The Newlyweds Read Online Free Page A

had gradually stopped. The rumors were that Nasir had antagonized his cousin, the owner of the London restaurant, and that he was unlikely to move to any more promising employment there. His elder sister Sakina, still unmarried at thirty-six, was encouraginghim to return to the small apartment building in Mohammadpur that their parents had left them. Sakina was a formidable woman, more than 1.7 meters tall, with a streak of white in her inky hair. Most of their acquaintances had expressed reservations before Amina left for America, but Sakina was the only one who had come to her mother directly, demanding to know how she could take such a risk with her only child. They thought of you for Nasir, her mother had said at the time—that’s why they’re so offended. Whomever Nasir married would be in thrall to Sakina, who was certain to act more like a mother-in-law than a dependent spinster. Amina didn’t think her parents’ feelings about Nasir had changed, but simply that they hoped for a better life for her. She hoped for it herself.
    She hadn’t thought of Nasir in months when he showed up at their door one afternoon with a book for her. She had been at Sharmila’s, staying late in order to e-mail George, and by the time she returned home, Nasir was gone. He had stayed for two hours, her mother said, and drunk six cups of tea; even more surprising, while he was in London Nasir had grown a full beard and started wearing a prayer cap.
    “I expected a Londoni, and instead I found a mullah at the door,” her mother joked. Her father, who had come in at the same time, took Nasir’s book eagerly from her mother and read the title aloud:
The Lawful and Prohibited in Islam
. Amina could tell he’d been hoping for poetry and was disappointed.
    “He left this for Munni?”
    “And this.” She handed Amina a sheet of lined blue paper from a schoolchild’s copybook, folded three times. When she opened it, she found an Internet address for something called the Islamic Center of Rochester.
    “A mosque in Rochester, isn’t it?” her mother asked Amina excitedly.
    “Islamic Center,” her father corrected. “Not mosque.”
    “A place to meet other Muslim women, then.”
    Her father took the piece of paper away from Amina. “Your husband will find a real mosque for you.”
    Amina wanted to keep the address anyway, but her father took it and stuck it in Nasir’s book. He flipped through the pages, stopping here and there. Then he asked her mother whether you had to be aguest to get a cup of tea in this house. Her father drank his tea and read the book until it was time to eat, and then when they were finished, he picked it up again. When Amina went to bed, he was still reading.
    In the morning Amina was studying at the table when she noticed that something was different. It took her a minute to figure out that she didn’t have to put any weight on the Southern Hemisphere in order to read; even when her mother set down her omelet and Horlicks (right in the middle of the Arabian Sea) the table didn’t wobble.
    “See what Nasir has done for us,” her father said, turning from the sink with his face half shaved. “A perfect fit.”
    Amina looked down and saw that Nasir’s book was neatly wedged underneath the left side of the table’s round base.
    “That book is about Islam,” her mother said.
    But her father spoke English, as if her mother weren’t even there. “Something happened to Nasir’s brain in London,” he said. “Maybe he is leaving it over there. That is why I am glad my daughter will be going to U.S.A.”
    4 When Amina had arrived in March, she’d met the majority of George’s very small family right away. They had dinner with George’s mother, Eileen, every Sunday night, and often Eileen’s sister, Aunt Cathy, would show up to join them. One of the first things Amina noticed about Cathy was the way she kept glancing at the diamond engagement ring on Amina’s left hand. The ring was a family