There Are Four of Them | Samina Hadi-Tabassum

Once upon a time
There was a dysfunctional Muslim family
 Living in suburban public housing
In a two-bedroom townhouse across from O’Hare airport
With neighboring old white couples in shade-drawn windows
And increasing Gujrati families all named Patel
Living alongside a graffitied park
With pock-marked tennis courts and no nets
Punctured by the smell of urine and industrial smoke
Next to parking lots with narrow numbered yellows lines
And sounds of gunshot in the heat of the night
Latin Kings and Four Corner Hustlers

This was not a Jhumpa Lahiri novel
Full of metaphysical angst, Bengali cuisine and Harvard Square
Theirs was a story of escalating tensions
Of police knocking on the door after distressed calls from neighbors
Of bloodied eyes and bruised arms
Of violent screaming in pidgin Urdu
Of gawkers and onlookers
Of eventual escape to large Midwestern universities
Of marriages always out of the Muslim gene pool

Yet the palimpsest persists
The father’s need to argue and complain: oldest son and youngest daughter
The mother’s need to nag and pick at people like scabs: both daughters
The father’s ability to waste money and spend only on himself: oldest son and youngest daughter
The mother’s ability to fix all broken things with duct tape: oldest daughter and youngest son
The father’s penchant to curse motherfucker and sisterfucker like a Bombay cabbie: oldest son and daughter
The mother’s penchant to call everyone paagal: both daughters
The father’s clenching teeth and pumping fists: oldest son and daughter
The mother’s wailing and moaning against the wall: youngest daughter
Both parents inability to ever be happy in a foreign land: all four children
Both parents need to cut off all Muslim ties: all four children

Their story is Alice Munro combined with Frank McCourt combined with Hanif Kureishi
Their story is set in Sartre’s hell and Dante’s inferno and a Muslim’s jahannam
Their story is in Hindi Urdu creole and not British Boston English
Their story did not win a Pulitzer prize

Indian Review | Author Profile | Samina Hadi-Tabassum is a professor at Dominican University.She has published poems in East Lit Magazine and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

 Samina Hadi-Tabassum is a professor at Dominican University.She has published poems in East Lit Magazine and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.