When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

“At first I knew nothing of the reason for his visits. I was ten years old, and was not surprised that my parents, who were from India, and had a number of Indian acquaintances at the university, should ask Mr. Pirzada to share our meals.”

Lilia shifts from her narrative position of knowledge and experience to her childhood self. She assumes that Mr. Pirzada is just another Indian acquaintance from the university; she has not yet learned of Partition or that he is Pakistani, she does not know about the war, and she has not experienced the loss she will feel when he leaves forever.

“When I said I thought [1947] was the date of India’s independence from Britain, my father said, ‘That too. One moment we were free and then we were sliced up,’ he explained, drawing an X with his finger on the countertop, ‘like a pie. Hindus here, Muslims there. Dacca no longer belongs to us.’ He told me that during Partition Hindus and Muslims had set fire to each other’s homes. For many, the idea of eating in the other’s company was still unthinkable.”

While Lilia’s father later worries that she is not learning enough of her own cultural heritage, here she demonstrates that she does know the date of India’s independence. What she doesn’t know about is the violence that her parents have likely kept from her, in much the same way that they do not allow her to watch the news once the war begins. Her ignorance is not her fault but the result of her parent’s efforts to keep her safe and sheltered so she can have every opportunity in life. The reference to shared meals alludes to Mr. Pirzada (who is Muslim) dining with Lilia’s parents (who are not). It illustrates Rituals as Connection and Coping Mechanism; the breakdown of such community routines characterizes partisan violence.

“It made no sense to me. Mr. Pirzada and my parents spoke the same language, laughed at the same jokes, looked more or less the same. They ate pickled mangoes with their meals, ate rice every night for supper with their hands. Like my parents, Mr. Pirzada took off his shoes before entering a room, chewed fennel seeds after meals as a digestive, drank no alcohol, for dessert dipped austere biscuits into successive cups of tea. Nevertheless my father insisted that I understand the difference, and he led me to a map of the world taped to the wall over his desk.”

Because Lilia was born in America, she does not have the cultural context to fully appreciate the racial, religious, and regional differences that could lead to a civil war. In her eyes, her parents and Mr. Pirzada are almost identical, largely because racially and culturally they are not “American” (in the dominant, white Christian sense). However, her naivety also reveals the arbitrariness of these types of divisions. Lilia’s parents are from Calcutta, which is predominantly Hindu, while Mr. Pirzada is a Bengali Muslim from what was then East Pakistan. During Partition, these differences drove people to set fire to one another’s homes. Yet in America, where they are cultural outsiders, they seek each other out to share meals.

“‘Lilia has plenty to learn at school,’ my mother said. ‘We live here now, she was born here.’ She seemed genuinely proud of the fact, as if it were a reflection of my character. In her estimation, I knew, I was assured a safe life, an easy life, a fine education, every opportunity.”

Families that emigrate must balance assimilating into the culture of their new home with maintaining elements of their cultural heritage that are important to their identity and way of life. Lilia’s mother is more concerned with her daughter’s assimilation than her own, invoking a version of the American dream (the idea that America is a place of equal opportunity and that anyone who works hard will achieve their dreams). However, while it is true that Lilia will not face the same life-and-death struggles as her parents did, the story subtly suggests that she may not have “every” opportunity. Lilia experiences multiple microaggressions (everyday comments or actions that express hostility or prejudice toward marginalized groups): At school she is scolded for deviating from American history to try to learn about Pakistan, and while trick or treating she receives several comments about the strangeness of a witch being Indian.

“We learned American history, of course, and American geography. That year, and every year, it seemed, we began by studying the Revolutionary War. We were taken in school buses on field trips to visit Plymouth Rock, and to walk the Freedom Trail, and to climb to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument. We made dioramas out of colored construction paper depicting George Washington crossing the choppy waters of the Delaware River, and we made puppets of King George wearing white tights and a black bow in his hair.”

The idealized, sanded-down version of American history that Lilia describes here is closer to cultural propaganda than actual history. Lilia’s note that the students seem to learn about the Revolutionary Way every year suggests a reluctance to dig into the more problematic elements of American history that might conflict with its professed values; the school instead focuses on the parts that reinforce superficial American values such as individual freedom. Lilia’s experiences at school develop the theme of Revolutionary Violence and American Insularity, as they contrast with the real-time conflict unfolding in East Pakistan.

“I was charmed by the presence of Mr. Pirzada’s rotund elegance, and flattered by the faint theatricality of his attentions, yet unsettled by the superb ease of his gestures, which made me feel, for an instant, like a stranger in my own home.”

What Lilia perceives as “the superb ease of his gestures” makes her feel like a stranger in her own home because it highlights the cultural divide between her and her parents. Watching Mr. Pirzada, she sees a man who is more naturally and easily “Indian” than she is. He fits in with her parents in a way that she cannot because she has to occupy two distinct cultural spheres and as a result has more opposing cultural weights to balance.

“I could not even thank him, for once, when I did, for an especially spectacular peppermint lollipop wrapped in a spray of purple cellophane, he had demanded, ‘What is this thank-you? The lady at the bank thanks me, the cashier at the shop thanks me, the librarian thanks me when I return an overdue book, the overseas operator thanks me as she tries to connect me to Dacca and fails. If I am buried in this country I will be thanked, no doubt, at my funeral.’”

Mr. Pirzada’s rejection of the phrase “thank you” reveals a Southeast Asian cultural practice Lilia is likely unaware of because she has grown up in America. In many Southeast Asian cultures, expressing thanks can come across as sarcastic or even disrespectful because there is an assumed degree of unspoken gratitude in close interpersonal relationships. Lilia is used to Americans saying “thank you” for everything, but Mr. Pirzada recognizes the superficial politeness that often accompanies these words and doesn’t expect or require thanks for things people are simply expected to do. Likewise, he doesn’t expect thanks for an action he enjoys doing to repay a kindness.

“I coveted each evening’s treasure as I would a jewel, or a coin from a buried kingdom, and I would place it in a small keepsake box made of carved sandalwood beside my bed, in which, long ago in India, my father’s mother used to store the ground areca nuts she ate after her morning bath. It was my only memento of a grandmother I had never known, and until Mr. Pirzada came to our lives I could find nothing to put inside it.”

The keepsake box signifies Lilia’s distance to her own cultural heritage. She never had the opportunity to know her grandmother, and secondhand stories are not enough to build a sense of meaningful connection (symbolically, she can’t figure out what to put in the box). It is fitting that Mr. Pirzada provides her with a use for the box, as he will lead Lilia to a true understanding of loss, including the loss of one’s roots.

“[L]ife, I realized, was being lived in Dacca first. I imagined Mr. Pirzada’s daughters rising from sleep, tying ribbons in their hair, anticipating breakfast, preparing for school. Our meals, our actions, were only a shadow of what had already happened there, a lagging ghost of where Mr. Pirzada really belonged.”

Lilia’s words are literally true of Mr. Pirzada, who is never fully present in the moment; he cannot be because all his thoughts and feelings are in Dacca with his family. The sense of loss he feels makes every action an imitation of what has already happened there—a futile attempt to forge any sense of connection when all other means have been barred. For Lilia, the words are more figurative. Her existence in America is a shadow of life in India, where her parents lived first; they learned values, beliefs, behaviors, and expectations that they complain American culture cannot satisfy. Trying to balance this against assimilating into American culture and forging her own sense of identity is incredibly difficult for Lilia.

“I did something I had never done before. I put the chocolate in my mouth, letting it soften until the last possible moment, and then as I chewed it slowly, I prayed that Mr. Pirzada’s family was safe and sound. I had never prayed for anything before, had never been taught or told to, but I decided, given the circumstances, that it was something I should do. That night when I went to the bathroom I only pretended to brush my teeth, for I feared that I would somehow rinse the prayer out as well.”

By doing something she has never done before—especially something she has not been taught or told to do—Lilia takes a big step toward coming of age. While the act itself is relatively naive, it demonstrates a new level of independence and understanding of what is going on around her. The decision to not to brush her teeth also works as a gesture of solidarity. All children know the “dangers” (i.e., cavities) of not brushing your teeth, especially after eating sweets. In risking this, Lilia attempts to forge connection with Mr. Pirzada’s family and those who are in real danger.

“Several people told me that they had never seen an Indian witch before. Others performed the transaction without comment.”

This moment passes without any additional insight or analysis from Lilia, who as a 10-year-old child would not understand the damaging effect this type of microaggression can have on identity and self-worth. However, the existence of this type of comment only adds to the difficulty of trying to develop a sense of self while growing up in two cultural spheres. At home, Lilia is not as Indian as her parents; in America, she is “too” Indian to fit in.

“When I replaced the phone on the receiver it occurred to me that the television wasn’t on at Dora’s house at all. Her father was lying on the couch, reading a magazine, with a glass of wine on the coffee table, and there was saxophone music playing on the stereo.”

Lilia’s home life starkly contrasts with Dora’s. At Lilia’s, the TV is always on because every morsel of information could provide hope or extinguish it entirely. Any downtime that exists is spent waiting for the next news broadcast. Dora’s father participates in leisure activities, and there is no sense of tension or anxiety in the house; they are blissfully unaware that a war is even happening somewhere else in the world. This highlights the two different spheres Lilia must inhabit. She constantly struggles to find a version of herself that can exist in both the tension of her own house and the calm of Dora’s.

“Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.”

The repetition of “single” emphasizes how unified her parents and Mr. Pirzada have become. Their shared cultural heritage and their shared understanding of loss make them indistinguishable to Lilia, who doesn’t have the same cultural connections due to being born in America, and who hasn’t yet learned the true meaning of loss.