Free And the World Changed by Muneeza Shamsie

elbows like crocodiles, are resurrecting a past that is best left in whatever recesses of the mind Ammijee has chosen to bury it.
    â€œDon’t do this . . . please,” protests Sikander. “You’re our guests . . . !”
    But the cousins, keeping their eyes on the floor say, “ Bhai , let us be.”
    The whispered comments of the guests intensify around me.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?”
    â€œThey are begging her pardon . . .”
    â€œWho are these men?”
    â€œ. . . for what the Sikhs did to her in the riots. . . .”
    â€œ Hai Ram . What do they want?”
    â€œGod knows what she’s been through; she never talks about it. . . .”
    â€œWith their hair opened like this they must remind her of the men who . . .”
    â€œYou can’t beat the Punjabis when it comes to drama,” says the supercilious Kashmiri. His wife, standing next to me, says, “The Sikhs have a screw loose in the head.” She rotates a stubby thumb on her temple as if she were tightening an imaginary screw.
    I turn, frowning. The sisters are glaring at them: showering the backs of their heads with withering, hostile looks. And, in hushed tones of suitable gravity, Mrs. Khan says, “Ammijee, they are asking for your forgiveness. Forgive them.” Then, “She forgives you brothers!” says Mrs. Khan loudly, on her mother-in-law’s account. The other sisters repeat Mrs. Khan’s magnanimous gesture, and, with minor variations, also forgive Khushwant and Pratab on Ammijee’s behalf.
    â€œAmmijee, come here.” Sikander sounds determined to put a stop to all this.
    We shift, clearing a narrow passage for Ammijee, and Kishen’s mother darts out instead looking like an agitated chick in her puffed cotton sari. She is about to say something—and judging from her expression it has to be something indeterminate and conciliatory—when Kishen, firmly taking hold of her arm, hauls her back.
    Seeing his mother has not moved, Sikander shouts, “Send Ammijee here. For God’s sake finish it now.”
    Ammijee takes two or three staggering steps and stands a few paces before me. I suspect one of the sisters has nudged herforward. I cannot see Ammijee’s face, but the head beneath the gray chador jerks as if she were trying to remove a crick from her neck.
    All at once, her voice, an altered, fragile, high-pitched treble that bears no resemblance to the fierce voice that had demanded, “Who are these men?” Ammijee screeches, “I will never forgive your fathers! Or your grandfathers! Get out, shaitans! Sons and grandsons of shaitans! Never, never, never!”
    She becomes absolutely still, as if she would remain there forever, rooted, the quintessence of indictment.
    They advance, wiping their noses on their sleeves, tearing at their snarled hair, pleading, “We will lie at your door to our last breath! We are not fit to show our faces.”
    In a slow, deliberate gesture, Ammijee turns her face away and I observe her profile. Her eyes are clenched shut. The muscles in her cheeks and lower jaw are quivering in tiny, tight spasms as if charged by a current. No one dares say a word: It would be an intrusion. She has to contend with unearthed torments, private demons. The matter rests between her memories and the incarnation of the phantoms wriggling up to her.
    The men reach out to touch the hem of her shalwar . Grasping her ankles, they lay their heads at her feet in the ancient gesture of surrender demanded of warriors.
    â€œLeave me! Let go!” Ammijee shrieks, in her shaky, altered voice. She raises her arms and moves them as if she were pushing away invisible insects. But she looks exhausted and, her knees giving way, she squats before the men. She buries her face in the chador.
    At last, with slight actions that suggest she is ready to face the world, Ammijee wipes her face in the chador and rearranges it on her untidy head.