The Submission - Amy Waldman [128]
But it was the revelation, in the Post, that she had received $1 million in compensation from the government that made her decision. The Mahmouds were furious that she had taken advantage of their generosity by paying only $50 a month for her room. Asma knew that for Mrs. Mahmoud it was less about the money than the embarrassment of missing such sensational news right in her own apartment. Hadn’t she noticed Abdul’s new toys or Asma’s swollen pride, people chided, as if pride were a physical change. Mrs. Mahmoud’s powers of observation were called into question. Mr. Mahmoud announced that Asma would need to find a new place to live. But who in Kensington, or even Jackson Heights or any other Bangladeshi neighborhood, would have her? Everyone was angry at her; or fearful that her illegal status would somehow call attention to theirs; or greedy for a ransom in rent, since, with her million, she could afford it. The world beyond Kensington—the white people’s neighborhoods with their sprinklers—seemed less alluring when she was being forced into it. Where to go, then, speaking so little English? Nowhere but home, Bangladesh, however reluctantly. As soon as she told her landlady her decision, Mrs. Mahmoud forgave her, perhaps because Asma confided in her first.
Her exile was ending. She was, after all, returning to her own country. Yet it was exile she felt herself entering. Of the boat trip with Inam—the impudent wind, the gulls dropping their cries like loose feathers, stilled Manhattan—flat, mute photos were all that remained. She feared that the ever-thinning cord that still bound her to her husband would snap once she left New York. She was breaking her vow to raise his son in America, and she was abandoning him. Inam’s remains swam in the city’s rivers, hung in its air.
She was abandoning, as well, her own hopes of being something more than mother, widow, daughter-in-law. She and Inam had lived with his parents for a few weeks after they were married while they waited for their tourist visas to come through. Her mother-in-law was always correcting her—the way she served tea or cooked or washed clothes—as if in those first weeks Asma’s wifely character would be formed and she, Inam’s mother, could risk no leniency. She was always telling Asma what Inam wanted, as if he could not speak for himself. Now she would go to live with them, be less their guest than their servant, always dependent on their kindness. They would blame her for Inam’s death, she suspected, and they would not be wholly wrong. The money would color everything. She discussed this with Nasruddin. One condition of her receiving the funds from the American government was that she agree in writing to abide by America’s inheritance laws and those of no other country, including Bangladesh, where widows inherit only small portions of their husbands’ estates. Neither her parents nor Inam’s would be able to take control of the money; if they did, the American government would take it back. She had tried to look chastened when she learned this, but felt a small glee. In this respect, America had given her power.
But she had met the limits of that power. She thought her freedom here was limitless but in truth it was bounded—by a larger circle than at home, but a circle nonetheless. When she spoke out, pushed at it, crossed over it, she offended. It was entirely different than at home, and yet the same. Maybe her speaking out would help bring Mohammad Khan’s memorial for Inam into being. But neither she nor Abdul would be here to visit it.
Sorrow at this flooded her, not once but in waves. Loss piled on loss. Into sleep she