Rahim couldn’t sleep. He turned on the lamp and looked at the clock. Half past three. He flipped through the pages of a half-read poetry collection, waiting for the morning call from the minaret. He never missed his prayers. 

Outside his window, a crow called. It was said that crows were bad luck for a wedding. He suddenly wanted to go downstairs and wake his daughter, to take her up to the roof to watch the sunrise. In her younger years he had tried to cultivate in her the habit of rising early. But Saara slept till nine or ten. Instead of preparing for prayers, she blearily called for tea while still in bed. 

He slipped on his sandals and went to the kitchen to make a cup of instant coffee. The house was quiet. He sat in the verandah, drinking and watching the sky change color. It was cold for October. That year, winter would come early. 

For months he had been preoccupied with this and that. The number of guests. Should chicken be served or goat. Was it better to seat people in the garden or the roof. Now, on the morning of the wedding, he felt strangely empty. Did all fathers feel this way? 

He kept thinking of the past. This, he had heard, was a sign of aging. As he sat in his bamboo chair, he was reminded of a boy sweeping the dead leaves that had been blown into the verandah. 

He dismissed the memory. Streaks of red and gold were appearing in the sky, and he climbed the stairs to the roof. The voice of the muezzin, magnified from the top of the minaret, called everyone to rise and pray. He pushed open the door to the roof and hesitated when he realized it wasn’t empty. There was Saara, her back to him, standing at the railing. 

“You are up early,” he said, approaching her. She turned to acknowledge him, and for a moment she looked unfamiliar. 

“I wanted to watch the sunrise with you,” she said. She was wrapped in a red shawl. Her hands, laced with henna, clutched the railing. They were shaking. 

“Are you cold?” he asked. 

She shook her head. There were shadows beneath her eyes. Had she slept at all? 

They stood there in silence, looking at the trees that surrounded them. The roof was lined with cracked clay pots that had once held flowers. A week after her mother’s death, Saara had planted tuberoses, determined to keep them alive. But the seasons changed, and she slowly forgot. 

A doel perched on a branch of the jujube tree, pecking at the flesh of the yellow fruit. Saara reached out a hand towards it. The bird took flight. She pulled the leaves towards her, and he was afraid her palm would graze the thorns. 

“Let me do it,” he said. 

She plucked the jujube and released the leaves. She held it in her hands and turned her face away. He realized she was crying. 

  *

By noon the house had come alive. A group of men were draping the garden fences with string lights. Three nieces were decorating the front gate with roses and marigolds, while the servants scurried in and out of the house, rearranging furniture to make more space. The cooks were busy in the kitchen, and savory smells permeated the air. Rahim finished a phone call with the imam, confirming the time of the ceremony, and was immediately surrounded by his relatives. The folk singer had come down with a rare fever and needed to cancel, and what would they do for entertainment now? The bakery had delivered the sweet curd, but it didn’t look like there was enough to feed a hundred and fifty people. In addition, the news predicted rain. 

He had a headache. He didn’t know what to do about the singer. He told one of them to take the car to Bismillah Bakery and come back with an additional forty pots of curd. He asked the rest to put up a canopy in the garden in case of rain.  As he watched them unfurl the giant piece of cloth, he was distracted by the laughter coming from the center of the garden, where Saara sat with friends and cousins. They were fixing her hair and painting her face, admiring her jewelry while teasing her about her husband-to-be. A month ago, he had sent her a poem by mail. Now it was being passed around the circle. Nora, the neighbor’s daughter and one of Saara’s closest friends, was finding all the errors, causing the rest of the girls to erupt in fits of mirth. 

“This man,” she said, “has clearly never written a poem before.” 

 Rahim felt his headache worsening. It was he who had chosen the groom. A respectable man who was interning at a barrister’s office. His parents owned a flat in the city. Rahim thought he was a good match for Saara. She needed a man who could provide for her, not one who wrote her poetry. 

Nora read aloud another line and pretended to vomit. Everyone laughed, and Saara laughed loudest of all. 

“It is good to see everyone together again,” she said, looking around. 

 Laali, who had attended middle school with Saara before moving away to the coast, paused in the middle of pinning a rose behind her ear. 

“But where is that servant boy?” she asked. “The one who used to follow us around like a puppy—what was his name again?” 

There was a sudden silence. Rahim felt a cold dread in his chest. He glanced at Saara. Her head was lowered, and he couldn’t see her face. 

“Imraan,” replied Nora in a clipped voice. “He is no longer with us.” 

“Where did he go?” asked Laali. 

“He left to serve in the army,” said Nora. 

The girls fell into a familiar hush. Then Nora passed the poem to the girl next to her, who read it out loud while impersonating Shah Rukh Khan. Slowly, the merriment returned. 

Rahim went into the house. He unbuttoned the top of his kurta and drank two glasses of water, but he still felt drained. 

  *

The guests had started to arrive. They sat in wooden folding chairs, drinking cardamom cha being served to them by the maidservants. Rahim needed a strong cup of tea. He tried to get the attention of one of the maids but kept being interrupted. So and so wanted to shake his hand, say hello, offer congratulations. His sister tugged his elbow, whispering that the groomsmen were running late. Above them, the clouds darkened. 

In the middle of the garden, on a raised dais, sat Saara in a red and gold saree. She was so still she looked like a statue. The guests approached her one by one, taking photographs and offering their blessings. 

“They grow up in the blink of an eye,” said Alok, leaning on his silver cane. “You have raised her well.” 

Rahim bowed his head in response. Alok was his superior. For twenty-two years Rahim had answered to him, bringing him weekly news on the progress in the jute fields on the outskirts of town. It was during one of these meetings, three years ago, that Alok had brought it up. 

“I could have sworn I saw Saara in Gitanjali Park yesterday,” he had said. 

“Perhaps,” Rahim replied. “She often goes there to study.” 

Alok raised his eyebrows. “In these times? I don’t let my daughter out of the house.” 

Rahim took a sip of water from his flask, trying not to feel spoken down to. After all, his superior had reason for concern. A shadow had fallen over the region, and the air was tense with talks of war. It was why he had removed Saara from the girls’ high school. 

“She gets bored inside,” he replied. “A change of scenery for a few hours does her good. Besides, she is never alone. Her friends are with her. And I always send Imraan along.” 

“I see,” said Alok. He poured himself a second cup of tea. Then he said there were no friends with Saara at the park. That it was only her and the servant boy. That he could have sworn they were holding hands. Touching each other. 

Rahim gripped his flask at the insinuation. “That is impossible. You must have seen someone else.” 

He hailed a rickshaw outside Alok’s office and tried to forget the whole thing. But he couldn’t. 

  *

The sun was setting and the lamps were lit. The groom’s party had not yet arrived. Rahim sensed that the guests were becoming restless. Nora sat in front of the microphone, singing an off-tune rendition of a Bengali folk song. Her fingers pressed into the wrong keys of the harmonium, causing some attendees to hide their laughter behind their hands. The children, too young for decorum, covered their ears. 

Some far-off relatives stood close together near the water fountain, gossiping. Earlier, Rahim heard them discussing the jewelry that was gifted to Saara from the groom’s side. 

“Looks like imitation gold,” they whispered to each other as he walked by. 

Rahim regretted inviting them. Looking around, he realized he couldn’t recognize half the guests. Where had they all come from? 

The harmonium made a jarring sound, magnified by the microphone. It was old, the wood unpolished and the keys stiff with neglect. His brother-in-law had unearthed it from the back of the storage room a few hours ago, and Nora had volunteered to play. 

The harmonium belonged to Saara. Rahim remembered the time when she sat down across from him at the breakfast table, twisting the end of her dupatta the way she did whenever she was about to ask for something. 

“All my classmates have taken up an instrument,” she said. Rahim called so and so to arrange the purchase and found a teacher to come to the house two evenings a week. Saara played for a month or two, then she took up painting, and then embroidery. The harmonium gathered dust in a corner. 

Raindrops. Rahim looked up at the sky as the guests dashed towards the canopy. Nora and Laali held the bridal shawl above Saara’s head as they walked into the house. For a while he stood there, feeling the rain on his skin. Then his sister took his arm and pulled him beneath the jujube tree. 

“So much planning,” she said, “and for what? Nothing is going right.” 

Rahim saw that she was breathing heavily. The previous night her daughter had ended up stranded somewhere for hours on her way to Saara’s gaye holud from the city. Since then everyone had been uneasy. 

It began to rain in earnest. Rahim looked at the water dripping down the leaves and remembered. 

  *

It had been raining all day. He was in his study, listening to the radio host describe the green tanks that had overtaken the city streets, how the air smelled of blood and gunpowder. The dead count had climbed to three hundred. Rahim pressed his fingers into the inner corners of his eyes. He said a prayer and turned off the radio. He felt fortunate to live in a small town, out of the way of danger, but one could never be too cautious. He had to speak to the gatekeeper. Tell him to lock everything up and be inside by sundown. 

He withdrew the curtain from the window to let in some daylight. There, in the garden below, was Saara. What was she doing out in the rain? She stood beneath the sprawling branches of the jujube tree. 

Rahim almost didn’t see Imraan. He was perched on the tree, his long limbs balancing his body as he took hold of a branch and shook. The jujubes fell, a green and yellow torrent. Saara gathered them in an old pillowcase. 

The boy climbed down. His hand was bleeding. She said something. They stood close together. He tucked her hair behind her ear. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. 

Rahim looked around the garden. The curtains on the neighbor’s windows were drawn. He breathed a small sigh of relief. 

That evening Rahim sat down for tea with his sister. He asked her what Imraan did these days. 

“A bit of this and a bit of that,” she said. “He minds the garden. Cleans the verandah. Buys rations at the night bazaar. Takes Saara to the park and to the bookstore.” 

Rahim took a sip of cha. “The boy is grown. Surely it is time for him to make his way in the world.” 

His sister stopped stirring in the teaspoon of sugar. “Where would he go?” 

Rahim wasn’t sure. There were many vocations that didn’t require an education. 

“He grew up here,” she said. 

Rahim set aside his teacup. He said he would let the accountant know that this month’s salary for the boy would be his last. Then he retired to his bedroom. 

  *

The groom had arrived. The younger nieces and nephews stood at the main gate, refusing to let him in till he gave them the quoted amount of money. After fifteen minutes of squabbling, Rahim’s brother-in-law walked over to berate them, and they quickly came to an agreement. The groom was dressed in a simple white kurta and a red turban that had a peacock embroidered across the front. He was broad-shouldered and commanded attention as he walked to the chair that had been laid out for him. 

“Shouldn’t you be greeting him?” asked the imam. Rahim came back to himself. He was still beneath the jujube tree. When had the rain stopped? 

“Yes, of course,” he said. The imam looked at him, then cast his stern gaze around the garden, at the biryani being served, at the lights and the roses, at the bejeweled guests drinking mango lassi. The people he had hired to videotape the event circled the periphery, cameras in hand. His sister had warned him not to be too extravagant. Not now, so soon after the war. 

“I only have one child,” he had said. His friend who lived down the street had arranged for fireworks at his daughter’s wedding. What would it look like if Rahim didn’t do the equivalent? Now he was a bit ashamed. 

He approached the groom and shook his hand. He asked how the commute went. There was an accident on the road, he replied. That had held them up. 

When they first met, Rahim was beyond impressed with his soon-to-be son-in-law. He was polite, spoke good English, and came from a family of barristers. But now Rahim felt a kind of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach. The groom wore thick-rimmed glasses that made it hard to get a good look into his eyes. When not speaking, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Had Rahim ever seen him smile? He couldn’t remember. He had the sudden urge to stride into the house, to find Saara and tell her that he had made a mistake, that the wedding was off. Then the groom’s father clapped him on the shoulder and pulled him into an embrace, and he came back to his senses. 

  *

For a few weeks after the boy’s departure, Rahim saw Saara wait by the main gate for the mailman. But he had nothing for her.  

She stopped embroidery and took up reading the newspaper. Rahim waited for this to pass. It always did. 

 But Saara continued to follow every update on the war. In the mornings he found her asleep in his study, head resting on the desk next to the radio. At dusk she sat by the jujube tree, wrapped in a shawl, hands cupped in silent prayer. Two months passed, then four, then six. He began to avoid her. 

The war ended. Parades filled the streets. Some soldiers returned. And some didn’t. 

Rahim sent Saara to university. Her grades were mediocre, and her tutor noted that she was inattentive. He often found her at her study table, gazing out the window or doodling absent-mindedly on her half-completed calculus homework. She didn’t take up new hobbies. She never asked him for anything anymore. 

After deciding not to complete her studies, she barely left the house.  She didn’t participate in the picnics her friends arranged and refused invitations to trips to the mountains. At night she roamed from room to room, drinking endless cups of tea. 

Some nights she went into the garden. The maids discovered her in the morning, sleeping beneath the trees, barefoot and shivering. 

“She is too old for such behavior,” he said to his sister. “What will people say?” 

“You should think less of people and more of your daughter,” she replied. 

Rahim considered this. He could see that Saara lacked direction. Her mother had been the same way. She had no ideas of her own. It made no difference to her if they went on holiday to the city or to the coast. She had no preference between rice or roti. It was only after she had a child that she found purpose. 

He made it known around the neighborhood that he was in search of a suitable man for his daughter. He visited houses, shook hands with the prospects and met their families. Once he decided, he called Saara to his study. 

“I have invited some people for tea this evening,” he said. “They will be coming to see you, so be presentable.” 

Saara nodded. Her face was unreadable. When she left, he felt his shoulders becoming less stiff. There was something about her presence that suffocated him. 

*  

The vows were taken, the papers were signed, and then they were married. Rahim watched as Saara embraced her family and friends. She was crying. All daughters did when they left their father’s house. He had been to enough weddings and had seen enough films. He knew what came next. She would touch his feet and ask for his blessings. He would place a hand on her head. They would part ways. It would all be over. 

“Goodbye, Baba,” she said. He felt her fingers graze the skin of his feet. She took his right hand and placed it on her head. “Thank you for everything.” 

He whispered his blessings. But instead of relief, he felt ill. His sister put an arm around Saara and gently pulled her away, towards the white car waiting outside the gates. Rahim fell back, watching with the rest of the wedding party. The groom held open the door of the passenger seat. Before getting in, Saara turned to look at them. She waved goodbye. Her eyes, so like her mother’s, found his own. The same eyes had watched him for the past three years, making him uneasy to be in his own house, making him want to hide. 

I only wanted you to forget about him, he wished he could say. I never meant for him to die. 

The car drove away. The guests dispersed. Family members lounged on the folding chairs and called for the servants to bring tea. His sister had lost an earring. Rahim excused himself. He needed to lie down. He went into the house and climbed the steps to his bedroom. 

It was done. Shouldn’t he be able to breathe now? He splashed water on his face, said his prayers, and turned off the lights. Outside an owl whistled. The nephews called out to each other as they dismantled the canopy. He heard his sister telling the cooks to pack up the remaining food in boxes to deliver to the mosque. 

Soon they would start to forget that there was a girl named Saara who lived here. A girl who grew up and became quiet. In the darkness of his room, Rahim tried to remember what Saara’s favorite subject was in school, or whether it was red lentils or yellow she preferred to eat with rice. He couldn’t. 

She would also forget. She would start her own family. Daughters were born to leave their fathers. 

Rahim pulled the blankets to his chin and tried to fall asleep. A green gecko clung to the wall, watching him. He looked at the clock, the tiny hands circling past the hour. He dreamed of an old woman wrapped in a red shawl, standing beneath a sprawling tree with hands outstretched, waiting for the jujubes to fall.