IT WAS A JUBILANT PARTY, with a sumptuous dinner spread, lively and colorful garbs, and merry chatter. The guests, all lifelong friends since back when they were young in the old country, were catching up as they did every month they gathered like this. Much of the talk was gossip, but lots revolved around freshening old memories, such as how much you could get for a single rupee fifty years ago, or about shared teachers of some of the guests who had passed away recently, how hard he unjustly rapped your knuckles with his switch, or how patient her voice was when she explained things.

“Say, I haven’t seen Junaid tonight,” one of the guests said presently. They were lounging in armchairs on the outdoor patio, all the men, with the women doing the same indoors, as was usually the routine after dessert had been eaten and cleared away. “Is all well?”

“Oh, you don’t know?” another guest exclaimed. “He’s gone back.”

“Gone back?” the first man said, baffled.

“Hao. Packed up the family to India last year.” The air was thick with the various scents of all the flavored shisha bottles the men were smoking.

“Why, so suddenly!” the first guest asked incredulously. “I heard nothing about it.” It made sense for him to be in the dark, for he, unlike the rest of his companions, had migrated a second time a decade ago, settling with his family in the West. He was now thousands of miles and a full twelve hours behind from their homeland, rather than simple hour and a half and a nonstop flight away. He only visited the friends he’d parted from once a year at most.

“Oh, he had his reasons. Money issues, some people say. It will always be far more expensive to live here than there.”

“But Junaid made a good salary!”

“You’re right. There are those who say that’s just a cover story. A way for him to avoid people’s questions,” their host said.

“A cover story? Then what’s the truth?”

“Wait, my begum tells this story well,” the host said, stifling a small burp as he sat up and looked around at the house. “Let me get her—ah, here she is! It’s a sign.”

“What’s a sign, ji?” the hostess said as she stepped outside, carrying a tray laden with steaming teacups. She strode to the center of the patio and set it down on the oval glass table.

“Feroz here was asking about the matter with Junaid,” her husband replied as he started distributing cups and the sugar bowl. “Perhaps the ladies could entertain themselves long enough inside for you to tell it to us?”

“Oh! Well, it’s been a while since I recounted it. I might not remember it as well now.”

“No matter, begum, we’ll all help fill in the gaps,” the host coaxed. Everyone knew that there was no chance she would refuse, but it was polite to insist, and so all the guests joined her husband in reassuring her that they wanted her to do the telling.

“Very well, if you all think it right,” the hostess relented at last. Seating herself next to her husband in the middlemost sofa, she reached over for the shisha bottle he was smoking, brought the tube to her lips, and took a puff.

“Sometime last year, Junaid bhai and his family moved into a new apartment. It made sense, with the baby, they needed the extra room. And then you all know his mother liked to visit for a season every year. They chose one of the complexes near the big shopping mall, it was all just a huge mound of sand a few years back, hai na ji? Rent was steep, steeper than some houses in the district, but Junaid wanted it. It was closer to the kids’ school and he felt they all deserved some of the high life. Everything was fine once they first moved in. But not even a week later, he’d started sleepwalking.”

“Not sleepwalking! You said he was having trouble sleeping.”

“He had trouble sleeping first, and then he started sleepwalking, ji!” the hostess said crossly. “What difference does it make? It’s just a minor detail.”

“Sorry, sorry, begum,” her husband chortled, clearly one to enjoy riling up his wife.

“Now I have to start all over again. Anyway, he was finding it very hard to sleep in the new apartment, but the family was all fine. Then, he went from not being able to sleep, to sleepwalking all of a sudden. It terrified Nasreen when she first saw it, let me tell you. But they didn’t think much of it at first, not after he went to the doctor and it was confirmed that this was a normal thing for some people. Never mind that he’d never before done it in his life. But that was until he began doing the most peculiar things.”

She paused as a collective murmur ran through the audience. A couple of the men elbowed each other; they were getting to the good part.

“At first it was just cleaning the kitchen for hours in the dark. Or running the laundry, even if it had already been washed. But when Nasreen woke up to find him standing in the balcony with a leg over the railing, she shrieked so loud that he came to his senses, and staggered back. After that, they all decided to tie his wrist to the bed. And it did work at first: anytime he tried to get up to sleepwalk, the rope prevented him and woke him up. But as he lay awake, stranger things began happening. Just as he drifted off to sleep, he would be woken by the strange sensation that there was something sitting on his chest. Something heavy and large as a person. When he tried to move, he couldn’t. Not even a finger. He was completely paralyzed. When he tried to yell out, he couldn’t even make a sound. On the third night that this happened, he was able to open his eyes. When he did, there, on top of his chest, he saw a skeletal woman with long black hair—” the hostess stopped abruptly, raised both hands before her face, shut her eyes and began to chant, “Lā hawla wa-lā quwwata 'illā bi-llāhi l-'aliyyi l-'azīm!”

An excited tremor ran through the listeners now, even though most of them knew what was to come: if she felt the need to recite a prayer for protection, what happened next was sure to spook everyone. She continued reciting various dua, the men staying quiet or silently reciting them along with her. When she was finished she began again.

“There was a woman, dressed in a white sheet, with long black hair, sitting on his chest and staring at him. He was terrified, but couldn’t scream, as he couldn’t move, and fainted from the shock. When he came to the next morning, she was gone.”

“But what could it mean?” Feroz, the first guest, interjected.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said another guest. “He was being haunted by a ghost.”

“Not a ghost, something more of an evil spirit,” the hostess corrected.

“Isn’t it the same thing?” the host asked. “A ghost is a spirit.”

“No, not always. Not every ghost is evil, most of them just hang around here and there.”

“But weren’t evil spirits alive at one time? If so, that makes them ghosts.”

“Oh, come now!” Feroz said, exasperated. “A woman in white with long black hair? Really? Surely a real ghost would be more original than that. This is like something from a C-grade movie! Kyun, don’t tell me you all believe in this?”

“Many of these stories are garbage, it’s true,” another man admitted. “But this is Junaid, isn’t it. We know him.”

“But you’ve already said that this wasn’t his reason. He gave a different story.”

“This kind of thing happens quite often back home,” said another. “Remember, Feroz, our relatives, friends, servants, they talked about occurrences like this all the time.”

“Yes, and I didn’t believe them back then either,” Feroz said gruffly. “And Hisham, neither did you! You’re a scientist, you know better, na?”

“I don’t know, boss,” his friend said doubtfully. “I do think most people nowadays make these things up. But I’ve seen some things since back then that make it hard to believe that we know everything there is to know in the world.”

A silence fell over the gathering as they all contemplated these words.

“If you’re all finished, might I continue with the story?” the hostess said in a surly tone. They all apologized profusely for interrupting, and she went on.

“Junaid bhai wanted to tell the family what he’d seen, but every time he tried, his voice would give out. He was so desperate, he stayed awake night after night. He was drifting off at work, his employer started to notice and give him warnings. They went back to the doctor, who, no matter how many times he examined him, kept insisting that he found nothing wrong, that he was just sleep deprived. So he prescribed him sleeping pills. With no other recourse, he started taking them. The sleepwalking began again, and this time, tying him up made no difference because he was able to untie himself, even though he was completely unconscious! One night, his oldest woke up to the sound of the baby crying. She was about to get out of bed to go to the nursery, when she saw him, Junaid bhai, standing in the middle of the room. The baby was in his arms. ‘Is she hungry, Baba?’ she wanted to ask. But the way he stood there, holding the baby, chilled her. She knew at once that something was wrong. His eyes were wide open, but vacant, as though he wasn’t even seeing her. Without warning, he bolted out of the room. His daughter ran after him, screaming for her mother. Nasreen got up just as Junaid bhai ran out to the balcony with the baby in his hands. All three of them, the mother and two daughters, seized him seconds before he could throw her off. They dragged him back inside, weeping, and he woke up bewildered, no memory of what he’d almost done. Poor Nasreen was in tatters. The four of them stayed together until morning that night, and locked him in one of the children’s rooms with no windows. He was begging them over and over to believe he hadn’t done anything intentionally, but to no avail. ‘This is all subconscious, just as the doctor said,’ Nasreen sobbed. ‘You resent that I gave you three girls and no son. You may love her, but it’s your darkest regrets coming out and taking control of you!’.”

“What an awful thing to be accused of,” a guest said, shaking his head dolefully. “Nasreen knows Junaid better than that. He gives his heart to those girls.”

“Still, seeing your husband about to fling your child off a balcony would tear any mother’s heart out. Poor lady must not have been thinking clearly.”

“No one knows what goes on between man and wife. And it’s true that Junaid had hoped the last child would be a boy, he said as much. Who knows what he may have said in private?”

“But Junaid is not an ahmaq nor an illiterate. He knows if there’s anyone to be upset with for not making a boy, it should be himself. How women have been blamed for generations for this, when even the Quran has stated the truth all along, will always baffle me.”

“Anyway,” the hostess began again. “The following day, after everyone had calmed down, Junaid bhai tried and failed again to tell them what he’d seen. He was only able to write down a few words. With him acting so erratically, everyone began to dread that he wasn’t right in the head. Nasreen wondered if it was a psychiatrist they needed to consult next. But thankfully, they didn’t have to wonder for long. Because that night, Junaid bhai had a dream.”

Just then, the door opened and the host’s daughter stepped out.

“Mom, I’ve put away all the gulab jamuns,” she said. “Am I supposed to put the halwa in the fridge or the freezer?”

“Araay, leave it out a little longer, beti. People may want more. So as I said, in his dream, his dadi came. She was a very pious, shareef woman, I’ve heard, far more decent than his other grandmother, the one who did the second marriage. In the dream, she told him that he was possessed by an evil spirit. And that if he wanted to be free of it, they would need to leave the apartment. To his astonishment, when he woke up, Nasreen told him she’d had the same dream!”

“Are you talking about Junaid Uncle?” the daughter, who had lingered by the door, said. She was a pretty girl, one whom many guests of the night considered a viable match for their sons someday, but for now she was still finishing up secondary school. “That’s not actually how he left. His daughter still texts me sometimes, she told me everything. What happened was, they asked around the apartment complex, and people told them that a maid had died there before they moved in.”

“Well, so? Couldn’t both things have happened? He had a dream, they asked around, and the people living there confirmed it. It was that maid’s spirit that was haunting them.”

“But begum, didn’t you say that their maid was friends with our Maxine, and she happened to know the maid who died? I thought she was the one who told them to leave the apartment, after giving them her notice because she didn’t want to live in that flat herself.”

“Yes, and Maxine found out through their ex-maid, and she told us the story.”

“I don’t know about all this maid business,” the hostess said. “Nasreen herself was the one who told us. Remember, ji, at the goodbye party she and Junaid threw, at that banquet hall? In the ladies’ area, she told me and the rest of us. I told you the story for the first time then, on the way home.”

“I do recall my wife doing the same that night,” one of the guests offered.

“Never mind that, how did the maid die? And what happened afterwards?” said Feroz.

“Well, after conferring with the other residents, they came to find that the maid herself had died by falling off the balcony. Though some people said she jumped off. Others said she may have been pushed! If she was pushed, it was probably by the master of the house, but who can say why? This story would explain why she was particularly invested in tormenting Junaid bhai out of everyone else. It would also explain why she became any evil spirit in the first place, for her death probably never received justice if it was passed off as an accident. In any case, they decided to heed his dadi’s words and vacated the house immediately. They spoke to the landlord and tried to get out of the lease, but alas, he didn’t consider spirit possession a viable reason to let them off. They would have to pay rent for the remaining nine months of the contract, even as they paid it for wherever else they were living. It wasn’t sustainable. Moreover, who wouldn’t want to return to where they knew it was safe, where they would be with those they came from? This could have been a wake-up call of sorts, to remind them that the high life isn’t what one must live for. And so, they decided to make the move back to India. The apartment they fled is empty to this day.”

With that, the hostess finished speaking. The men were nodding to themselves, their expressions a mix of impressed, solemn, or disturbed. By the door, behind the hosts’ daughter, stood several of the women, having gathered there after hearing the words travel inside. They, too, looked on silently with a type of reverence. It was Feroz who broke the silence.

“Are they ever coming back?”

“Who can say? No one knows the future except the one up above. And then people like us are always coming and going from place to place. It’s become our way of life now.”

Silence descended again as everyone contemplated these words. Finally, Feroz laughed. “Well, what can one say to follow that, apa. I do appreciate the entertainment, truly.”

The night was almost to a close, so everyone began to disband, help clean up, take home superfluous leftovers, say their farewells, promise to meet again for the next kitty party.

Feroz stayed for a few more days before flying to visit India with his family, as was his usual itinerary whenever he traveled back east. By the end of the month, he was back in the West and back to using English as his primary means of communication, back to saying “package” instead of “parcel”, “carousel” instead of “merry-go-round”, “cookie” instead of “biscuit”, “soccer” instead of “football”. Sometimes, during parties where the desserts had too much butter and not enough khoa, he would tell the other guests stories of back home, one of them being the Junaid matter he had just learned of. And always, before he began and after he finished, he made sure to clarify to everyone that he was among those who did not believe in such things.

Areej Quraishi's fiction appears in The Normal School, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Baltimore Review, Porter House Review, jmww, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. It has received accolades and finalist spots from Glimmer Train Press, CRAFT Literary, Salamander Magazine and New Millennium Writings. Her writing explores familial relationships, cultural identity, and memory. Her surrealist fiction is inspired by myth and fairytales. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington—Seattle and a PhD from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she was a Black Mountain Institute fellow. She is at work on a novel and two short story collections. Find her at www.areejquraishi.com