A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

“After that I noticed his pattern: he begins to try, only to feel, at some point, helplessly unable to continue, like he decides for himself there is no point in trying.” The curtain moves back and forth. The fabric of Huda’s trousers are wet from her tears. Mumma turns off the hose. “You’re going to make a good teacher,” Hadia says to her, and Huda mouths a thank-you, and wipes Hadia’s cheeks. How were they to know the moments that would define them? It will affect his personality for his whole life, someone is saying to her, and whose fault will it be then? Mine, a voice replies, and the voice is hers. Now her brother was in danger of having nothing. And now she wanted nothing her brother could not have: not the exams her teachers handed back to her winking, not the accolades, not the watch that had been gifted to her—she was glad it had disappeared—not the career she was building or the space opening up between her and Baba that told her he finally respected her as an adult and would rely on her the way a father might a son. What had she done to her brother, so that she could survive, so that she could be the one who thrived?

Parents love wasn’t conditional. Only dispensebed How did Huda manage