wrong.
For the rest of our visit, Naani kept Mariya and me apart. “Shame
on you,” she said when she changed my Band-Aids in the morning. “You
at least should know better. If your mother was sick like Mariya’s, you
would act the same way.”
“Is it true?” I said suddenly, stomping my foot against the hardwood. “Is it true that Mariya’s family is cursed? With nazr, the evil eye?”
Naani’s fingers froze on my arms, and then fell to her side. She sat
down in the chair beside me. “Who told you this?” she asked, her voice
low and steady.
“Mariya told me. Mariya told me her Daadhi told her.”
Naani exhaled, long and deep. “God knows best, Aisha. But
maybe it is true. These doctors believe in only science. But I say, science
wience! We are from a different time. These things are real, Aisha. You are
old enough to know.”
I felt cold, felt the sourness in my stomach liven. “But how?” I
asked, “Why would anyone want to curse them?”
“Because, Aisha, you can’t tell now but Mariya’s mother was a
woman of great beauty. And her husband had lot of money in Pakistan,
very intelligent they were, both. Who wouldn’t be jealous? This is the way
nazr works. Even if you don’t mean it. For some people, a bad look is all
it takes. And it’s a very tricky thing to solve.”
That night, I stared long at my eyes in the bathroom mirror:
almost black, the pupil barely decipherable, surrounded by slightly pink
whites, shaded by heavy lids. I wondered at their power; the power of a
look. And although I wasn’t sure if I even believed in it still—this phenomenon that had for so long been denounced as the stuff of fairy tales
and horror movies— for the next few days, I walked around with my eyes
pointed towards the ground.
My parents came to retrieve us after the New Year, the day before
school opened again. They had started making preparations for Ramadan,
which was to begin mid-January. “The days will be short this year,” my
father told us on our way home from our grandparents’. “You and Mariya
may fast if you like.”
“Did you know that your cousin Ali fasted the full Ramadan last
year?” my mother announced at dinner, “And only eleven years old! The
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