A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

How furious Baba would be if he looked out a window and saw her. What would the neighborhood think of him, for having a daughter who did something like that? She smiles a little. But he won’t come for her. Not after they have fought. He won’t try to appease her. He will wait for the apology that is his right, simply because he is older, because he is her father, and a father is deserving of respect regardless of how she feels about his rules and the logic he uses to arrive at them. But tomorrow, after she has apologized, she knows Baba will come straight to her room after work and he will close the door behind him. He will present to her a blended ice drink he knows she loves that costs almost five dollars each, or a book she has not yet read, or a porcelain figurine of some kind that has less to do with her and more to do with what a girl might expect to want—a girl holding her puppy, two children sitting back-to-back reading with their knees up on a bed of grass. The figurines are not inexpensive, but they are also not necessary. What good does it do to give me a gift now, she will think, when all I wanted was just for things to be another way yesterday. Still, there was always a reluctant delight in rising from her desk to claim her frozen drink or little figurine. In part, her delight came from knowing that Huda was not getting one and Amar was not getting one, nor would he. Baba loved him in ways Amar was blind to.