in a suitcase full of Rashid’s belongings, Zia wondered for the first time about Rashid’s loss that night, in leaving his family and home to be a part of hers. Her life had been handed over to him but it was he—at least initially—who would face the most change.

Mama helped Zia remove the many tiny pins that held her sari in place, so Zia could change into the mauve silk nightdress and dressing gown that they had bought especially for this night, and undid the clasps in her hair so that it fell in thick waves over her back. In Mama’s eyes too there were tears when she kissed Zia goodnight, and Zia’s own filled in response. It was Rashid who was moving in so how was it that it was she who felt lost, overcome with nostalgia for her room as it used to be, for the nights when she wore a simple cotton shift and climbed into her narrow bed alone with a book?

He was still in his suit when he came into the room, spinning the red bridegroom’s hat in his hands as he stood there looking at her properly for the first time that night. Zia rose and went to him. They had spoken about their first night together many times over the past few weeks. There was no rush, he’d often said, they would give themselves time to get used to each other.

But how would they begin?

What words, what touch, would mark their entrance into that journey?

Here I am, she thought as she walked towards him, the edge of her robe fluttering against her ankles, the tiles cool against her feet. Your wife, Zia.

She stopped a few feet away from him, uncertain what to do.

‘We are both very tired,’ he said, making no move to touch her, still spinning the hat in his hands. ‘You go to bed, I’ll come in a bit. We should try and get some sleep.’

‘Okay,’ she said, after a moment of silence. Disappointment bloomed in her chest, thrummed down her arms to her fingertips.

He was right, they were both tired. They had all the nights ahead of them together. Perhaps this was how things were when the noise and confusion of a wedding had just ended, perhaps they both just needed to recover from the intensity of the celebrations.

She turned on the ceiling fan and lay down on the bed, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of Rashid moving about her room, the swish of the shirt sliding off his body, the jangle of a wristwatch dropping onto the glass top of the dresser. He turned off the lights and she stiffened as the mattress shifted with his weight, keeping very still as she felt him stretch and sigh, pulling the sheets over him. If she moved just a few inches, she could touch him, she could lay her head on his shoulder.

The darkness thickened. She could still hear people talking outside, the sounds of dishes being washed in the kitchen, Amir’s door opening and closing down the hallway. Somewhere in the distance there was a whoosh and a burst of muffled sound—someone had lit firecrackers. Rashid’s breathing grew deeper and slower, his body growing still and heavy with sleep, and even then she did not move, watching the shadowy curtains fluttering in the darkness. Although her body ached with exhaustion, it was a long time before she fell asleep.

8

She was alone in the room of the hotel where she and Rashid were on their honeymoon in Bentota, on the south coast of Sri Lanka. A gust of wind blew in through the open windows, bringing with it the sharp, salty scent of the Indian Ocean. The coconut trees outside swayed, the slim trunks bending, green fronds turning dark against the light of the setting sun. Zia watched Rashid walk down the pebbled pathway to the beach, slipping off his shoes and letting his feet sink into the damp, golden sand.

She would join him in a moment and they would go for a walk as they had done for the past few evenings, gathering small, perfect seashells that Zia put in a glass jar to take home, sitting on the rocks and watching the sea water pool into dark hollows beneath.

Zia loved the sea in all its moods. Even when there was a storm, she loved watching the way it swelled and grew dark and grey, the angry play of clouds and lightning, rain and wind. The deep stillness afterwards.

It was the first thing that she discovered she had in common with Rashid. He said he’d booked this cabin by the beach for their honeymoon so that he could share his love of the sea with her, because he thought it was the perfect place for them to begin their lives together.

They had been married for almost a week and yet it wasn’t until they’d arrived here that they were finally truly alone with each other and the grimness in which Rashid had held himself since the wedding began to unravel. He had begun to be more relaxed, open, tender towards her, more like the man who had sung a love song to her that night that she held so closely in her memory.

‘I get into these moods sometimes when things are stressful,’ he told her the first evening of their honeymoon. ‘It’s like there are a million thoughts racing in my head and it takes everything I have to try and catch those thoughts, to keep them from exploding. It was so crazy leading up to the wedding, you know? We had all these people staying over, and my parents were being difficult … I don’t know why there’s so much fuss around weddings. At the end of the day it was like it wasn’t even about you and me, people just wanted to have this big shindig.’

He knew he might be difficult to approach when he was in a mood, he told her, but if she gave him a little time he would always come around. He wanted to learn how to be a good husband to her. He would never want to hurt her. As he looked at her with anxiety colouring his eyes, she had assured him that yes, she did understand, that she too wanted to learn how to be a good wife to him, that they would discover all the ways in which they could love each other, together. And as she turned her face towards him, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her for the first time.

*

She walked down the pathway to the beach towards her husband, thinking of the things she’d learned about him in the past week—that he fell asleep with his hand tucked under his cheek like a child, that he had a small diamond-shaped birthmark on his chest just where his heart would be, that he drank milk tea at home with his family but preferred unsweetened black instant coffee, the way he had learned to drink it in America. How his face changed with his thoughts and how she was already learning to read the tilt of his lips, the flicker of his eyelids, the furrow of his brow.

He turned as she drew near, his face breaking into a smile as he reached for her hand, pulling her close to him. They stood there together, watching the white-tipped waves rise and fall, the roar and thud of the sea matching the beating of their hearts, water lapping their feet as sunbeams shattered into a cascade of sparkling stars in the ocean.

9

The first time that Rashid told her that he loved her, Zia was in the kitchen, baking a cake for a party at Nazrin Aunty’s house the next day. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the house was unusually quiet. Her parents were out visiting friends and Amir had gone to watch a cricket match with his friends. There were already several updates on his Instagram page, his face painted blue and yellow, Sri Lankan flags waving in the background.

Rashid had considered going with them but changed his mind at the last minute and was now watching the match in the living room. Rashid did not have many friends of his own, Zia had discovered, and never seemed much inclined to spend time away from home unless it was for work or with her. He did however accompany her to the frequent family lunches and dinners that took place in both their families and sometimes when they went out with her friends and their husbands, Zia found herself comparing him with the only other men she knew, secretly proud of his good looks and what seemed to her a more sophisticated outlook on the world.

And yet, one day she had heard Umar, Azrah’s husband, whisper an endearment to Azrah across the table, and as she saw the look that passed between them, she felt her own face burn from being privy to such an intimacy, the kind which was still unknown to her, that secret tenderness between lovers that they seemed to be able to access even as they sat amidst others.

Zia could hear the dull roar of the crowd, the beat of drums and blaring trumpets of the papare band from the TV. She would join him to watch the last half of the match when the excitement and tension was at its peak—she had no patience for the early overs, when batsmen were slow to take risks, and bowlers and fielders were still warming up.

She carefully measured the roasted semolina and preserved pumpkin, the spices and rose water that would give the cake its warm, distinctive flavour, putting them in clear glass bowls on the kitchen counter and smiling to herself as she heard Rashid’s sudden ‘whoop’. Someone must have hit a six.

They had been married a few months and any uninhibited expressions were rare from Rashid. More often than not, she found herself trying to navigate the closely guarded trails of his thoughts, gathering and studying his words and expressions to better understand the man she had married.

His kindness and aloofness appeared to be two sides of the same coin of his personality and she could not seem to predict or control which side she would encounter or if there was anything in her own behaviour that could sway his temperament. She sometimes thought of her mother’s words, that the hell or heaven of her marriage was hers to create, yet it seemed that it was Rashid, not she, who dictated the atmosphere of their relationship, and although she was learning to mould herself into the patterns of his moods, she was sometimes frightened that she did not have the knowledge or the tools to control their direction.

She was chopping the cashews when he came into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the counter.

‘It’s going to be a close one,’ he said, sitting on a stool by the window. ‘Coming to watch the rest with me?’

‘I will,’ said Zia, ‘as soon as I get this in the oven.’

‘Let me help?’ he asked and Zia, after hesitating for a moment, gave him the bowl of egg whites to whip.

They worked together in companionable silence, the electric beater whirring as Zia finished the cashews and started grating the lemon rind.

‘Is that a love cake?’ asked Rashid afterwards as she mixed everything together, pouring the creamy batter into a tin. ‘One of my favourites—I’ve always wondered why they called it that.’

‘I think it’s from the time Sri Lanka was a Dutch colony,’ said Zia absentmindedly, turning on the oven. ‘The Portuguese believed the cake was a labour of love with all these ingredients and then the Moors added flavours like the lemon rind and the rose water. I read somewhere that it was meant to attract suitors for women—and it probably worked, the cake’s so delicious!’

She turned to him with a smile that faltered a little when she saw the unfamiliar look on his face, strange and tender, a vulnerability in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. He reached over and took her hands, still dusty with sugar and spices, kissing her knuckles.

‘I love how you know these little stories,’ he said. ‘And—you must know by now, Zia, how much I—I love you.’

Zia grew very still, letting him draw her into his arms. There had been other times when she had felt the words on the edge of his thoughts or hers, those quiet moments after they made love or in the mornings when she kissed him before he left for work.

She felt it sometimes in the apology of his touch after he had been surly or distant, in the small, unexpected things he did for her, like making space for a bookshelf in their room, so she could bring back the books that she’d had to put away before the wedding, or leaving a spray of jasmine from the garden on her pillow.

Once, as she lay in bed in the morning, her eyes shut, her body still heavy with sleep, she’d felt Rashid bend over her and kiss her forehead and it felt to her like the purest expression of love, a kiss that sought no acknowledgement or response.

She was learning to balance these things against those times when he was cold, his mind shut away in some place she couldn’t reach. She was trying to magnify the moments that she felt his care and give less significance to those times she felt herself unimportant, a hindrance. Such as those evenings when she would begin sharing something about her day with him, only to realise he wasn’t listening, that when she paused he would either stand up and leave the room or look at her with an expression she had begun to dread, both cold and questioning, as though he was affronted by the fact that she had spoken to him at all.

Now, as these words fell unforeseen from his lips in the warm kitchen fragrant with nutmeg and vanilla and bathed in the dappled afternoon sunlight, she discovered that her own response was more complex than she had imagined it would be, words forming and dissolving in her mind, making her reach deeper into her thoughts to find an emotion that would match his own. That old dream of love, the joyous, passionate experience that she had once imagined it to be, seemed very far away at that moment, locked in some hidden place she could no longer see.

And even as she offered the words in return, even as she whispered, ‘I love you too’ into the firm curve of his shoulder, she felt a throb of fear run through her, the sense that she had opened yet another part of herself to him and, in doing so, had created new and as yet indefinable possibilities for pain.

*

In some ways, married life was not so different to how things had been before. She still lived with her parents in her childhood room, which despite being transformed with bridal furniture and Rashid’s belongings continued to be her sanctuary during the day. Most mornings, after Rashid had left, she would sit on the armchair by her window and read, as she had done for most of her life, books that she borrowed from the British Council Library in Colombo—often contemporary novels, but sometimes books from the philosophy, psychology or science sections, texts that she sometimes struggled to fully understand and yet satisfied some secret, unnameable curiosity, a hunger to continue learning in some form.

Sometimes she would sit outside on the veranda, curled up on one of the cane chairs, reading Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the writing of Sylvia Plath or the poetry of Rupi Kaur as she watched the little brown babblers chirping and dipping their beaks into the porcelain birdbath in the garden. How brave these women were, how vulnerable yet courageous to write as they did, to ask for more than what the world dictated they should have. What was the link between ideas and actions, she wondered, what were the means by which women could cross barriers to reach for the freedom they dreamed of?

What if those boundaries that restricted you also defined you?

Could one climb mountains on desire alone?

It seemed to her that her life lacked purpose or direction even more now that she was married. Being a wife was not the full-time job that she had anticipated. Mama or the servants did all the cooking and cleaning in the house and Rashid himself was surprisingly self-sufficient, insisting that he did his own washing and ironing, going into the kitchen to make tea for himself if he wanted it rather than asking one of the women. This was something different in Zia’s experience, having grown up watching her mother take care of her father as much as she took care of Zia or Amir, and although she was glad that Rashid didn’t expect her to pander to his needs, she found that it also left her at a loose end.

Without the routine of school or classes that she had been used to before marriage, the days yawned before her, empty and dull, hours that she sometimes tried to fill with useless activities—starting and abandoning projects like embroidering a tapestry or painting some of the clay vases that a customer had given Dada. No one seemed to mind what she did now that she was married as long as Rashid was happy. She was free to spend her time at home however she liked.

Every week, they would visit Rashid’s family, long afternoons that filled Zia with unease as she tried to grasp the strange tension that existed between Rashid and his mother, where each of them seemed anxious to please but also unwilling to tolerate any criticism or conflicting thoughts from the other.

One weekend, Zia took a fish curry that she’d made for lunch, only to have Jamila spend the whole meal listing its faults—it was too salty, the fish was overcooked, what kind of spices had she used to make it taste so bland? And Rashid, who had remained silent throughout, had finally risen from the table and asked Zia to come with him, telling his mother that they would not stay the rest of the afternoon as they had planned. Afterwards, he too had seemed angry with Zia, not speaking to her for several days.

The next time they visited, Jamila had been kinder to Zia, but Zia was now as wary of her moods as she was of her son’s, staying quiet in her presence and preferring instead to spend time with Layla who was always glad to see them and in whom Zia was beginning to find a friend.

Some days, Zia would visit relatives with Mama or there would be functions, engagements and weddings that interrupted the monotony with their flurry of glamour and excitement, but these were brief moments in an otherwise quiet existence.

Once, she saw an ad for an online degree in teaching, something she thought she would be good at, and asked Rashid if it might not be a good idea for her to do something like it. He had responded by raising his eyebrows and pointing out that it was a large cost and commitment for something that she was unlikely to ever use, and once again frustration welled up in Zia as she listened to the same words that her own father had said to her and realised that Rashid’s progressiveness only went so far.

Anyway, went on Rashid, they would begin trying for a baby soon, and Zia would then be occupied with the demands of being a mother—wasn’t that what she had always wanted?

Unable to think of a counterargument and unwilling to disturb the delicate balance of the relationship they were building between them, Zia never spoke of it again, continuing to read and learn on her own, dreaming of other lives that she might have lived in other times, where she would not have had to choose between one precious dream and another, other places where she might have broken free of the girl she had to be in Colombo.

10

When Rashid told her that he was taking her to New York on his work trip, that they would begin to travel as he had promised her during their first meeting, Zia felt a throb of excitement, as though a door that she had been looking at for a long time was finally opening. At last, here was her chance—to see the world beyond the boundaries of her hometown, to experience a space away from the family and community that had surrounded her all her life.

The first time she sat in an aeroplane and felt the earth falling away from her, she felt her own heart soaring as though it was a bird that had not known it needed to escape until it was set free.

She discovered that Rashid loved airports, that he could spend hours wandering there, watching the joy and relief of those arriving, the heartache of those leaving, and all those emotions in between, the range of human experience captured in those who passed through.

‘I love the feeling of being in transition,’ he told her as they entered the terminal in Dubai, ‘of knowing that neither the place I’ve left nor the place I am going to has any claim on me while I am here. Like being suspended from reality for a short time.’

It seemed as though he spoke to her this way more often when they were travelling, offering her his thoughts and emotions far more readily than he did at home, and it occurred to Zia that she was not the only one who felt stifled sometimes by their existence in Sri Lanka.

In New York they stayed in a hotel overlooking Central Park and while Rashid was in meetings during the day, she was left on her own.

‘Go for a walk—enjoy yourself,’ Rashid had said, giving her a pair of jeans and a beautiful wine-coloured cashmere sweater that he’d bought that morning at Macy’s, clothes that Zia had never worn before, having only owned salwars or kurtis, clothes that reached her ankles, shawls draped over her chest.

When she wore them, she felt shy and exposed—the jeans clung to her legs and hips, the sweater moulded to the curve of her waist. Rashid laughed at her embarrassment and twirled her around, calling her his ‘pretty little wife’, reminding her that no one really thought or cared about what she wore here.

‘It’s America, Zia,’ he said. ‘You can be whoever you want to be.’

She laughed too and kissed him goodbye as he left for his meeting, both frightened and exhilarated as she set out to explore, wearing her new clothes like a new personality. It seemed bizarre that she had never done this in Colombo, that the first time she walked the streets of a city by herself was here in the epicentre of the USA, and she felt as though she was expanding and growing, the possibilities of life swelling within her.

She strolled through Fifth Avenue, eating the honey-roasted nuts she’d bought from a street cart, alone and anonymous in the crowds that thronged the streets. A lone busker playing a haunting serenade on his guitar paused to yell a thank you when she poured a handful of coins into his guitar case.

At Starbucks, she bought herself a large caramel cappuccino and hailed one of the bright yellow taxis to take her to Lower Manhattan from where you could see Lady Liberty raising her torch through a haze of smoke. She collected a heap of memories like the red-gold autumn leaves that coloured the park, the energy of the great city pulsing through her veins with the beat of unspoken desires.

They went to a different restaurant for dinner each night, marvelling at the huge portions they were served as they discovered everything from gourmet pizzas to spicy Middle Eastern dishes. One night, Rashid took her to watch The Phantom of the Opera at Broadway and held her hand as she cried, the beauty and tenderness of the words and music moving her in a way that felt entirely new, as though the emotions she was usually so careful to hold in check had been amplified and brought to life by the colour and vitality of the performance on stage. Her heart broke in tandem with the Phantom’s despite his manipulative ways, her morals and beliefs suspended in the grief that she felt for this story of complicated, unrequited love.

And it stirred within her again, that hidden, personal grief, that love had not been for her the magical thing that she had dreamed of as a young girl, that she might never know the kind of passionate longing that had been depicted that night at the theatre.

They travelled a few more times that year, once to Dubai, where they rode on camels and experienced the exhilaration of dune bashing on a desert safari, and once again to New York in winter, when Zia discovered both the delight and misery of a freezing snowfall, the magic of Christmas lights in Times Square, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows to warm her chilled body.

Each time they returned to Sri Lanka, she was Zia again, Rashid’s wife, her parents’ daughter. Yet these travels had carved a space inside her that would remain, a nostalgia for the freedom of being a stranger in a country where no one knew her and therefore no one expected anything of her.

*

‘Do you like it?’ Rashid asked as they walked through the apartment, the cool white walls still smelling of fresh paint, the wooden floors gleaming and the spacious empty rooms full of promise. Sunlight poured into the living room through French windows that opened onto a balcony that overlooked the coastline of Colombo, the jagged outline of buildings, the gold and blue strips of shore and sea.

‘I thought you would like this view,’ he said. ‘You can even see the Colombo harbour from here—look.’

Zia stepped onto the balcony and leaned over the parapet, looking at the city below, the cars lining the streets like a child’s colourful play mat. Rashid laughed and pulled her backwards into his arms, saying, ‘That makes me nervous—don’t do that again until we’re a bit more used to being so high up, okay?’

The apartment was on the eighth floor of a brand-new complex in the city, one of the many high-rises that had sprung up over the past few years as the country’s economy began its slow recovery after the decades-long war. Rashid, who had already been promoted twice at work this past year, wanted to make it their new home—for them and the baby who would be born in a few months, the baby whom, they had discovered to Zia’s secret delight, had been conceived on their last trip to New York.

She imagined the tiny life sparking into being within her, ignited by the magic of a winter night, imbued with its starlit beauty and the free spirit of that city, flying over the oceans within her womb, a presence Zia would recognise only weeks later, lying on her bed and counting the days on her fingers as she battled a sudden wave of nausea.

How delighted Rashid had been when she told him, how beautifully uncomplicated their shared joy in the anticipation of being parents. In the weeks that followed, Rashid had begun to look for a house and Zia, whose future had finally begun to take shape and form in her mind, who now had a purpose to her days as she pored over books about childbirth and babies, agreed that it was time they moved out and created a family of their own.

Zia knew that Rashid had never felt fully at ease in her parents’ home, that although Mama and Dada treated him like a son and wanted them to spend a few more years there, he sometimes felt stifled being surrounded by her family. As though, he once told Zia, ‘We haven’t been allowed to grow up yet’. And Zia too felt the need to break away, finding that there was a difference now in being Rashid’s wife and being her parents’ daughter and that sometimes it was an effort to reconcile who she used to be with whom she was gradually becoming.

Rashid, she had discovered, was more relaxed in his beliefs, in his compliance with the rules and traditions that she had unquestioningly accepted for most of her life. Although his father, like hers, had inherited the family jewellery business and Rashid was next in line to take over the shop, he had chosen instead to educate himself, to take his knack for business and love of IT into a corporate career—a choice that had caused his parents some grief, but which, especially in the light of his recent success, they had come to accept.

He prayed and he fasted but wasn’t as disciplined about it as she was, not pushing himself to do these things when he was too busy or tired, his faith seeming altogether lighter, an easier thing to carry. He did not expect of her the things she had learned to do as a Muslim woman—to cover her head, to never go out unaccompanied, to avoid speaking with any man who was not a relative—and with him, Zia had begun to be more aware of her behaviour and choices, to think about what had meaning for her and what were simply habits that were born out of others’ expectations.

She had stopped wearing the hijab most of the time, feeling more comfortable now without it, despite Mama’s protests and Dada’s sorrowful acknowledgement that they could no longer tell her what to do as she was married. It was her only rebellion, one that she carried out knowing that she could still respect something while choosing differently for herself, as she learned that her faith too could be a more personal thing, that she could create her own beliefs within the framework that she had been given by her family.

Sometimes, spurred by their recent travels, Rashid spoke of immigrating to another country, starting life afresh in the Western world, where he said everyone had a right to the good things in life, where people worked hard but also played hard. After one of his cousins won the Green Card Lottery and prepared to move his family permanently to Texas, Rashid decided that he too would apply for himself and Zia, painstakingly going through the requirements and taking Zia to the photography studio in the city to take digital photographs that would fit the exact dimensions the online forms demanded.

When they didn’t win, Zia shared Rashid’s disappointment, and yet she was partly relieved—despite the lure of adventure, of the luxuries and freedoms that life in the First World promised, she was still afraid of the finality that the decision to immigrate held, the thought that once they took that step to move away from the life they knew and the people they loved for an existence that they could as yet only imagine, there would be no turning back.

All around them, people were talking about immigration, disappointed by the country’s continuing instability in the wake of the war, with political unrest and corruption hindering progress that was already slow. Every week Zia would hear on the news about commissions appointed by the government towards reconciliation in an attempt to ward off a United Nations inquiry into human rights abuses during the war.

Despite this, she knew from the stories that her father brought home about his Tamil friends in the north of Sri Lanka that nothing was changing in the lives of those who had been most affected, that they still feared repercussions and were continuing to flee the country, sometimes making the perilous voyage by boat to escape the horrors of abduction and torture that threatened those who were even suspected of having links to the militant separatist group that had waged war against the government for three long decades.

‘It’ll be Muslims next,’ said Umar, Azrah’s husband, as the four of them ate dinner at their favourite Chinese restaurant one warm evening in Colombo, spooning hot butter cuttlefish and vegetable chop suey over platefuls of fried rice.

Azrah sat next to him, her dark hair gleaming beneath a jade silk shawl, silver bracelets sliding down to her wrist as she reached for the chilli paste. She and Umar were trying for a baby now, she had told Zia earlier that evening as they sat outside waiting for their husbands, and Zia had smiled and said that was wonderful, even as she wrapped her heart around her own sweet secret that she wanted to keep to herself just a little longer. The low hum of other conversations floated towards them, spoons clinking and dishes clattering as waiters moved gracefully between tables in the soft yellow light.

Umar and his brothers ran a hardware store in Pettah, the city’s commercial hub, where the pulse of the country’s mood beat in the unceasing crowds that moved through the streets. Last evening, he said, there had been talk of a riot in the outskirts of the city, where a group of men on motorbikes had thrown rocks at a Muslim-owned shop and then youths at the nearby mosque had retaliated with violence.

‘Several people injured and in hospital,’ Umar said. ‘And you’ve heard the rumours? They’re saying that Aras, the clothing chain owned by Muslims, is serving poisoned sweets to Buddhist women that will turn them sterile and prevent Sinhala population growth. Can you imagine?’

It was part of an explicit conspiracy theory being spread by a hardline Buddhist group, said Umar, that Muslims in Sri Lanka were gaining economic power while the rest of the country stagnated, luring Sri Lanka into becoming a Muslim nation—partly an extension of the current global Islamophobic rhetoric and yet distinctly local in its fearmongering about the wealthy Sri Lankan Muslim business community that had originated from the Moor traders who had arrived at the country’s shores centuries ago.

‘But that’s just ridiculous,’ said Zia. ‘Why would they spread such a story? Why would they want to create more bloodshed after everything this country has been through?’

‘They’ll have their own agenda. They won’t care,’ said Rashid, looking worried.

Zia listened as the others continued to discuss whether all the anti-Muslim feeling that was festering would turn into something worse, if the fact that Muslims had lived so peacefully among other communities in Sri Lanka for centuries would be enough to quench the wave of hatred that seemed to be on the rise.

‘If we go,’ she said to Rashid later that evening as they left the restaurant, ‘what about everyone else that we will have to leave behind?’

‘If we go,’ he said, turning to her, his face luminous under the streetlamp, ‘we will have to make that choice—to know that we are choosing something different at the cost of leaving something behind.’

*

Zia said yes to the apartment, yes to moving and beginning their new lives together as a separate unit and Rashid called the real estate company immediately, leaning against the glossy granite countertop in the kitchen.

There were things about being at her parents’ home that she would miss—waking up to the sound of Mama making tea in the kitchen, hearing Dada’s footsteps arriving home in the evening, weekend lunches where everyone sat on the floor to eat around a sahan, the massive plate piled with biryani or yellow rice, and she and Amir fought over who got to eat the drumsticks.

And when Rashid retreated into one of his moods Zia drew comfort from her parents’ presence, chatting with them or Amir until the atmosphere had cleared and Rashid indicated with a smile or touch that he was back to himself. Where would she go, she wondered, when it was just the two of them here, alone?

‘It’s not too far from your place—you can get the driver to drop you off there whenever you like,’ said Rashid, putting his phone down and looking at her as though he had read her thoughts. ‘And I’m sure they’re going to visit all the time too. I know my family will—Layla says she can’t wait to help you decorate the baby’s room. And we’ll get a maid, someone to do the cooking and cleaning. I don’t want you to have to worry about anything except yourself and the baby.’

His face was bright, full of hope and excitement, and Zia felt a rush of love for him—for their life together, for the child they were bringing into this world. Inside her, the baby moved again, and she walked over to Rashid, taking his hand and placing it on her stomach so that he too could feel the miracle that was taking place within her, and it felt as though the future was lit by a multitude of possibilities, each one brighter than the last.

*

When they first moved, Zia and Rashid enjoyed the novelty of being alone in their new home, playing the kind of loud music that her parents disliked, buying takeaway meals and eating on the sofa while they watched movies. Zia found out that Rashid was a Bollywood fan, that he would watch anything that starred Amitabh Bachchan, his favourite actor. It surprised her that Rashid, whom she saw as more Westernised and sophisticated than herself, preferred the overt acting, the passionate and vibrant storytelling that was characteristic of these films.

There were other things that they discovered about each other, layers that only became apparent in their new surroundings, each one revealing a little more to the other about their thoughts and fears. One day Rashid came home to find Zia waiting for him in the lobby because no one else had come by in the past hour since she had come downstairs and she was afraid of getting into a lift by herself.

Instead of laughing at her, as she had thought he would, he told her how he had been afraid of the dark for a very long time until his mother had discovered him sleeping with his light on. His mother had not said anything but for several nights afterwards, she had come into his room at night, turned off the light and stayed with him until he fell asleep, quietly reciting verses from the Quran as she sat on the chair next to his bed. He still sometimes felt that old edge of fear when a room was plunged into darkness but that image of his mother, the memory of her soft voice, soothed him and Zia was reminded of her own mother hanging the Ayatul Kursi on her wall to protect her from bad dreams.

Zia looked forward to hearing these stories about him, to remembering things about herself that she hadn’t shared with him before, waiting for him to get home from work so that her own day with him could begin.

Rashid rarely went into one of his moods after they moved, shaking them off more easily, as though living in his own home allowed his mind to become more free and supple, and growing so kind and tender towards Zia that she felt as though she was only just beginning to fall in love with him.

*

As Zia’s due date approached, Rashid insisted that they hire a housekeeper, engaging a recruitment agency to look for someone suitable. When Latha arrived one morning, her hair neatly gathered into a bun on top of her head, her clothes worn but clean, Zia had taken to her immediately, drawn to the woman’s gentle expression, her motherly tone, the firm, wide girth of her body.

She spoke a little English, having worked for a British expatriate family for several years. Now that they had returned to England, she was looking for work again, she’d said. Zia hired her immediately and she soon became an indispensable part of their lives, arriving at six each morning and leaving late in the afternoon, keeping their apartment spotless, cooking for them and the guests who frequented their home.

As the weeks passed and Zia grew heavier, Latha became as protective of Zia as Rashid or her own mother, not letting her pick up any of the household chores herself even if she wanted to, making her fresh fruit juices every morning, cooking milder, sweeter curries than usual that Zia could tolerate without getting nauseous.

Once, she brought Zia a small posset of white flowers from the Buddhist temple where she had made an offering in Zia’s name, praying for an easy birth, a healthy child.

‘Even if you are Muslim and I am Buddhist,’ Latha said, ‘I think our prayers are heard by the same gods.’

Zia had agreed, touched by the gift, and put the flowers in a glass by her bedside, their sweet fragrance scenting her room for days afterwards.

*

Whenever Zia felt the baby move, the strange fluttering of life inside her solidifying what had so far been surreal, the miracle of their own child, she hoped it would be a girl, the daughter she had dreamed of: beautiful, brave, with the world at her feet.

‘A baby girl who looks like you,’ Rashid had agreed when she told him, ‘although even a little boy who looks like you would be so cute!’

It still amazed her sometimes when he spoke this way that he thought she was beautiful, that she would sometimes be in the midst of something else and lift her eyes to find him looking at her as though she was something extraordinary, precious.

‘You shouldn’t need a man to tell you that you’re beautiful!’ Azrah had exclaimed once when they were having one of their long chats, curled up on the sofa in Mama’s living room. Zia had tried to explain to her how Rashid made her feel and Azrah had told her she had always been beautiful, that it was only she who saw herself as anything otherwise.

And yet Zia couldn’t help thinking that even the things we know about ourselves to be true can only become wholly so when they are spoken by someone else, that it had taken Rashid’s unconditional belief in her beauty for her to begin to fully acknowledge it as her own.

11

When Farah was born, a nurse placed her gently on Zia’s chest as Zia turned to look for Rashid, wanting him to share in this moment of triumph, to be as astonished as she was, that this small, crying baby, so perfect in every way, had appeared from inside her. But he wasn’t standing next to her as she’d thought he was—it seemed he had slipped outside as soon as the baby had slithered into the doctor’s hands to tell their families, who had been waiting outside the delivery room all night, that their baby girl had arrived.

‘Farah,’ she said softly, returning her attention to her daughter, touching her feather-soft cheek, ‘my happiness, my joy.’ She and Rashid had pored over Muslim baby name books once they had found out that the baby was indeed a girl, rolling the soft Arabic syllables on their tongues to see which ones sounded the best and had the most beautiful meanings.

Rashid had wanted to name her after one of the great women of Islam—Khadija, the Prophet’s wife, a strong businesswoman who was the greatest support in the early years of his prophethood, or Maryam, mother of Jesus. But when Zia had read the name Farah out loud and seen the word ‘happiness’ next to it as its meaning, she had known that it was what their child would be called and she hoped that the name would be a blessing, a harbinger of the life that their daughter would have.

When Rashid returned, Mama and Dada were with him. Mama hugged and kissed Zia, pouring her a cup of hot spiced coffee from a flask as Rashid picked up Farah, now cleaned and wrapped in a flowered flannelette shawl. He handed the baby to Dada who softly recited the adhaan in her right ear, welcoming her into the world with words of God’s greatness, calling her to join this earth in prayer and prosperity. Mama rubbed a drop of date juice on Farah’s tongue and she pursed her tiny red lips at the sweetness as Mama returned her to Zia so she could nurse her for the first time.

Over the next few days, they had a stream of visitors—relatives and friends bearing gifts, often small trinkets of gold as was the custom for a baby girl. Zia’s grandmother, who rarely went anywhere these days, brought packets of dried herbs which she soaked in hot water for Zia’s bath, insisting on bathing Zia herself, scrubbing Zia’s aching body with her gnarled hands. Afterwards, Mama sprinkled sambrani on heated coals in a small brass brazier, fragrant fumes rising from the glowing red embers as Zia stood beside it to dry her long, wet hair.

On the seventh day after Farah’s birth, Rashid left home at sunrise to visit a farm in the suburbs where a butcher would slaughter a goat in Farah’s name. If it was a boy, it would have been two goats, which didn’t make sense to either Zia or Rashid, who would have gladly sacrificed a hundred goats for their precious daughter. Rashid and the butcher divided the meat into small parcels to be distributed among the poor and Rashid brought home the rest to be cooked for a feast that afternoon.

After Farah’s bath that day, Zia held her while Rashid gently shaved her scalp, the fine, dark baby hair falling onto the sheet of newspaper beneath. Afterwards Rashid took the hair to a jeweller’s to be weighed and to estimate the value of its weight in gold so that they could give that amount to charity. Farah was dressed in a long frilled gown and cap, a custom borrowed from the christening tradition of Christians, and a naming ceremony was held at which guests feasted on rice cooked with the goat meat.

In the weeks that followed, Mama stayed with Zia, cooking dishes together with Latha that they believed would help Zia regain her strength and ease the flow of breast milk—jackfruit curry, ox tail soup and boiled barley water—placing a flask of plain ginger tea on Zia’s bedside table every night for her to drink when she woke up for the long night-time feeds.

‘Look, the angels are talking to her in her dreams,’ Mama said when Farah smiled in her sleep, telling Zia that babies were still a part of heaven in their first month of life, that they drifted between the life they’d left behind and their new life here on Earth. The two tiny indentations on the small of Farah’s back, Mama said, as Zia cradled Farah on her shoulder to burp her after a feed, were the fingerprints of the angel who pushed her out of the womb when it was time.

Later, when Zia thought of those first weeks after Farah’s birth, she remembered it as a surreal time, the exhaustion of new motherhood tempered by the delight of the tiny, soft baby that she held in her arms, her whole world shifting and resettling into one where Farah and her needs would always come first. And always those helping hands: Mama gently taking Farah from Zia when Zia could barely keep her eyes open from fatigue, Jamila singing lullabies in a voice that was surprisingly sweet and melodious, Layla folding nappies and the soft embroidered baby shirts into neat piles.

*

The fortieth day after the birth marked the end of Zia’s confinement and she was finally able to leave home, first for her six-week check-up, and then in the evening Rashid asked if Mama could watch Farah for an hour or two so that he could take Zia for a drive.

‘I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in months,’ he said, laughing as they got in the car, and she answered, ‘Well, we had a baby in case you didn’t notice …’

She was slightly giddy with freedom, Rashid treating her almost as though they were newlyweds again, reaching over to hold her hand as he drove, asking if she was comfortable.

They went to the café near her father’s shop to get her favourite mint and pistachio ice cream and ended up back at their apartment building, on the rooftop terrace, leaning against the parapet wall as the stars appeared in the night sky, fading against the brilliance of the lights from the city.

‘What do you think her life will be like?’ Zia mused. ‘I want to give her the best of everything, I want her to be anything she wants to be.’

‘I know,’ said Rashid, ‘whatever the best might mean.’

They talked about their dreams for their baby girl, about how they would not limit her with the boundaries that Zia herself had to comply with, how they would give Farah the freedom to choose.

‘Things will be different when she grows up,’ said Rashid, who seemed ready to abandon the last of his own hold on the old ways for his daughter. ‘It will be a new world.’

And Zia found that there was comfort in this thought, that although it was too late for herself, perhaps her daughter would one day be free to embrace the opportunities that life offered her.

*

In the months after Farah was born, their families visited frequently, wanting to spend time with their first grandchild. Mama came almost every morning to give Farah her bath, showing Zia how to cradle her firmly in the crook of her arm as she lowered her into the warm water, soaping and drying her gently while Farah made cooing sounds of pleasure in her grandmother’s arms. They would talk for a while, catching up on family gossip as Zia rocked Farah to sleep on a pillow laid across her outstretched legs.

If Zia was feeling tired after being up with Farah at night, Mama would look after Farah for a while so she could catch up on her sleep. Sometimes Zia’s father would come by for lunch, usually with a small toy—a rattle, a plastic doll in cellophane or a wind-up monkey that he had bought from the street vendors who sometimes set up their wares outside his shop.

Jamila, fearful that the baby’s skin might turn dark like Zia’s, brought large bottles of Johnson & Johnson’s baby lotion, which she believed would keep Farah’s skin light and smooth. She held Farah and examined her face for Rashid’s features—the sharp nose, the bright, dark eyes—exclaiming that she was a beautiful baby, just like Rashid and Layla had been. Smart like Rashid too, she said, just see how intelligently she looks at everyone. And Zia, seeing that his mother’s desire for her son’s child to be like him was born out of love, would bite back her irritation and agree.

Azrah visited often with her own baby boy and they compared notes about their babies and husbands, drinking warm cups of tea as they nursed their children, laughing about how impossible it seemed that they were now mothers.

12

The day that they decided to leave, there was a thunderstorm in Colombo, lavish streams pouring down from the sky while water rose from the blocked drains, flooding the streets of the city. The world glowed purple as lightning streaked across the swollen grey sky, the windows in Farah’s room trembling with the shock of thunder as Zia walked in.

She swatted at a mosquito that hovered over the cot, a dark speck against the soft white netting. This rain would probably bring on another wave of dengue, she thought anxiously. Last month five-year-old Avi in the apartment downstairs had died; once the haemorrhage set in there was nothing they could do. He had been an only child and Zia had often seen him on his little green tricycle scooting down the corridors on the ground floor. One day he had come over to stare at Farah in her pram and had asked Zia why babies couldn’t talk, shaking Farah’s toy rattle over her face.

That sweet little life extinguished by a mosquito—Zia wondered how his parents had borne it. When she saw Avi’s mother the other day in the lift, her face lined with grief, she had wished she knew her well enough to embrace her, to tell her that this terrible thing should not have happened.

She lifted Farah from the cot, still drowsy from her mid-morning nap, and carried her into the dining room where Rashid sat at the table, reading the Sunday papers. Latha was clearing away breakfast—the plates of coconut roti and bowls of dhal, chicken curry and spicy onion sambal that she made for them every weekend.

‘Could you chop some fruit for baby?’ Zia asked her as Rashid added, ‘And some tea for me, Latha.’

‘Okay, madam, okay, sir,’ Latha said, hurrying into the kitchen, her apron fluttering.

‘I’m so worried about the dengue spreading again,’ Zia said, settling Farah into her highchair. ‘There hardly used to be any mosquitoes in this apartment block but ever since Avi died I keep seeing them everywhere.’

‘It’s this bloody rain,’ Rashid muttered, turning the page.

Zia sat next to him, picking up the features section of The Sunday Times and scanning the pages as Farah thumped her tray and reached for Rashid. He turned to Farah and smiled, kissing her dimpled hands. Glancing up at them, Zia delighted for a moment at how easily Farah commanded this warmth from Rashid, at how he had become increasingly loving and unguarded with his affections since her birth.

As usual, the papers were full of advertisements for skilled migrants, listing occupations that were in demand in Western countries, inviting people with qualifications like Rashid’s to apply for skilled visas that would be a ticket to a new life there.

By now many of their friends and relatives who were young professionals had left Sri Lanka. Their Facebook profiles showed them living the First World life, in homes on clean, quiet streets that looked like the ones you saw in movies, where everything looked brighter and fresher than their counterparts in Colombo.

And yet when she and Rashid weighed the pros and cons, it was never clear which side tipped the balance, their significance changing according to the yardsticks they used to measure their quality of life.

Rashid was at the peak of his career, they had a luxurious home in the heart of the city, plenty of money. Family and friends surrounded them, and though it was stifling at times, these people were part of the fabric of their existence, loving them deeply and taking care of them in ways too many to count. Even Jamila seemed to have grown less prickly, as though Zia being the mother of her first grandchild had finally made her regard Zia with something like affection, if not exactly love.

And the wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric continued to grow. There were Facebook posts that encouraged people to stop buying from Muslim-owned stores, reports of tuk-tuk drivers who refused to transport women who wore the hijab, festering wounds in the community as everyone watched and waited with fear to see if these things would turn into something worse.

Even in their bubble of wealth and safety, Rashid and Zia felt the twinges of uncertainty. Only the week before, Layla had told them she and her husband Kamil, whom she had married a few months earlier, were moving to England where Kamil’s brother lived. It was a shock to think of Layla, the nearest thing to a sister Zia had ever known, leaving them, making them wonder again about their own future in this country.

Sometimes Zia thought it would be an adventure, discovering a new life in a new country, an extension of the holidays that they had been on. She imagined them living in New York, catching trains at Grand Central Station, taking Farah on a buggy ride in Central Park, or perhaps following Layla to England, living in a small house in the countryside with a garden full of flowers, each country sparking a story in her mind of what their life there might be like.

She and Rashid would talk about leaving, going in circles until neither of them knew who wanted to go and who wanted to stay.

What about racism, Zia would ask, what if they were treated differently in the West, as something less than, or ‘other’? What about the stories they had heard, of slurs and ridicule, of white people’s disdain for those whose skin was darker than their own?

It wasn’t like that anymore, Rashid would counter, these countries had progressed, the influx of immigrants was beginning to change the age-old story of racism. And as his voice hovered on a note of uncertainty, Zia admitted that after all they were at risk of racism here in Sri Lanka, that they could be targets of the wave of rising antipathy towards Muslims.

No pollution, no garbage piling the streets, no frequent, unexpected power cuts, he would say.

No family or domestic staff to help, she would counter.

Better access to free healthcare, he’d say.

But we can afford to pay for excellent doctors here, Zia would reply.

No one to judge us or our behaviour, she would say. Farah and I could walk on the street without a care in the world.

No family or friends to visit, he’d reply. No one who would understand the ways of life that we are used to.

Low crime rates, she’d say.

But crime still exists, he’d point out.

Everyone drives in those countries, he’d say. And here you have never needed to.

But maybe I could, said Zia, who had always secretly longed to be able to drive, finding the thought of getting into a car and being free to go wherever she wanted both frightening and exhilarating. Maybe in another country, in another life, that would be a possibility.

*

Rashid turned on the TV after breakfast to the news that mobs had attacked Muslim-owned shops in Ampara, a town in central Sri Lanka, after an incident involving Muslims and a Buddhist truck driver earlier that week.

The shops were burning. Zia and Rashid watched the screen in horror, the clouds of grey smoke that billowed above the angry flames, screams rending the air as people dispersed into running streams on the streets. A woman in a blue hijab embraced her crying child as she spoke tearfully into the journalist’s microphone: ‘They broke into our house, stole our jewellery. When we ran outside, they were burning these homes, these shops. We never hurt anyone, we don’t know why they are doing this.’

The camera moved on to show other scenes of wreckage: smashed windows, destroyed merchandise cluttering the streets. Three young men were said to have attacked the truck driver after he ran into one of their cars and the driver had later died in hospital from his injuries. Now Sinhala Buddhist mobs were striking back with this violence, turning one community against another in a terrible echo of the bloodshed that had sparked a war that claimed thousands of lives.

Zia thought of what it would be like if this happened to Dada’s shop, if everything he and his forefathers had spent their lives building were to go up in flames, instigated by hatred for a crime he did not commit, for just being who he was, for belonging to a community that for some reason inspired fear.

Turning, she found Latha standing in the hallway, her face twisted in trepidation.

‘I would never think like them, madam,’ Latha said at once, lifting her hands outwards in a gesture that seemed almost a plea. ‘I don’t hate Muslims.’

‘I know, Latha,’ said Zia, walking towards her and placing her palms in the older woman’s workworn hands. ‘I know you don’t.’

The news wrapped up and moved on to sports. The Sri Lankan cricket team was touring Australia, their blue-clad figures scattered across the lush green landscape of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Zia felt the strange sense of disorientation one feels in the knowledge that even amidst tragedy life went on, that even while people set shops on fire and screamed words of hatred, even while storms raged and children died from mosquito bites, in other parts of the world there was sunshine and laughter, a batsman hitting a cricket ball into the air, people eating ice cream and waving at the camera as it swung past.

Rashid stood up and went to the window, Farah in his arms. Outside, the wind and rain were whipping the ocean into a grey fury, obscuring the view of the city beneath them. Zia sank into the sofa, watching Farah tangle her small fingers in Rashid’s hair as he looked at the rivulets pouring off their balcony, his brow furrowed in thought.

‘What will we do?’ she asked after a moment, the thoughts of dengue and the images of the burning shops morphing in her mind into a heavy apprehension, a need to do something, to escape.

He was silent for a while before turning around and putting Farah gently down on the rug, where she immediately crawled towards her basket of toys.

‘I think it’s time,’ he said as they both watched her play. ‘It’s time to think about leaving.’

‘Where will we go?’ she asked, her heart racing with what felt like excitement but also like fear, and in that moment she couldn’t say which was which.

If they left, could they protect Farah, and themselves, from the horrors that she feared?

How could she leave behind her family—her father, who would be vulnerable if such a mob were to attack the Muslim businesses of Colombo, her mother, whose hijab-clad face marked her Muslim identity to all the world, her brother, young and foolhardy, who believed he was immune to the atrocities the world may inflict?

And yet how could she protect them if she stayed?

Was it selfish to go?

Was it selfish to stay?

Rashid gestured at the TV, at the sunny blue skies and shimmering green grass of the cricket grounds half a world away.

‘I’ve been thinking about this for a while,’ he said, ‘and I think Australia should be our first choice. Their skilled migration program is the most accessible right now. I think I’d get a visa quite easily. You know that guy Mahesh in my office, one of the other managers who moved there last year? I heard he got a good job within a few months. And the healthcare and education would be world-class, you know. Farah would have the benefit of all of that. So will the other children we’ll have. It’ll be a new life for us, for our family.

‘Australia, Zia. That’s where we’ll go.’

PART 2

Settling

13

Farah sat on the little sandy beach by the lake, her small face intent under her pink cotton summer hat as she scooped sand into a yellow plastic bucket. Every now and then, she glanced up at Zia sitting on the bench nearby, seeming to reassure herself that she was still there, that she had not vanished as everyone else that Farah loved had seemed to, transformed into faces on a screen that spoke to her from a world away.

She turned the bucket upside down, carefully patting the sides with her shovel, the way they had taught her on the beach in Sri Lanka. Zia, remembering that vast expanse of sand, sea and sun, the crowds milling on the beach, Farah a speck among them, felt as though their world had shrunk and shrivelled into this moment where only she and Farah sat at this tiny strip at the edge of Lake Ginninderra, with its mild foam-tipped waves lapping the shores and the skyline of an unfamiliar, low-rise city shimmering on the horizon. A swan glided past, the flutter of its wings and the ripples on the water momentarily disrupting the stillness.

They had been in Canberra for almost a month now, weeks and days in which Zia had woken up to strangeness, the sun painting golden squares on the faded walls of the bedroom, her ears still ringing with the quiet. Layer upon layer of memory weighed her down as she drifted from sleep to wakefulness—that there was nothing to look forward to, that Mama, Dada, or anyone else from their families would not be visiting, that she could not see them, could not visit her friends, could not open the windows and look out at the familiar, bustling city, the deep blue glimmer of the Indian Ocean. That other than Rashid and Farah, there was no one else in this country that she knew, and that Rashid was not the same husband who had kissed her goodbye in Colombo all those months ago.

She would lie there until the ache of remembering subsided a little, until the thought that time would bring familiarity soothed the fear that she would never get used to this new life, that they would never belong in this new place.

During the day, when Rashid was at work, Zia tried to entertain Farah, sitting with her on the floor and pulling out toys from the blue wooden toy box that Rashid had picked up at a garage sale. Even this felt strange, this effort to sit and play with her child when once it had been effortless, when playing had been a seamless part of Farah’s day in a world where she had been surrounded by loving adults who took it in turns to entertain her. Now, Zia’s attempts seemed to amplify their aloneness, the silences between her questions and Farah’s responses stretched thin with the lack of distractions, and when Farah announced that she was bored and wanted to watch TV, Zia would let her go, both relieved and ashamed at her inability to engage with her daughter in their cocoon of isolation.

They fumbled through the day, Zia half-heartedly trying to do chores around the house until late afternoon, when finally it would be morning in Sri Lanka and Zia and Farah would snuggle together on the rose-patterned sofa to make a video call to her family.

Dada would talk to them as he drank his morning tea, telling Farah little anecdotes that made her laugh, such as the story about the cat that had left two kittens at their doorstep and come back for them a week later, and how he and Mama had looked after the kittens, feeding them with the medicine dropper that they had used for Farah when she was a baby. Mama would join him soon afterwards, asking Zia questions—was Zia remembering to do all her prayers on time, even though prayer times would be different in Australia? Was Farah eating enough, did she like the food there? What were the shops like? How was Rashid?

Sometimes, if Amir was there, he would join in as well, his eyes still reddened from sleep, yawning as he told Zia about the latest shipment of fabric they had received at the shop, how Zia would have liked the new colours in silk.

It was the brightest hour of Zia’s day, when she was comforted by their beloved faces, even as her heart twisted with longing, oppressed by the thought of the miles between them. What had they done, leaving those who loved them best, taking Farah away from the warmth of the home she knew to the sterility of this unfamiliar place?

When would they begin to reap the rewards of their sacrifice? What if, Zia sometimes thought in odd moments of terror that swept through her as she watched Farah move aimlessly about the house as though she was lost in that small, confined space—what if they never did?

And yet she said none of this to her family, only that she missed them but that Australia was wonderful, that the streets in Canberra were clean and quiet, the shopping centres enormous, the people friendly—this, although the only times she had been outside so far were with Rashid to the Westfield mall and the only people she had spoken to were cashiers at the supermarket who smiled at her as they bagged her groceries and asked her if she would prefer to pay by cash or card.

She avoided telling them the details, painting instead a picture of what she thought things would be like once she had grown accustomed to this life, a time when she tried to believe that she, Rashid and Farah would learn to be happy here. Even if it was just the three of them, they would find ways to let that be enough.

*

In the two years that it took for their permanent residency visa to be finalised, Zia had tried to prepare for the move by reading articles and blogs on immigrant life in Australia. A young Indian scientist, working in a fuel station in Melbourne—a ‘servo’ he called it—wrote on his blog about his homesickness, his inability to find suitable work, the strangeness of hearing only English being spoken, the fear he had felt when, walking through the city one day, he had found himself suddenly in the middle of an antiimmigration rally where a flag-bearing white woman had screamed at him to go back to where he came from. At the same time, he also wrote about how much he loved the city’s laidback, friendly vibe, the peacefulness of the suburb where he lived, the beauty of the landscape, the food, the music, the culture that he would not have experienced had he not made this decision to move. His blog posts swung between nostalgia and hope, grief and joy, and clicking through them, Zia felt her own hopes and fears rise and fall, her anxieties sharpening as she questioned the wisdom of their own decision and tried to imagine ways in which they might avoid the adversities he described.

Once, as she sat in her room in Colombo scrolling through websites, she stumbled across an article describing a boat full of Sri Lankan asylum seekers who were intercepted by Australian authorities and sent back to Sri Lanka where they were at risk of torture and persecution by the Sri Lankan military due to suspected links to the Tamil militant separatist group. Australia’s tough asylum policy, Operation Sovereign Borders, put the military in control of asylum operations, and even those who did make it on the boats were not allowed into Australia itself but held in detention centres on Christmas Island or Papua New Guinea for months, sometimes years, not knowing if their claim for asylum would be granted.

Accusing the country’s opposition to asylum as being racially motivated, the article went on to speculate that Australia’s hard line on immigration was unlikely to change any time soon.

Wasn’t this the same Australia that was enticing Rashid and Zia to come there as skilled migrants, people from the same country whose citizens it had rejected, turning them away when they had arrived vulnerable and empty-handed, seeking to escape the kind of horrors that neither Rashid nor Zia had ever known?

How carefully Australia vetted them, how much proof they’d had to provide that they were skilled, qualified, healthy, so that they would not, as the immigration forms described, be ‘a burden to the Australian taxpayers’. Rashid dusted off his old university transcripts, sending copies in triplicate to the immigration case officer. Zia studied for weeks for the IELTS exam to prove her competency in English. At the exam, despite her fluency in the language, she struggled with the speaking component, stumbling over her words as she responded to the examiner’s unfamiliar accent, breathing a sigh of relief weeks later when she found that she had just made the pass mark and would not have to take it again as many others had. They went through medical exams to rule out any health issues, with Farah assessed for reaching her developmental milestones. Only when they had ticked these boxes and paid a hefty fee to the Australian Government were they approved for their permanent residency visas.

What was this country that held itself in such high esteem that it could pick and choose who was allowed to cross its borders, that was so compelling in what it offered that people risked their lives to reach it? That she herself was willing to leave behind all that she held dear, to follow her husband there in his quest for what he believed would be a better life for them all?

Would Australia treat them differently, be kinder to them, because they had come through the right channels? How would it differentiate one Sri Lankan immigrant from another?

The thought was a shadow that flitted amongst the others in her mind, and yet she found she was unable to speak of it to Rashid, that once again she was carried on a tide over which she had no control, to a future that she could not yet imagine. She let her fears lie silent, believing Rashid must know better than she, that the brighter world he sought must surely one day be theirs.

*

She began adding small touches to the little townhouse, objects that bore the marks of the life they’d left behind, in an attempt to make it feel like home. In a corner of her bedroom was the maroon prayer rug and handcrafted wooden Quran stand with the heavy Quran that she’d had since childhood, the hard leather cover with its gold border only a little worn from all the times she’d held it, turning its yellowing pages to read the words in Arabic on the right and English on the left. Her framed copy of Ayatul Kursi now hung in Farah’s room, and in the living room she hung the bright Sri Lankan handloom tapestries that had adorned their apartment walls in Colombo.

She put up no photographs, remembering how Mama said that angels did not visit homes where there were images of living things, and every evening at sunset she lit two incense sticks and placed them by the window to ward off evil spirits.

And yet it was only she who pressed her forehead to the softness of the prayer rug day after day and every night Farah woke up crying from new nightmares that were born out of the recent journey and the absence of the life that she used to know.

*

Rashid was hardly ever home, working shifts as a cleaner both day and night. He hadn’t told her, until their first night together in Canberra, that this was what he did. The money was good, he explained, and he wanted to make sure they didn’t deplete all their savings while he looked for a job. Sri Lankan rupees didn’t go very far after they were changed into dollars and the cost of living in Canberra was exorbitant compared to what they were used to.

‘But—don’t you mind?’ Zia had asked, deeply shocked.

She had always known it wouldn’t be easy for him to get a job right away—still, she had thought he would find some sort of work in an office, had secretly believed that he was so capable that it would not take long for him to return to the kind of work that he was used to.

He had shrugged, pulling the blinds closed and plunging their small bedroom into darkness. He had bought a mattress and ensemble for them as it was cheaper than a full bedframe, and Zia, who had never seen an ensemble before, thought it looked incomplete and awkward. As she lay down on the mattress, she missed the boundaries of the solid timber beds that she was used to, with the carved headrests and sturdy legs. When Rashid settled down next to her, the bed moved slightly on its wheels and she felt as though they were unmoored, as though the bed was an island that floated in this new home, in this unknown city.

‘I have to do something, don’t I,’ he said, placing his hands on his stomach. ‘I’d rather keep some income coming in than not.’

It was even harder than he’d initially thought to get a job in Canberra, he told her. Almost all the jobs that were a fit for his skills were in the public service which required you to be an Australian citizen. He would probably have a better chance of getting a job in a city like Sydney or Melbourne but the condition of their permanent residency was that they would stay in Canberra for at least two years.

‘I’ll keep looking,’ he said, yawning. ‘And you know I’m not afraid of hard work.’

‘I know,’ said Zia, rolling onto her side to look at him. His eyes were closed, his thick eyelashes fluttering slightly on the dark shadows on his skin.

On the mattress on the floor, Farah stirred, murmuring in her sleep.

Zia reached out her hand, gently ran her fingers along the side of his jaw. It had been months since she had touched him like this and her hunger seemed to vibrate through her body and into her fingertips as she rested them on his chest, the familiar, comforting spot where she could feel his heart beating through his birthmark.

Love me, she thought.

But he did not move, his hands remaining where they were, his body tense beneath her fingers. After a while she withdrew her hand and rolled away, tears knotting her throat. When Farah woke up, crying in a way that she hadn’t cried since she was a baby, it was a relief to pick her up, to feel the soft warmth of her body as Zia comforted her, to lay her between them and fall asleep with Farah’s small hand resting on Zia’s cheek.

*

The night before Zia and Farah had left Sri Lanka, her parents had thrown a party, inviting their closest relatives and friends. Everyone had sat on the marble floor, eating string-hopper pilau from sahans, talking and laughing as though it was any other night, as though they were not there to mark Zia’s upcoming irrevocable journey.

Latha’s familiar figure had moved quietly among the guests, refilling dishes and jugs, taking away empty platters. From the following week, she would work at Azrah’s house—Azrah, whose own housekeeper had left for a post overseas, had been only too glad to employ her when Zia asked.

‘May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you,’ Latha had said to Zia when she told her the news. ‘I will miss you and baby very much, but I am happy I can still feed my family. Take care of yourself, madam. Take care.’

It seemed impossible that night to Zia that her life would change, as she sat in her childhood home among people who had known and loved her all her life, while Rashid and the life that waited for them hundreds of miles away across the ocean seemed as insubstantial as a dream.

It was only later that night when Rashid’s mother wrapped her arms around Zia, her eyes full of tears, that she had felt the first pangs of parting. Over the years, Zia had learned that Jamila was a complex woman. Although she had seemed at first the archetype of Mamis—possessive of her son and resentful of her daughter-in-law—she loved her children deeply, and at different stages had both held on to them fiercely as well as let them go, so that they could be happy. This latter had taken a strength Zia could not fully understand but which she felt now in the firmness of Jamila’s embrace.

Layla had already moved to England by then, living not in a cottage in the countryside as Zia had imagined but in a small studio apartment in London. Sometimes when they FaceTimed, Zia could see the cloudy grey sky from Layla’s window and hear the distant sounds of London traffic. When Zia asked her what life was like there, Layla would only say that it was different, that the homesickness never really went away, that it helped that Kamil’s brother and family lived nearby.

‘All my children have left—and now you and my first grandchild, daughter of my firstborn,’ Jamila said, her voice hoarse in Zia’s ear. ‘But that’s how it must be, it is for the best. It is too late for us, and for your parents, we will live and die here, but you young ones must go now and make a better life for yourselves.’

She drew back and looked at Zia closely, her heavy gold earrings swaying, her dark eyes lined with kohl.

‘Rashid needs someone to love him well. He’s hungry for love, my boy, that’s why he seems angry sometimes. But that’s all it is, really, he just needs to be loved. He’s treated you well all these years, no? And now you will be alone there, only the two of you, and you must love each other and take care of each other even more than before. And I will pray for the three of you, and for more children, and one day this old woman will come and visit you, see you living a good life in Australia, and that will make my heart happy.’

And she had kissed Zia three times, on both cheeks and her forehead, a blessing, and in its warmth Zia felt some of the hurts and resentments of years dissolve.

Even the next day, as they drove to the airport, Zia’s hand tucked into Mama’s, Farah snuggled in Dada’s lap, she had not fully realised that this would be a long parting. That she would not have the comfort of knowing that her parents’ presence was somewhere nearby, that it would perhaps be years before she held her mother’s hand again.

At the airport, they had all embraced, holding each other for a long time, but even when Amir had shed a few tears, trying to laugh and saying who would he tease now that his Dhaatha was leaving, Zia’s own eyes had remained dry.

‘It’s not those who leave who suffer the most, it’s those who are left behind,’ Mama said, as she lifted the fall of her sari to wipe away her tears.

The three of them stayed in the airport until she had checked in and walked through the glass doors, their faces almost identical in their sorrowful expressions as they lifted their hands in farewell.

It was not until the plane was about to land in Australia, suspended in the sky between the life she knew and the life that was yet to unfold, not until Zia looked out the window at the vistas of a strange new country and realised that she was here to stay, that the sadness in her began to take shape, rising through her and overflowing in tears.

And she thought that perhaps it was only later that those who were leaving started carrying their loss, that if they had begun to feel their grief before they left, perhaps they would have never left at all.

*

On some days, her longing for home turned shadows into ghosts born of her yearning. Were those Mama’s footsteps she heard echoing along the hallway? Was that voice in the wind Dada calling for her, saying ‘Mahal, come’? The rustle of a curtain became the swish of Jamila’s sari, the rattle of a branch against the glass sounded like Amir, trying to get her attention.

If there was no one here to call her Mahal, no one to call her Dhaatha, was she not less than the person she used to be? It was as though she had left behind these parts of herself, floating weightless in the absence of the beloved names she had been known by to her family.

Her empty days seemed to be nothing but hours strung together by chores, and Zia, who had been determined to manage life for the three of them here as best she could, found her confidence waning in the absence of the help and the companionship of those she loved. She seemed to always be falling behind, forgetting one thing as she did another, sometimes bursting into tears when the sudden beeping of the smoke alarm alerted her to a burning dish, or the rush of rain spattering on the windows reminded her that she’d left the clothes hanging outside for days.

It was as though her mind had grown foggy with loneliness, her limbs slow from an exhaustion that had no cause that she could define, every basket of laundry or sink full of dishes not just a job that needed to be done but a reminder that she was alone in the doing.

*

In Colombo, she and Rashid had pored over the brochures about Canberra given to them by their migration agent, and like Rashid, she too had been dazzled by the pictures of pristine neighbourhoods, wide open spaces and shining lakes, amazed to discover that this city of which she had known nothing before was actually the capital of Australia.

In descriptions of community life in Canberra, Zia learned about playgroups, mothers’ groups, book clubs, walking groups, multicultural women’s support groups. It seemed that there were groups and programs for everything imaginable, and although this should have been comforting, Zia was secretly appalled that everything had to be so organised. Didn’t friends just meet up so their children could play together? If you enjoyed a book, didn’t you just recommend it to your friend so she could read it too, and then you could both talk about it?

Although now that they were here, Zia found that she did not know how to begin to access this life that they had prepared for. She looked up playgroups online and rang the numbers only to hang up again when someone answered in a friendly Australian accent. She looked at bus routes and felt defeated by the thought of taking two or three buses to get to a suburb that would have been only a ten-minute drive by car.

She knew she could learn to drive and yet every time she thought of it, she felt afraid and uncertain. After a lifetime of being a passenger, of having someone to take her wherever she needed to go, how could she suddenly be expected to learn this skill for herself? It was yet another hurdle to overcome and one that she did not have the energy for.

*

One evening she began to cook a lamb curry, which she knew Rashid loved, slicing onions and scooping them up in the palm of her hand, dropping the purple rings into the oil that was heating in the saucepan. As it sizzled, she began to pound the creamy cloves of garlic and golden pieces of ginger in the small wooden mortar and pestle that Mama had given her when she left, adding the smooth mixture to the onions. From the pantry, she took out the small jars of spices, counting out four cardamom pods and four cloves, breaking off a small stick of cinnamon and crumbling it with her fingers into the pan, the small kitchen growing warm and fragrant as the spices spluttered in the oil.

Rashid came out of the bedroom as she put the lid on the pot, the curry now simmering in a gravy of tomatoes. He was dressed in the green uniform that she knew he despised, the logo of the cleaning company that he worked for gleaming yellow on his sleeve. It jarred her every time she saw him—Rashid, who used to wear nothing but designer shirts and ties to work, who ordered Gucci leather shoes from the USA every year.

Surely, she thought, looking away from him, surely this was all just temporary, as he himself had said many times, and he would find better work soon.

He stood at the doorway, watching her as she put the spice jars back in the pantry.

‘Do you have a shift tonight?’ she asked finally, unable to bear the silence. ‘I didn’t know, or I would have cooked earlier so you could take some food with you.’

She opened the fridge, looking for something she could give him—why hadn’t she thought of it before, why hadn’t she saved some leftovers from last night?

‘You know I’ve been getting these extra shifts lately.’

‘I know.’

She took out the butter and Tasty cheese slices, starting to make a sandwich.

‘So, cheese for me, while you guys eat rice and lamb.’

His tone was light but her stomach clenched as he sighed and went into the living room where Farah was playing.

She cut the sandwiches into neat triangles and wrapped them in foil, putting an apple, muesli bar and box of juice into a brown paper bag. She should be more organised, she thought. The next time she cooked, she would freeze some of the food in containers so that there would always be a proper meal that he could take with him.

He never complained or said outright that he expected Zia to do these things, yet there was always that faint air of disappointment, as though the constant unhappiness that hung over him these days was deepened by her incompetence.

Sometimes he would speak of the drudgery of his job, how he could not believe that he had thrown away his career to come here and do this kind of work, as if he had not at one time been excited by the possibility of change, as if he had been immune to the allure of a life in Australia, and there was a note of reproach in his voice that made Zia want to protest, to say, But it was not I who asked you to leave!

And yet she was painfully aware that it was because of her and Farah that he was working so hard, that she herself could do nothing to contribute to their income. Guilt made her desperate as she tried to make up for this in other ways, to never ask him for money unless it was for something essential, to cook his favourite meals, to try to keep the house clean and uncluttered, the way they had been used to.

It seemed to make no difference and sometimes Zia didn’t know which she dreaded more, the long, quiet hours when she and Farah were alone in the house or the times when Rashid was home, his dark mood permeating the very rooms they were in until she could hardly breathe.

As she went into the living room to give him the food, Farah was asking Rashid if he would take her to the park with the flying fox the next day.

‘In sha Allah,’ he said, taking the brown paper bag from Zia without looking at her.

‘In sha Allah yes or In sha Allah no?’

Farah stood up from where she was playing with her Lego people and wrapped herself around Rashid’s leg. She was growing taller, Zia realised, her head almost up to his waist.

‘Okay—maybe yes.’ He laughed a little as he bent down and kissed her.

Farah kissed him back and returned to her play.

And then he was gone.

The air was heavy with Zia’s unsaid goodbyes, twisted with the tangle of her apologies.

Later, she served a small helping of the rice and lamb and sat next to Farah on the carpet to feed her, breaking off pieces of meat with her fingers and shaping the rice into little balls. When Farah grumbled that she was full, Zia reminded her that the last three balls of rice were the most important, that there was the strength of an elephant contained in those grains.

‘One for Mummy, one for Daddy, and one for you,’ she coaxed, and Farah opened her small mouth for the rest.

Putting the dishes away that night after Farah had gone to bed, Zia decided she wasn’t hungry after all and would eat the meal tomorrow, for lunch, when Rashid was home.

*

This morning Zia had decided they would go on an outing, just herself and Farah, for the first time by themselves. She had felt as though she could no longer bear the quietness of the house, the small rooms and narrow hall, the dishes that cluttered the sink, the musty smell from the string of damp clothes gathered in the living room after the sudden thunderstorm that had broken the dry summer heat last evening.

Farah was listless, lying on the rug in her room and turning the pages of a Peter Rabbit book. She had stopped asking to go home now, stopped trying to put her things back into the suitcase that still stood in a corner of her bedroom. She seemed happiest when Rashid was home, chattering about things that had happened months ago in Sri Lanka when he was away, falling onto the floor in fits when he played tickle games with her. Sometimes, Zia felt as though she was watching them from a distance—how was it that they were so relaxed in each other’s company? Why must she be the only one to bear the brunt of Rashid’s moods, of Farah’s grief?

But today she had decided they would make the most of the milder weather and go for a walk to the lake nearby. She packed biscuits and juice before setting off on the gravel walking trail that wound through the nature reserve behind their street.

As they walked, Zia grew accustomed to the sound of their feet on the path, to Farah’s chatter echoing in the silent, open space. The air smelled sweet and earthy, of fresh grass and wet soil. Once, when something rustled in a hedge, she started and grabbed Farah’s hand, ready to run, until she saw that it was a small brown rabbit, its nose twitching as it looked at them for a brief moment before hopping swiftly away. Farah, who had never seen a rabbit before, laughed and clapped her hands as Zia’s own terror softened with unexpected delight.

When they reached the lake, Farah ran towards the small beach, her little feet flying over the damp green grass, excited to use the bucket and spade that Rashid had bought for her a few days ago.

Now, her sandcastle complete, Farah carefully placed a small leaf on top of it and walked down to the water to wet her feet in the shallow waves as voices and laughter floated towards them. Turning, Zia saw a small group of children—two girls and a boy—their bright hair shining in the sunlight, looking no more than five or six years old.

‘We brought bread for the ducks!’ the boy called out to her, and Zia was startled by his familiarity, his confidence in speaking with a stranger on a bench at the park.

Farah stepped back from the water, watching them warily as they approached and pulled a package of bread from a bag, crumbling the slices amongst themselves. A flock of ducks appeared as though from nowhere, squawking and flapping their wings as the children threw pieces of bread into the water. One of the ducks waddled up to Farah, who raised her hands to her cheeks and stepped back in surprise.

‘Here,’ said one of the girls, handing Farah a slice of bread, ‘you feed them too.’

Farah turned her head to look at Zia questioningly and Zia nodded, resisting the urge to go and stand with her, to moderate this unexpected encounter.

The children prattled, laughing and splashing in the water, the smallest girl walking over to admire Farah’s sandcastle and sitting down with her to make more, their bright cotton dresses turning brown with mud.

From a distance, a woman’s voice called out, and the children hollered in return, letting their mother know where they were.

A cyclist rode past, tinkling his bell, wheels humming on the grass. The ducks swam in lazy circles and Farah laughed as the little girl buried her feet in the sand.

Watching them, Zia felt something slowly shift and change, as though the void in which they had lived these past few weeks had been breached, as though the silence had finally been broken.

14

In February, the streets of Florey began to come alive each morning as the school term began. Farah started preschool three days a week at the small local public school down the road, a singlestoreyed brick building that curved around a shady courtyard. Every morning Zia helped her get dressed, brushing her curls into shiny ringlets, and walked her to school with kisses and promises to be there as soon as the bell rang.

Cars lined up across the school’s car park as children tumbled out, others walking or cycling, turning the pavements into a blur of colour and movement with their brightly coloured backpacks and red-and-blue uniforms.

Zia was surprised to see some children walking on their own, and she once even saw a kindergartener on his bicycle, his short legs spinning furiously as he rushed past them. She couldn’t remember a time when she was let outside on her own as a child; even now she was only just getting used to being out and about by herself without a chaperone—and here were these little children, completely free and unfettered, and she had a moment of envy, both for the children as well as their parents, whose trust in their safety was so complete that they could let them leave home by themselves without worry or fear.

In the beginning, Farah cried and clung to Zia, refusing to let her go. The teacher, young and fresh-faced, her blonde ponytail swinging as she smiled and nodded at the children, lured Farah in with toys and books, telling her about all the fun, exciting things they were going to be doing that day. Zia, struggling with the guilt of leaving her child with a stranger, was comforted by the teacher’s warm voice, by how she assured Zia that Farah would stop crying and start enjoying herself as soon as Zia left.

Soon, Farah was rushing into the classroom with hardly a second glance, wriggling impatiently out of Zia’s embrace when she bent to kiss her goodbye. Watching her melt into the group of children, Zia realised that it was not only they who were from elsewhere—the little African boy whose skin gleamed like dark silk, the Japanese girl whose nails were always painted bright red, the Indian girl with a black bindi on her forehead who was dropped off every day by her grandmother dressed in a bright cotton sari—all of them were a part of this school community, the classroom a vibrant patchwork quilt of their unique identities.

Had these families found their place in this country?

Were these children the bridge between their parents’ past and present as they grew up here and learned the ways of this life?

Was it to them that the new beginning their parents had sought truly belonged, these children who had the advantage of starting life here on an equal footing with Australians?

Zia walked back alone to the empty house and empty hours that were now bracketed by school drop-offs and pick-ups, the beginnings of a routine in her otherwise haphazard days.

*

As summer mellowed and slipped into autumn, the grip of homesickness loosened, and Zia began to move through the days with more ease. She grew accustomed to the household chores that had seemed so overwhelming in the beginning, even finding time in her day to read books, to take short walks, to tend to the small garden in their backyard, planting dahlias, roses and lavender, small plots of carrots and spinach out of packets of seeds that they bought from Bunnings.

She had never done any gardening in her life yet now she discovered that there was a pleasure in feeling the soil crumble beneath her touch, in digging, clearing weeds to make space for garden beds, in the implicit hope of burying seeds in the ground and waiting for something beautiful to appear.

Her steps grew firmer, less hesitant, when she stepped out of the house for a walk, turning her face towards the gentling autumn sun. She learned that the silence, which had seemed so stark in the absence of familiar sounds, was actually coloured with birdsong, the whisper of winds that moved through trees, the distant hum of cars on the highway.

*

In the evenings, Zia continued trying to recreate the familiar, comforting dishes of home—the spicy curries, dhal, the fluffy rice that had to be cooked with just the right amount of water so that the grains didn’t stick together. Sometimes she would prop her phone on the kitchen counter and call Mama while she cooked, Mama reminding Zia to add the turmeric to the curry before the coriander or cumin, to let the meat simmer for a while before adding the coconut cream, how much tamarind juice she needed for the marinade.

Once, she asked Rashid if they could buy more fresh seafood, thinking of how much she missed the taste of fresh fish, mussels and prawns, brought straight to their door from the fishermen’s daily catch. As he hesitated, she suddenly realised that these things must cost far more in Canberra than they were used to, that Rashid did not earn the same kind of salary as before. That the same hesitation appeared every time she asked him for money, the shadows in his eyes deepening although he never refused.

‘Actually, maybe not—it takes so much time to clean and cook fish,’ she said, turning away so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘Let’s get it some other time—we can just have dhal and rice this week.’

It was the first time in her life that she’d had to worry about money, about what things would cost, the first time she had seen Rashid hesitate over an expense, and it came as a shock, this new way in which their lives had changed. This awareness began shaping her decisions even as she tried not to let Rashid see that she was looking for ways in which to curtail their expenses. When Farah was at school, she walked to the Salvos up the road to look for things she needed, finding that there were sometimes brand new clothes, toys and other items at a fraction of the cost there. She cooked extra portions to save electricity, gave Farah showers instead of baths.

She found that fresh ingredients cost more and that the supermarkets sold many things that helped save time and money—frozen vegetables, bottles of minced garlic and ginger, cans of fish, crushed tomatoes and coconut cream. Even as she tasted the odd tinned flavour of the coconut cream in the dhal, she thought of the evenings spent in Mama’s kitchen, sitting sideways on their old-fashioned coconut scraper and scraping fresh coconut as Mama prepared dinner, how the process of making coconut milk alone took up so many of the leisurely hours that they spent in the kitchen.

Zia would blend the crisp white coconut flakes with warm water and strain it through a fine muslin cloth to get the creamy ‘thick milk’, and then blend and strain it again for the ‘thin milk’ that Mama used to cook the vegetables in. Sometimes, they made pol sambol, pounding red onions, chillies, salt and lime juice into the flakes of coconut, eating the spicy mixture with thick slices of buttered roast bread and fried eggs for breakfast.

Even as she used the bottled and canned ingredients that made it so much easier for her to cook in this country, she decided that one day she would show Farah how to do these things, to teach her the pleasure of feeling the silky fresh coconut milk strain through your fingers, to inhale the aroma of crushed spices as you sprinkled them in the pot, to talk about their day as they prepared a meal together.

*

Rashid came and went like a shadow, his presence and absence defining the atmosphere of their home. Zia’s entire body tensed when she heard his car pull up in the driveway and even as Farah ran to the door, she would linger behind, listening for the tone of his voice, searching his face for markers of his mood. She did not approach him unless he turned to her with a glimmer of a smile or he called out to ask her for something—a cup of tea, a snack, a fresh towel.

It reminded her of those times in the early days of their marriage, when his mood turned sour and she would leave him alone as he asked while she spent time with her family—only now, there was nowhere to retreat except within herself and no escape for either of them except in the rooms within the four walls of the house.

And yet there were also rare moments when things seemed serene, when Rashid was relaxed and kind and she was able to let go of the watchfulness that haunted her so often, times when she felt something akin to happiness.

One Sunday, he took them to a farmers’ market, where they wandered past stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables, paintings and homeware crafted by local artists. Zia found that she had a craving for fresh cherries, which she had never eaten before, except for the tart preserved ones on top of shop-bought cakes in Colombo bakeries. Now she bought them from the cherry farmers’ heaped crates and ate them with Farah, sitting on a sunlit bench, the sweetness of the fruit exploding on her tongue, their lips and fingers stained with the red juice.

Watching them, Rashid took out his phone and snapped a photograph, laughing and saying that he didn’t know who the bigger child was. In the picture, Zia and Farah were laughing up at him against the backdrop of the bustling market, their eyes bright, their hands full of cherries in the warm light.

That evening, Zia sent the photograph to her family and friends in Colombo, telling them how delicious fresh red cherries were, how much they were enjoying life in Australia, how lucky they were to be here.

*

‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ said a voice behind her.

Zia was standing at the preschool gate watching Farah and another little girl walking towards the playground, their light and dark heads bent close together.

She turned to see a woman smiling, as Zia was, at the sight of the children.

‘I’m Jenny, Amy’s mum,’ she said, nodding towards the girl who was now playing with Farah.

Jenny’s fine, light brown hair, like her daughter’s, was clipped back with a large red flowered slide. She wore a purple singlet and brightly patterned harem pants, silver bracelets that clinked together on her slim wrists, reminding Zia of the brilliantly coloured parrots that sometimes swooped into the backyard and perched on the wooden fence, vibrant and conspicuous beside the pale cockatoos and dark magpies.

Zia nodded, suddenly shy, uncertain how to speak to this striking woman who bared her arms and shoulders with such confidence, who spoke to her with the ease of someone who was unafraid of how they sounded to the other person, who belonged here in a way that Zia feared she never would.

Her only encounters with Australians so far had been brief interactions in passing—the bus driver who told her that Farah could ride for free, the old man who walked his dog past their house every afternoon and called out hello, and wasn’t it a lovely day, if she happened to be outside. When she responded to these people, she was always painfully aware of her appearance, her accent and manner of speaking, so different to theirs, and she wondered how she must appear to them, if her differences made her seem alien, an intruder in their world.

Even so, when Jenny invited her to walk home together, Zia found herself agreeing, drawn by her warm smile and friendly voice, by the knowledge that they were both mothers of little girls who had just started preschool.

As the school bell buzzed and the children ran into the classroom, Zia and Jenny set off down the road. A cool breeze wafted through the trees, the occasional car whizzing past them as they walked.

‘Is this Farah’s first time at school?’ asked Jenny. ‘Amy’s been to childcare before so she isn’t too fazed by it, I think.’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Zia, telling her how Farah had struggled in the beginning but how she loved going now, how she even missed school on the days she had to be at home.

As they talked about their children, she discovered that it was not so difficult after all to understand each other, and she began to relax, to tell Jenny a little more about herself and how she had come to live in Canberra, to ask Jenny questions about herself and Amy.

‘It’s just the two of us here in Canberra too,’ said Jenny. ‘Amy’s father left me when I was pregnant and I haven’t seen him since. Said he wasn’t ready for a baby, that if I wanted to keep her, it was up to me. The idiot. Not that I care anymore, and look at what he missed! Amy’s the best thing in my life—you know how it is. I can see how much you love your little girl. My family lives in Sydney, so we don’t see them much either—I mean, it’s not as bad as for you, we do go there every couple of months, or Mum or Dad will come here—but it does get lonely, I get that. We get by, though, Amy and I, we take care of each other.’

Questions spun through Zia’s mind as she listened—how had Jenny managed to raise Amy on her own? Wasn’t it hard? Had she struggled? Had she loved Amy’s father? Did she know, when they met, that he wouldn’t want children? Did it hurt when he left? Did she miss him?

It was a life that was so far removed from her own experience and one that in the world she was from would be viewed as a calamity, inviting judgement and pity, a belief that this was a woman with questionable morals who had brought such hardship upon herself. And yet, looking at Jenny as she walked beside her, so easy and free, so comfortable in her own skin, Zia felt only a mild stirring of envy, of wonderment at how something could look so different if your view was undistorted by old, inherited ideas.

She wanted to ask Jenny how she had lived this life, to understand how one could be both bound to her child yet unencumbered in other ways, but she could not find the words. Instead, she said simply, ‘You seem very happy.’

‘You bet I am. It hasn’t all been easy, so many ups and downs, but it’s been worth it.’

She was a web designer, Jenny said, and when she found out she was going to have to raise Amy by herself, she gave up her job with an advertising agency to start her own business and work from home.

‘It’s great because it means I get to work in my pyjamas if I want to, but it also means I sometimes end up hiding in the toilet to take calls from clients so they won’t hear Amy shrieking in the background,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll probably go back one day, when Amy’s older. A part of me misses working in an office. What about you? Are you working at the moment?’

Zia began to say that she was a housewife, then, remembering that people in the West preferred a different term, said that she was a stay-at-home mother.

‘Cool, cool. Would you want to do something now that Farah is in school, do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so,’ said Zia, surprised by the question, by the assumption that she might want to do something else.

All her life she had lived amongst women whose primary role was to care for their families, to be wives and mothers above all else. It was a long time since she had looked at those old dreams that she had packed away in some secret corner of her mind when she married Rashid, along with her textbooks and other remnants of her school life.

A memory came, of overhearing her parents talking quietly in the kitchen one night soon after her Advanced Level results had come out, excellent grades that would have guaranteed her a place in any university in Sri Lanka.

‘She could go to university,’ Mama had said. ‘She might end up being a teacher or something, she’s so good at English.’

‘Two years waiting for entrance, and then four or five years until she gets a degree that she most probably won’t even use?’ Dada had replied. ‘When she could be married with a couple of kids by then? Don’t waste time talking about this—let’s get her settled while we can.’

Mama had called the matchmaker the next day and within a few months she had been engaged, then married. When Farah was born, it no longer seemed possible to deviate at all from this path that had been laid out for her.

Besides, what would she do in Australia? Who would hire her here, when even Rashid, with all his qualifications, had failed to get a good job?

Jenny had paused at one of the streets that branched off from the main road, turning to Zia to say goodbye.

‘Well, I’m glad we met, Zia. I’ve enjoyed the chat,’ she said. ‘I live just around the corner here—you and Farah should come over for a playdate sometime! It can be hard to make friends when you’re new in Canberra. I remember how it was when I moved here. Feel free to call me anytime, okay? Better head off, I’ve a project to finish this morning.’

They exchanged phone numbers, and Jenny walked down the street, raising her hand in a wave, bracelets gleaming in the sunlight as they slipped down her arm. As Zia walked the rest of the way home, that image of brightness stayed with her, and throughout the day she found herself smiling at the thought that perhaps, like Farah, she too had made a friend.

15

A cold breeze made Rashid shiver as he gathered his cleaning equipment from the boot of the car. He was at the office building where he cleaned the toilets twice a week late at night after all the employees had left. The sprawling building was surrounded by vast bushland, now a shadowy realm in the moonlit darkness. As he lifted the large bucket and mop, he sensed movement behind him and turned.

For a moment, all he could see was their eyes, gleaming at him through the blackness. He remained still, his heart racing with terror. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw the pointed ears, the long, graceful limbs, the tails sloping gently to the ground.

Kangaroos, he thought with relief. He had seen them here before but never this close. He’d heard stories of kangaroo attacks in the suburbs but these animals looked harmless enough, watching him silently with their eerie gaze.

Perhaps they knew him by now, this poor brown bugger who showed up like clockwork twice a week to do the dirty work that none of the white people wanted to do.

He turned away from their stares and walked towards the building, pausing to locate the key from the bunch of key tags in his pocket—tonight he would also go to the childcare centre and the Uniting Church headquarters in the city.

Inside, he made his way through the dim corridor, past rooms where the shadows of desks and computers mocked him with memories of the life he used to have. When he reached the toilets, he flicked on the lights and was assaulted by the brightness, the stench, the pain of having to do this task.

Still, he would do it and he would do it well—if he had to be a bloody cleaner, he would be the best cleaner in town.

Only last week his boss had told him that the clients were really pleased with his work—also, he was always reliable and never took a day off. He may even be due for a pay rise soon, he’d said.

Rashid had listened with a mixture of pride and shame. Had it really come to this? That after managing successful international projects, manoeuvring complex deals, winning key contracts—years of corporate achievements—he was now being congratulated on a sparkling row of commodes and sinks?

*

A month ago he’d been to see a recruiter and had handed her his resumé with its long list of accomplishments.

She’d hmmed and aahed as she turned the pages before finally saying, ‘Maybe you should just take off your master’s degree. Then you could try for, say, an admin role. Also—ah—maybe you could change your name to sound a bit more Anglo. Something like … Richard. What do you think? Not so different, hey? And not have “Ahmed” in your name … Richard Hassan actually sounds quite nice, don’t you think? Lots of migrants do that, you know.’

He had understood.

The more foreign he seemed, the less likely employers were to hire him. Also, she was advising him to aim low—not the managerial positions he had in mind.

‘Look, I can try to help,’ the lady—her name was Rachel—had said. ‘But you know you can’t expect to get a good job straight after you get off the boat, you have to slog it for a while.’

But I didn’t get off a fucking boat! he’d wanted to tell her, angry at the implication. I paid for my visa, your government invited me to come here!

And then he’d felt guilty, because what about all those Sri Lankan refugees who did come in boats, those who were as skilled as he was but whose choice was not between a comfortable lifestyle in Colombo and a business class ticket to a new beginning in a First World country, but between threat and fear in the war-ravaged north of Sri Lanka and a rickety boat on the open seas to a country that threatened to return them to the horrors they were trying to escape?

Immigration, it seemed, was the great equaliser—no matter where you came from or how you came to Australia, no matter who you were before, you had to let it all go and reinvent yourself.

He’d gone home filled with despair. He was never going to get the kind of job he wanted, he was never going to return to the kind of roles he was used to. Moving to Australia had been fatal to his career.

Even if he changed his name to Richard.

He was no longer the man his family and friends knew and respected, no longer the husband Zia loved. This idea darkened and twisted his thoughts when he spoke to his parents, especially his mother, who had called almost every day, wanting to know how he was, if his work was going well, if he was happy. He answered her in short, curt words, offering her no details and asking her no questions, until she too became curt in return as he knew she would, calling him less and less frequently until now they barely spoke at all.

Easier that than to have to confess to her how far he had fallen from her ideal of him or to face her disappointment if he told her the truth.

That night Zia had cooked chicken biryani, raita and pappadums, one of his favourite meals. Instead of being pleased, he’d felt irritated. Why was she cooking festive meals when their life had disintegrated the way it had, when everything he’d worked for had turned to dust?

They ate their dinner in silence. He didn’t tell her about his visit to the recruiter—she would not have understood. Zia seemed to think that their problems would magically resolve themselves, that he would one day get an amazing job offer out of the blue. He knew that was what she prayed for, kneeling on the prayer mat five times a day, her palms raised in supplication.

Later, he’d felt a pang when he went into the bedroom and saw that she was waiting for him, wearing a soft violet Victoria’s Secret chemise that he’d bought for her years ago. The shadows under her eyes had deepened; she was as tired as he was, he knew.

He started to go towards her when he heard in his mind the recruiter’s voice, suggesting that he take his graduate degrees off his resumé, that he change his name to something more familiar and easy to the Australian eye. Somewhere simmering beneath that was his mother’s rage when he failed to please her, the whip of a cane across his legs, shadows that blended into one dark, familiar pain that blinded him to the sight of Zia waiting for him.

He climbed into bed and turned away from her, closing his eyes. After a while, he felt her slip in beside him, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body, although they weren’t touching. Her breathing was uneven and he knew she was crying. And yet the space between them felt impenetrable and to turn to her, to take her in his arms as he knew she wanted, was something he couldn’t bring himself to do, even though he knew that this moment would return to haunt him.

*

He remembered that night now as he poured disinfectant into the toilet bowls, watching the dark blue liquid swirl through the clear water. These days, Zia was usually asleep by the time he went to bed.

He realised that he couldn’t remember the last time they’d held each other.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her smile or heard her laugh—his Zia, whose smile could light up the whole room, whose laugh used to be one of his favourite sounds in the world. He remembered the first time he saw her—she had been smiling, not at him but at her father across the room, and something about her had captivated him enough that he had wanted to marry her, despite his mother’s protests.

It had been a good choice, the years following their marriage had proven that. She was a good wife to him, a good mother to Farah. Even here, without the help and support that she was used to, he could see how much she tried to take care of them both, to please him, to keep Farah happy.

He knew she thought he couldn’t see these things, that her efforts made no difference to him. He saw the fear that flickered over her face when he entered the house, that brief moment when she seemed to decide whether it was safe to speak, to come to him, or to retreat. When he was in a bad mood, this angered him even further; he would almost want to make her speak so that it would give him a reason to unleash his rage. And yet on days that the darkness did not weigh so heavily on his heart and limbs, it filled him with sorrow that he could cause her to look as she did.

Where was the freedom, the ease, the luxury of the life he had imagined would be theirs when they immigrated? How had he failed so badly in mapping out his dreams? The thought that this whole thing might have been a mistake, that he should have paid more attention to the people who told him how hard it was to start again from scratch in a new country, was sometimes almost more than he could bear.

Zia and Farah were the foundation on which he stood, their love was his safeguard. Despite his coldness these past few months, he believed Zia knew that. She had always been patient with his moods, waiting for him to return to himself, sweet and loving when he did go to her. He needed to do better, to find ways to be kinder, at least in those times when he felt able to.

The toilets were spotless, the sharp smell of the disinfectant stinging his nostrils.

When he returned to the car there was no sign of the kangaroos.

16

They were going to the hot air balloon festival.

Zia woke much earlier than usual, feeling different. She lay quietly in the darkness, beneath the warm quilt, savouring the lightness of the feelings that floated through her. It was hope, she realised, the expectation that this day, and the days that followed, would bring good things. It was the absence of dread.

Rashid’s soft breath fell on her shoulder, his arm heavy across her stomach.

She was safe. She was loved.

Everything was going to be okay after all.

Last night, Rashid had made love to her after what felt like a very long time. She’d felt a subtle shift in him during the day, that strange calmness that sometimes came after his grim moods, visible in the gentler way he moved, in the ease of his smile, as though he had laid down whatever mysterious burdens he’d been carrying.

There was a moment when he had caught her eye after Farah said something winsome and they had both burst out laughing in shared enjoyment. A surprised joy had bloomed in Zia in that moment, that such an ordinary delight could still be theirs.

At night, when he ate the simple meal of rice, chicken and potato curry that she’d made for dinner, he’d smiled and said, ‘This is really good—reminds me of what you used to cook before Latha came along.’

He would take them to the hot air balloon festival in the morning, he said, showing Farah pictures on his phone of the bright balloons floating in the sky. They would have to wake up very early to get there in time to see the balloons go up but it would be fun.

He didn’t have a cleaning shift that night and she’d gone to bed, thinking he would probably watch something on TV until past midnight as he usually did on his nights off.

Instead, he’d come to her.

He got into bed and slipped his arms around her from behind, his kiss on the back of her neck igniting a flare of forgotten desire. She hesitated only a moment before turning and offering herself to him, the familiar caresses, the ways in which they had learned to touch each other, all returning in a stream of longing, dissolving the pain in her heart.

‘Do you love me?’ she whispered afterwards, her words shrouded in the safety of darkness. ‘You still love me, don’t you?’

He moved, laughed softly, and held her closer as he said, ‘You know I love you. Even if I don’t say it, even if I seem distant at times, you should know I love you.’

Of course she should, she thought, ignoring the ripple of hurt that asked for more—that wished he loved her in ways she could understand, that his love was a more tangible thing than a whispered promise in the dark.

This must be enough.

Now, he stirred and sighed in his sleep as she slowly eased herself from beneath his arm and went to the bathroom for a shower. Afterwards, she stood under the heat lamp, drying her long hair. She was filled with anticipation about their outing today, about the prospect of continuing to bask in the light of Rashid’s kindness towards her. She took extra care with her clothes, putting on a pretty lilac skirt and white sweater, a blue and white silk Hermès scarf and dangling Swarovski earrings that Rashid had bought her last year.

She usually wore only Western clothes now, partly because she had learned to love the swing of a pretty skirt against her legs, the casual comfort of the T-shirts and jeans that her family would have considered indecent in Colombo, but also because she felt it was easier to blend in this way, to not attract the curious glances of strangers by the simple fact that she was dressed in the same way as they were.

It was odd enough to look around her sometimes, on the bus, or in a shop, and realise she was the only dark-skinned person among a sea of white faces, to feel that curious sense of otherness without adding to it by dressing differently. Did these other people notice that she was different, or was it only she who was aware of it because of her years of living in a place where everyone else looked and sounded similar to her? Would she one day be as oblivious and free, or would she forever be hampered by the differences that set her apart?

She glanced at the clock and saw that there was an hour to go until sunrise. Rashid was still asleep, his arm still stretched across the space where she had been, as though he was unaware that she had left.

Silvery light was glowing at the edges of the windows, one bird, and then another, beginning its song. Zia unrolled the prayer mat in the corner of the room and put on her white cotton purdah, adjusting the fabric to sit neatly around her face. Turning towards the direction of Mecca, she quietly murmured the words that signalled the beginning of her prayer:

‘Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem, in the name of God, most beneficent, most merciful, I turn my face towards Him who created the heavens and the earth …’

Bending, kneeling and rising again, she completed the two rakaaths of the dawn prayer and then raised her hands in supplication. Today, her open palms were light with gratitude, shaky with hope.

‘Thank you for last night. Thank you for today. Please make it last. Please make it last, and let us be happy, let Rashid find a job that he is happy with, let Farah be happy, teach me how to keep my family safe …’

Silently, she mouthed the words.

When she finished and opened her eyes, she saw that Rashid was awake and watching her from the bed, his eyes still heavy-lidded with sleep.

Except for Jumu’ah prayers on Friday, when all men went to the mosque to pray the noon prayer, he had never seemed to care for the daily prayers.

For Zia, it was a habit ingrained from the day she turned seven, her days marked by the prayers at dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening, everything set aside for those few minutes as the whole family turned their attention to worship.

She loved the simple rituals—the cleansing ablutions as she washed her face, hands, arms and feet, the quietness of the moments in which she stood before God, the simple, rhythmic movements of the prayer as she clasped her hands together and bowed her head in surrender to His will, the lyrical Arabic words of praise and supplication. Here, in Australia, her prayers had become even more important, a way in which she remained loyal to her past life, even as the belief that God would reward her constancy by answering her prayers gave her succour on the days when it seemed as though things would never change.

She picked up her string of ninety-nine wooden prayer beads to say dhikr, smiling at Rashid and raising her hand to indicate that she’d be done soon. She hurriedly whispered her praises of God, ‘Subhan Allah’, ‘Alhamdulillah’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’, thirty-three times each, the thirty-third word marked by the golden beads between the brown. As she said the last Allahu Akbar, she heard Farah calling out from the next room, where she’d been sleeping in her new bed for just a week now, since her nightmares had gradually lessened after she had started school.

Yawning and stretching, Rashid slid out of bed and headed towards Farah’s room.

‘We’d better leave soon,’ he called to Zia over his shoulder. ‘You don’t want to miss the launch of the balloons.’

Zia rose to her feet, folding the prayer rug and purdah and going to the kitchen to make tea and warm up some milk for Farah. Soon they were all in the car, Farah wide awake and excited as she rattled off a string of questions. Who would blow the balloons? How big were they? Big enough for people to fly in? How come?

They laughed as they tried to keep up with her, Rashid driving through the misty grey morning towards the city. Zia was excited too—she had never seen a hot air balloon before, let alone several of them going up at the same time.

It reminded her of the time she and Rashid had been going through immigration brochures in Colombo, looking at the different cities in Australia and wondering what life in each of them would be like. The pictures of balloons floating over Lake Burley Griffin at sunrise added to the dreamlike image of Canberra as a beautiful place to live in—a city that celebrated the arrival of autumn with a colourful festival of balloons released into the early morning sky.

They arrived at the lawns in front of Old Parliament House, which were teeming with cars and people bundled up in warm coats and boots despite the earliness of the hour. Surprised, Zia turned to Rashid and exclaimed, ‘Look at all these people! Where do they all hide?’

He laughed. ‘It’s quiet in the suburbs but the city is a bit busier, you know, especially this area, and I suppose especially during an event like this. You should just hop on the bus and come with Farah sometime.’

He looked down at her as he lifted Farah out of the car and reached out for a moment to touch her scarf, his eyes suddenly sad.

‘I remember buying this in New York. I knew the colours would look beautiful on you.’

Zia could almost feel the sudden pain throbbing in his fingertips, for the life that was past, for a time when it had been a simple thing for him to walk into a shop in New York and buy her a Hermès scarf as a gift, to return to Colombo on a business class flight and give it to her, to watch her try it on for the first time in the safety of their comfortable bedroom in their luxurious city apartment. How much they had taken the security of that life for granted! Even as they had planned for this transition, they had never really thought of the loss of such material things, had not imagined its impact.

She knew that Rashid believed such times were lost to them forever, that he thought they would always be struggling to make ends meet, that they would always be somehow less in Australia.

And yet how much did it matter? Weren’t they here, in this beautiful country, in this stunning city, on this crisp, cold morning, at the very beginning of a new chapter in their lives? She did not want this moment to be marred by sorrow and so she clasped Rashid’s hand in her own, saying gaily, ‘I love this scarf, but the one I got at Target last week is just as pretty, you know. I think they’re starting to blow the balloons, look!’

The grassy lawns were spread with the brightly coloured nylon of the balloons, which began to rise and float in the dim morning light, glowing in the bursts of flame that roared from the gas burners. A guitar strummed, a drum began to beat, and suddenly the air was filled with vibrant music, people pausing in their stride to tap their feet and twirl their arms, circling around to look for the live band that was playing somewhere on the grounds.

In the distance, the ghostly silhouette of Canberra’s stately Old Parliament House rose out of the grey wreaths of mist.

Zia and Farah walked through the throngs of people, their feet falling softly on the dew dampened grass, as Rashid went to join the queue for the coffee cart. There were couples snuggling together for warmth, young parents with sleepy babies in prams, children darting from one balloon to the other, dogs straining against their leashes.

Rashid returned with two cappuccinos and a small hot chocolate for Farah. As they huddled together and sipped the warm drinks, a murmur rippled through the crowd—the first balloon had been blown up.

It was a magnificent pink and yellow turtle that made Farah jump up and down with delight as it hovered with its smiling yellow face and large pink legs sprawled in the air. The other balloons rose in a riot of colours in different shapes and sizes—birds, whales, soccer balls, the wise old face of E.T., plain balloons and brightly patterned ones—straining against the ropes that tied them to the ground, towards the rising sun and orange-tipped clouds.

Amidst the chatter and laughter of the crowd, the music and the sunshine, the balloons were untethered and set free, lifting off into the air, one by one.

Watching them, Zia felt her own emotions lighten and rise in simple joy and wonder at the beauty of the moment, her eyes filling with tears.

Turning to Rashid, she said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? I’m so glad we came!’

He smiled back at her, his expression warm and loving. ‘It is.’

They held Farah between them and watched the balloons floating away in the bright morning sky like a constellation of dreams.

17

Zia was drinking tea on the sofa that afternoon when the WhatsApp message came in. She picked up her phone and idly clicked on the video that had come from one of her old school friends in Colombo. After a few seconds, she closed the video with a trembling finger and put her mug down, her stomach heaving.

What was that? Was it real? Why would anyone send it to her?

The screams still rang in her ears, the woman’s pleas of ‘please don’t shoot’, the gunshots, the blood blooming on the man’s chest as he fell, his hands still raised in prayer.

Outside, the street was bathed in sunlight, quiet and peaceful. And yet, somewhere in the world, something terrible had happened, and Zia felt the darkness of it rip through her.

She picked up her phone again to see that her friend had sent another message.

Shooting at a mosque during Jumu’ah prayers, she’d said. Shocking. You guys stay safe.

So it was real. The horrifying scene she had just witnessed had really happened. Zia sank back on the sofa and turned on the TV, clicking until she found a news channel, which was reporting the unbelievable news that there had been a shooting in a mosque in New Zealand that afternoon.

She was shaken by the news presenter’s sombre expression. Every time she had watched the Australian news these past few months, she had noticed that the presenters were usually light-hearted and cheerful, often adding personal comments or other entertaining banter to their reports. Rashid had once remarked that watching the news in Australia was a completely different experience to watching it in Sri Lanka. It was as though the events that made the news here were of a different timbre: politicians discussing policy and economy, even the occasional accident or crime being a far cry from the relentless reporting of war, disaster and poverty that they were used to.

Now, Zia was caught in a moment that was at once familiar and yet unknown, this witnessing of a terrible act of violence in a country so similar to Australia which had seemed immune to such a tragedy.

A lone gunman had entered the mosque during the Friday prayers, shooting indiscriminately at worshippers. The death toll was at thirty-two and still climbing—men, women and children, almost all of them first generation immigrants who had moved to a country that had promised them a higher quality of life, peace, freedom.

The gunman, the reporter was saying, had been identified as a white male in his twenties. He had published an online manifesto before the attack that railed against mass immigration, diversity and ‘white genocide’ and his intention appeared to be to incite further racial violence. The gunman had also livestreamed the attack and the video was posted on social media. The reporter urged people not to share this horrific video which was now banned online.

At that, Zia picked up her phone again, clicking back to the message and deleting the video.

That was really distressing, she wrote back to her friend, please don’t share it with anyone else.

But it was too late for her, the chilling sounds and images of lives ending and shattering seared into her memory.

*

Only a few weeks ago, Rashid had taken Zia and Farah to the Yarralumla mosque in Canberra’s south for Jumu’ah prayers. It had been Zia’s first time in a mosque—the mosques in Sri Lanka were not open to women, except sometimes for special prayers during Ramadan or Eid, and even then Zia’s father’s preference had been for the women to pray at home while he and Amir went to the mosque.

She had dressed Farah, who was home that day, in a small red patterned hijab, explaining that every woman wore a hijab to the mosque out of respect and that when she was older, she could choose for herself if she wanted to wear it all the time or not. As Zia had wrapped a bronze-coloured scarf around her own head and pinned it in place, she had felt a subtle shift within herself, a reclaiming of a part of her identity that had begun to feel nebulous in these past few weeks, as though it was losing shape in the absence of familiar boundaries.

‘Am I like Red Riding Hood, Mummy?’ Farah had asked, examining her face in the mirror.

Zia had laughed, saying, ‘You are indeed! But luckily there’s no big bad wolf at the mosque, only lots of other lovely Muslims who are going to pray with us.’

In Yarralumla, amidst the embassies and diplomats’ houses that the suburb was known for, the distinctive minaret of the mosque rose up from its gleaming white dome into a cloudless turquoise sky. Rashid, Zia and Farah had walked across the neat, freshly mown lawns towards the entrance, where they had taken off their shoes, putting them on the rack by the door.

‘The women’s section is over there—if you follow those women who just came in, you’ll see,’ Rashid had said, adjusting his skullcap. ‘I’ll meet you two back at the car when we’re done, okay? Farah, be a good girl, pray like Mummy and listen to the Imam’s khutba so you can tell me about it afterwards.’

He had walked away into the larger hall, where the men congregated, while Zia and Farah had followed the women into a smaller room. Despite the fact that the mosque was open to women, it had been clear that the men far outnumbered them. Dark green and maroon prayer rugs had lined the cool, tiled floors, warm sunshine flooding the room with gold-tinged light. The other women had smiled at Zia and Farah, greeting them with salaams.

‘Where are you from, sister?’ asked a dark-skinned woman in professional clothes whose mauve hijab was pinned in place with a sparkly silver clip.

‘I’m Salma, from Nigeria,’ she had said after Zia had told her they were from Colombo, Sri Lanka. ‘You’ll find there’s people from all over the world here! And Australian reverts, like sister Donna over there.’

‘Do you mean converts?’ Zia had asked, glancing at the woman who had turned and waved at them with a smile as she heard her name.

‘No, reverts—because we believe everyone is born a Muslim, you know, and if someone who has gone on another path returns to us, we then call them a revert rather than a convert.’

‘I see,’ Zia had said, wondering for a moment about what would have led Donna, who had presumably been born and raised with the freedoms of Western culture, to choose Islam, if she had perhaps been drawn to the firmness of its rules, the safety that came from drawing boundaries that you would not allow yourself to cross.

‘Welcome, ahlan wa sahlan,’ Salma had said, reaching down to pat Farah’s head.

As Zia thanked her, the call to prayer began sounding through the speakers, the Imam’s voice low and melodious. Zia had joined the line of women, standing shoulder to shoulder so that Satan could not pass between them, their heads lowered, gaze focused on the ground. From the corner of her eye, she had seen Farah following her movements as she raised her hands and clasped her palms together on her stomach, softly repeating the words of the Imam under her breath.

At the end of the prayer, along with everyone else, Zia had turned her head right, then left, her salaams this time for the angels whom they believed had joined them in their prayers.

Afterwards, Farah had climbed onto her lap, snuggling into her as the Imam began his khutba, the Friday sermon. A baby who had been sleeping in his pram during the prayer began to wail, his mother gently lifting him and moving to a corner, sitting cross-legged on a rug as she nursed her child.

Zia had only heard khutbas second-hand before when Dada and Amir returned from the Grand Mosque in Colombo for lunch after Jumu’ah. They would sit at the table, eating the special ghee rice and fried beef that Mama usually made on Fridays, narrating the day’s khutba for Mama and Zia, topics that ranged from correct etiquette to loving your family, compassion, the meaning of time. Now, she listened to the Imam in the next room speak of how hardship and ease were inseparable.

‘So, verily, with every difficulty there is relief; verily, with every difficulty there is relief. Therefore, when thou art free from thine immediate task, still labour hard,’ the Imam had said, quoting the Quran. ‘Many of us, my dear brothers and sisters, have taken this verse to mean that ease comes after hardship—however, if you think about it, what it is actually saying is that ease is inherent in the hardship. Verily with every difficulty there is relief. Perhaps you lose your job and this is a tough time for you but it means that you have the time to recover from a health problem while you look for another job. Perhaps you are far away from your family but you have the opportunity to make new friends. So remember to look for the relief within every difficulty, brothers and sisters, and be grateful for it and it will change your life. Remember that Allah’s mercy is boundless, that He is always there when we turn to Him—remember the hadith that says when we take one step towards Him, He takes ten steps towards us.’

Listening to him, Zia had thought of all the little blessings that were wrapped within her days even as she was burdened with homesickness and worry. Having both Rashid and Farah to love and care for, the quiet moments when she was alone and yet not lonely, discovering a freedom of thought that was not possible in the presence of others.

A sense of peace had settled over her as she had absorbed the warmth of Farah’s cheek pressed up against her own, the murmurs of the baby content now in his mother’s arms, the comforting presence of the other women in the room.

Was this then what it was like to go to the mosque and worship among strangers who made you feel safe by their solidarity, to listen to words that renewed your faith, that strengthened your resolve to be a good Muslim?

‘I hope we will see you again here, sister—I work in the embassy nearby, so I come often,’ Salma had said, smiling at Zia and Farah as they left the room together.

‘I hope so,’ said Zia, returning her smile. ‘But I don’t drive, so we can only really come if my husband is home.’

‘Ah, you need to learn to drive, sis! That’ll change your life!’ Salma had waved as she walked away, heels clicking on the tiles.

On the way home, Zia had unpinned her scarf, shaking her head so that her hair fell forward onto her shoulders.

Rashid had glanced at her, asking, ‘Did you like it? The prayers? The khutba?’

‘I did,’ Zia had said thoughtfully, folding her scarf on her lap. ‘It was lovely, so peaceful. I’m glad we went. It reminded me of home but it was also different. I’d love to go again.’

‘We’ll see,’ Rashid had said.

His face had grown serious and he hadn’t seemed inclined to speak any more, driving the rest of the way in silence.

*

On the evening of the attacks, Zia and Rashid went to the mosque again, driven by a need to share their grief, to find solace in the company of other Muslims in the aftermath of the tragedy.

When they arrived, they found a crowd milling at the entrance, people talking softly amongst themselves, voices in several languages blending together in a low hum. The walls of the mosque were lined with flowers, lit by the flickering flames of candles that glowed in the purple twilight.

‘Are you Muslim?’ a young woman in jeans and a T-shirt asked Zia. ‘Is it okay if I come in?’

‘I’m sure it is,’ said Zia after a moment’s hesitation.

They walked together into the mosque, finding a spot near the wall in the women’s section and kneeling on the tiled floor. The woman clasped her hands together, closing her eyes, her lips moving as though in prayer.

‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un,’ murmured Zia, the old phrase, To God do we belong and verily to Him do we return, that she had been taught to say in response to the news of death, the old words that gave comfort and meaning to the ending of life.

And yet the deep unease within her remained, sharpened by the palpable sadness in the room. Prayer beads clicked, voices rose and fell as people recited the Quran, foreheads pressed to the ground, palms raised to the sky.

The way the men and women at the other mosque had been in the moments before they were shot and killed.

The young woman turned to Zia, her grey eyes bright with unshed tears.

‘I’m so sorry for what happened. It feels so shocking and I just wanted to come here and express my condolences in some way, you know? It was their home just as Australia is yours. I hope you feel safe here. I hope we will never see such a thing happen again.’

She clasped her hand over Zia’s, then rose to her feet and left.

After a while, Zia left also, joining Rashid and Farah outside. They stood together for a while, watching Farah play hopscotch on the concrete patch by the fence.

‘Are you feeling better?’ asked Rashid quietly.

‘Not really,’ said Zia. ‘I can’t stop thinking of those people, how they must have been building their lives in a new country, how safe and peaceful they must have felt in the mosque.’

She fell silent, unwilling to say the words that she knew were on both their minds.

Those people, like us, made a choice between one life and another—and they were wrong.

What if it was us?

What if we too were wrong?

18

Rashid had an interview.

He stared at the email from the recruiter in disbelief, a small bubble of lightness rising in his chest.

It felt like hope.

He’d been selected, the email said, to interview for the position of administration assistant at a state government organisation. There was a date and a time—Tuesday, 11:30 am next week. Could he please confirm his availability?

His hand shook slightly as he clicked reply and began to type.

Dear Rachel,

Thank you for the opportunity …

Administration assistant—in an office, at a desk, with a computer, where he could draft correspondence, even reports, manage finances, make bookings. It would be a shadow of what he had once done, but surely when they saw what he was capable of they would promote him—he could start building a career again, he was sure of it.

Slowly, slowly, he told himself, clicking send. It was just an interview.

Briefly, he wondered if he should have changed his name. He should have at least taken his middle name, Ahmed, out of his CV.

This was not a good time to be identified as a Muslim.

Last week he and Zia had watched footage of bombings in Sri Lankan churches, horrified at the violence that had suddenly been unleashed in the country. Seven suicide bombers had walked into three luxury hotels and three churches that morning, killing and injuring hundreds as they blew themselves up. The suicide bombers, it turned out, were members of a local Islamist militant group believed to be seeking retaliation for the shooting in New Zealand. Despite the decades of war that Sri Lanka had endured, it was the first time in the country’s history that such an act of terror had been instigated from the minority Muslims and the first time that an attack was targeted at the minority Christians.

In the days that followed, they learned that the bombers were men from elite Colombo Muslim families, the sons of wealthy businessmen, some of whom were educated abroad.

‘They’re just people like us,’ Zia said as she pored over the news online, ‘families like ours. What must have happened to them to drive them to do such a terrible thing? What about the verse in the Quran that says do not kill yourselves or one another? How can they justify this in the name of religion?’

She worried about it continuously, talking to her family and friends in Colombo, anxious for their safety as the military began investigating Muslim homes across the country, looking for signs of Islamic fundamentalism. Zia’s mother said that she had taken down all the framed Quran verses from the walls and turned their prayer room into an ordinary room, even packing away the prayer rugs and Qurans, fearful that these ordinary things that had always been a part of their lives would be taken as a sign of extremism if the army were to search their house. There were stories of women in hijab being insulted on the streets and so many women were choosing to stay at home rather than go out without their head covered.

Here in Australia, the news seemed to create a ripple of interest, mainly because two of the victims had been Australian. When he’d stopped to get petrol last night, Rashid overheard two men discussing the attack, words like, ‘Islamist pigs’ and ‘send them back to the Middle East where they can just all kill each other’ reaching his ears. His face burned with shame and anger as he paid for the fuel, a part of him wanting to challenge these men, to say that not all Muslims were terrorists, that this attack, these people, were an aberration.

But what if they were to recognise him somehow as a Muslim, what if they attacked him for it? He was grateful that Zia did not wear the hijab, that no one would be able to identify her as a Muslim at first glance. Why invite suspicion and dislike at a time like this?

Only a few weeks ago, Muslims had been the victims, now they were the perpetrators, going from an expectance of sympathy to a fear of vengeance.

The discomfort of it weighed heavily on both him and Zia, this unbalancing of the home they had left behind and the home they had chosen for their new lives.

It felt as though nowhere was safe, as though the attempt to find security anywhere in the world was futile, as though the wisdom of your decisions could be destroyed in a single moment of fate—by being at Friday prayers in a mosque in New Zealand, or at a Sunday service in a church in Sri Lanka.

Neither of these attacks had anything to do with him and yet he felt both the fear of one and the humiliation of the other, simply because of who he was.

He did not want to be associated with either. Perhaps it made him a coward but he didn’t want to carry the burden of these events that had nothing to do with him.

He should have removed the ‘Ahmed’ from his name. Next time, he told himself.

*

Rashid used to have his own administration assistant called Eresha, a slim young woman from a village several kilometres away from Colombo. She had sat across from him at her interview, visibly nervous in the large, air-conditioned office with its modern furnishings and bright blue and silver themed decor, an IT hub in Sri Lanka’s central business district. Her clothes—obviously brand new, probably just purchased for the interview—had sat awkwardly on her small frame. With her old-fashioned hairstyle and thick glasses, she had looked completely out of place, yet had spoken with surprising determination and confidence about what she could bring to the organisation.

The other managers had disagreed with Rashid’s decision to hire her—they preferred the more sophisticated city candidates—the ambitious, newly minted graduates—to the timid village girl who spoke broken English and had no previous work experience. Rashid, though, had been impressed by her courage in applying for a job at their organisation, by her fierce conviction that she could take on this role and be good at it.

Although he used to be the first one in the office in the mornings, after they hired Eresha, he would arrive to find her already there, a hot mug of tea at his desk, the curtains already open to let in a bright stream of sunlight as they sat down to discuss his day’s schedule. Over the next few months, he learned that she was a widow with two young children, that her husband had been a soldier who lost his life in the final days of the war. The children were being cared for by her elderly parents while she lived as a boarder in the city, renting a room with two other working girls. On Friday evenings she would catch the bus from Pettah for the four-hour journey to Kurunegala so she could spend the weekend with her children before getting on the bus back to Colombo on Sunday afternoon.

After six months, Rashid had approved her for a raise—she had worked so efficiently that he had hardly needed to focus on the little things that used to distract him like mundane HR issues or how to fit in five meetings and travel around the city in one day. She had run his calendar seamlessly, prioritised what needed to be done, and never missed a detail.

Once, Eresha had invited him and Zia to her home for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year celebrations in April. They’d left Colombo at sunrise, driving through busy little towns as they left the urban landscape for the bumpy roads that wound through the lush green paddy fields, sprawling mountains and gushing rivers of the countryside. They had arrived in the village to find that there were only footpaths leading through the fields. Rashid had parked his silver BMW on the edge of the deserted road as they tried to work out where Eresha’s house was from the directions she’d given Rashid. Zia had struggled a little in her heels as they trekked up a hill where a serious-faced little boy—Eresha’s son—was waiting to welcome them.

Eresha’s face had beamed as she ushered them into the small, clean house and to a table laden with the delicious traditional New Year’s feast—milk rice, small bowls of curries and sambals, kewum, the fried treacle cakes, and kokis, the rice-flour biscuits. Eresha had asked Rashid to light the oil lamp, and then, almost as an afterthought, had asked if Zia would like to as well. Zia had refused, smiling slightly, and had remained quiet for most of the visit while Rashid made small talk with Eresha and her parents. When they were about to leave, much to his discomfort, Eresha had made her children hand him a sheaf of betel leaves and bend down to touch his bare feet in the traditional gesture of respect to one’s elders, and then Eresha herself had done the same thing, lingering at his feet while he had gently touched her bowed head in the benediction he was meant to give.

It went against his own religion, which commanded that no man should bow down before anyone but God, yet he knew it was important to these people, and he had learned, like many Sri Lankans, to accommodate the traditions and beliefs of other religions and cultures as well as his own.

She had not done the same for Zia.

Later, on the drive home, Zia had gently touched his arm and said, ‘Eresha seems very fond of you—she might have a crush on you, I think.’

He’d been annoyed and had told her she was being silly, that it was simply a village girl’s respect for her boss, but later he remembered how Eresha had always texted him when she got on the bus from Colombo and the moment she arrived back on Sundays. How once, when he was away from the office for a few days, she had said that she hadn’t felt like coming in herself when she knew he wasn’t going to be there.

He had realised she wasn’t the same girl he’d hired—at some point, she’d got a new haircut, her clothes were smarter, she had started wearing lipstick. He had noticed the whiff of cheap perfume when she lingered at his desk to ask him about his travel plans or his thoughts about the latest political situation in the country, and he had noticed the sway in her hips when she walked away.

He wondered how Eresha was now. She had been promoted to assistant manager last year, and he knew from Facebook that she had recently become engaged to a man in her village. Did she ever think of him, her old boss, whose feet she had once touched in such devout respect? What would she think if she saw him now, standing far beneath her on the ladder that they had both sought to climb?

It was past midnight when Rashid finally shut down the computer after browsing through other career websites, looking at online courses he could do that might help him get a better job. When he went into the bedroom, he found that Farah had crawled in beside Zia and was sleeping tucked into the curve of her back. Although there was room for the three of them, he turned and went to Farah’s room instead, getting into her narrow single bed. He lay there for a long time, staring at the scattered glow-in-the-dark stars that Zia had pasted on the ceiling. His thoughts wove between the past and the future, turning into troubled dreams as he fell asleep.

19

Zia was lost.

She had been to the library in Belconnen that morning and spent over an hour browsing through the books, picking out a few new titles for Farah but also looking for old favourites that she’d owned in Colombo but hadn’t brought with her—Anne of Green Gables, Pride and Prejudice, a well-thumbed copy of Jane Eyre. Each book felt like an old friend, and although she’d read them many times before, she had slipped them into her calico library bag along with some contemporary novels. After all, the librarian had said you could check out up to fifty items at any one time—fifty! At the library in Colombo, you could only take out five.

Afterwards, she had bought a small latte from the café outside and had sat on a bench in the grassy lawn, letting herself be warmed by the coffee and the mellow sunlight of a cloudy autumn day. The trees were just beginning to blush for autumn, red-gold tipped leaves dropping onto passersby—young mothers out for a walk with their babies in prams and toddlers running alongside, old couples deep in conversation or lost in their own thoughts, men and women in suits, smoking cigarettes, chatting on their phones.

After weeks of feeling disoriented in the wake of the violence that had taken place, this outing had been a relief, a moment of quietness in the turbulence that had been swirling in her mind.

The world had already begun to move on—the gunman who carried out the attacks had been charged with terrorism and murder and was awaiting trial while the community there continued to rally around its Muslims. In Sri Lanka, tensions were beginning to die down even as investigations into the attacks continued. Mama had begun to refurnish the prayer room at home, and Dada had said that his non-Muslim customers were beginning to return to the shop, that several of them had stopped by to offer their support. Amir had joined a committee to help rebuild the bombed churches, along with other Muslim youth. Rashid’s parents, it seemed, were going about their lives as usual and Jamila had rung Zia the other day to tell her she was sending Farah some clothes that she had bought from a new outlet in Colombo.

At the same time it seemed as though she and Rashid were still struggling to emerge from the shadow cast by these incidents, the intensified fears and doubts that had risen in their aftermath. It was, Zia thought, as though the ground beneath them kept shifting, their reasons for being here constantly in question, and they had yet to find a foothold, a gravity to their lives that would help anchor them.

Perhaps it was moments such as these, sipping coffee in the sunshine, among strangers, where you found your peace, your home within yourself.

As she had watched a gust of wind toss the leaves into a mini tornado that swirled like a coloured flame along the street, Zia felt again the way she had felt when she was in New York—that strange thrill of being alone in a place where no one knew you.

If there was no one to define who you were—then who were you?

Who would you want to be?

She had suddenly felt light and free, thinking for one mad moment that even if she were to stand up and dance, spread her arms and twirl amidst the falling leaves, no one would say anything, perhaps they would just stop to stare at the crazy dark-skinned girl and laugh, but no one would know who she was or what she was doing there.

No one would call Mama and say, ‘We saw Zia this morning, out by herself …’

She had finished her coffee and hurried to the bus stop as she saw the bus approach—only she had got onto number 17 instead of 16. Almost half an hour had passed by the time she realised that the bus was driving through unfamiliar streets, that she didn’t know the names of the stops displayed in luminous characters on the screen at the front. Panicking, she had rung the bell for the next stop and stumbled out, clutching her heavy bag of books. Now she realised that she should have asked the driver for help.

She checked her phone for the time—it was just past noon and she needed to be back by three to pick Farah up from school. Rashid probably wasn’t back yet and for some reason she was reluctant to call him. If she could find a way to get home soon, she wouldn’t have to tell him about her mistake.

She scrolled through the phone, trying to find Google Maps which she had never used before, and then remembered that her phone was out of data. Putting it back in her pocket, she began to walk. She would probably reach a main road soon and could ask for directions from there.

The feeling of panic had faded and instead she felt again that curious sense of lightness and freedom. No one knew where she was, there was no one waiting for her. No one was watching, expecting her to behave as Rashid’s wife or as Farah’s mother, to notice that she was wearing a fitted burgundy jumper and jeans, that her head was uncovered and her hair hung loose, soft curls blowing against her cheek in the breeze.

What were the rules if there was no one to see? Or perhaps there were no rules at all.

The streets in this suburb looked different to where they lived, the large, two-storeyed houses with red-tiled roofs that glowed in the sun speaking of wealth and comfort. There was no sign of life apart from the birds that flitted from tree to tree, dark feathered magpies and milky cockatoos with their lofty crests shrieking as they flapped their wings. In one of the yards a sprinkler was running, showering beds of bright crimson poppies and violet larkspur. A wind chime tinkled gently from the branch of a fig tree. Parked on the lawn was what looked like a very old, very bright red car, and as Zia walked past, she heard the faint sound of whistling.

Pausing, she looked towards the car, the lilting tune of the whistler sounding vaguely familiar. A pair of pale, stocky legs stuck out from underneath, next to a box of tools.

Perhaps she should ask the stranger under the car for help, Zia thought, considering that she hadn’t come across another person so far.

Nervously clearing her throat, she approached the car and said, ‘Hello?’ but it came out too softly.

She tried again, tapping on the car at the same time. ‘Hello—hi.’

The whistling stopped. After a short pause, the man slowly eased himself out from beneath the car, revealing a pair of khaki shorts and a pale blue T-shirt followed by grease-covered arms and bright green eyes in a dirty, unshaven face. He got to his feet, staring at Zia, and she started slightly when she saw the angry red scar running along the left side of his face, down his neck and disappearing into his T-shirt.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked politely, putting down the tool in his hand.

‘Hi—I’m—uh—I’m not sure where I am. That is, I think I’m lost and I was hoping you could tell me how to get to my home in Florey. I took the wrong bus and ended up here somehow.’

‘Huh—didn’t think that happened to people anymore, getting lost. What with GPS and all.’

Zia’s cheeks grew warm but the man’s expression as he smiled at her was kind.

‘I don’t have data on my phone,’ she explained, ‘and I’m also kind of new to the country and haven’t been out much.’

‘That so? Where are you from?’

She told him and he nodded, leaning against the car.

‘Of course, I think there’s a few Sri Lankans in Canberra these days,’ he said. ‘Though that didn’t used to be the case. I remember the summer of ’84 when the Sri Lankan cricket team came over to play one-day internationals and I made a trip to watch them at the MCG—that was really something, watching those guys play. And the Sri Lankan crowd with their flags and their drums, they sure knew how to cheer their team! Terrible thing, what happened there a few weeks ago, hey? Your family back home okay?’

‘Yes, they’re all fine, thanks,’ said Zia, slightly unsettled by the switch in topic from cricket to current affairs, by the dissonance of discussing her homeland with this stranger on the street.

What had she been thinking? She should have just kept walking.

And yet how lovely it was to have someone speak with her this way. As though they’d known each other before. As though he’d been expecting her, knowing she was going to be walking along that street as he tinkered with his car.

She felt a strange longing unfurl within her. She wanted to say something that would keep him looking at her with those intent green eyes, that would make him ask her another question about herself.

‘That’s good, that’s good,’ he was saying. ‘You must have been worried about them. Anyway, m’dear, you’re in Aranda as it happens, just about ten minutes away from Florey. I’d be happy to give you a lift home if you like. I’ve got to drive to Belconnen to get something anyway.’

The surreal feeling intensified as Zia imagined herself getting into a car with this man that she did not know—she, who had never been alone in the company of any man other than her father, brother and Rashid. Why not, she thought, tentatively moving a step closer towards him, catching a whiff of cigarette smoke, soap and coffee. Who would know, or care?

Still, she found herself saying, ‘That’s very kind of you. But you’re busy and I’m sure there’s another bus I can catch?’

‘I’m not busy,’ he laughed. ‘Just tinkering with my old girl here while James has a nap—he’s home sick from school today. Also, you’d have to walk another kilometre or so to the bus stop and you’ve probably got an hour’s wait for the bus—not sure what the timetables are like these days. Or you could get a taxi. Up to you—oh hey, James.’

A curly-haired little boy, maybe around ten, wearing Star Wars pyjamas had appeared at the glass-panelled front door of the beautiful house.

‘Can I have some ice cream, Dad? My throat still hurts.’

‘Yep—there’s some left in the freezer.’

James turned and went back into the house and Zia thought, surely this man, with his bright green eyes and kind smile, father to little James, must be safe. Besides, she needed to be back for school pick-up, and by the sounds of it, she would be cutting it close if she chose to walk to the bus stop. And she had no idea what a taxi would cost but it was probably more than she could afford.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘If you really don’t mind. It really is very kind of you.’

‘No worries. Give me a second, I’ll get the car. No, not this one,’ he laughed as she glanced towards the red car. ‘This hasn’t hit the road in years. It’s a 1965 Mustang, just a little project of mine.’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy key ring, pressing a button on a small remote. The garage door on the left side of the house slowly slid open to reveal a sleek black Mazda. He beckoned her towards it.

‘What about James?’ she asked. ‘Will he come with us?’

‘Nah, he’ll be right by himself. I’ll just tell him I’m heading out, won’t be a sec.’

He went into the house, and Zia noticed that he had a slight limp as he walked. He reappeared a few minutes later wearing a fresh shirt, his face clean. His scar was now even more conspicuous, and even as Zia tried not to stare, she found her eyes drawn to it, only glancing away in embarrassment when he turned to her with a wry smile as though he knew she couldn’t help herself.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, sliding into the driver’s seat.

The car was strewn with food wrappers and toys, a car seat in the back stained and grubby. Feeling something sticking into her thigh, Zia felt around her seat, her fingers closing around a lipstick, a dark red shade that she could never see herself wearing. She imagined them all together in this car, this man, whose name she still did not know, the boy James, his brother or sister, and a pretty, red-lipped wife, eating chips and cookies out of packets, tossing them onto the floor of this shiny car.

Rashid got so annoyed with her if she gave Farah any food in the car, complaining about the crumbs, so she’d always try to feed Farah something before they went anywhere together.

As he reversed into the driveway and onto the street, the man told her that his name was Pete Cormack, that he was a stay-at-home dad to James and three-year-old Paul, who had just started day care two days a week. His wife, he said, was a lawyer who worked for a government department in the city.

Zia was struck by the idea of a man who stayed at home to look after his children while his wife went to work. Did that mean she was the head of the family? Did she make the decisions about what to buy, how they lived? Did he pack her meals for her, clean the house, do the washing?

Did his wife, the lawyer in the city with the bright red lipstick, miss having someone to take responsibility for her, did she miss the time with her children? Or did she enjoy the freedom of leaving her house every day, knowing that things would be looked after by her husband?

‘Did you work before you—I mean before your wife—had kids?’ she asked him.

His face darkened for a moment and when he glanced at her, she was reminded suddenly of Rashid. Yet the shadow passed so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it as he laughed and said, ‘Yeah, I did a few things, worked as a driving instructor for a while, nothing major.’

‘Do you miss it?’

‘Are you kidding? No way. All that stress of working, having to be someplace at a certain time, making people happy—better Cassie than me, I say. She makes more money in a week than I would in a month and I get to stay home, hang out with the kids, do some gardening if I like—so who’s the lucky one, hey?’

Again, Zia thought of Rashid, of how he would be if he had to stay at home with Farah all day. She could not imagine it, Rashid, with all his dark restlessness, his constant need to be earning, achieving, proving things to an unseen audience, for reasons she couldn’t fully understand.

She looked at Pete, at his firm hands on the wheel.

‘A driving instructor,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s pretty cool. I can’t drive at all.’

‘What do you mean you can’t drive? You never learned or something stopping you?’

‘I just know I can’t—I’m too scared. Besides, I never needed to in Sri Lanka.’

‘Oh? So you guys just walked everywhere?’

Zia started to laugh and then, realising he was being serious, laughed even harder.

‘No!’ she said. ‘We didn’t walk everywhere! We had a car and a driver—it’s quite common in Colombo. Or my husband would drive me.’

Pete apologised for his ignorance, confessing that he’d never known anyone who had a chauffeur before. Zia, smiling, said she had never met a stay-at-home father before.

‘Well there you go,’ he said, turning down Zia’s street. ‘We’ve both learned something new, hey? So what’re you going to do now? You can’t be taking the bus in Canberra forever—you’ll spend half your life at bus stops. This your place?’

‘Yes,’ said Zia as he pulled up in front of her house. ‘And I know. I’d love to be able to drive. There was a time when I believed I could. Whenever I think of it now though, it frightens me. What if I have an accident? What if I kill someone?’

Pete laughed.

‘You don’t look like a very good hitwoman to me. Anyway, these are all great questions—which is why you have to learn to be a skilled and safe driver. I could teach you if you like.’

‘You could? But I thought you didn’t work anymore?’

‘Look here.’ Leaning over, he pointed to where her feet were resting. ‘There’s an extra set of controls there because this is actually a learner’s car. We bought it a couple of years ago when I thought I might start a driving school, but then Cass got this new job and the kids were still little so we figured it would be best for me to stay home with them for a while. I’ve been thinking about taking it up again sometime. You’d be helping me get back into it and I wouldn’t charge you anything. It would give me something to do while Paul’s in childcare—you’d be doing me a favour really.’

‘I—I don’t know,’ she said, caught between longing and a reluctance to give up the fears she had held for so long. ‘I don’t think anyone can teach me.’

‘Huh—then you haven’t met Pete Cormack. Here—this is my number. Gimme a call if you change your mind.’

‘Will do,’ she said, saving the number on her phone. ‘Thank you so much. You’re really wonderful to offer a stranger a lift in the middle of the day—and free driving lessons on top of that!’

‘Strangers today, friends tomorrow,’ he said, his eyes bright as he looked at her. ‘I’ll hope to hear from you soon.’

20

Zia was telling Farah a story about a little girl who had a magic ship on which she sailed through the clouds instead of the sea.

That afternoon, as she cuddled up to Zia on the sofa, Farah had said, ‘Mummy, tell me a story—one of your stories, not a book story.’

The stories had started when Farah was about two. They had been sitting on the balcony of their apartment one warm evening, watching the distant ships sailing into the Colombo harbour, dark silhouettes against the sun that set the ocean aflame as it slipped below the horizon.

‘Where is that ship from, Mummy?’ Farah had asked, clambering onto Zia’s lap. ‘Who is on the ship?’

Zia, who had spent many days on the balcony watching the ships and daydreaming about where they might be from, found her imagination taking flight as these dreams shaped themselves into stories that she had begun telling Farah.

The ships, she told Farah, were from many wonderful places around the world, carrying treasures and trinkets from one country to another. She told Farah stories of magical kingdoms, heroic rulers and brave warriors who travelled the seas in search of fame, riches and love.

Sometimes, Zia would tell Farah stories from Sri Lankan history and folklore. She had told Farah of their ancestors, the Moor traders who arrived on ships seeking the gemstones and spices of the island of ‘Serendib’ as Sri Lanka was known then. How they fell in love with the beautiful women there, married them and ended up staying and becoming the Moors of Sri Lanka, giving rise to a culture that was reminiscent of the countries they had come from yet very much its own. This was why Appa and Papa, both her grandfathers, were successful businessmen, Zia had told her. It was in their blood.

One of Farah’s favourites was the story of Prince Vijaya, the exiled Indian prince who arrived on Sri Lankan shores on a ship thousands of years ago. She loved to hear the legend of the demon princess Kuveni, and how together Kuveni and Prince Vijaya had formed the first kingdom in Sri Lanka. How later, when Vijaya had realised his men feared Kuveni and her strange magical powers, he had sent her away from the palace with their two children and how the broken-hearted Kuveni had cursed Vijaya and his kingdom with eternal tragedy and sorrow. How some people said that it was Kuveni’s curse that still held sway over their small island that had suffered through so many years of war and poverty.

Farah had found this story far more fascinating than Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, Kuveni a darker and more tragic figure than wicked fairy godmothers or cruel stepmothers.

Now, as Farah’s eyes drifted closed to Zia’s voice, Zia realised that she hadn’t made up a story for Farah in months, that she had missed the delight of spinning a tale out of threads in her imagination, of creating a moment that she and Farah could get lost in.

She was reminded again of the Imam’s khutba, of the relief within hardship, and how she seemed to have let some of the simple things that used to give her joy slip away. Like this—lying down in the middle of the day with Farah falling asleep in her arms, the sweet, heavy warmth of her on Zia’s chest. Like sitting down with Rashid every morning for a few minutes after Fajr prayers as they drank their tea together in friendly silence, or waiting for him to come home every evening while Farah sang ‘Daddy, Daddy, come home, bring me chocolates and toys!’ The joy of watching Farah run into her father’s arms every day as though she hadn’t seen him for months, the way everything felt complete when they were all together.

Now Rashid always woke up late and heated his cold mug of tea in the microwave, and he usually got home long after Farah, and often Zia, had gone to sleep. He would play with Farah or take her for an outing when he was home but there was a distance between them again that Zia couldn’t seem to cross. Often when she tried to talk to him, she felt like she was calling out from afar, that her words were falling into a crevice or being blown away by a wind, so that he never heard or understood her properly.

Had it always been like this? Had she simply never noticed because of all the other people around her, because if Rashid hadn’t heard her, there had been so many others who would?

Last week, after Rashid had sat in the living room for an entire morning, glowering at the TV and not speaking with her or Farah, Zia had tentatively asked if they should, perhaps, return to Sri Lanka.

‘If you hate it so much, we don’t have to stay,’ she had suggested as she sorted the clean laundry, folding it into neat piles in the basket. ‘We could go back to our old life.’

His expression as he turned to stare at her had frightened her with its fury.

‘Go back to what?’ he had asked, rising from the chair and coming towards her. ‘Go back to what, Zia? Do you think I’d get my old job back? Do you think we’d find another apartment or get another car like the one we had? Do you think it’s that easy, hopping from one country to the other, packing up a life and starting a new one? What are you thinking? That your old life is just waiting for you to come back and pick it up?’

As Zia had stared at him, too scared to answer, he had picked up the basket of clothes from the floor and hurled it at the wall, shouting, ‘I gave up everything, everything, to come here and now there’s no going back, don’t you get it? There is no going back!’

He turned around, grabbing his car keys from the coffee table, and stormed outside, slamming the door behind him.

Zia had sat, frozen, until she heard a small sound behind her and turned to see Farah, pressed against the wall, her eyes wide and afraid.

Immediately, Zia had curved her mouth into a smile, halting the tears that were gathering at her throat.

‘Daddy was pretty angry, wasn’t he, darling? It’s okay, he’ll be back when he’s feeling better. And look how silly he was, tipping the clothes over. Do you want to help Mummy put them back in the basket?’

Zia had got to her feet, gathering the scattered clothes.

‘No,’ Farah had said, shaking her head. ‘You’re naughty, Mummy, making Daddy angry like that. I won’t help you!’

And she had run off to play in the yard.

Zia hadn’t called her back.

Rashid had been quiet when he came back later with a box of Lindt chocolates, Zia’s favourite, and that night he had made love to her, his tenderness an apology.

Yet the words had clattered loudly in her mind in the days that followed.

‘What are you thinking, that your old life is just waiting for you to come back and pick it up?’

‘I gave up everything, everything, to come here, and now there’s no going back, don’t you get it?’

And, ‘You’re naughty, Mummy, making Daddy angry like that.’

Now, as Zia gently laid Farah on her bed, she thought about how she had reined in her words even more now, only speaking with Rashid if she absolutely needed to, and how he didn’t seem to notice her withdrawal. There was a constant pain in her heart that ebbed and flowed, briefly soothed in those moments that Rashid made an effort to be kind, yet never quite going away.

She took a deep breath, stretching her arms. It was so quiet that she could hear Farah’s soft breathing, the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, the sudden rush of wind that rattled the branches of the trees on the street.

The rest of the day yawned ahead of her, empty and dull. The house was clean, and since Rashid would not be home for dinner, she and Farah could make do with leftovers. There was no one she could call for a chat—in Sri Lanka, it was still early in the morning. Dada must have just left for work and Mama would be at the gate, waiting for the fishmonger to cycle past with the day’s catch or the vegetable seller with his cartload of fresh vegetables. Her friends would be busy in their own homes.

She wondered if she should call Jenny. They often walked back together from school now and she and Farah were meant to be going over for a playdate with Amy next week. But what would she say? ‘I was just feeling lonely and wanted to chat’? Friendships needed to have a lot more weight—months or years of conversations, shared experiences and confidences—before you could say something like that. Besides, she was still shy around Jenny, in awe of her confidence, the frank, easy way in which she spoke, the way she moved, as though she owned the space around her.

She had grown up with girls like Azrah, trained in humility and modesty, taught to keep their voices low, their looks hidden, their gazes lowered, taught that to be anything else would be brazen. Looking at Jenny, Zia found that she envied the fearlessness with which she seemed to live, how she didn’t need to answer to anyone, and yet this was still strange and new to Zia. She missed the familiarity of her old friends, the ease of already knowing who each other was and how to behave in their presence.

When she had left, they had all promised to keep in touch with each other, to email or WhatsApp every day, yet the time difference and the children constantly by their sides had made this difficult. These days Zia found herself reluctant to even reply to their infrequent messages, finding that it only reminded her of the life she’d left behind, setting her on a trail of nostalgia that she found hard to step away from and so preferred not to go towards at all.

A few weeks earlier, they had gone to a get-together of Sri Lankan Canberrans, a potluck dinner at a community hall. She had taken a large container of fried eggplant curry and enjoyed the sumptuous dinner with other Sri Lankans, eating the saffron rice with their fingers while the children ran around the room playing. Still, she hadn’t really connected with anyone, and despite casual promises to catch up, she didn’t particularly want to meet any of them again.

Later, Rashid had remarked that just because you met another Sri Lankan didn’t mean you had much in common or that you could be friends.

She thought briefly of Pete Cormack, the stranger with the warm smile and unusual scar whom she had instantly, inexplicably, felt comfortable with. She had yet to call him, both enticed by the prospect of seeing him again but also still nervous about the idea of learning to drive with someone she barely knew, even though she knew Rashid would never have the patience to teach her.

Sighing, she wandered into the living room and sat at the desk. Flipping open her laptop, she thought about the story she’d told Farah that afternoon about a girl who sailed through the night sky on a ship of dreams. Farah had loved the tale and would probably want to hear it again.

Opening a new Word document, she began to type.

Once upon a time, there was a girl …

21

Rashid sat on the dark leather sofa in the brightly lit waiting area of the government department where he was due for his interview. People walked past him as though he was invisible, a group of young men laughing as they walked up to the lift with their reusable coffee mugs in their hands, a woman in a smart grey dress, her heels click-clacking on the tiled floor. The auburn-haired receptionist caught his eye from behind her gleaming wood and brass desk, quickly looking away before he could smile at her.

He was early. The recruiter had said that parking was a hassle in the city and to leave himself plenty of time, and yet he’d found a spot as soon as he pulled in to the parking lot beside the department, carefully navigating into a space between a massive Land Rover and a small black sedan, paying $4.50 for two hours of parking at the ticket machine. Surely that was a good omen?

It was warm here despite the cool weather outside and Rashid was uncomfortable in his suit, sweat trickling down his back and pooling in his palms. The suit, which he hadn’t worn in months, didn’t fit as well as it used to. He had realised this morning after he put it on that he’d lost weight, that his cheekbones and nose were more prominent in his face. Even his skin, which used to be light and smooth, seemed rough and dry. He had turned to tell Zia, to ask if she’d noticed the weight loss and the dryness, and had seen her hovering at the bedroom door, that now familiar, nervous look on her face. Immediately he’d felt irritated, his eyebrows drawing together as he looked at her, forgetting what he’d meant to say.

‘Shall I make you another tea?’ she had asked. ‘You hardly ate anything this morning.’

‘If you like,’ he had replied shortly, turning back to the mirror to adjust his tie.

He’d drunk the strong, sweet tea standing at the door, then handed his mug to Zia and walked to the car before she could kiss him goodbye. He hadn’t been in the mood to hear her thoughts and anxious wishes for him; he had been nervous enough about the interview without adding her feelings into the mix.

Now, he suddenly felt the absence of that kiss, the coolness of his lips reminding him of the warmth that might have been his had he only taken a moment to claim it.

If the interview went well, he thought, he would take her out to dinner tonight. Maybe they could even find a babysitter—Zia’s new friend, Jenny, might be able to help. He and Zia hadn’t been out together by themselves since they’d come to Australia, when back in Colombo they’d gone out at least once or twice a week without a second thought, handing Farah over to one of the many people who were always around to care for her.

He began to feel better even as he thought about how it would be—he would go home after the interview with good news. He would tell Zia how well it had gone, how the interviewers were impressed by his skills, his experience, his excellent English. How he knew, even before the interview ended, that they were going to offer him the job. The nervous, uncertain look would disappear from her face, she would be hopeful, relieved, happy for him—for them. She would be excited by the idea of going out to dinner together at a proper restaurant, just the two of them, like in the old days.

He glanced up to see a middle-aged man in a suit walking towards him.

‘Rashid?’ he said, pronouncing it the way most Australians did, with a long ‘a’.

‘Yes,’ said Rashid, quickly wiping his palm on his trouser leg before shaking hands.

‘Hi, I’m Alex, assistant director of the branch. The panel is just organising themselves. Please head this way.’

The panel? wondered Rashid as he followed Alex along a wide corridor. How many interviewers were there? When he had been interviewed for his position in Sri Lanka years ago, he had walked into the senior manager’s office and sat opposite him at his desk. The manager, Sarath, had offered him a cup of tea and asked him a few routine questions. After a while it had led to a personal conversation about each other’s university experiences and career aspirations. At the end of the hour Sarath had offered him the job and said they could negotiate salary and benefits.

When he was a manager himself, Rashid had usually conducted interviews on his own and discussed the candidates with his colleagues afterwards, unless it was for a more senior position, in which case a few of them would sit in. Even so, the interviews were almost always relaxed, simple conversations. Even if a candidate got stuck, Rashid had known how to help them along, to ask them how their morning had been, if they lived in Colombo, how their family was.

In front of him, Alex was slowing down, stopping at a door with a bronze plaque that said Meeting Room 8. He knocked firmly, twice, before opening it and stepping into the room, beckoning for Rashid to follow.

Three people sat on one side of a long meeting table, two women and a man, while a fourth woman sat apart at one end. The man appeared to be South Asian like himself but when he spoke, inviting Rashid to sit, it was with a marked Australian accent. Alex took his place opposite Rashid and introduced the others. Three of them would take turns to ask Rashid questions, he said, while the lady who sat at the corner was the ‘scribe’ who would take notes during the interview.

Rashid lowered himself into a chair, facing the three panellists, the scribe to his left, his confidence ebbing under their curious, direct gazes. Alex launched into a spiel about the department, what it did, how many employees worked there, what programs they were running at present, what Rashid’s role would involve. He invited Rashid to tell them about himself and why he was interested in the role.

The walls of the windowless room seemed to close in, the bright light flickering, the panel members’ faces looming large and impassive as Rashid struggled to focus, to remember his carefully prepared speech. The recruiter had told him to avoid speaking of his software development or management experience, to focus instead on the administrative aspects of his previous roles—things he hadn’t done since his early years as a junior executive.

But when he opened his mouth, he found himself telling them the truth—that he was a senior software development manager, that he had worked with other software developers to plan and execute projects, that last year his organisation had won the National Software Development Productivity Award in Sri Lanka.

His words were punctuated by the soft tapping of the scribe’s keyboard. The panel members looked intently at him while he talked, pausing sometimes to scribble notes. The woman, whose name he couldn’t remember, picked up a tissue and daintily wiped her nose, her fingernails bright purple against her skin. He thought he could see an expression of derision on her face.

When he paused, Alex cleared his throat and asked the other man, Harry, if he would like to ask the next question.

Harry nodded, looked at a sheaf of papers in his hand and read out, ‘Can you give me an example of when you were met with an obstacle that was preventing you from meeting an objective? How did you overcome it and what was the result?’

He looked up, and Rashid felt the sweat beading on his forehead. He tried to gather his thoughts, to capture the words that were flying through his mind and form them into a coherent sentence, but it was all too much—the woman’s disdainful gaze, the scribe, with her fingers hovering expectantly over the keyboard, Alex drawing doodles on his notepad as he waited. His tongue felt large in his mouth, his lips frozen, unable to move.

After what felt like several minutes, Harry asked, ‘Would you like me to repeat the question?’

Rashid nodded, although he clearly remembered the question.

Hearing it again seemed to help, however, and this time he described a time that third-party integration requirements made a project he was leading more complex to achieve than his team had anticipated, and how they had all put in extra hours to meet the deadline. He described how he borrowed manpower from another team to make sure they completed it on time.

Other questions followed. The woman—Sarah, he remembered now—asked about the way he would approach a task, and Alex asked for an example of a time when he had to reorganise his work to reflect a change in priorities.

He was unprepared for these types of questions, for the strange, stilted way in which the interviewers moved from one topic to another, for the lack of warmth or interest in him as an individual.

He found himself speaking in disjointed sentences, starting to describe one experience and then switching to another, stumbling through explanations.

When Alex thanked him for his time and said they would be in touch, Rashid staggered to his feet, feeling nauseous. As politely as he could manage, he refused Alex’s offer to walk him out, turning and fumbling his way back through the hallway towards the exit. As he walked to the door, he heard the receptionist call out, asking him to return his pass.

Outside, he took deep breaths of the cool air, shoving his hands into his pockets and curling them into fists.

What had happened? Why had he made a fool of himself like that? Why had they asked him those strange, probing questions that had made him feel like he was on a witness stand, defending his ability to work, to perform this job?

When he returned to the car, he found that he still had an hour of parking time left. Rather than go home, he turned on the airconditioning and waited for the hour to pass, thinking of how he had failed, how he would not have a new job at a desk in an office, how he would have to clean the same row of toilets again that night.

How he would have nothing to tell Zia when he went home.

22

‘I’ll never learn all of this!’ exclaimed Zia, leaning back in the driver’s seat of the black car parked in her driveway.

‘You will,’ Pete said. ‘I’ll teach you, don’t you worry.’

A few nights ago, Zia had a dream in which she’d seen a woman in a car, hands clasped on the steering wheel, driving along a road that wound through a lush countryside. The windows were rolled down and the wind blew through the woman’s hair as she nodded her head along to the music playing on the radio. When the woman turned, Zia had seen that it was herself, and that the smile on her face had been joyous, unfettered, reflecting an emotion that seemed alien to Zia whenever she remembered it. She only knew that when she woke up, she had a yearning to know that mysterious version of herself that she had dreamed of.

That morning, after dropping off Farah at school, she had looked up Pete’s number on her phone, her thoughts returning to that quiet afternoon when they had met, Pete’s kindness to her, his laugh, the confident way in which he’d promised he could teach her to drive. After some long moments of hesitation, during which she picked up her phone and put it back down several times, she had finally called him. His voice when he answered was warm, as though he had been expecting her call. Of course he remembered her, he said, and yes, he was still happy to start teaching her to drive. When would she like to start?

She had never thought she would drive—never imagined she would need to. The thought of being in control of a car, manipulating its speed, the agility with which one had to manoeuvre it through traffic, filled her with panic. For most of her life, she had not needed to think about how she would get from one place to another—she was always accompanied, there was always someone else to decide for her.

If Dada hadn’t been around, Zia and her mother would sometimes walk up the street to hail one of the little tuk-tuks parked there. Mama would clutch at the sari draped over her head, struggling to keep it in place as the wind had blown in their faces and the tuk-tuk driver had zigzagged his way through the traffic in Colombo. After she was married, it had been Rashid who would drive her or their driver.

Last week, tired after a long shift, Rashid had refused to take Zia to Coles to buy the week’s groceries, although they had run out of most things and it would be hard for Zia to carry all their bags back by bus.

‘Walk—take the bus—do whatever,’ he’d said. ‘Or just learn to drive, will you? I told you this would happen if we moved to Australia! I’m not your bloody chauffeur anymore. And what will you do if there’s an emergency, if you need to get to Farah in a hurry? We can hardly afford Ubers or taxis and I’m sick of being the one who has to manage everything.’

Zia had turned and left the room, knowing that to talk about her fears of driving would only enrage him further. It was two days before he finally took her to the mall to do their shopping, following her sullenly with the shopping cart while she and Farah picked out boxes of cereal, bottles of milk, the pouches of flavoured yoghurt that Farah loved in her lunchbox.

So far, Zia had tried to manage as best she could, hoping she could organise their lives in a way that her inability to drive would not impact Rashid or Farah, poring over bus timetables and maps so she could walk or take the bus rather than wait for Rashid to drive her. Taking Farah to a playgroup in the next suburb on the Fridays that she was home from school involved a journey of forty-five minutes and two bus rides, although it was just a ten-minute drive in the car. More than once, they had missed the bus by a few minutes, which meant Farah had to miss the playgroup since there wouldn’t be another bus for half an hour.

Save for these occasional trips, Zia never went anywhere else. Although she was free for the first time in her life to come and go as she pleased—for Rashid did not seem to care if she went about on her own—she found that she was trapped, the lack of a driving licence and a car incapacitating her in a way that her family and friends in Sri Lanka would have found difficult to understand.

Now that her helplessness was adding to Rashid’s irritability, she found that she no longer wanted to ask him to take her anywhere for fear of triggering one of his black moods.

She had been raised to be driven, not to drive, and she had been certain that she never would.

And yet there were days when the walls of the house seemed to close in around her, the thought that she could not leave at a moment’s notice encircling her like a trap, growing until she felt a rising sense of powerlessness, that even so had culminated in that strangely powerful dream in which she had seen another self beckon to her like a vision of what could be.

And now, here she was, sitting next to this Australian man with the tiny silver hoop in his ear, the gold cross on his pale chest, where his sky-blue shirt was unbuttoned at the top. His eyes, as he looked at her, were pale and clear, like green silk.

It was just a driving lesson, Zia told herself, with a kind man who had offered to help her. She tried to ignore the strange fluttering in her stomach, the curious sense of guilt, as though she had run away from something, from somewhere that she needed to be, when all she had done was get in this car so that she could learn to drive.

Before the lesson, Zia had googled Peter Cormack, Canberra. She’d been surprised to find not just a Facebook or LinkedIn profile but full-page biographies of Pete as a race car driver, pictures of him smiling in a racing uniform, a V8 supercar in the background.

A feature article in the Canberra Times described the end of a short but illustrious career when another car in the Bathurst 1000 race crashed into a concrete wall, flipping over and bursting into flames. The driver, Nate Bradley, had died, and Pete, who had abandoned his own car to try and save him, had suffered injuries and decided afterwards to quit racing.

Looking at the glamorous picture of Pete, at his smooth, unblemished face, Zia thought of his scar, of how he had brushed her off when she’d asked him about his work before he became a stay-at-home dad. Had he given up racing because of his injuries? Or was it the trauma of seeing one of his peers die such a horrible death? The article did not say, only referring to Pete’s comments on how he wanted to spend more time with his family, wanted to start a driving school, how he was committed to creating a community of safe drivers.

How had he felt, leaving behind a thrilling life to be a father, to teach people how to drive? If you bore witness to a tragedy such as that, how did it colour the rest of your life?

When Pete arrived that morning, Zia had been tense and nervous, certain that her complete ignorance of driving and her fear would put him off. And then he’d greeted her as though they were old friends, seeming genuinely pleased that she’d called him.

‘Look,’ he said, showing her his diary. ‘Ten students lined up already—and I only advertised once! It took your call to get me started, though. I’ve been putting it off for so long.’

‘I should have called sooner then,’ said Zia.

‘Ah, well, there’s a time for everything as they say. It’s good to see you again—I’m glad you decided to give this a go, Zia from Sri Lanka. So apart from wanting to learn to drive, how have you been?’ he asked, leaning back in his seat, stretching his legs.

‘Not too bad,’ said Zia carefully. She had learned that this was how Australians typically responded to this question, rather than saying ‘fine’ as she was used to, that ‘not too bad’ was not a negative thing as she had thought at first.

‘Great. I’m having a shocker myself. Took me half an hour to find the keys this morning—Paul had put them in his pocket, the little bugger. Then he threw a massive tanty ’cos he didn’t want to go to day care. You got kids?’

‘Yes.’ Zia smiled. ‘A four-year-old girl—they can be little terrors, can’t they?’

‘They sure can. Bet you’re glad to get away and have some fun yourself.’

He grinned at her, and Zia felt again that sense of unease, that she was enjoying herself too much for something that was meant to be hard. After all, she was used to teachers who were strict and demanding, who snapped out instructions and expected you to follow.

But Pete was casual and friendly, weaving information about the car so effortlessly into the conversation that Zia did not even realise at first that he had already started teaching her.

Her left foot must rest on the footrest, he said, and her right foot would move between the brake and accelerator.

‘And guess what—I’ve got them on my side too, so I can always take over if needed,’ he said, and Zia was comforted by the thought that she didn’t have to worry too much about making a mistake, that if she did, Pete could step in and fix it.

There was nothing that she was expected to know, he said. She could simply start learning now.

He asked her no questions, did nothing to test her knowledge of cars or driving.

Even so, there was so much to remember.

As he finished showing her the different gauges on the dashboard, Zia turned to him and asked, ‘Can you really teach me to drive? A girl like me?’

‘Of course I can,’ he said, laughing, and at the sound of his laughter, something that was tightly wound inside her unfurled and was released into the space between them.

He didn’t ask what she meant by ‘a girl like me’.

He showed her everything again: how to start the car, indicate left and right, how to adjust the mirrors, to do a shoulder check.

She learned what a blind spot was, how sometimes what you saw wasn’t all there really was. Your eyes didn’t even detect colour in your peripheral vision, said Pete.

‘But instead of two holes at the sides of your head, apparently your brain fills in the colours from your memories—so the blue skies and green fields you see in the corner of your eye while you drive are actually coloured by your imagination—how cool is that?’

How beautiful, thought Zia, that she could paint the world with her mind. That a memory was sometimes enough to fill in the gaps of things she could not see.

In the warmth of the bright morning, listening to Pete’s easy conversation as the late autumn sunlight glinted off the deep honey shades of his hair, lulled by the gentle hum of the car’s engine, Zia felt her mind grow quiet and content, distant from the shadows of fear and loneliness, from the exhaustion of not knowing who she was or what her future would be in this country.

For a while, she almost forgot why she was there, looking up, startled, when Pete said, ‘Alright, let’s go for a drive.’

She was not ready and yet Pete was looking at her expectantly as though he thought she was.

‘Just like that?’ she asked.

He smiled.

‘Just like that,’ he said.

23

‘Can we talk?’ asked Zia, sitting on the sofa beside Rashid.

It was late in the evening and Zia had just finished putting away the dishes and packing Farah’s lunch. She still didn’t know how the three of them generated so much washing up—by the looks of the sink at the end of the day, one would think it was a household of ten.

Rashid was watching TV, wearing only a short-sleeved T-shirt and blue checked sarong although the room was cold. Zia turned on the small oil heater next to the sofa and drew the grey woollen throw over her lap, curling her feet under her legs.

A reality show about compulsive hoarders was on, their homes filled to the roofs with rubbish that people couldn’t bring themselves to throw away. When the program brought in professionals to help clean out the clutter, some of the hoarders sobbed as though someone they loved had died.

Rashid didn’t answer, so she sat there and waited, watching as a seven-year-old cried hysterically over a rusty chain and his mother worried out loud that she had passed her hoarding tendencies on to him.

After a while, Zia tried again, softly, using the shortened version of his name that she usually reserved for intimate moments.

‘Rash?’

This time, he winced and muttered irritably, ‘What?’

It had been almost a week since he had gone for the interview in the city and he hadn’t looked at Zia or spoken properly with her since. When he had returned that day, Zia had been waiting for him, certain that he would have good news. Rashid was so clever, so competent—she was sure that this was just the opportunity that would allow him to get back into the kind of job he wanted, back on the career path he’d once envisaged for himself.

But he’d stepped into the house and walked past her without a word, as surly as he had been when he left, and she was too afraid to ask him what happened. Since then, he’d barely spoken, left behind the meals she packed for him and spent nights after he returned from his shifts in front of the TV or tossing and turning on the sofa.

Zia could not bear the weight of his nameless grief any longer, and tonight she was determined to try and breach the wall of anger and sadness that seemed to stand between them. Besides, she had news that she knew would bring him joy and she wanted to tell him this, to see the gladness spread across his face and replace the tension that was now there.

This morning, when she had found out, she’d immediately gone to her prayer rug and offered a prayer of gratitude for this thing that she knew would finally be the hope that carried them, the anchor that grounded them in this place, in this life.

But as she opened her mouth to speak, he suddenly turned to her, saying, ‘Was that your Mama who called earlier?’

‘Yes,’ she said, surprised. He was usually never interested in whom she was speaking with. ‘Why?’

‘She wanted to know about my work, didn’t she, about what it is I do? I heard you talking about me. Did you tell her anything?’

‘I—no! What would I say? We were just talking like we always talk—I can’t even remember what it was all about now.’

‘What do you mean you can’t remember? You just talked to her a little while ago—what kind of an idiot are you?’

Zia stared at him, unable to answer. They had never really fought openly with each other—Zia had learned so early on in their marriage how to stay away from him when he was in one of his moods, and he always seemed to come back to himself after some time had passed. In their own way, they had worked out some unspoken rules of how to avoid conflict. Zia was dimly aware in some part of her mind that by approaching him now in this way, she had breached those rules—yet how could she not, what other choice did she have? Where else could she go, who else could she speak with, cloistered as they were?

She tried again, speaking slowly as she explained her call with her mother.

‘It was just small stuff—you know, what we had for lunch, whether Farah went to school. But what I wanted to tell you was—’

He cut in, his eyes hard as he looked at her. ‘Tell me what? That your parents think I’m a good-for-nothing loser? I heard you! I know you were talking about me. Do you think I don’t know why your Dada wouldn’t talk to me properly the other day when he called? He couldn’t even look at me! It’s because I don’t have a job now, isn’t it? It’s because you told them I’m a bloody cleaner, you complained about me, didn’t you?’

Despite herself, Zia felt her own anger rising to meet his torrent of rage. She couldn’t understand why he would be so unfair. She had said nothing to her parents or anyone else in Sri Lanka about Rashid’s work here. She knew they would be appalled to learn the truth, that they wouldn’t be able to comprehend the context of life here, and so she had lied for him, leading her parents to believe he worked in a role similar to what he did before.

When they called, it was simpler to pretend that their life had not greatly changed, that they lived here as they had in Sri Lanka, only better—that Australia was delivering on its promise of a higher quality of life. She had skimmed over the details, painting a vague picture of their life here, wondering if this was what it had been like for Layla in England, if this was why Layla never said anything when Zia asked her if she was happy, if the better life that they had both moved countries for was so strange, so different at first that it was impossible to be happy, because happiness meant ease and comfort, the predictability of the simple joys that the day, the week, would bring. And so she had said nothing of the loneliness, of the long, quiet mornings, the empty streets or Rashid’s grim silences, talking instead about how beautiful Canberra was, how clean, how fresh the food, how happy Farah was at school.

Sometimes, when she had talked about these things—which were, after all, as true as the things she did not say—she found the weight of her thoughts shifting and lightening, she found herself almost believing that they were happy.

And yet now Rashid’s words seemed to push her into an arena where she had to face the truth, that they were not, and the sudden pain of it was unbearable.

‘So what if I did tell them?’ she found herself asking, her voice rising. ‘What are you so ashamed of—that you thought you were such a big shot in Sri Lanka and now you can’t even get yourself a small office job?’

When he hit her, his fingers whipping painfully across her mouth, it seemed to her that she felt nothing, that her heart was empty, and yet as she raised her hands to her face she discovered that her cheeks were wet with tears.

Through her blurred gaze she saw Rashid’s face change, the anger receding, replaced by the shadow of sadness as he reached for her, wrapping her close in his arms.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know what happened. You should have left me alone.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

As he held her, she felt the softening of both her body and his, days of exhaustion draining away as her tears drew a path of sorrow on his skin. Finally, she thought, finally his anger was spent, whatever it was that had held him in its grip these past two days, it was gone now. She pressed her lips, still throbbing with pain, against his chest.

On the TV, an ad for life insurance promised total peace of mind if you bought their cover. The hoarders came back on, wailing about the loss of things they didn’t need.

As they sat, cocooned in each other’s warmth, Zia offered him her news, her words slipping into his ears like a precious gift.

‘I wanted to tell you … I’m pregnant.’

PART 3

Winter

24

As the trees shed their leaves and branches grew bare, Zia and Rashid discovered that the slow onslaught of the winter months in Canberra was yet another challenge to be dealt with. They were unprepared for the mornings they woke up with their teeth chattering, opening the front door to find the world wreathed in a cloud of heavy mist. Rashid’s bottom lip cracked and bled, the tips of his fingers turning white from flaking skin. Zia found herself missing Fajr prayers, unable to drag herself away from the warmth of the blankets, her faith failing her in the face of the chilly darkness before sunrise. Only Farah remained unaffected, seeming not to care about the cold, often throwing off the beanies and gloves that Zia so carefully dressed her in and running out into the backyard wearing nothing but her light cotton dresses.

A few weeks into her pregnancy, Zia was grateful that she had no morning sickness as she had with Farah, that she had no other symptoms other than a deep tiredness that sometimes made her fall asleep in the middle of the day. She could not imagine how she would cope here alone if she felt truly unwell.

In the early days of that first pregnancy in Colombo, she’d stayed in bed during the mornings after Rashid left for work, her stomach rumbling, bile rising to her throat. Latha would bring her a glass of warm water with sliced ginger and a few plain crackers to munch on until she felt well enough to get up. Often, Mama or Jamila had visited during the day, keeping her company with tales of their own early motherhood. If she had been tired, she had slept. If she had needed a change, she had visited family or friends. She’d spent her days in what now seemed like lazy luxury, being cared for, dreaming of her unborn child.

Sometimes, as she went about her day now, she wondered if it was the fact that she had no choice other than to get out of bed every morning, to care for Farah and do the multitude of tasks that it took to keep their home in order, that kept her from feeling ill. If it was the fierce hope that leapt through her every time she thought about this baby that kept her strong, instilling her movements with an energy that she would have otherwise lacked.

The news of the baby appeared to have softened Rashid, gentling the harshness that had manifested in the weeks leading up to that night when she had told him about her pregnancy. That moment was marked by both pain and relief for Zia, for ever since then Rashid’s anger and irritation had transformed into a love and kindness tinged by regret. They had never spoken again of what happened—Zia had seen the terrible sadness in his eyes over what he had done and did not want to hurt him with its memory, accepting instead his renewed attempts at gentleness, at caring for her, as an apology.

He tried to help her more around the house, sometimes bringing her tea as she sat reading on the sofa, kissing her lips and then her stomach. She lived for these small kindnesses, their sweetness a balm for all the times he had drawn away from her.

Once, he had surprised her by bringing her a bowl of achcharu that he’d made, cubes of chopped sour green apples glistening in a mixture of salt, sugar, vinegar and chilli powder.

‘I remember how much you loved eating this when you were pregnant before,’ he had said, smiling. ‘I couldn’t find any mangoes or guava like you used to have in Colombo, but I read that green apples make a pretty good substitute.’

As the sweet and sour spiciness of the fruit exploded on her tongue, Zia had remembered how Rashid had delighted in indulging her cravings throughout her pregnancy with Farah, finding her sudden appetite for street food endearing. He would rush out late at night to buy her a packet of koththu if she had said she felt like eating some, sharing the delicious mix of chopped roti, stir-fried vegetables and meat with her, rubbing her back afterwards if the rich meal made her nauseous, as it usually did.

Often in the evenings they would go to Galle Face Green, walking along the vast seafront promenade on the Colombo coast, watching the children running along the strip of grass, strings unfurling as their colourful kites rose into the air. Street vendors had hawked their medley of snacks and Zia had sampled something from each one—boiled chickpeas and golden manioc chips salted and dusted with chilli powder, fried prawn and lentil cakes, spicy flatbreads and curries, all washed down with a tumbler of sweet, milky tea.

They would stroll past the ancient cannons from the colonial era that still kept silent guard over the Green and over to the rocky ledge, their legs dangling over the sandy beach, watching as the sun set in a riot of fiery colour over the Indian Ocean and the city behind them lit up in the darkness.

‘We could be umbrella lovers,’ Rashid had joked once, referring to the couples who came to Galle Face to cuddle, shading themselves from the sun and curious looks with massive black umbrellas. And then, as night fell, he had kissed her—quickly, briefly—the first and only time he had ever kissed her in public.

Mama had cooked all her favourite dishes and every Saturday Rashid’s mother would send a meal: string-hopper biryani or thakkadi—creamy dumplings floating in savoury goat soup. As her due date approached, Mama would bathe Zia’s hips in warm water every night to soften her muscles, giving her a drink of boiled garlic and butter which Mama believed would ease the baby’s passage through the birth canal.

*

Mama, who had never been overseas in her life, offered to fly over for a few months when the baby was born. For a while, the thought of her mother’s presence glowed in Zia’s heart. How comforting it would be to have Mama there, tending to her and the baby, to let go of some of the responsibilities and be, for a little while, her mother’s child again.

Yet how could she let Mama see the reality of their life here when Mama seemed to believe that their wealth and good fortune had followed them to Australia, that their lifestyle was not very different to what they had been used to in Sri Lanka, perhaps even better?

To bring a baby home to just Rashid and Farah would be coloured by an unbearable loneliness. And yet she couldn’t imagine her mother in this small house with its cramped kitchen and small rooms, Mama who had grown up in the spacious colonial-style bungalow of her grandparents and then the sprawling Colombo home that was given to her as a dowry when she married Dada. Mama, like the rest of them, would have nowhere to go and there would be no way to conceal the things that distance made possible to hide—the harshness of Rashid’s moods, the reality of the work he did, the depth of Zia’s sadness and nostalgia.

And so she told Mama that she did not need to come—that Dada and Amir would find it difficult to manage without her, that perhaps all three of them could visit Australia some day and make a holiday of it.

‘I will be fine, I’m used to doing things on my own now and Rashid will help,’ she said, trying to deflect Mama’s questions.

How would Zia stay home for forty days after the baby’s birth if there was no one but Rashid to help her?

Who would take Farah to and from school?

How would they manage to cook nourishing food for Zia when she was nursing the baby?

Would Zia and Rashid remember the traditions and prayers, to whisper the adhaan in the baby’s ear, to place a drop of date juice on the baby’s tongue?

‘We will find a way,’ said Zia, even as a part of her longed to say, Yes, I need you. Please come.

Didn’t people in this country have babies all the time with very little help? She would have excellent medical care, and things like disposable diapers and frozen meals would make life easier for them. Surely it would not be the hardship that her mother feared.

When she told Rashid that Mama would not be coming after all, his face twitched with some unknown emotion. After a while, he sighed and came over to her, taking her hands in his.

‘That might be for the best. They could visit another time, when things are better for us—or we could go back one day ourselves, with the baby. We’ll manage this, you and I. It’ll be okay.’

He would help her with everything, he promised—bathing, changing nappies, waking up at night—everything he hadn’t needed to do for Farah but looked forward to doing with this baby. He would look after Zia, Farah and the baby as best he could.

And Zia was comforted by the thought that their little family would grow in love, that this baby would summon and keep Rashid at his best self, that even now, the ties between them were growing stronger.

The baby had given her a renewed focus in her life, a new reason to look forward to the future. She would know afresh the sweetness of motherhood and the delight of now two children to hold and care for. Would this not be enough, would it not make up for the fact that she was to go through this passage far away from the place and the people to whom her heart still belonged?

*

Zia continued her weekly driving lessons with Pete, taking to her learning with an alacrity that surprised Rashid.

‘I thought you didn’t like learning to drive,’ he remarked one day, watching her curiously as she put her logbook into her handbag and swept her long hair into a ponytail. The slight bulge in her stomach was barely perceptible and she still wore her old jeans, held together by a hair band at the waist—a trick she’d seen online. Farah was at school and he had come home between shifts to spend some time with Zia, only to find that she had scheduled a driving lesson.

‘I didn’t think I would,’ admitted Zia, ‘but Pete makes it seem like fun somehow.’

‘Well as long as you learn and get your licence soon,’ he said, his interest already fading as he turned away, not looking up as Zia said goodbye and walked out to meet Pete in the driveway.

‘Hubby at home today?’ asked Pete, glancing at the white car parked in the car port. ‘Sure you want to do the lesson? We can reschedule if you like, it’s no biggie.’

In that moment, as she considered the choice he had offered her—to stay back with her husband who had come home in the middle of the day to be with her, or get into Pete’s car and drive around the block as he talked to her not just about driving but the many other things that made his conversation so interesting—Zia realised that the driving lessons were not just about learning to drive but also a reprieve from the drudgery of her day-to-day life. Surprisingly, the thing she had feared so much had become the thing she now most looked forward to.

She would have enough time this evening, and in the days to come, to spend with Rashid, but this next hour was for her alone.

‘No, that’s fine, I want to do my lesson,’ she said firmly, opening the door of Pete’s car and sliding into the driver’s seat. ‘Let’s go.’

*

In the mornings when Zia was alone at home, she continued to write down the short fairy tales that she read to Farah and dreamed of one day reading to the baby. The stories were always about a girl and her adventures—travels through time and space, fighting monsters and demons, making unusual friends.

One day, when Jenny came by to pick up Amy, who had spent the afternoon playing with Farah, she found Farah telling one of the stories to Amy, pretending to read the words from the printout Zia had left on the coffee table.

‘Can I see?’ asked Jenny, reaching out her hand for the pages as Zia protested.

‘It’s nothing, Jenny—just rubbish that I come up with,’ Zia said.

‘It’s not rubbish, Mummy—it’s my stories!’ said Farah, looking up with a wounded expression on her face.

‘That’s right,’ laughed Jenny, ‘how can they be rubbish? Now, will you girls play for a bit longer while I catch up with your mummy, Farah? How’re you going, Zia? Wow, did you write this?’

As Zia served her tea and biscuits, Jenny read the short story about the girl and Maha Sona, a demon in Sri Lankan folklore. In Zia’s story, the girl went into a dark forest to confront the dangerous creature, who bore the head of a bear and struck terror into the hearts of the villagers. But when the girl found the demon, she discovered that he was after all a warrior and had been protecting the village from harm all along. Maha Sona admired the girl for her bravery and took her to the king of the forest, who crowned her the warrior princess of the village.

‘This is fabulous,’ said Jenny, munching on a mint slice. ‘You write really well, Zia. Have you ever thought about a career in writing? I work with a couple of freelance writers in my work—you know, they write the content and I design the website or the flyers, that kinda thing. I bet you’d be good at it.’

‘I haven’t, no,’ said Zia, her mind stumbling over the word career.

‘Well, you should think about it. It would be something for you to do from home if you wanted, after you have the baby.’

Zia nodded, changing the subject to the preschool disco that would be taking place next week, asking if Jenny would be able to give Farah a lift home afterwards.

When Jenny left, she took the story with her, saying she would design it into a book and illustrate it for Amy and Farah who both seemed to love it so much.

That night, Zia told Rashid what Jenny had said, wondering out loud if she could actually make some money through writing.

As soon as the words left her lips, she knew it was a mistake, watching Rashid’s face cloud over with the expression that now sent her fleeing within herself to a place that was racked by both fear and revulsion.

‘Why? Don’t you think I can look after you anymore?’ he asked.

When she remained silent, he went on, ‘Just because you write those childish stories doesn’t mean you can actually do it for work, you know. What do you know about businesses, about managing clients, about handling money? When have you ever done anything by yourself? These Aussie women are different—they know how to get about in the world, how to look after themselves. Don’t let what she said go to your head.’

Zia didn’t respond, and after a while he seemed to forget the conversation, asking her if she would like a mug of Milo before bed.

She never mentioned her stories to him again, but in the stillness of the mornings and the long sleepy afternoons when she was by herself, she continued to write. Words swirled in her mind, flowing through her fingertips, giving shape and form to thoughts and dreams that had once been nothing but flimsy shadows. She wrote stories and poems, letters that she would never send—and it seemed to her that writing had finally given her a way to define and control her world, to retell the story of her life and to thus give it a beauty and meaning that it had hitherto lacked.

25

The rain softened and ceased, the world glistening in the sunlight that streamed through the clearing clouds. When Pete rolled down the windows, a fresh breeze wafted in, smelling faintly like Vicks VapoRub. Puzzled, Zia looked around to see where the smell might be coming from, half expecting to see someone with a cold walking down the street. When she told Pete what she was looking for, he laughed.

‘It’s the gum trees—eucalyptus. That’s what Vicks is made of, you know. When it rains after a warm spell, the leaves release their scent.’

He hopped out of the car and returned with a crushed leaf in his palm, holding it up for Zia to smell, her nostrils filling with the sweet, sharp scent. A memory came of Mama rubbing balm on her chest when she was sick, bringing her hot cups of coriander tea, the smells of comfort that made her well again. So these were gum trees that lined the streets of the suburbs in Canberra, leaves hanging from their graceful branches like a multitude of green teardrops.

‘I’ve been here all these months and I never knew these were gum trees. I also didn’t know gum trees were eucalyptus,’ she said, taking the leaf from him.

‘Gum trees are as Aussie as kangaroos or koalas, darl—you can’t go ten minutes in the country without spotting one,’ said Pete. ‘Haven’t you heard any of the kids’ songs? Like “Home Among the Gum Trees”?’ He sang a few verses, then broke off and grinned at Zia.

She smiled back, thinking how easy it was to be with him, how gentle he was. The English terms of endearment that he often used, like ‘darl’ and ‘m’dear’, fell sweetly on her ears. Even though she knew they were ordinary words used by some Australians, they seemed to her to hold a particular significance, to be expressions of kindness and care, and every time he said them, something in her softened and grew tender.

Why did Rashid never use endearments, why did he never call her anything but Zia? She had once read somewhere that the more someone meant to you, the less likely you were to call them by their name. It hadn’t seemed important before but now this thought nagged at her as though it was another way in which Rashid withheld his affection.

‘That’s a great song,’ she said, trying to shake off her thoughts of Rashid. ‘Farah would love it. I’ll look it up on YouTube.’

‘There’s a few more—“Waltzing Matilda”, “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree”—she’ll likely learn them all at school, and I bet your baby will be born singing. You guys will all be bogans like me in no time!’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Zia, laughing.

They were parked on a street a few blocks away from her home in front of a house where a small tree marked the spot where Pete said he always brought students to learn to make three-point turns.

‘There’s no hurry,’ said Pete, taking a sip of his coffee. ‘It usually takes students a few goes to get it right.’

Pete was never in a hurry, treating her more as a friend than a student, saying that it was she who had helped him return to some kind of work of his own, that it was their conversation on the day they met that had motivated him. He still would not let her pay for the lessons, and Zia, knowing that she could hardly afford the full cost of driving lessons, did not resist for long, telling herself she would find a way to return the favour someday.

She enjoyed the slow pace of the lessons, the long conversations as they shared stories about their lives. As they talked, Zia often felt a slight simmering of excitement, of possibility.

Because Pete knew nothing about her, where she was from or the boundaries that had hemmed her in all her life, because they had no mutual connections or commitment to each other beyond the lessons, she felt an odd sense of freedom, as though she had a clean slate. Her thoughts flowed unfettered; her tongue loosened with words that she didn’t know were waiting to be said. She felt as though she could talk to him about anything, her speech unfiltered by any sense of the other person’s expectations.

Pete seemed to be fascinated by details of her life in Sri Lanka and her upbringing as a Muslim girl. There was a joy, she discovered, in retelling the stories of her past, in building a picture for him of who she used to be in a different country, in a different time.

From him, she learned more about the Aussie way of life—that people liked to work hard and play hard, that humour was both a way to share joy as well as to soften hardship. She learned how to say things like ‘arvo’ and ‘brekkie’, what it meant when someone ‘spat the dummy’, that in Canberra tradition dictated that you didn’t turn on your heaters until Anzac Day.

He never mentioned his own past or his career as a race car driver, and although Zia longed to know more, something stopped her from asking. Perhaps he would tell her in time. For each encounter seemed to bring them closer, a slow and lingering discovery of who the other was. Zia, who had never had a male friend in her life, told herself that was all it was, a growing friendship with someone who was kind to her at a time in her life when kindness felt scarce.

If there were days that she sat by the window long after Pete had left, thinking of the things they had talked about, if there were times when she would be reading a book and find that her mind had drifted to the way Pete had laughed at something she’d said—what did it matter? There were so few things these days that made her smile, surely there was no harm in dwelling on these happy moments?

Their conversations were always punctuated by laughter.

‘How come,’ Pete asked her once, ‘you speak such good English? How did you learn?’

For a moment Zia was offended. Then she laughed, saying, ‘I don’t know—how come you do?’ Seeing his confusion, she took pity on him and explained, ‘I’ve been speaking English all my life. I do speak both Sinhala and Tamil as well but English is my first language. It’s fairly common in Sri Lanka, you know—we used to be a British colony and English was the official language until a few decades ago.’

‘Really? So everyone in Sri Lanka speaks English?’

‘Most people can speak some level of it, especially in Colombo. I guess it’s the bridge between the different ethnic groups as well—most Sinhala people don’t speak Tamil and most Tamils don’t speak Sinhalese, but funnily Muslims, being a minority, usually speak all three languages. I’m not sure why—maybe because they found it easier to integrate into the community that way. My ancestors were traders from South India who settled in the country and I think one of them married a local Sinhala woman.’

‘From India to Sri Lanka and now your great-great-grandkids will talk about how their ancestors came to Australia. Isn’t it fascinating how families spread over the globe like this? My people were Scottish crofters who were turned out of their homes during the Highland clearances in Scotland, so they came here to see if they could make a new life for themselves. Funny the things that make you leave your home and look for a better place, hey? Although your life in Sri Lanka was pretty good by the sounds of it.’

‘It was,’ said Zia softly. ‘Sometimes I’m not too sure why we left.’

‘Well, sometimes we don’t know the rightness or wrongness of our decisions except in hindsight. And look, if you guys felt it was the right move for you, it probably was. You just need a little time to find your groove—and you will! I mean, look at you, learning to drive and everything. In a couple months you won’t know yourself.’

‘Thanks,’ said Zia, finding that her throat had constricted.

‘Hey, I’m sorry if I offended you with all the how do you speak English stuff—it’s just ’cos I didn’t know any better.’

‘That’s okay,’ she reassured him. ‘You asked and now you know. There’s so many things I don’t know about living here and I never feel bad about asking you.’

‘Good. Whether it’s driving or geography or why the hell we shorten every word and put an “o” at the end of it, you can always ask me, okay?’

Sometimes they talked about religion, discovering similarities between Christianity and Islam that they didn’t know existed as they discussed what their faith meant to them. Pete said that he no longer went to church, that he believed in God but questioned the Bible, that his wife, Cassie, had never believed in any of it and so they were raising their children without a particular faith. He admitted that he sometimes wished he could take his children to church, just for the experience of it—for the sense of belonging in the community, the simple rituals of prayer.

Zia told him how she had never been to a mosque in Sri Lanka, as women were expected to pray at home, and how the first time she had been for prayers was here, at the mosque in Canberra. How she loved the way the prayers marked the beginning and end of the day. Still, how she wondered sometimes whether they really made any difference to her life, if God was actually keeping count.

Pete asked why she did not wear a hijab, which he had learned from the media to associate with Muslim women, and Zia explained that not all Muslim women covered themselves in a similar way, that she herself had been raised to always dress modestly but chose not to cover her head. That she believed her faith was in her heart rather than her clothing.

‘Good thing too—you have such pretty hair,’ he said, and Zia, laughing, pointed out that this was exactly the point of the headscarf—to cover a woman’s hair and make her less attractive to strange men.

Now, as Zia struggled again to get her turn right, Pete put his hands over hers and firmly turned the wheel. He didn’t seem to notice that she was startled, jumping slightly at his touch. After a moment she relaxed, realising that it was probably just a normal part of his teaching, that it made it easier for him to demonstrate what he meant.

Rashid, like all the other men she knew, would never touch another woman in this way. Even when he met someone for the first time, he would always wait until the woman extended her hand before putting out his own for a handshake. Zia herself would never shake another man’s hand, and she felt in that moment as though she had crossed some invisible barrier by allowing this uninvited—yet somehow not unwelcome—touch.

‘You make one wide turn like this rather than a few small ones—see?’ Pete was saying. ‘I think you’re doing the small turns because you’re so petite, but you can teach yourself to make bigger, bolder moves—like this—and that will help you make this turn.’

They did it once more with his hands guiding hers, and then Zia tried it on her own.

‘Again,’ he said when she did it right the first time, and the next time he high-fived her with a whoop.

‘Told ya you could do it.’

‘And I did!’

The small accomplishment felt significant, another step towards her goal of being more independent. And yet, as they ended the lesson and drove home, Zia found that her thoughts were not about the new skill she had mastered but of Pete’s hands on hers, the brief warmth of his touch still lingering on her skin.

26

In July, winter set in properly, the cold pouring through the cracks in the windows and doors. Rashid said they couldn’t afford to keep the heaters running all day so she saved the heating for when Farah got home from school, learning to keep the curtains closed against the draughts, wearing a scarf, beanie and socks all the time, her soft knit sweaters stretching to accommodate her growing belly.

The twentieth week of her pregnancy also marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, setting off another wave of homesickness as she thought of how the rest of their families would be celebrating this time of fasting and spirituality together. Here there was no formal recognition that Ramadan had begun, no fanfare, no excitement as everyone prepared for the first sehri or pre-dawn meal before the fast, no adhaan called over the loudspeakers from the mosque to mark the fasting day’s end.

When she told Jenny, on their walk back together from school, that it was Ramadan, Jenny looked at her blankly, a reminder that these things might not be familiar to the people of this country. When she explained the concept to her, Zia was unsettled by Jenny’s reaction: her amazement that people would go for twelve hours or longer without food or water because of their faith, that they would practise this for an entire month. Not wanting to appear strange or alien, Zia minimised the discomfort of fasting, saying that your body adapted in a few days, that the month passed by quickly, that Eid, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, was very festive.

Zia herself didn’t fast, her pregnancy exempting her from that obligation this year, but she woke up before dawn every day to make tea and porridge or a sandwich for Rashid, who like many Muslims seemed to give more credence to fasting as a demonstration of his faith rather than regular prayers.

The fasting day from dawn to sunset was short in winter. In the chilly afternoons, Zia cooked kanji, the traditional Sri Lankan iftar meal to break the day’s fast, the warmth from the simmering pot of meat and rice broth spreading through the small house. At sunset, she and Farah would set the table with three plates, serving three dates and a glass of water each, joining Rashid in his iftar. As they ate their kanji, Farah would ask if she could please fast like Daddy and Rashid promised her that when she was old enough, they would all fast together.

He’d finish his kanji and ask Zia for more, saying that despite the shorter days his work seemed to make him hungrier and thirstier than he remembered being before, that he thought it might have been easier to fast when he was working in an office in Colombo.

*

In spite of the hardships of fasting, Ramadan seemed to rejuvenate Rashid. Some evenings, he took them to the mosque for the special longer Ramadan Tarawih prayers. Farah wore her tiny hijab over her head, solemnly bowing and kneeling on the green rugs next to Zia as she mimicked her movements. Later, when Zia asked her what she was praying for, Farah whispered, ‘A baby brother from Mummy’s tummy.’

On the way back, they would go to McDonald’s to get milkshakes from the drive-through, and at night, instead of watching TV, Zia would find Rashid at his computer, scrolling through websites like Seek.com, looking for jobs again.

‘Let’s do something nice for Eid,’ he said to Zia. ‘I want our first Eid in this country to be special. I think next year is going to be different for us, with the baby and everything. And I’m sure I’ll have found another job by then. We’ll go out for lunch—maybe have a picnic somewhere if the weather is nice.’

Zia agreed, delighted by his enthusiasm, by the tentative, shared hope that was growing between them.

On weekends they began shopping for the baby, browsing through the baby sections at Target and Kmart for things on sale, a corner of their room filling up with brightly coloured packs of nappies, flannelette wraps, towels, clothes and crib sheets. Rashid found a beautiful white bassinette on Gumtree for ten dollars, driving across town to pick it up from the young couple who told him their baby only slept in it for two months before moving into a cot.

They didn’t know if their baby was a boy or a girl—Rashid surprised her at the last appointment by telling the doctor that they didn’t want to know. She had assumed they would find out as early as they could, as they had done with Farah, deciding on a name and ordering tiny pink baby shirts from the seamstress they had hired as they told everyone they were having a girl.

‘I don’t know—let’s just wait and see this time, find out when he or she is born,’ he’d said when driving Zia home afterwards. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, right? I would love another little girl like Farah as much as a boy.’

And Zia, though secretly disappointed that they wouldn’t find out, had agreed.

Their families sent clothes and presents for Eid—Zia unwrapped a parcel from Mama to find a beautiful silk salwar kameez, the purple-green fabric embroidered in silver and gold, and a smaller version in blue for Farah. If they were in Sri Lanka, they too would have bought clothes for each of their parents: saris for their mothers, shirts and sarongs for their fathers. Instead, Rashid managed to send each of them some money, asking that they buy clothes for themselves on Rashid’s and Zia’s behalf.

Gifts for the baby began arriving too—a set of cotton hand-embroidered baby shirts from Mama and soft, pastel-coloured cloth nappies from Jamila. Her brother sent a box of handmade toys bought from a shop in Colombo: stuffed elephants, turtles and mice made of vibrant handloom fabric. Zia put the toys in the bassinette, their colours bright against its white edges.

*

When the last day of Ramadan ended and Eid dawned, Zia woke up in the darkness before the alarm went off, her heart clenching with an inexplicable sense of fear. Farah was curled up beside her, as was usual now, one small hand on Zia’s cheek, and Rashid was asleep in the other room, his soft snores barely audible through the wall. Inside her, the baby moved, her stomach undulating with gentle ripples.

She lay there for a few moments, her thoughts spinning as she tried to pin down the cause of her unease—had Rashid been upset about anything? Was there something she had missed in her preparations for Eid? Was it something to do with driving lessons—with Pete? That new awareness of him whenever he was near … but no, that was just her growing affection for him as her friend, she told herself.

What then?

After a while she decided it was simply the oddness of having to celebrate Eid alone in a different country, just the three of them, away from their families. Despite their efforts to make it special, it would not be the same—there would be no large family lunch, all of them sitting cross-legged on reed mats to eat out of the same sahans, the large platters piled with biryani and roast chicken. There would be no Eid visiting afterwards, driving around to the homes of relatives to feast at their tables laden with savoury and sweet snacks, no one to slip notes of ‘festival money’ into a little purse that Farah would have had for that very purpose.

Eid was not even a public holiday in this country and Farah had to be kept home from school, Rashid cancelling all his shifts for the day.

This would not do, Zia told herself sternly, turning to her side and slowly sitting up—she felt heavier this time than she had with Farah, already beginning to walk with her hand on her hip.

They may not be in Sri Lanka, she told herself, but they were here, they had each other and they would begin to create new memories, new traditions for this life that they had chosen.

She showered and prayed Fajr, changing into the salwar that Mama sent, the silk fabric gliding softly over her rounded body. Taking her gold jewellery out of the red velvet boxes in the closet, she slid on the pieces that she would wear for festive occasions in Colombo—the thali, her necklace which symbolised her marriage to Rashid, her diamond studded earrings, the heavy bracelet that was a gift from Nazrin Aunty. Eid was a time to wear your best things, and even if there was no one to see, no one to ask her where she got her beautiful salwar from, to admire the gold that glittered at her throat and wrist, she wanted to dress for Eid as she always had.

On her phone, she scrolled through the Eid greetings from family and friends, replying to each one, then clicked on YouTube to look for a video of Eid prayers. Finding one, she set the volume on high and the melodious sounds of an Imam reciting the thakbeer filled the room as Zia repeated the words softly under her breath—‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar … God is great.’ The age-old refrain of praise and worship grounded her, the joyful sound that would be resounding in Muslim homes all over the world, igniting the sense of celebration that had seemed so elusive that morning.

The sound woke Farah, who flung herself into Zia’s arms, squealing with delight at her finery.

‘You’re beeeeyoootiful, Mummy!’

‘Indeed you are,’ said Rashid, coming out of the room, his voice husky with sleep.

He walked over and put his arms around them both, embracing his family.

‘Eid Mubarak,’ he said softly.

After both Rashid and Farah were dressed in their own new clothes, they drove to the mosque for Eid prayers. The mosque was more crowded today than usual, even those who never attended the rest of the year turning out for these special prayers. There were Muslim immigrants from all over the world, each dressed in their own traditional costumes—vividly patterned abayas and scarves, long, flowing robes and skullcaps, colourful saris and kaftans. Zia saw Salma in a stunning jade-green dress with flared sleeves, and she came over to hug her and Farah and wish them Eid Mubarak.

They embraced strangers, clasping their hands to exchange salaams and Eid greetings, acknowledging their mutual religion, their celebration of this day, as the rest of the city continued its usual workday routines.

Returning home, they ate the special Eid breakfast that Zia had prepared—string hoppers with chicken curry and spicy pol sambol—while Farah opened her presents: a small toy kitchen that Rashid had kept hidden in the garage until this morning, a new doll, a set of Charlie and Lola books from Zia.

It was only later, at the park, her silk dress covered with a tan coat, her nose stinging from the cold wind from the lake, that Zia’s sense of foreboding returned. The day was bright and sunny although cold and Farah was keen to play on the flying fox, now yelling with glee as she glided through the air into Rashid’s waiting arms.

Watching her, Zia felt again that inexplicable sense of dread, the thought that something was very wrong, and touching her stomach, she realised that the last time she had felt the baby move was that morning in bed.

She called out to Rashid, saying that they needed to go to the hospital, apologetic even in her fear, acknowledging that there was no way of knowing for certain if anything was wrong.

‘It’s probably nothing, babies sleep in the womb sometimes, don’t they?’ Rashid said, turning irritable. ‘But okay, let’s go and get it checked.’

They walked to the car, huddled together against the cold, Farah upset that they were leaving the park early.

27

Their baby was dead.

The fact of this pounded repetitively, cruelly, in Rashid’s mind as he sat next to Zia on her hospital bed, sedated and sleeping after her ordeal. Grief seemed etched on her face even in sleep, her eyebrows drawn together in pain, her lips white in her dark face, her body thin and vulnerable in her hospital gown. The clothes she’d worn that morning were draped over a chair by the window, the rich silk gleaming incongruously in the stark hospital lighting.

They had dropped Farah at Jenny’s place before they went to the hospital.

‘I’m sure it will all be fine,’ Jenny had said, peering into the car, her kind grey eyes bright with concern.

When Rashid had called Jenny to tell her what had happened and ask if she could keep Farah for the night, he thought he could hear Jenny crying even as she told him not to worry about Farah at all, that she was happy to have her stay for as long as they needed.

He was uncomfortable with this, with knowing his daughter was sleeping under someone else’s roof, someone who probably knew nothing of their way of life. What if Jenny served pork for dinner? For a moment he thought of calling her back and telling her not to give Farah any meat, and then realised how odd it would be to do this, to worry about Farah eating pork when his baby was dead.

His baby was dead, his baby was dead, his baby was dead.

When they walked into the emergency room, crowded with people coughing and sneezing from winter flus, a nurse had asked Zia a few questions and then whisked her away with surprising swiftness to be taken for an ultrasound.

When the doctor had looked at them both sorrowfully and said, ‘I’m so very sorry,’ Zia had let out a terrible wail, while his own heart beat harder with pain and disbelief.

It felt as though they had been in this hospital for weeks and yet only a day had slipped into night since they’d first walked in, only a few hours since he cradled his tiny, perfect, silent daughter in his palms.

He had held her, this little girl who was going to be the brightness in their future, whom he had believed would give their lives here a solidity that it lacked so far. Unlike them, she would be Australian by birth. Everything in the world should have been hers; she should have been the blessed one who lighted the way for their family, she should have been loved and rejoiced in by Zia, Farah and himself, and instead here she was, dead before she was even alive, cold and still in his hands.

‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un,’ he whispered. To God do we belong and verily, to Him do we return, but the words were as dust in his mouth, giving him no comfort.

The doctor had induced labour and things had progressed quickly, Zia’s body seeming willing to give up its burden now that it had failed to nurture the life within it. Tears had streamed down her face the whole time and yet except for that one cry of despair she barely made a sound throughout. He remembered now how she had screamed as she was giving birth to Farah, at one point asking him to leave the room because she thought he was smirking when all he had been trying to do was sympathise with her pain.

How strange it was, to be here alone in the hospital with Zia. If they were in Colombo, their families would be gathered around them, tending to Zia, sharing their grief. The burden of having no one but each other felt crushing. How would he, alone, comfort her, when his own loss was as terrible as hers?

A nurse came in to check on Zia, a dark-haired young woman in pale green scrubs who looked at him with pity. ‘Are you okay? Can I get you anything?’

‘No,’ he said, answering both questions, and she didn’t ask again.

Her ministrations woke Zia, who opened her eyes and looked around in bewilderment. He saw the moment that realisation dawned, the way the sleepy confusion was slowly swept away by pain. Her eyes met his and she began to shake, the tears flowing down her neck and soaking her gown.

‘Rash,’ she whispered, reaching for him, and he took her hand, holding it as she cried. And yet he did not embrace her, his own eyes remaining dry, his tears frozen in a tight knot in his chest.

28

When Zia walked into the room, the first thing she saw was the bassinette squeezed into the narrow space between the bed and the wall, bright toys scattered on the sheets.

‘I’ll take that to the garage,’ said Rashid from behind her, moving past her to lift up the assortment of wood and frilly fabric and carry it outside, toys and all.

Zia wanted to call him back, to tell him to leave it where it was, as though the simple fact of the bassinette’s presence might reverse the terrible thing that had happened, as though having a place for the baby to sleep might mean that her child was still alive.

Her legs gave way and she collapsed on the bed. When Rashid returned, he began to throw the rest of the baby paraphernalia—the small clothes, nappies and bedding—into a black garbage bag. She opened her mouth to ask him what he meant to do with it and then shut it again, deciding that she didn’t want to know. His actions seemed cruel somehow, an annihilation of the life that their baby would have had.

They had barely spoken since the morning they had gone to the hospital. Zia, reaching out in her pain, had only been met with silence and a coldness that had made her shrink back into herself. Did he not grieve for their child, she wondered? Was he not hurting, could he find no way to share her anguish?

He brought her a cup of tea, telling her he was going to get Farah, who had spent the last two nights at Jenny’s.

She didn’t respond, lying still on the bed, listening to the door open and shut, the rumble of the car starting and fading as he left.

The silence felt oppressive, unbearable.

She felt a familiar rush, a weight in her chest, her eyes filling with tears again as she realised that her milk had come in. The nurse had told her this could happen, telling her to take warm baths and drink sage tea to relieve her discomfort, that her body would eventually come to terms with its loss.

They were very kind at the hospital.

They let her hold her daughter, Aasiya, for as long as she wanted, memorising the details of her miniscule face, the tiny blue lips that would never suckle at her breast. Where was Aasiya now? Was she lonely, was she afraid, her poor baby? Rashid had said he would take care of the burial, that Zia was not to worry, but she wanted to know, she wanted to be there.

Restless, fighting a desire to call him and ask him to return to the hospital to get their baby, she reached for her purse and took out her phone. There were ten missed calls—five from Mama, three from Jamila, and two from Jenny. There were also several text messages—Jenny, saying she was thinking of her, and that if she needed anything to call, one from Pete, asking if everything was okay, and with a start she remembered that she was meant to have a driving lesson that morning, that Pete must have come to her door and wondered where she was.

The lessons felt like a distant memory from another life, a life when her baby was growing inside her, when there was a different kind of future to look forward to. Had it been only last week that Pete had been telling her she would get her licence before the baby was born, that it would make life so much easier when she had the baby to be able to drive? Now, the thought of learning to drive exhausted and frightened her as it had before.

There were several pamphlets in her bag from the hospital, on life after stillbirth, on grief, on relationships, whom to call, where to get help.

She remembered, suddenly, little Avi, who had died from dengue in their apartment building in Colombo, the childless mother who looked at Zia with empty eyes in the lift. Who had helped his mother get over the loss of her only son? Was it something that you ever healed from or did you carry this terrible pain with you all the days of your life?

She and Rashid had moved to Australia to protect their children from the dangers of racism, poverty and fatal mosquito bites, to give them a safer, cleaner, healthier place to grow up in, and yet it was her own body that had betrayed them, failing to keep her baby alive.

Grief morphed into anger as she clenched her fists around the loose skin of her stomach, still bloated in a mockery of her pregnancy.

She heard Rashid return, the thud of the car door opening and closing, Farah’s small feet pattering on the carpet as she came looking for Zia.

Farah climbed into bed next to her and put her hand on Zia’s cheek as usual, snuggling close.

‘I missed you, Mummy,’ she said. ‘Jenny is very nice and Amy shared all her toys with me but I didn’t like Amy’s bed. I like sleeping here with you, Mummy.’

‘Good,’ said Zia, her voice cracking, unable to say more.

They lay there together quietly, listening to Rashid move about in the kitchen, pans clattering in the sink as he cleared away the remains of their Eid breakfast. After a while, Farah spoke again, asking, ‘Mummy, did God take the baby back to heaven because she was a girl and I asked for a baby brother? Can we ask Him to send her back? Can I tell Him I don’t mind a baby sister?’

And Zia tried to explain that no, babies did not return from heaven, that it was not Farah’s prayers that caused the loss of her baby sister, that sometimes things happened for reasons no one could understand.

PART 4

Spring

29

‘I brought you these,’ said Jenny, standing at Zia’s door, her arms filled with golden blossoms. ‘They’re golden wattle, and it’s when you see them blooming everywhere that you know spring is truly here.’

Zia moved aside to let her in, vaguely conscious of her unbrushed hair, the cups and plates cluttering the living room.

‘Have you got a vase? No? That’s fine, a jug will do.’

Jenny went into the kitchen and rummaged around, returning with a plastic jug filled with water. She put the flowers into the jug and placed it on the coffee table.

Zia had barely noticed the passing of winter, the brightening and lengthening of the days, the slow green blush of leaves on the trees. For the past few weeks, she had gone through her days in a series of motions that she was barely aware of. Even though she felt as though she would rather stay in bed and sleep forever, there was still Farah to care for, to feed, to play with, to read to, and so she did these things, lifting her heavy head from the pillow each morning, putting one foot in front of the other until, one by one, all these small tasks were accomplished.

Rashid tried to help, looking up recipes on the internet, doing the laundry at midnight when he got home from his shifts. Yet he barely spoke to Zia and she found that for the first time in their years together, she didn’t really care.

One night, unable to fall asleep and overcome with loneliness, she had tried to wake him. Startled, he’d woken up cursing and struck her, as though he had fallen asleep enraged and woken up with the same anger pulsing through him. As realisation dawned, he had tried to embrace Zia, stumbling over his apologies—he was sorry, she shouldn’t have woken him, he was sorry, what was so important that it couldn’t wait until morning, he was sorry. Zia had gently disentangled herself and walked away, going outside to lie on the frozen blades of grass, hot tears running down her cheeks.

He hadn’t followed.

Sometimes, when she was alone at home, the pain grew until it was a great shadow, swallowing her whole in its darkness. She tried to pray, to find solace in the familiar movements and words, but for the first time in her life she found that her prayers felt empty, that she could not muster loyalty to a god who had taken her baby from her.

One afternoon, she found herself thinking of ways in which she could kill herself, to put an end to her pain, sitting at the computer and doing a Google search on what was the quickest and simplest method to end one’s life.

Scrolling through the articles and comments, she saw someone asking whoever was considering suicide to just pause for a moment and think that there was always, with time, an end to pain. The person had mentioned a number to call. It brought Zia back to the present moment with a shock, the realisation that she was sitting there thinking of ways to die despite the fact that she still had one child who needed her and a family who loved her, although they were so far away. And so, despite the black hurt that rose and swirled in her chest, Zia called Lifeline, telling the kind stranger who answered the phone that she wanted to die because she couldn’t bear to live in a world where her baby was dead.

The lady listened to Zia for almost an hour, becoming a vessel for the river of grief that had poured out of Zia. At the end of the call, she made Zia promise to call if she ever felt this way again, but Zia had known then that she would not, that the worst of her sorrow was spent, that no matter what happened after that, she would not consider taking her own life again.

*

This was the first time someone had brought her flowers. It was not a custom in Sri Lanka to give someone flowers as an expression of love or apology the way it was in the West, and now it seemed remarkable to Zia that she should feel so cared for, so touched by something that did nothing for her other than be beautiful, the yellow-gold blossoms brightening the dull living room.

She sank to her knees on the carpet, breathing in the sweethoney fragrance that was a cross between the jasmines and roses that bloomed in Mama’s garden.

‘Thank you,’ she said to Jenny, who sat on the chair beside her, slipping off her burgundy coat and placing it on the armrest.

‘You’re welcome. Did you know this is Australia’s national flower, that the green and gold on our flag is inspired by the wattle?’

Jenny kept talking, telling her how the golden wattle was able to stand the worst of Australia’s weather, surviving through drought, wind and heatwaves. She told Zia that it was her favourite flower because of its resilience and how this was meant to symbolise the spirit of the Australian people—people who arrived here from all over the world and adapted to the ways of the new country, not just surviving but thriving in an unpredictable environment.

She talked about Amy and school and how the teacher had panicked the other day when she thought the chocolate spread on Amy’s sandwich was Nutella, calling Jenny to remind her of the school’s nut-free policy.

Her words washed over Zia, a soothing monologue that did not require her to respond. Before she left, Jenny tidied away the clutter in the living room and washed the dishes in the sink. She then asked Zia if she and Farah would like to join her and Amy on a trip to Floriade, Canberra’s flower festival, that weekend. And Zia, who opened her mouth to say no, found that she had said yes instead.

*

‘We could have gone together,’ said Rashid when Zia told him on Saturday morning that Jenny was picking them up to go to see the flowers at Commonwealth Park. ‘I asked you last week if you wanted to go to Floriade and you said no.’

‘I didn’t feel like it last week,’ said Zia, pulling on a pale blue cardigan over her shirt. ‘And I think it will be fun for Farah to go with Amy.’

Rashid began to say something, then seemed to change his mind, turning his attention back to the old dollhouse that he’d found on their street, put out by one of their neighbours whom they had never met but whose teenage daughters they sometimes saw cycling past, their blonde hair tucked under identical denim caps.

The old wooden dollhouse was unlike anything Zia had seen before, an eight-roomed structure that took up an entire corner of the living room, its interior consisting of mostly broken parts—tiny, dislocated staircases, a miniature four-poster bed that was missing a leg. Farah was delighted with Rashid’s find and he had promised to fix it up for her, saying they would paint it together.

Now, watching him carefully glue the parts of a dining table back together, Zia felt the way she seemed to feel so often these days—a sense of being with someone who was at once both known and unknown, her love for him woven into the very fabric of her being and yet whose presence she sometimes could not bear.

At one time she would have never considered going on an outing such as this without him, and yet that was before her life was ripped in two, the rules of the way life was supposed to be still amorphous in the wake of their baby’s death.

‘We’ll see you later,’ Zia said as Jenny pulled up in the driveway and Farah hugged and kissed him goodbye.

*

It was the first time Zia had ventured out since returning from the hospital. Apart from walking Farah to school and back, she hadn’t had the energy to take a bus or cared to go anywhere with Rashid. At first it felt like an affront—the brightness of the spring day, the commotion of the crowds, the flowers, tulips, pansies and hyacinths brazen in their colourful displays.

Zia was grateful for Farah and Amy, whose chatter and questions kept them busy as they strolled on the paths between the flower beds, pausing to buy skewers of strawberries dipped in chocolate fondant from one of the food stalls.

Afterwards, they walked to the banks of the Nerang Pool, where Jenny spread a faded striped picnic rug on the grass, taking packets of crackers and biscuits, sliced carrots and small tubs of hummus out of a bag.

A large, transparent globe of water floated on the pool and overhead a flock of birds seemed to rise out of nowhere, gathering into a precise formation and flapping away into the distance. Watching the birds, Zia felt a slight shift within herself, a lightening of the weight that was ever-present in her chest.

‘Have you written any more of your stories?’ Jenny asked, spreading hummus on a cracker.

‘No,’ said Zia. ‘I haven’t felt like it at all.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But being able to write, it’s such a gift, isn’t it—like art. You could use it to express anything you wanted, to make sense of your world. You might find it useful to keep a journal or something like that.’

‘Like a diary? I haven’t kept one since I was fifteen and my mother found it and read it!’ An unexpected laugh bubbled up from Zia’s throat at the memory—Mama’s horror to discover her detailed notes on Muttiah Muralitharan, Sri Lanka’s star cricketer at the time. ‘You’re right, though,’ she admitted to Jenny. ‘I think it would help.’

‘It would, I think—and it’d be good for you to have something of your own to do, something to get stuck into. What about your driving lessons? Weren’t you learning with that guy, that racer? I heard someone mention him the other day. Apparently he’s a great teacher.’

Zia thought of Pete, who had texted and called her a few times in the past two months. She hadn’t responded. What could she say? ‘My baby died and I don’t want to learn to drive anymore’? She could not bear to face his shock and his sympathy, Pete, who always seemed to carry himself with such lightness, as though no shadows had ever crossed his life, as though joy was an end in itself. And yet now as Jenny spoke, in the ordinariness of that moment in the sunshine, eating crackers and dips on the grass, the idea of returning to lessons did not seem as outlandish as it had before.

‘I might think about it at some point,’ Zia said, and Jenny, seeming to understand that she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, went on to other things, how great the entertainment at Floriade was this year, whether they should take the girls on the Ferris wheel.

It was late afternoon when Jenny dropped Zia and Farah back home, pleasantly tired from their excursion. Farah ran inside to find Rashid to tell him about their day, but the house was empty, a halfdrunk mug of coffee left on the window ledge beside the door. Zia took it to the kitchen and poured the coffee down the sink, washing the mug and filling a glass of water for herself.

Returning to the living room, she found Farah sitting by the dollhouse, playing and rearranging the furniture—tiny tables, chairs and beds, staircases that were now whole and intact.

30

‘Zia.’

‘Pete.’

She walked towards the car, her smile faltering as she met his gaze. She had forgotten the way he looked at her, the way he made her feel, as though she was the sole focus of his attention. She knew it was probably the way he made all his students feel, that it was why people said he was good at what he did. Still, today felt different, his knowledge of her grief colouring the space between them.

He moved as though to embrace her, then stopped, reaching out and taking her hand instead. His palms were warm and dry against her cool fingers.

‘I’m so sorry, Zia,’ he said. ‘I know it won’t make a difference, I know there’s nothing I can say that can take your pain away, but I want to say it anyway.’

‘It’s okay,’ she said, her eyes beginning to fill with tears at his kindness. Pete seemed unembarrassed by her crying, reaching into the car for some tissues and handing them to her.

‘You’re a brave girl to get back to lessons,’ he said. ‘I’m so proud of you. We’re going to have you on the road in no time, wait and see.’

‘You really think so?’ Zia tried to laugh, a half-sob escaping her as she blew her nose into the tissue.

‘I do think so. But first, for today, what do you say we just go for a drive and you can get reacquainted with me and the car? Come on, hop in the passenger seat for now.’

They took off, Pete driving through the busy streets, the city falling behind as they entered a country road that wound through wide open spaces, seas of shimmering green dotted with grazing sheep, rippling through hills and shadowy pine forests. The car dipped and rose with the road, gliding around tight corners in a way that seemed almost effortless to Zia.

Now and then, she turned her eyes from the beauty around her to look at Pete, studying his face with the slight stubble on his chin, the dark lashes that were flecked with gold, thinking that it was usually he who watched her from this seat as she was learning, that there was a strange gratification in being able to look at a person when they were unable to look back at you. She had looked at Rashid this way, while he was driving, and yet it was always with a sense of unease, wondering if the wrinkle on his brow meant that he was worried or angry, if the clenching of his jaw meant he had something on his mind of which she knew nothing.

After a while Pete pulled up in front of a small, dilapidated shop that sat on a gravel patch by the side of the road, red paint peeling off its wooden slats.

‘You’d be surprised but they serve amazing coffee here,’ he said. ‘Can I get you one?’

Zia agreed and followed him into the shop, where an elderly man in a checked blue shirt and wide-brimmed hat took their order. His glance moved slowly from Zia to Pete and then back to Zia again, and she wondered uncomfortably if he thought that they were a couple. She moved away from Pete’s side, wandering through the shop that had a curious mix of things on its shelves—tiny ceramic animals and clay ornaments alongside packets of Smiths potato chips and Tim Tams.

‘That’s a dreamcatcher,’ said Pete, joining her as she looked at a small wooden hoop threaded with beads and feathers. ‘Some people believe it traps your nightmares if you hang it over your bed, so you’re only left with the good dreams.’

‘I could use something like that,’ said Zia wistfully, thinking of all the nights she lay awake, afraid to fall asleep for fear of dreaming—dreaming that her baby was alive but lost, looking for her in strange places, wandering along dark corridors and empty streets. Sometimes she thought she could hear a baby’s cry, always just out of reach, and would wake up with her heart pounding with terror, fear giving way to a heavy sorrow as her memories replaced the dreams. Not even reciting the Ayatul Kursi helped, the old Quranic words holding no power against the immensity of her grief.

‘Here, let me get it for you,’ said Pete, unhooking the dreamcatcher and taking it to the counter before Zia could protest.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, when she thanked him. ‘Let me know if it works! We could all use a little help to get through some sleepless nights, I reckon. Besides, it can’t hurt, hey? It’s a pretty little thing.’

They returned to the car and sat inside, sipping their coffee and looking down at the valley below them, kangaroos leaping away into the forest, a thin spiral of smoke rising up towards the bright, cloudless sky from a distant farmstead.

‘Grief is a strange thing,’ mused Pete. ‘You think you’re never going to get over something, that the pain you feel is going to last forever, but then one day you realise that you haven’t thought about your pain for a few hours, and you’ll feel guilty, like it means you’ve forgotten about the person you love. And you’ll pick it up again, all those miserable feelings, and you’ll realise that it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, that somewhere along the way your healing has started, and that doesn’t mean you’ll ever forget or that your love will be any less, but you’ll find you can keep living without the thing that you thought you could never live without. That you can even be happy. All this won’t make much sense to you now, but I guess I’m trying to say—you’re going to be okay. Your daughter will always be with you, and you’ll always love her and miss her, but you’ll also go on living your own life.’

‘I guess I will be,’ said Zia. ‘I feel so tired now, you know, like everything is too hard, like nothing is worth doing. I know I called you and said I wanted to start lessons again, but I don’t know if I can, really. I don’t know that I have the energy for it.’

Pete was quiet for a while, tapping his finger restlessly on the rim of his coffee cup. When he talked again, his voice was quiet, hesitant, lacking the conviction with which he usually spoke.

‘I’ve never told you about my friend Nate, have I?’

‘No,’ said Zia gently, ‘I’ve read a little about what happened though.’

Pete nodded, drawing a deep breath and turning his gaze to the valley, where grass was stirring in a sudden gust of wind.

‘When I gave up racing after Nate died, I thought my life was over. I’d never been good at anything—and when I found out I had a knack for driving, that I was good enough to get into racing, it was a gamechanger. I loved it—all of it, the hours of training, the build-up of excitement before a race, that rush when you cross the finish line. Except I got addicted to it all, I wanted to win so badly that I let my best friend die. And then I watched while he burned in that car, and I couldn’t save him.’

He told Zia how he and Nate had had a fight earlier in the day just before the race, how Nate, who had been temperamental of late, had accused Pete of trying to steal his girlfriend, Ashley, because he’d given her a lift after a party the night before.

‘We were all just friends hanging out, you know—me, Cass, Nate and Ash. She was a nice girl but I was crazy about Cass and I’d never hit on my mate’s girlfriend. Nate knew that but he was acting really weird, saying I didn’t care about anyone but myself anymore, that I wanted all the wins and the girls for myself.’

He’d noticed Nate slipping away quietly before the race and, following him, had seen him take the drugs that were found afterwards in his bloodstream and said to be what caused a talented driver to veer off course and crash in a way that seemed almost intentional.

‘I saw him pop those pills and I said nothing. I was so angry with him that I didn’t care, and for a long time afterwards I wondered whether Nate was right, whether I didn’t stop him because I wanted to win so badly that day. Even if he didn’t listen to me, I could have reported him—this was before they had drug testing in motorsport, right, but I could have told someone. It would have ruined his career, but I could have saved his life. But I didn’t, and I thought the pain and the guilt would destroy me. I’ve never told anyone this.’ He moved slightly sideways in his seat to look directly at Zia. ‘Not Cass, not the counsellors I saw for years afterwards. I never told them what I saw, that I could have stopped him.’

This time it was Zia who reached for his hand, wrapping her fist around his knuckles.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘How terribly painful.’

She looked at their hands, the darkness of her skin against his, then, surprised by her own boldness, reached out and drew her index finger along the scar on his cheek.

‘And that’s when you got this?’

He nodded, and when she dropped her hand from his face, his breath rushed out in a sigh.

He’d also hurt his knee, he told her, tearing the ligaments in a way that never fully healed, making it impossible for him to ever return to racing, even if he had not been traumatised by Nate’s death. And then there was Cassie, beside herself with terror after watching the news, seeing her husband fling himself at a burning car while the track team tried to pull him away.

It was Cassie who had encouraged him to take up his dream, supporting him through the relentless months of training while she built her own career in law, and after the accident, it was she who begged him to leave that world altogether, saying she made enough to support the both of them, that he could choose to do anything else he wanted.

‘So here I am,’ said Pete, smiling slightly. ‘It’s not so bad, teaching people to drive. It’s kinda amazing, actually, watching someone grow into a confident driver—I’ve had a couple of students get their licences already. Can’t wait to see you do it.’

‘I don’t think I could ever drive like you just did on this road,’ said Zia. ‘It just felt so seamless.’

‘Nothing to it, darl. Besides, not only can you do it—you’re going to do it. Who do you think is going to drive us back?’

‘I couldn’t,’ gasped Zia. ‘I haven’t practised in months, I’ve forgotten everything!’

‘It’ll come back,’ said Pete. ‘And I’ll be right here telling you what to do. Come on, let’s get going.’

As they changed seats, Pete said that driving on the country road would actually be easier than driving through traffic, that the things she had learned would come back to her through muscle memory.

Even so, Zia was tense, gripping the wheel as she slowly backed out of the gravel strip and onto the road. Glancing out the window, she saw the shopkeeper standing on the porch, watching them.

‘It’s okay,’ said Pete softly, and drawing a deep breath, she took off, focusing on the road, the movement of her foot between the brake and the accelerator as she took the first corner, the first dip in the road. After a while she felt Pete’s touch on her shoulder.

‘You need to relax,’ he said, running his fingers lightly along the length of her arm, resting his hand for a moment on hers.

Something in her buckled and gave way at the gentle touch, as though it was something she had needed without knowing it. Pete was talking about why it was important to not grip the steering wheel so hard, how it was easier to manoeuvre a vehicle with a lighter grip, but she barely heard him as she struggled to contain the voluminous longing that had opened up inside her.

She realised later as she parked in front of her house that she had been driving for almost an hour, although it felt as though only minutes had passed since they left the little shop in the hills.

‘Couldn’t have done it better myself,’ Pete said. ‘Just a little more practice and you’ll be zipping around like a pro.’

His voice was hearty but when Zia turned to him, she saw that he looked tired, his eyes red-rimmed, his scar seeming to burn against his pale face.

‘Pete,’ she said. ‘Are we friends?’

He looked at her in silence for a while and she wished she could take the question back. Why had she asked? They had crossed some invisible line today but perhaps that was just the intimacy of that moment of shared grief. And why did she need to know? What else could they be, other than friends, other than a teacher and his student?

She was about to excuse herself and leave when Pete said, ‘Why do you need to define it? Can’t we just be who we are with each other without giving it a label?’

She smiled, relieved and yet uncertain what he meant.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We can just be us.’

That night she hung the little dreamcatcher on the wall behind her bed. As she lay down next to Farah, she found herself thinking about that moment when Pete had told her to relax, the memory of his touch lulling her into the first dreamless sleep she’d had in months.

31

When Rashid arrived at the office complex, cleaning supplies in hand, he was surprised to find the door unlocked. Stepping inside, he realised at once that there was someone else in the building. Instead of the usual chill and lifelessness, there was a warmth in the air, a faint smell of masculine cologne, a shuffling in the distance.

Walking cautiously along the corridor, he saw that a light was on in one of the rooms, and as Rashid passed, a man looked up from where he was sitting at a desk. He appeared to be younger than Rashid, wearing a dark blue sweater over formal trousers, his light brown hair curling over his forehead.

He raised his hand in greeting to Rashid. ‘Hi there, mate—don’t worry about me. Just do what you need to do. I won’t get in the way.’

‘Okay,’ said Rashid, wondering who he was, why he was here at this time of the night.

He continued on to the toilets, beginning at the sinks. The work felt harder than usual, the sponge heavy in his hand, the night of endless cleaning looming darkly ahead of him.

That morning—yet another in a string of terrible mornings—he had lost his temper with Zia when she had refused to call his mother whom she hadn’t spoken with since Eid. His mother had been troubled by Zia’s silence, messaging him every day on WhatsApp to ask how she was.

Rashid knew that Zia’s reluctance was partly because she worried his mother would blame her for the stillbirth, that she was prone to asking questions about what Zia might have done that could have caused it to happen—if she had exerted herself too much in the weeks before or eaten something unsafe. And yet he was tired of dealing with his mother’s anxiety himself and thought that surely Zia could speak with her once and set his mother’s mind at ease.

‘I hardly even talk with Mama or Dada,’ Zia had protested. ‘I just don’t feel up to it, Rashid—can’t you please tell her? I just need a little more time.’

‘For God’s sake, it’s been almost four months, how much more time do you want!’ he’d exploded, and before he could say anything more, Zia had looked up at him, raising her hands as though to protect herself.

The tide of anger had drained away as fast as it had risen as they looked at each other in silence, Zia slowly lowering her arms. Then she turned and went into her room—a room he hadn’t shared in months—shutting the door behind her.

She’s afraid of me, he thought now, as he scrubbed at the taps.

The first time he struck her, the night she’d told him she was pregnant, he had been filled with remorse, certain it would never happen again. And then it had, one night after they’d returned home from the hospital when he’d woken to Zia’s insistent tugging on his arm. He remembered with painful clarity that moment when he’d struck her again, the darkness that had risen so swiftly in him, a muddy swirl of rage, fear and grief. He’d lain there with his heart pounding afterwards, listening to her leave the room, the sound of the front door opening and shutting.

He’d wondered if she had left, where she would go, and yet he’d lain there still, his limbs refusing to move. After what seemed like hours, he’d heard her return, her soft footfall in the hall, the rustle of sheets in the next room.

They’d never spoken of it.

He told himself that it didn’t really mean anything, that Zia had not really been hurt, that he was not the kind of man who would strike his wife whenever he was angry, that he was driven to it by her own frustrating behaviour. And he’d tried to make it up to her—doing most of the cooking and cleaning as she was recovering, buying her favourite chocolates and even one day a stack of books that he thought she would enjoy from a second-hand bookstore in the city. She accepted these things quietly, without comment, keeping the books on her bedside table, thanking him for the chocolates.

And yet she never approached him nowadays, never talked about anything other than Farah or what to cook for dinner.

And why would she, you bastard, he thought, suddenly furious with himself, when all you’ve done is hurt her over and over again?

The weight of his shame was unbearable.

He had failed his family in every way. He was unable to provide for them as he used to in Sri Lanka, and in the absence of their family and friends, was unable to give Zia the kind of love she needed.

‘I’m not very good at expressing myself,’ he’d told her years ago. ‘But I want you to know that I’ll always love you in my own way. Always.’

He wondered if she remembered. If she still loved him.

He finished up his cleaning, flushing the last toilet and returning to the corridor. Exhausted, he squatted on his haunches, his head throbbing.

‘You okay, mate?’

Startled, Rashid looked up to see the man in the blue sweater standing over him, a concerned expression on his face. The man stretched out his hand. ‘I’m Dan. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself properly earlier. I’m the CEO here.’

‘Hi.’ Rashid staggered to his feet and shook Dan’s hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘just a bit tired, that’s all.’

‘No need to apologise. I was just getting some coffee from the kitchen. Would you like to join me?’

‘Alright,’ said Rashid, too surprised to refuse.

He followed Dan into the kitchen where there was a small coffee machine on the counter. Dan reached into a cupboard and took out two mugs, asking Rashid how he liked his coffee, adding a spoonful of sugar to each mug as the dark liquid poured out of the machine.

Rashid thought briefly of Eresha bringing him tea in the mornings, flecks of milk powder floating on the surface. He had never seen the kitchen in his old office, had never had a reason to go there.

They returned to Dan’s office, warmth radiating from a small electric heater against the wall. There were neat piles of folders on the large desk, a pen holder with an assortment of pens, brightly coloured post-it notes stuck to the computer monitor. On a shelf in the corner there were a few books and framed photographs, mostly of a smiling young woman with Dan.

‘My partner hates it when I bring work home,’ said Dan, gesturing to the photographs with a smile. ‘So if I do have something that’s been pending I end up staying late—usually not this late, though. We had a couple of staff leave last week so it’s been more hectic than usual. Good to have a bit of company. Have you been doing our cleaning for long?’

‘Maybe about a year now,’ said Rashid. He found himself telling Dan that he hadn’t thought he would be doing this for so long, that it was only meant to be a temporary thing while he looked for other work. He admitted that he hadn’t looked for other jobs in a while, that his family was going through a rough patch.

He hadn’t had a conversation like this with anyone in a very long time. He wasn’t in touch with his friends in Sri Lanka anymore, the men and women he had worked with, who knew him and respected him for who he used to be. He wasn’t that person any longer and he didn’t know how to speak with them from the context of his current life.

‘What did you do before you came to Australia?’ asked Dan, and Rashid laughed.

‘I was kind of like you,’ he said. ‘I was a software development manager. I’d end up working late sometimes when there was a big project on. It’s like another life now.’

‘Wow,’ said Dan, shaking his head. ‘You’re a brave man. I don’t think I would be able to do what you’re doing—restarting my career, doing a job I’m not used to. That’s amazing.’

At Dan’s words, Rashid felt a brief flicker of something like pride. He never thought of the past year with anything but doubt and regret, never thought of the work he’d been doing as anything but a sign of his failure. But perhaps, after all, it did take courage to do what he was doing. He’d continued to provide for his family in the best way that he could, hadn’t he?

He rose from his chair, thanking Dan for the coffee and the chat.

‘I’ve a few more jobs to do tonight,’ he said.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Dan, getting to his feet as well. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, extracting a card.

‘Will you give me a call sometime this week? Let’s catch up again soon. I may have something for you—not promising anything at the moment, but let’s talk. A few people just left, as I said, so we’ve got some vacancies coming up soon.’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

Rashid pocketed the card and left, the cold air outside a shock after the warmth of Dan’s office. Although the days were warmer now, the nights were still chilly enough for him to keep his big winter coat in the back of his car. As he drove to his next job, he tried not to dwell on Dan’s words, on the gold-bordered business card now in his pocket.

To hope, he thought, was only to be disappointed.

32

It was Pete’s idea to pick a location each week that Zia wanted to go to and then use that as a destination for her drive. Once they reached the spot, they’d spend some time wandering around. So far they’d been to Parliament House, the National Library, the Botanic Gardens, the Royal Australian Mint and the War Memorial. Pete turned out to be an excellent tour guide, telling her all about the history of each place, laughing at her surprise when she discovered that many of Canberra’s suburbs were named after the prime ministers whose portraits hung in the Members’ Hall at Parliament House.

With each drive, Zia grew increasingly confident, depending less on Pete for instructions, beginning to make her own decisions about what to do on the road. Still, she could not imagine having to do it on her own, without the safety and comfort of Pete’s presence by her side. She didn’t want to think of life without her lessons, the days that shone like stars scattered across her dreary weeks.

Every drive was an adventure in which she discovered something about the city she lived in, but also about herself. She found that she was smarter, funnier and bolder when she was with Pete, that he made her laugh, but that it felt even better when she learned she could make him laugh too. When she said something to him and he responded with, ‘How interesting—go on, tell me more,’ she felt as though she could talk forever.

With her, Pete began sharing more stories about his life as a race car driver and of his friendship with Nate. How he was meant to be the best man at Nate’s wedding, how once, when Pete had contracted severe pneumonia, Nate had been the one to stay with him in hospital, sitting up all night to make sure he was able to breathe. Pete said he realised later that the strange changes in Nate’s personality towards the end were because of the drugs he’d started taking, but that time had softened and erased most of these painful memories, that what he remembered most now were the good times they’d shared together.

Zia listened to his reminiscences until they seemed to become her own, Nate inhabiting her thoughts as though she too had known him, as though she had ridden down the Kings Highway with Pete and Nate on their motorbikes, laughing and talking as they smoked cigarettes and drank beer late into the night, as though she had been in the ambulance when Pete held the twisted hand of his dying friend, yearning for one last conversation that they would never have.

Zia told Pete about her secret love of writing, about the fairy tales she wrote for Farah, and like Jenny, he encouraged her to do something about it, to enrol in a course or submit her stories to a publisher. She laughed off his suggestions, but at home, she opened her laptop for the first time in months and began to write again.

*

One morning, Zia asked him if they could drive to the cemetery in Gungahlin. She knew that Aasiya was buried there, that Rashid had organised this with the hospital and had buried her within the twenty-four hours that Islam decreed. She knew that he sometimes visited the grave himself. And yet he’d stuck to the Islamic belief that women should not visit graveyards, that the grief of it would be too much for Zia to bear. Zia, too exhausted to argue and remembering how her mother hadn’t even witnessed the burial of her own father, how none of the women in her family had ever been to a burial site, had accepted that it was how things had to be.

But as the weeks passed, the desire to see where Aasiya was buried grew and intensified, her belief in the ancient tenet crumbling in the face of her need.

Pete agreed at once, cancelling his next lesson so that she would not need to hurry.

‘You don’t have to come with me,’ she told him when they reached the cemetery, but he shook his head, saying he would like to be with her, to help her look for the spot, if she wouldn’t mind him coming along.

They wandered through the grassy lawns until they reached the Children’s Garden, pausing to look at the headstones and plaques inscribed with heartbreaking epitaphs, testaments to the love and grief these children had left behind. Born into the arms of angels, said one. Loved beyond measure, said another.

The cemetery wasn’t anything like Zia had imagined, the rustling trees and flower beds lining the path, the gleaming lake reflecting the deepening blue of the sky, creating an atmosphere that was far from morbid. She felt as though she was walking amongst those who were asleep, treading softly so as not to disturb them.

When they reached the more recent graves, Pete hung back, letting her walk by herself until she reached the tiny plaque she had been looking for.

Aasiya Hassan, Born Sleeping, it said simply, with the date of her daughter’s birth and death underneath, and Zia suddenly found herself doubled over with pain, gasping with sobs as she bent over the grave, wanting to tear at the soil with her fingernails, to find her baby and take her home.

This is why I told you not to go, Rashid would have said. There are reasons behind all these old rules.

After a while, she felt Pete’s arm around her, holding her as she cried.

‘We named her after one of the bravest women in the Quran, the woman who rescued Moses and adopted him as her own, protected him from her husband, the Pharaoh,’ she said after her sobs had quietened enough for her to speak. ‘I think she would have had an amazing life. She would have been a brave and beautiful girl, a wonderful sister for Farah. I can’t understand this, I’ll never understand why she didn’t deserve to live.’

When her tears were spent, Zia bent down and pressed her lips to the ground. Then she rose unsteadily, letting Pete take her by the arm and walk her back to the car, grateful for the comfort of his company yet grieving that she could not be here with Rashid, that they had failed to mourn their child together.

*

‘Over here,’ Zia called up from the bottom of the path that sloped down through the Himalayan cedar forest. Pete, who had been looking for her in the other direction, turned and grinned as he caught sight of her, scrambling down past the tall trees to join her.

‘Thought I’d lost you,’ he said.

‘Not a chance,’ said Zia, laughing. ‘I just wanted to see what the view was like from here.’

They were at the arboretum this morning, Zia having chosen it as her driving destination for the day. She had been here once before, standing at the edge of the pod playground with Rashid while Farah scrambled through the acorn cubbies and slithered down the slippery slide. It had started raining before they could explore any further and Rashid had said they would have to come back another day and have a picnic.

But now they hardly went anywhere together. Occasionally, Rashid took Farah on outings, and Zia and Farah often joined Jenny and Amy on trips on the weekends. Sometimes Jenny brought along other friends, and Zia was finding that her circle of acquaintances was slowly expanding—there was Mel, who offered to lend Zia books by her favourite Australian authors, and Talia, a Sudanese lady who taught Amy and Farah to play a game on a wooden board with beads.

Zia was reluctant to go anywhere with Rashid, fearful of the long silences that had become commonplace between them, haunted by the memory of the last time they had been out together as a family, on Eid. Every time he suggested that they go somewhere, she would make an excuse, saying she had some housework to do, that she was tired, that she would go another time, and Rashid never insisted, although Farah sometimes looked at her with reproachful eyes as she and Rashid left the house together.

‘Come—there’s something else I want to show you,’ Pete was saying, breaking into her thoughts, and she turned to follow him up the hill to where a sprawling sculpture of metal letters spelled out the words wide brown land, a patchwork of cloudy blue sky and rugged hills framed between the arcs of the script.

Zia reached up and touched the large twisting tip of the R, the brown steel warm against her fingers. The sound of laughter floated up from the picnic deck below where a group of people seemed to be getting ready for a performance, young men and women in colourful medieval costumes fluttering through the forest like butterflies.

‘Wide brown land?’ Zia asked. ‘Meaning this land we’re standing on?’

‘Meaning Australia,’ Pete said. ‘It’s a line from a poem called “My Country”—you’d like it, I think. They say the letters in this sculpture mimic the poet’s actual handwriting.’

He looked up the poem on his phone and Zia read it, lingering over the imagery of a sunburnt country with its ragged mountain ranges and sweeping plains, the droughts and the floods, the jewel-sea.

‘Her beauty and her terror—the wide brown land for me,’ she recited. ‘I read this and I think of Sri Lanka—a sunburnt country in a jewel-sea—both beautiful and frightening at the same time. Maybe my two homes are not so different after all. But will I ever really belong here, will I feel the way Dorothea Mackellar did about Australia? Sometimes I feel like I’ve been split in two, like I’ve left a part of myself behind that I will never find again. And I miss that part of me, that part who knew who I was, where I fit in. There were rules to life that I understood back then, that I could live by. And now, here, it’s all chaos and I have no idea where I belong or who I’m supposed to be.’

She looked up and realised Pete was standing very close to her, leaning against the tall brown spine of the letter B, sunlight glinting off the thin silver hoop in his ear. He was looking at her in a way that made a smattering of sparks dance across her arms and face, making her cheeks burn. She couldn’t look away from the warmth in his eyes and she took a step closer, her nose almost brushing against the collar of his shirt as she breathed in the now familiar smell of him, the faint mix of coffee and cigarettes and soap.

‘It’s what happens after your life falls apart,’ said Pete, his voice very soft. ‘You start putting the pieces back together, but they never quite fit like they did before. But then you start finding out new things about yourself, new ways of approaching life, and one day the chaos starts making sense. You’ll never be the same person you used to be, but that’ll be okay because you’ll start to like the person you’ve become. Where you are now, that’s your becoming. Let it happen. Be gentle with yourself.’

He drew his knuckles gently across her cheek, resting his hand on the curve of her neck, bending his head to lightly kiss the top of her head.

‘I thought your hair was black, but now I can see some red strands,’ he observed quietly.

‘It’s the henna,’ said Zia, surprised that her voice could sound so ordinary when her heartbeat was thundering in her chest, when she could barely hear for the blood rushing in her ears. ‘I use henna on my hair, and that makes it reddish.’

‘I see,’ said Pete. ‘Maybe that’s why it smells like apples.’

She stood very still as he dipped his head and kissed her throat, reaching up to clasp his shoulder as he moved his lips lightly across her collarbone. When he kissed her, his hand on her cheek, his arm around her waist, she felt as though something was ripping in the fabric of her universe, even as she moved closer in his embrace, even as she kissed him back, she felt the tear rippling through her life and his, through the lives of the people they loved, the pieces falling away that would never come back together in quite the same way again.

33

‘Zia, come! Come and see what I have for you!’

She looked up in surprise from the stove where she was stirring a pot of khichdi for Farah, the green mung beans and brown rice simmering in coconut milk sweetened with jaggery. Rashid stood at the doorway, his face bright with excitement, smiling as he beckoned her.

He was happy, she realised with a shock. When was the last time she’d seen Rashid happy? The memory of the afternoon at the arboretum that hovered like a ghost whenever she was in Rashid’s presence now sharpened and pierced her as she turned to meet his smile. What had she done, oh what had she done? Was it too late to put things right?

She was suddenly desperate to capture this moment, to be a part of whatever it was that had made Rashid beam with joy. She turned off the stove and wiped her hands on a tea towel, almost tripping over the rug in the hall as she hurried to join him.

‘Come and see,’ he said again, walking outside into the scorching summer afternoon, the hot gravel of the driveway burning her bare feet as she followed him.

Parked next to his car—which he had left behind this morning, saying he was taking the bus for a change—was a small red Ford Fiesta glowing in the sunshine.

‘It’s a bit old but it drives beautifully and I thought it would suit you,’ Rashid was saying, his words tumbling out in a rush as he looked at Zia. ‘You’re almost done with lessons, aren’t you? Does Pete think you are ready to do the test and get your licence?’

It startled her to hear Rashid say Pete’s name. The two men had never met, Rashid usually being at work when Pete arrived to pick her up or dropped her off afterwards. Now, with this small, fierce little red car that Rashid was saying was hers, she felt these disparate aspects of her life merge, the thought that she would soon have her licence and her time with Pete would end, that her life with Rashid was a reality she must face. That there was freedom within her grasp, but also difficult choices to be made.

‘Yes, he did say I’m just about ready,’ she said.

She moved towards the passenger door and then realised that Rashid had already opened the door for her on the other side, that he was waiting for her to get in the driver’s seat.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked as she got in the car. ‘Does it feel comfortable? We could go for a test run, maybe pick up Farah from school?’

She ran her hands along the hard surface of the steering wheel, pulled forward the seat to adjust it to the length of her legs. The vehicle seemed to hum with energy, like a creature sleeping beneath her touch, waiting to spring to life. She imagined what it would be like when she was driving and realised the terror that used to seize her at the thought was no longer present, that she felt nothing but an eagerness to begin.

‘I love it,’ she said, turning to Rashid as he slid into the passenger seat. ‘It’s more than I ever dreamed of—to have a car like this of my own. But why now? Can we afford it?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his smile melting months of frostiness between them as he met her gaze. ‘We can, and we’re going to be able to afford more things now. I just got a job, would you believe it? Nothing major—as an IT support officer at one of the places I used to clean—but it’s a start, don’t you think?’

He told her the story of how he’d met Dan and how, when they met for coffee later that week, he had asked him more questions about his work experience and suggested that he apply for a vacancy that had just opened up in his organisation. He hadn’t promised anything and Rashid had applied and gone through the interview process just like other applicants. The interview itself was less formal and stressful than facing the government panel had been and Rashid had felt far more comfortable and confident this time as he talked honestly about his career.

‘Dan called yesterday to offer me the job and I just received my contract this morning,’ Rashid said. ‘I didn’t want to say anything until I was a hundred percent sure. I’m not going to give up my cleaning shifts completely either—my boss says I can still do a couple of nights a week and the extra money will be useful.’

He was like a man who had stepped into the sunlight after a year in shadow, his expression softer, his movements lighter, free from the weight of the invisible burden he’d been carrying. He seemed more like the man he used to be, and yet Zia saw for the first time that his hair was beginning to grey at the temples, that there were deep lines beneath his eyes that had not been there when they arrived in Australia. When he placed his hand over hers on the gear stick, she felt nothing other than the momentary warmth of his palm, and her throat stung with the bitterness of what they had lost.

‘I am so glad for you,’ she told him. ‘I always knew you’d make it.’

‘You did too,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘You always believed in me. Look—Zia—I know things haven’t been good with us, and I haven’t treated you properly, but it’s going to be better now, okay? I promise I’m going to make it better.’

Tell me you’re sorry then, Zia thought. Tell me you’re sorry that you hit me. Tell me you’re sorry that our baby died.

She knew Rashid truly believed what he was saying, that he genuinely thought things would be better now that he had a better job. She still wondered what would happen when he had a bad day at work or when he was exhausted after working at the office all day and cleaning at night? Would he still feel as positive as he did now or would he retreat into a cloud of despair and punish her for the things that had brought him down, over which she had no control?

She had a sudden desire to hurt him, to shatter his moment of joy and relief by telling him she had kissed another man, that she no longer loved him, that things could never be the same again.

‘I have something to tell you too,’ she said.

And yet as he looked at her inquiringly, with an interest he hadn’t shown in months, her courage failed her.

It was not true, after all, that she no longer loved him.

‘I just—I was looking up a few courses and there’s a media and communications one at the university that I think I’d like to do,’ she said. ‘I have a little money saved up so you wouldn’t have to worry about it. And I can drive myself there now too.’

She held her breath, expecting him to say no, yet knowing that his refusal wouldn’t matter anymore, that she was going to do it anyway. Even so, a part of her longed for his approval, for this to be easy.

‘You always did have a thing for writing,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Why would you need to do a course, though? Would you enjoy it?’

She swallowed and nodded. ‘I would. Why wouldn’t I do a course? What if I wanted to have a job one day too? Remember when Farah was little, how we talked about our dreams for her and how she could do anything she wanted? Can’t it be the same for me? This is Australia and I’m thinking that maybe it’s not too late for me to have a dream too.’

‘But I thought your dream was to be a wife, a mother,’ he said, looking at her strangely as though he too was noticing for the first time that she had changed, that she was no longer the woman he used to know.

‘It was—it is,’ she said. ‘I just think that maybe I don’t have to give up one for the other—that I can be all that and do something for me, too.’

Rashid turned his head to the window, dropping his hand from hers. A muscle twitched once or twice at the corner of his mouth. A warm breeze wafted through the car, fragrant with the sweet coconut smell of the half-cooked khichdi left on the stove.

‘Okay,’ he said after a while. ‘If you think it will help you.’

‘Great,’ said Zia. ‘Thank you.’

She adjusted the mirrors and checked that Rashid had his belt on before starting the car, the way Pete had taught her to. Rashid was quiet as she drove, as she familiarised herself with her new car and the way it moved, letting her choose where to go.

34

Later, when Zia thought of those last few weeks of driving lessons, she remembered them as days when she was drenched in a strange contentment, a time made all the more precious with the knowledge it would soon end.

There was never any question that anything would change for either of them, that Pete would disturb the life he had built with Cassie. As for herself, she seemed to be incapable of thinking beyond the next hour or the next day, seeking only the momentary reprieve from her pain that came with Pete’s presence.

Sometimes, she knelt on her prayer rug, trying to ask God to forgive her transgressions, only to discover that she could not find the words, that she could not feel the remorse she was trying to express.

‘You said with every difficulty there is relief,’ she whispered once, her forehead pressed to the ground. ‘What if this is my relief? Is it such a terrible thing to want this kindness, this thing that feels like love?’

She felt almost completely untethered from the ties of her past and her home, floating in a tenuous space, yet to discover who she was, who she wanted to be. Was this really her, Zia, in the arms of this Australian man? Was she the same woman who had once been so shy in the presence of Rashid, who would have never dared to cross the boundaries that had been laid down for her?

Even as she struggled to reconcile these past and present versions of herself, she found there was a freedom in knowing that perhaps these changes were just the beginning. That there would be other things to discover about herself, like the delicate strength of a butterfly’s wings, its capacity for flight only becoming apparent when it emerged from its cocoon.

Pete was ridden with anxiety, seemingly more for her sake than his own.

‘Am I taking advantage of you?’ he asked her once, after kissing her on a bench by Lake Burley Griffin. Zia lifted her head to look at the sailboats and kayaks floating on the lake, the music of the bells from the National Carillion drifting over the still blue waters. She felt strangely peaceful, her heart as quiet as the lake before her.

He was worried that she would feel used, he said, that she would look back one day and regret this time, that she would hate him.

‘I’ve never done something like this before,’ he said, over and over again. ‘I’m not the kind of guy who cheats on his wife.’

But you did, thought Zia, both repelled by his inability to see what he had done and drawn to his wretchedness over his unfaithfulness.

‘I’ve chosen to be here, with you, like this,’ she said. ‘No one made me do it—you didn’t force me to be here.’

‘But—you’re vulnerable,’ he said, running his fingers through her hair as he often did, as though he could not stop touching her, even when he was tormented with guilt and doubt. Zia closed her eyes, absorbing the feel of his hands. How cared for it made her feel—and yet at the same time how fragile, how vulnerable, as Pete said.

‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘maybe you are too.’

*

They continued to drive to different spots across Canberra as Zia perfected her driving technique, learning to read the body language of other cars, to anticipate the moves of other drivers even as she planned her own, thinking faster and making decisions more confidently on the road.

They drove up Mount Ainslie so Pete could teach her how to change gears when driving up and downhill, and afterwards they sat at the summit, Zia sipping her coffee while Pete smoked a cigarette, watching the planes take off from the airport in the distance.

They went to Tidbinbilla, where Zia saw koalas for the first time, sleeping with their heads tucked under their arms—drugged, Pete said, by the eucalyptus leaves they had eaten.

At Weston Park, they watched children ride the little red train on the miniature railway and walked along the grassy knolls to the SIEV X memorial with its 353 poles that Pete told Zia represented each of the asylum seekers killed when the Indonesian fishing boat SIEV X sank in 2001 on its way to Australia. They stood within the confines of the memorial, which was meant to be the same size as the boat in which the refugees had fled—men, women and children packed together so tightly that they must have felt like one entity, a single, breathing, hurting, desperate mass of humanity.

Shutting her eyes briefly against the sunshine of that day and the comfort of Pete’s presence beside her, Zia felt for a moment the anguish of those who had fled their country in search of happiness and freedom elsewhere, the pain of their lives and dreams being engulfed by the ocean. When she opened her eyes again, Pete was looking at her tenderly, a small girl in a pink helmet turning to smile at them as she sped past on her little scooter.

One afternoon, they visited the village of Hall on the outskirts of the city, wandering through the small local museum and sitting on the steps of an old Catholic church, talking about their childhoods as a small wren trilled between the red-gold flowers on the branches of a marigold plant nearby.

Zia told Pete about coming home after school in the hot afternoons where her mother would be waiting for her and Amir with tall glasses of mango or papaya juice, the table laid with rice and curry for their late lunches. They would eat and then go up to their rooms to lie down on their beds for an afternoon nap, Zia reading a book until she fell asleep, lulled by the cool breeze from the ceiling fan. It was a habit she found difficult to get out of, she said, the nap in the middle of the day. She would wake up refreshed, do her ablutions and go into Mama’s small prayer room where they would perform the afternoon prayers together and read a few verses of the Quran. Mama would make tea afterwards, and often someone would ring the bell at the gate—a neighbour, dropping by for a chat, or Nazrin Aunty, on her way to the shops.

Pete said the only time he ever took naps as an adult was the day after a race, when the adrenaline drained out of his body and left him exhausted. He told Zia about growing up on a farm in New South Wales, with miles of empty grassland between them and the nearest town, how his brothers and sisters would cool off with a swim in the nearby creek after a long day in the stables or fruit picking in the sun. He learned to drive a tractor when he was just seven years old, he told her, driving through the fields with his father beside him, learning as a child what to do if someone was bitten by a snake, where to go if there was a bushfire.

Only once did they talk about their respective marriages, about the spouses they had each betrayed.

‘I’ve known Cass since she was a kid,’ said Pete. ‘I was friends with her brother. Didn’t really notice her until she came back from uni one time and came by my place to tell me she was keen on me and would I please make up my mind if I wanted to date her or not. I was pretty shocked at the time—what would she want with a guy like me, almost ten years older, a yuppie would-be race car driver? But she was gorgeous and smart and funny, and I’d have been a fool to say no.’

Of all the girls he’d dated, he said, Cass was the smartest. She could sing the lyrics of any song after hearing it just twice, name every Australian prime minister and how long they had been in office. She’d learned all about how a racing car worked just so she could have a conversation with him about it. It was after James was born and Cass returned to work while he stayed at home that things had begun to change.

‘I’m not as smart as she is,’ he said. ‘She’d be telling me about a difficult situation at work and I wouldn’t be able to understand the half of it. And after I quit racing, I didn’t know who I was anymore, just that I wasn’t the exciting guy she married in the first place. I guess she gave up after a while. Now we only talk about the kids, really, if at all.’

Zia told him about her own arranged marriage, how the matchmaker had compared their resumés and decided they would be a good match, how the first time she and Rashid had been completely alone together was on their wedding night.

‘But wasn’t that scary?’ asked Pete. ‘Like marrying a stranger?’

‘In some ways, maybe,’ said Zia. ‘But there was also a sort of security about it, in letting the people who knew and loved you best choose your life partner for you. There’s still some romance and excitement about it, you know, getting to know the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. And then I think you just learn to love each other without questioning it. I know Rashid and I did, just like my parents, just like thousands of other people who have arranged marriages.’

‘And yet here we are. The same process, different admin systems? Maybe there is just no way to predict the course of a marriage, whether you fall in love with the person or have your parents choose them for you. Whether you stay in love, whatever that means. I guess there’s no perfect relationship.’

What about this? Zia thought, looking at Pete’s hand resting on her arm. Isn’t this perfect?

Pete looked at her and seemed to guess her thoughts.

‘This thing between you and me—it’s just an interlude, a fairy tale, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve both helped each other in some way, but can you imagine if we really got together? We’d always be the people who broke up each other’s families, our kids would always hate us, and after a while we’d probably resent each other too. I wouldn’t want to do that to you—to us.’

He told her he was thinking of talking to Cassie and trying to salvage their relationship.

‘What I have with Cass, it’s not a terrible life, you know? We care about each other, and there’s the kids to think about.’

And what of her and Rashid? How could she continue to live with him when she had opened her heart to someone else? And yet how could she destroy not just his but also Farah’s life with the truth, especially when they had only just begun to build a fragile peace between them?

*

When the day of her last driving lesson finally came, Zia asked Pete if they could go to the arboretum again, wanting to create one last memory of their time together. Even though her heart ached with the impending loss, a part of her was glad it was almost over, that perhaps now she could finally let go and grieve this tremulous, unexpected love that had never been hers to keep.

Today, the forest was as silent and beautiful as a cathedral, sunlight filtering through the leaves to create mosaics of light and shadow on the earth. Pete sat on the ground, resting against a tree and clearing a space beside him for Zia, smiling at her with the slight, mischievous tilt of his lips that she’d grown to love. She sat beside him and stretched her legs next to his.

‘Will you miss me?’ she asked.

‘Dunno—maybe,’ he said, but Zia ignored the false flippancy in his tone, reaching for his cheek and turning his face towards her.

‘Kiss me then,’ she said quietly, hearing the sharp intake of his breath, watching his eyes turn into liquid pools of longing. ‘Kiss me like you’ll never see me again.’

Between them was a chasm built by memories of other lives, dreams and promises made to other people. Just for now, in this moment, she willed him silently, be mine.

He reached for her, touching her gently as though she was something very precious, as though she might break.

‘I will miss you,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I will think of you. Every moment. Every day.’

I love you, she thought, but she knew that to say the words would break the spell of this moment. What did it mean, after all? What did it matter? She had once said the words to Rashid, Pete had probably said them to Cassie, and now the words seemed worthless and insubstantial, their implicit promises turned to dust.

And so instead she said, ‘Thank you. You made life bearable for me when I thought I couldn’t stand to get through another day. Thank you for that.’

It was late afternoon when Pete dropped her at home, the sun glowing hotly as it sank beneath the red rooftops of the row of townhouses on the street. Rashid’s car was parked in the driveway; he and Farah were back from whatever outing they had been on.

Zia reached into her bag and handed Pete a few folded sheets of paper.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, taking it from her.

‘A story for you,’ she said, her voice full of tears. ‘A fairy tale. About us. That’s what you said we were. Goodbye, Pete.’

She got out of the car without waiting for an answer, walking up the driveway, past her red Ford Fiesta and Rashid’s white Honda, without looking back.

*

She felt his eyes watching her as she reached the house and went in, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it. She imagined him stretching back in his seat as he liked to do, reading her story, the words on the page telling him the things that she had been unable to say. Perhaps, when he finished it, he would fold it, and then fold it again until the story was a small, hard rectangle that fit in the palm of his hand, the sharp edges digging into his skin. Perhaps he would keep it like that, close to his chest, the words searing into his memory, and then perhaps he would throw it away because his life had no place for fairy tales.

By the time she went to the window to look outside, the black car was gone.

35

The Girl Who Couldn’t Drive

By Zia Hassan

Once upon a time in a land far away, there lived a girl who couldn’t drive. The girl was quite happy however, since she had people there to take her wherever she wanted to go. She thought she could live forever this way and never have to learn how to drive.

One day, everything changed.

The girl and her husband decided to leave the land that was their home and fly halfway across the world to a new country—a country that was rich and beautiful, where all their dreams would come true. In this new place, her husband said, they would begin to build their lives all over again. It would be an exciting adventure.

But here was the important thing—she would have to learn to drive.

The girl was frightened. She had thought she would never have to drive in her life! Now suddenly everything was changing and while she was excited and happy to be moving to the new country, she was afraid that she would not survive there because she didn’t know how to drive and was afraid to learn.

The day came when the girl and her family packed their belongings, said goodbye to everything and everyone they loved and flew across the wide oceans.

The new country welcomed them with its brilliant sunshine and blue skies, with adventure and opportunity. Still, building a life all over again was no easy task.

The girl tried her best to make things work. She tried to learn the new ways of the land and to make friends. She encouraged and supported her husband when he wondered if they had made the right decision. She carried her family through hard times and made sure everyone was strong.

And still, she hadn’t learned to drive.

Who could teach me to drive, she wondered, a girl like me, so afraid and so ignorant when it comes to driving? Perhaps she would never learn. Perhaps her fate was to stay at home, day after day, and never know the freedom that driving would give her.

The girl felt sad and helpless.

And then, one day, she learned of a teacher. A teacher, they said, who could teach anyone to drive. This man, they said, will take the most fearful and ignorant of students and transform them into capable drivers.

It sounded like magic.

Hopeful, the girl decided to find this teacher. When she found him, she saw at once that he was good and kind, smart and handsome, and she trusted him with her entire being.

‘Can you teach me to drive?’ she asked. ‘A girl like me?’

‘Of course I can,’ he said and laughed, and his laughter gave her confidence.

And so she began to learn. With her teacher, she found that she wasn’t as helpless as she had thought she was. Because he was so patient and so kind and taught with such wisdom, she found that she was not nervous or afraid. Under his gentle guidance, the girl grew braver, and not just with driving. She found herself trying new things all the time because her teacher had shown her that she didn’t have to be afraid.

Because this teacher was so clever and knew of many things, he also taught her about the ways of life in the new country. He told her stories and secrets and gave her tools to navigate an unfamiliar landscape.

He taught her what life looked like from another angle.

The days went by and the girl was often tired and worn out with the effort of adjusting to life in an unfamiliar place. Her husband was tired himself and unable to help her with her feelings. The girl missed her family and friends and felt very much alone. She wondered if she would ever get back the full life she used to have and sometimes she felt discouraged.

And yet, when she was with her teacher, all these feelings fell away. She found herself laughing at the things he said and relaxing more than any other time of the week. She found herself telling him what was on her mind and discovered that he listened to her with greater care and attention than anyone else in her life. The conversation between them flowed so easily and between so many different subjects like the threads of a rich and vibrant tapestry woven by two people.

One day, while they were driving, they came across a line on the road. Both the girl and her teacher hesitated.

‘If we cross that line,’ she said, ‘everything will change.’

‘If we cross that line,’ he said, ‘we may find something we never knew existed.’

And so, because of the promise of the wonderful, undiscovered territory that lay beyond the line, they decided they would go ahead, even though there were some risks.

Beyond that line, everything was different. The world became sharper, thoughts were clearer, feelings were deeper. The girl and the teacher discovered that although they had different coloured skin and different coloured lives, although everything about them on the outside was as different as could be, their hearts and minds were the same.

They never regretted crossing the line.

The girl continued learning to drive, but she was also being drawn deeper and deeper into something that she couldn’t name. She only knew that with her teacher, she could be herself in a way that she had never been before. She only knew that he was her safe place, a place where everything and anything could be said, felt and experienced.

They were strangers and yet not strangers, friends and yet not friends. They were something else altogether, something that refused to be defined.

The girl grew better at driving. She was almost a driver! She could now look towards a time when she was free and independent. She started to realise that perhaps their time together would come to an end, and it almost broke her heart. She wanted to tell her teacher how much he meant to her, but the words often travelled to her tongue and stopped there.

She thought but did not say: What we share is precious.

She thought but did not say: I will miss you, I will miss you, I will miss you.

She thought but did not say: I think I have been looking for you all my life.

She thought but did not say: Stay.

She worried that she would never be able to say any of this and that she would lose this precious thing she had found. And so she gathered up all the things she loved about him—the laughter in his eyes, the mischief in his smile, and the kindness in his voice, the quickness of his thoughts and the way they tumbled out and wove themselves into hers—she took them all and more, to weave into a blanket of memories that would comfort her when she missed him in the days to come.

She opened the door to her heart and found a special place just for him.

She filled this space with thoughts of all the special moments they had shared. In this place in my heart, she thought, no matter what happens, whether I see him again or not, I will love and remember him always.

36

When Zia passed her driving test, Rashid insisted that they celebrate the occasion, booking a table for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the city. Zia drove them there in her little red car, slightly nervous as she steered her way through the busy evening traffic. Farah, thrilled with the novelty of Zia driving and having both her parents in the car together after so long, kicked her legs in excitement, her small feet thudding against the back of Zia’s seat.

At the restaurant they ordered garlic bread and pasta, Farah insisting on her own plate of fettucine and rolling the pasta around her fork—a skill Zia hadn’t learned until recently, having grown up eating rice and curry with her fingers. Rashid asked her if she remembered the time they ate risotto in New York after taking the ferry across to Staten Island, and for a while they talked about their shared memories of that trip, and others—the time they climbed the Sigiriya rock together, pausing to take photographs by the massive paws of the lion gateway, the time they went with Rashid’s colleagues on a Buddhist pilgrimage to Kataragama, wearing white clothes and sitting with everyone else as they meditated on the temple grounds beneath a sacred Bo tree.

‘We should start travelling a bit around Australia now,’ said Rashid. ‘Maybe we could go to Sydney for a weekend. It’s not that far.’

Zia agreed, thinking that perhaps this was what they needed, to get away from Canberra for a while, from all the memories of this past year, to forge a new beginning for their small family.

And yet, later that night, when Rashid slipped his arm around her in the hall, she found herself turning her face away from his, stiffening in his embrace. They stood there for a moment in the dim light from the streetlamp, unmoving, Rashid’s arm still around her shoulders, her cheek pressed against the wall. Then, he slowly dropped his arm to his side and shuffled away in silence. Turning, Zia saw him go into the bedroom.

She did not follow.

*

Summer drew to an end again, and sometimes Zia felt as though she was sinking and rising through a sea of sadness, layers of a particular grief that she didn’t have a name for. She still grieved for Aasiya and she missed Pete with an intensity that felt like a physical ache, waking up each morning to the absence of the driving lessons that for so long had been a refuge from the rest of her life.

Still, there were other things now to look forward to—the course at the university where she had begun to make new friends and the teacher complimented her writing on her first assignment. At the end of the course, there was the option to sign up for another diploma that was a pathway to a university degree—something that Zia had decided to do after discovering there was government assistance for students so she wouldn’t have to rely on Rashid.

There were the trips she could now make on her own to the lake, the city, the countryside, no longer constrained by bus timetables or the weather. One morning when she was at the library, she noticed the quiet assistant stacking books on the shelves and went to ask the librarian if there were any vacancies for more assistants and what kind of qualifications she would need to apply.

When she got home, she visited the link the librarian had referred her to, discovering that such a job might, after all, be within her reach. Although she did not apply, the thought that she could—that she might not be as helpless as she had once thought she was—gave rise to new thoughts of independence that she turned over and over in her mind until they did not seem so unfamiliar and frightening.

She was busy, more engaged in life than she had ever been before, but in the quiet spaces in between, sorrow still caught her off-guard.

Once, as she was sitting on the sofa reading, she heard a car on the road, the beat of music streaming through its open windows, the way it used to sound when Pete arrived to pick her up for a lesson, and she ran outside with her heart in her throat. When she saw an unfamiliar vehicle turn into a neighbour’s driveway, her eyes stung with foolish tears.

Her disappointment grew all day, until by evening she was burning with rage—why had he not even called or messaged her to find out how she was? How could he just walk away from her after everything they had shared?

That evening, she told Rashid she needed to pick something up from Jenny and left, driving towards Aranda, trying to remember which street it was that she had been walking down when she first met Pete. She drove through the suburb for an hour, not thinking, not caring, until she saw the red Mustang, still in the exact same spot as she had first seen it, the flower beds in the yard now bright with new blooms.

She parked a few metres away on the opposite side of the road and sat there looking at his house, wondering if he was home, if she could just knock on the door and pretend she was lost again.

As the desperate thoughts looped through her mind, she saw another car pull up, silver-grey in the evening light. A woman in a smart blue business suit stepped out, strands of blonde hair framing a lovely but tired-looking face, and Zia realised with a shock that this must be Cassie, whose existence she had never fully grasped until this moment. A little boy, a smaller version of James, came running out of the house towards her, and they walked hand in hand to the front door. Through the branches of the trees, Zia saw Pete standing there, saw him bend his head to kiss his wife.

She thought that he glanced briefly in her direction before they all went inside, closing the door behind them.

She realised that the pain coursing through her was a now familiar thing, that no matter the source of grief, in her body it always felt the same.

Pressing her forehead against the steering wheel, she cried, racked with anguish for everything she had lost. After a while, her sobs quietened and she dried her tears, starting the car and driving back home to where Rashid and Farah were waiting for her.

37

Zia was running, sprinting through a maze of dimly lit rooms and corridors. She could remember neither the place that she had left behind nor where she was meant to be going—only that she was running towards something or someone that she had to reach before it was too late.

‘Too late for what?’ she cried out in her dream, the words rising and falling in the silence.

The walls around her dissolved and altered; now she was in an airport, standing in the check-in queue. When she reached into her bag for her ticket, she found that it was full of dead leaves rustling between her fingers.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but we need a real ticket,’ said the woman at the counter when Zia offered her a handful of brown leaves. When she looked at her again, Zia saw that the woman was Cassie, her dark red lips pursed in disapproval.

‘But I have to leave!’ Zia cried again, but only she could hear her own voice, a roar of desperation.

Dream Cassie shook her head and pointed behind her. Turning, Zia saw that the room was shifting and changing again, that there, sitting on a wide sand-coloured leather sofa, was Jamila. Her sari was peacock-blue, edged with silver embroidery. When she raised her hand to beckon to Zia, her gold bracelets flashed and jangled together.

‘I’m sorry,’ Zia whispered, going towards her. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

She saw to her horror that Jamila was crying.

‘I told you he just needed love!’ Jamila said, tears pouring in tiny kohl-coloured rivulets that smudged her cheeks. ‘You only had to love him!’

‘But I tried,’ Zia sobbed, and again her voice screamed into a void.

‘You should have tried harder, Dhaatha,’ said Amir behind her.

Spinning around, Zia ran again towards Amir’s voice, but instead of her brother, she found her parents sitting together on a champagne-coloured seat, surrounded by white columns draped in chiffon and decorated with pale gold bouquets. Their expressions were sombre, and every time Zia took a step towards them, the seat retreated from her.

‘Mahal,’ said Dada, his voice coloured with anger, with sadness. ‘Don’t you know that the Prophet said the most hated of permissible things to Allah is divorce?’

Mama said nothing, but when Zia cried out to her, she turned away so that Zia could no longer see her face. As Zia began running again towards them, the seat began to melt, her parents’ features growing distorted and dissolving into a pool of white and gold.

*

The next day, sitting outside in the backyard, Zia called her mother. The flowers she had planted last year were in full bloom, pale pink roses and delicate lavender scenting the air. A butterfly hovered over them, fluttering its burnt orange wings, rising and settling on the black netting of Farah’s trampoline. Overhead, a cockatoo screeched.

Her heart began to race when she heard Mama’s voice as she prepared to tell her—what? The truth? How could she begin to tell her something that she had kept to herself for so long, a truth that she was only just beginning to understand herself? She only knew that she did not want to hide any longer.

‘Won’t you turn on your video?’ asked Mama.

‘Not today, Mama,’ said Zia, who wanted the anonymity of an ordinary phone call for the things she wanted to say. Neither did she want to see Mama’s face. She didn’t know if she could bear to see the confusion, the disappointment, the hurt that would probably flicker across Mama’s beloved features. ‘How are you all?’

They were well, Mama said. She had been spending more time at Nazrin Aunty’s house this week as Mina and her two children were staying there while Mina’s husband was travelling for work. Dada was busier than ever. There had been a spate of weddings in Colombo and people knew Dada’s shop sold the best fabrics now, so business was good. It was probably Amir’s doing—since he’d joined Dada at the shop, he had done things like start a website and a Facebook page. He was even thinking of looking into exports, could Zia believe it?

She could, Zia thought, thinking fondly of Amir and how his goal had always been to follow in Dada’s footsteps.

Mama had heard from Jamila that Layla was coming down soon for a visit. Did Zia know? Layla—and Mama hesitated at this before going on—was pregnant and they had decided that they wanted the baby to be born in Sri Lanka. Perhaps Zia and Rashid would be able to visit too? It had been so long already, didn’t they want to come home for a little while? They missed them so much, they wanted to see Farah before she grew up any further!

Zia closed her eyes as Mama spoke, imagining what it would be like to go. To awaken to the busy streets of Colombo, the riot of voices and sounds, the sea breeze blowing through the windows. To slip downstairs and sit in the kitchen with Mama while she made tea, the smell of the cardamom and ginger rising from the pot, the rustle of Dada’s newspaper, the music upstairs as Amir turned on the radio. To know she was loved and—in the absence of other choices—happy.

When she opened her eyes, the orange butterfly was gone. The violet sprigs of lavender swayed in the breeze. She was here, in Canberra, where it was beautiful, silent, and lonely. Here she had choices that she could no longer ignore.

‘I don’t think we will visit now, Mama,’ she said quietly. ‘We can’t really afford it and we are still settling into life here. Things have been … hard.’

She and Rashid had struggled, she told Mama. For a long time Rashid hadn’t been able to find proper work and it had made him moody and unhappy. She had been homesick and unhappy herself. They had thought the new baby would make things better, but who knew? Even if Aasiya had lived, perhaps they would never have been able to recover the things they had lost when they came to Australia.

Being in Colombo, sheltered by their families in a life that was both comfortable and familiar, had protected them. Here, the threads that held them together were frayed.

Mama listened, interrupting once or twice.

Why had Zia not said anything until now?

Didn’t she know that her family would always be there for her?

Why had she suffered alone? Even when she was pregnant—when Aasiya died—why did she refuse to let them help?

‘I thought I was doing what was best,’ said Zia. ‘I thought I was protecting my family.’

What about Farah, asked Mama, and now Zia could hear the tears in her voice.

What about Farah? How could she know what would be best for Farah but also for herself? What if those two things were not one and the same—how then, to choose? It was a knot that only seemed to tighten whenever she tried to unravel it.

Only a few days ago Farah had asked Zia why she didn’t like Daddy anymore.

‘But I do!’ Zia had said, startled into giving Farah the answer she thought she wanted.

‘No you don’t,’ Farah had said gravely, shaking her head. ‘You never look at him anymore when you talk to him and you always look sad. You only smile at me, not Daddy.’

Zia had fumbled for words, trying to explain that she and Daddy were going through a difficult time, that they still cared about each other, and most of all, that they both loved Farah more than anything else in the world. Even so, Farah had not been reassured, her small face wrinkled with worry.

So, the tension between them had spilled into Farah’s life, as much as they had tried to keep it from her.

Would it hurt Farah more if Zia upended their lives and chose a different path? Or by choosing freedom for herself, would she also set Farah free of the pain that now simmered in their home?

‘I don’t know, Mama,’ said Zia, also crying now. ‘I don’t know what is best for Farah but I know that I will try not to hurt her.’

‘Is this all because you left? None of this would have happened if you were still here.’ Mama’s grief coursed across the miles to touch Zia as she said, ‘No matter what you do, Zia, please don’t forget who you are.’

‘But Mama,’ said Zia, a new truth rising brightly through the shadows of her thoughts, ‘I think it’s only now that I am finding out who I am.’

*

The first time Zia witnessed an Australian wedding, she was at the park, sitting by the lake at a picnic table with Jenny. They were sipping their coffees and watching Farah and Amy play on the monkey bars when they noticed the groomsmen arrive.

‘Ooh, looks like a wedding,’ said Jenny, as the men walked towards the water, talking and laughing, hanging their dark suit jackets on the branches of a tree and rolling up their shirtsleeves in the hot sunshine.

The guests began arriving soon afterwards—women in tight, sparkling dresses and high heels, men in formal shirts and ties, a woman in a smart maroon business suit that Jenny said looked like the celebrant who would perform the ceremony.

The strains of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’ rose to join the chorus of voices, laughter and birdsong. Turning, Zia saw the bride appear, her white dress shimmering against the trees as she walked slowly up the path to meet her waiting husband-to-be. She walked alone, and the sunlight fell on her auburn hair like a benediction. Her head was held high, her gaze direct, and her smile unwavering as she looked towards the man she loved, to a future they had dreamed of together.

They stood on the small timber jetty over the still blue waters of the lake and promised to love each other forever. It was a moment from a fairy tale, a scene from the English romances on Zia’s bookshelf.

And yet there were other elements to the story unfolding before her that Zia would not have expected. The bride had a son, a little boy who stood next to his mother with his hand in hers as she said her vows. The groom had a daughter, a young woman who cried throughout the whole ceremony. The bride’s parents were unable to attend the wedding, for reasons the celebrant did not mention, while acknowledging that they were missed.

Somewhere, Zia thought, was a man that this bride had perhaps once loved, who had fathered her child. Somewhere was another woman that this groom had kissed and held and perhaps thought he would spend his life with. A mother and a father who could not be at their daughter’s wedding. There were other stories, other heartbreaks in the chapters of their lives that had led to this moment where they looked at each other with such joy in their eyes and made promises that they hoped they would each keep.

Zia turned to look at her friend, who had her own story of love found and lost, who had told Zia recently that she had created a profile on a dating app and was hoping to meet someone again that she could share her life with. Zia began to ask Jenny what she thought of the wedding but found herself asking another question instead.

‘Were you ever afraid,’ she asked, ‘of being alone?’

‘Of course I was,’ said Jenny, smiling as though at some long-forgotten memory. ‘Terrified at first. But I got past it, I learned to love and look after myself. And I had Amy, family and friends—so this idea of being alone, it’s just a thought, you know? I was never really alone, and I would never put one person at the centre of my universe again if I could help it. I’d like to meet someone of course—but I’d like them to fit into place along with the rest of my life, I think. And I won’t be so afraid of loss as I used to be, because I know I’ve been happy by myself.’

‘Maybe that’s the best way to love someone,’ agreed Zia. ‘Without fear.’

The wedding ceremony was over, guests dispersing, the bride and groom walking over to a table to sign documents. As the bride was signing on the page, her husband put his arm around her waist and she raised her head for a moment to smile at him. Beside them, her son began to dance to the music.

Perhaps, Zia thought, fairy tales came in many shapes, perhaps the best happy endings were the ones that you got to write yourself. Perhaps taking the first step, even when she could not see the whole path, was how the rest of her life would begin.

38

Once, when Rashid was walking with Zia on Galle Face Green in Colombo, she had told him that she wanted to get her palm read. A woman had been walking on the beach below them, the fall of her green cotton sari streaming behind her in the sea breeze as she called out, ‘Saastharey! Saastharey!’, inviting people to get their fortunes told for a few rupees. He remembered how he had teased Zia for her whim, reminding her of the belief that one’s prayers would not be accepted for forty days if one went to a soothsayer.

‘Besides, she’ll just take your money and tell you a bunch of lies,’ he had said, laughing. ‘I can read your palm if you like—look, I think this line says you’ll marry a rich and handsome man and have three beautiful children.’

‘Oh, please—it’s just something I’ve always wanted to do and Mama would never let me,’ Zia had pleaded. ‘I know there’s probably no truth to it but it’s just such a romantic thing.’

In the end, Rashid had relented, calling to the woman to come up the narrow stone stairway that led to the promenade from the beach.

He remembered the fortune teller grinning at him with lips stained red from betel nut juice as she walked towards them, how she had insisted on being paid the two hundred rupees upfront before taking Zia’s hand, tracing the lines on her palm with her dirty fingernail.

At first, the woman had told Zia the standard positive fortune that Rashid had predicted—that she would be wealthy, that she would have good health and a long life, that her children would bring her joy. And then her tone had changed as she pointed to the curving line at the base of Zia’s palm, the spot in which it split in two.

There would come a great sorrow in her life, the woman had said, and at the time, Zia would not be able to trust her husband. It was quite possible that her husband would leave her. And then, as Zia had looked up at him in dismay, the woman had said that for an extra thousand rupees she could make her a charm which would ward off the evil that was to come.

Angry, Rashid had asked the woman to leave, telling her that she was lucky she was getting to keep the two hundred rupees he’d paid her. He told Zia to forget about what the woman had said, saying that he hoped she’d got the bizarre desire to have her fortune told out of her system now.

Still, Zia had been sombre for days afterwards, praying more than the usual five times, saying that she hoped God would forgive her for what she had done.

Rashid hadn’t thought of the woman’s prediction in years, yet now it was this memory that floated to the surface as he sat in the darkness, grappling with what Zia had just told him.

‘I still love you,’ she’d said, sitting next to him on the bed they’d bought for Farah over a year ago. ‘But I can’t live a lie anymore. I don’t know where to go from here, but I want it to be from a place of honesty. I’ll understand if you hate me after this. But I hope we can make a decision together about what’s best for both of us, and for Farah.’

After she left the room, she had returned almost immediately, standing at the door and saying, ‘We had a good life before, Rash. I won’t forget it.’

She stayed there, leaning against the doorway, perhaps waiting for a response, but he’d remained silent, and after a while she’d left again. He stood up and shut the door, turning off the light and sitting back on the bed.

He wondered who this man was that she said she’d loved for a while, who she’d turned to when she was hurting. Who had held her and comforted her when he, her husband, had not.

Was it that man who’d taught her to drive, the guy who used to be a race car driver? Rashid had wondered at that friendship sometimes but had not thought too much about it. Zia’s innocence, he’d thought, protected her, and her honesty had never been something he had questioned.

Perhaps he should have, he thought now, or perhaps it was those very things about her that this man had taken advantage of.

But wasn’t he married?

He started to google the man’s name and then suddenly realised that he didn’t care. Did it matter who it was? Even if he found him and unleashed his rage on him, which he very much wanted to do, it wouldn’t change what had happened, it wouldn’t bring back the innocence of the love that had existed between him and Zia before they had arrived in Australia.

He buried his face in his hands. How had it come to this?

It was well past midnight when he opened the door to Zia’s room, but he found her awake, sitting on the prayer rug in the corner of the room, the wooden prayer beads in her fingers. He walked over and knelt down beside her, taking her hands in his.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice breaking.

The beads clattered onto the floor as she put her arms around him, and they held each other as he said the words over and over again, as if repeating them would make up for the fact that they had come too late.

39

Zia was getting ready to go to her classes, winding her long hair into a bun on top of her head, slipping on a soft coral sweater over her T-shirt. She checked her laptop to make sure her last assignment had been submitted online—a creative writing piece describing a life-changing experience, either fact or fiction. She had submitted The Girl Who Couldn’t Drive, labelling it a fictional work. She wondered what her teacher would make of it.

In the living room, she paused to pick up Farah’s toys, putting away the small plastic saucers and teacups scattered on the carpet, thinking that she really should have a talk with Farah about putting her toys away after playing. She was in kindergarten now, her speech beginning to take on the inflections of an Australian accent, her memories of Sri Lanka already fading.

Farah had also been playing with the dollhouse, Zia noticed, now populated with miniscule dolls. The mother doll was with a little girl doll in the living room of the dollhouse, the two figures propped together on the small wooden sofa while the father doll sat alone at the dining table, a tiny plate of plastic chicken and vegetables placed in front of him. Zia picked up the lone doll with her fingertips and moved it into the living room with the others.

Then she walked outside and got into her car, feeling, as she always did, a surge of confidence, of power, in the knowledge that she was free to drive wherever she wanted to go. She switched on the radio to her favourite station, turning up the music as she took off, merging onto the highway after a few minutes.

When she drove, she felt as though she and the car were one, flying past the trees and fields, as light as the air rushing through the windows.

She felt as though everything she had ever wanted in life was within her grasp.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Zia first appeared in my mind many years ago, when I was still living in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I saw her sitting on the floor of her room, the night before her wedding, gazing pensively at her henna-patterned hands. I knew then there was a story she wanted me to tell, and over the years I would be revisited by the same image—a young woman with a heart full of hopes and fears, at the threshold of a new chapter in her life.

I didn’t know then that I would have to live some of these experiences—the heartache of leaving friends and family and a place you’ve called home for most of your life, the fear, loneliness and freedoms that come with starting over in a new country—before I could tell Zia’s story and explore other aspects of the impacts of immigration on individuals and families.

It is a story that’s been many years in the making, and I’m grateful to everyone who has helped me write this book and bring it to light.

Thank you to the Australian Society of Authors and HQ for selecting the manuscript as the winner of the 2022 Commercial Fiction Prize—sometimes dreams come true in unexpected and wonderful ways!

Thank you to the team at HQ and HarperCollins for the exciting and supportive journey towards publication. Thank you Rachael Donovan, for your enthusiasm for this book and warm support and guidance. Thank you to editors Julia Knapman and Marisa Wikramanayake for your insightful comments and considered edits. Natika Palka, thank you for your passion in ushering this book into the world.

For the gorgeous cover, thank you to Hazel Lam and the HarperCollins design team as well as artist Hema Shironi for the poignant artwork The Walking House, 2020 that is such a meaningful part of the design.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Australia for awarding me the Write It fellowship for an early draft of this novel and thank you especially to my mentoring editor Catherine Hill for making me dig deeper and bring new scenes and ideas to life.

Thank you to the Rosie Scott Writers Studio and Danny Vendramini for awarding me a writing residency in the Blue Mountains, where so many of the chapters in this book came into being amidst that serene and beautiful atmosphere.

I am lucky to have many wonderful people who support me as a writer, a mother and a woman.

Thank you to established author Peter Papathanasiou for remembering what it was like to be an unpublished novelist trying to find a home for your work and encouraging me to never give up. You were a steady source of knowledge and support.

Holly, you believed in this book when it was only ten pages long, and your faith in it has remained undimmed over the years. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback and encouragement.

Prasadini, thank you for helping me get the manuscript ready for submission after you’d already read multiple drafts with equal attention and enthusiasm.

Talib, thank you for the special journey that we made together. I am grateful to have your continued friendship and support.

Smriti, thank you for the encouragement and laughter as we envisioned every possible outcome for this book. Our friendship is a gift.

Gerry, thank you for giving me the space to be all the versions of myself, listening to my musings, and always being a loving voice of reason.

To the many friends from life before, and after, immigration—thank you for believing in me and cheering me on every step of the way.

Thank you to my parents Munawfara and Ismath, for showing me that anything is possible with hard work and courage. You taught me how to be brave.

My brother Hosney and sister Safa, I know you have been waiting for me to write a book since we were children. I hope you enjoy this one!

Lastly, to my strong and beautiful children Aqil and Hana—it’s a joy to watch you growing into the amazing young people that you are. You inspire me to reach for my dreams, and this book is just one of them.

Thank you.

BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

1.What does the title Untethered mean to you? Does it have positive or negative connotations?

2.In the early part of the book Zia wonders: What if those boundaries that restricted you also defined you? What does it mean to be defined by one’s boundaries? What happens when those boundaries are removed?

3.In Chapter 12 Zia wonders if it is selfish to go or selfish to stay. What does she mean by this?

4.Did your opinion of Rashid change as the novel progressed? Did you have empathy for him despite the ways in which he hurt Zia?

5.What was Pete’s role in Zia’s life? Did you think Pete and Zia’s story could have ended differently?

6.In the novel, we see Zia go from being a conservative, confined young woman to someone who strives for independence and makes difficult decisions to get there. What were the catalysts for that change?

7.What did you think of the ending? What had Zia gained, and was it worth her losses?

8.Zia and Rashid immigrated in search of a safer, better future for themselves and Farah. How did that decision play out in the novel? Has it affected your perception of immigrants—or if you are an immigrant, could you relate?

ISBN: 9781867267065

TITLE: UNTETHERED

First Australian Publication 2023

Copyright © 2023 Ayesha Inoon

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