The beads of sweat that had steadily been forming on her forehead started streaming down her cheek. Her breathing was labored and her lips felt parched. It could have been the heat and humidity of a feisty summer afternoon, or the dust and mildew in the stairwell, or just nervousness at starting this new chapter in her life, but a sense of nauseousness overwhelmed her. She felt light headed, her eyes closed, and just as her knees began to buckle, she grabbed on to the wooden railing that ran along the long winding staircase. “You okay, Ma?” she heard her eldest daughter call out and she turned to look at her and the rest of her eight children struggling up the stairs carrying suitcases and bedding and boxes of pots and utensils and multicolored potlis. She wiped the sweat of her brow, took a few deep breaths, shook her head and replied sternly, “Of course.”
She had been restless the night before. Both the anticipation and uncertainty of the day to follow had kept her tossing and turning in bed. A mosquito that kept buzzing by her ear and the incessant snoring of her annoying brother in law in the room next door didn’t make things any easier. Even her usually relaxing early morning Fajr prayers did little to calm her nerves. She missed her father : his authoritative voice, his dynamic presence, his not very expressive but undeniable love for her. Despite her mother’s objections, he had taught her to ride a horse and swim in the well. She had fond memories of him reading to her from the Persian classics by Ferdowsi and Saadi, and Urdu poetry by Ghalib and Iqbal. The opulent Eid celebrations. She missed the ocean: the foaming waves, full of sound and fury crashing on to the beach and then meekly retreating back. The rustling of the coconut tree leaves as they swayed in the gentle ocean breeze; the salty air.
She dug into the folds of her sari by her waist to pull out her keys. There was the one from her childhood home, now abandoned, in Agar, her houses in Murud : the one by the beach and the one further inside that she used during the monsoons. There were a couple for the farmhouse in Kalsoor and a few others she didn’t recognize anymore but was too scared to throw away, not knowing if she’d eventually come across a lock that would need one of them. And then there was the shimmering new one that Mushir bhai had given her earlier that morning.
Already a successful lawyer, Mushir had hopes for an ambitious political career, but post-independence, as the Marathi and Gujarati people jockeyed for power, his own career started to stagnate. The large immigrant population in southern Pakistan was looking for leaders and his friends who had left Bombay for Karachi during partition, after years of cajoling had finally convinced him that it was time. In need of urgent cash as he was uprooting one life and starting another he started divesting his holdings and properties to anyone and everyone who was willing to buy. Partly out of goodwill and partly out of desperation he sold his fourth floor Sultan Manzil apartment to his cousin for three thousand rupees, less than half of what he had paid for it just two years ago.
The Godrej lock was huge, a bit rusty and oddly shaped, like a very muscular pregnant woman wearing an ill fitting iron armor. A terribly twisted aluminum latch screwed into the wooden door strained under the weight of the lock. The door itself seemed to have seen better days: there was rot building at its edges and the dull blue paint was peeling off in strands; a beam of sunlight squeezed through its warped split panels and illuminated dust particles that swirled around like little whirling dervishes.
Her hands were shaking as she grabbed the lock and turned the key. She heard the levers in the lock untangle themselves and the shank popped out. She removed the lock, pulled open the latch and with a barely audible “Bismillah,” flung open the doors.