For

  all the little girls who dream of flying

  and

  misfits who refuse to grow up,

  I have simply one advice ...

  Keep asking those damn questions!

  Contents

  1

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  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  9 August 2019

  Good evening!

  But I should not be starting off with that rather inaccurate and imprecise greeting since it is about 15 minutes past midnight as I write this.

  Now, I am in a bit of a predicament. What is the correct way to wish someone a ‘good midnight’? Perhaps something along the lines of ‘Waddup, Owl?’ would be the correct salutation for unholy midnighters… Or ‘All midnight-oil burners unite!’ Or ‘Hey, snooze off!’ Or shall I simply and unimaginatively stick to a flavourless ‘Hi!’?

  When in doubt take the shorter, simpler route, I suppose?

  So here goes…

  10 August 2019

  00:18

  Hi!

  I’m a second-generation immigrant based in New York, and I love my life. Over the course of this book, I shall share with you how I am also (surprisingly) destined to protect it.

  Although I did not start this book with the usual ‘Once upon a time blah blah blah’ banality, if ever there was a tale that needed this particular opening line, then perhaps it is this one.

  You see, I am, after all … ahem … a Superhero.

  And this story shall take you to the very beginning … to the source of my superpowers, the fabled holy spring Zsa Zsa, where I shall, eventually, also confront my destiny.

  So, yes… I am Zeba, an accidental superhero with a hijab for a cape. Yes, you read that right.

  Everything you will read in the following

  pages is fiction.

  Do not believe anything you read here.

  Just because something is written doesn't

  make it true.

  Right?

  2

  An Introduction to a World-Class Superhero

  Present Day, 2019

  Zeba

  Some stories begin as nightmares—dark and deep. They emerge from your subconscious, clawing at your heart, tugging at you from your navel with swift, sharp pulls. You wake up drenched in sweat, heart racing, and you look around, unblinking, trying to grapple with reality. Was your dreamworld true or is this one?

  Maya. Illusion.

  Hard to tell. Hard to comprehend.

  But all nightmares bring forth some deep, dark fear. Of losing someone you love, of death, of ageing, of losing all your teeth, of faking an orgasm with cute-but-unimpressive-in-bed Mike, of sitting at the back of a moving car as you watch old loves tearfully wave you goodbye. Forever.

  Often, I have a hard time telling apart what is real and what is imaginary. Even when I’m awake. It could be the excessive smoking of weed. I’m not sure. In any case, this weed is lit.

  I lie on my rooftop. Sunbathing. Wide hat plopped over my eyes. I swing my feet down from the sunchair and walk barefoot on the fake grass stuck to the floor with some kind of super-strong adhesive. The vertical garden of this lavish thirty-third floor is springing all sorts of lush greenery. I look over the skyline. What an awesome fucking view.

  But everywhere, people are just busy being busy. The rusty-red bridge with the snarling New York Traffic crowding it. People running to airports, jobs, families. Mundane. Boring.

  Looking down, I take another long drag. So many people below, milling about. A final puff and I flick my joint over the edge and down, and follow its descent. Will it fall on someone’s blonde hair extensions or set someone’s dress on fire?

  NEED. FOR. DRAMA.

  It falls on the pavement and I imagine a conscientious brown shoe serendipitously stubbing it out. Damn. What an anti-climax. New York annoys me so much at times. Party poopers. Devoid of drama.

  Most of the time, people don’t even look at you. One time, after a trip to my dermatologist—who charged me 1,200 dollars for a ‘diamond meets platinum meets liquid gold’ treatment and smeared a brown shitty-looking cream on my face to numb the sting of the laser—I decided to ditch my car and walk down Lexington Avenue to my favourite protein smoothie place, Equamix.

  Navigation is not my strong suit. With Doobie, my devoted black Labrador, on a leash, I buzzed through people. My face covered in what looked like peanut butter. The chunky kind. Not smooth. Nut Butter Co. variety. You get the picture. The dark goo bothered nobody. Heck, no one even gave me a second look. No narrowed eyes in the crowd. No one reacted. Nothing to show that anyone noticed a thing. I could have fallen down, drunk, face first, in an Indian-style latrine and come up with my face covered in potty—potty that looked like it came from someone who ate too much protein and not enough greens. You know what I mean: shit that’s darker, almost black, not the soft, yellow type. But nobody cared. Nope. Nada.

  Anyway, doing weird shit and pausing to see how people react—that’s my favourite pastime.

  The chauffeur was waiting with the car outside Equamix. I walked in and ordered the Choco-Nib Almond Milk Vegan Whey Protein Shake, 550 calories, and picked up a box of the overpriced energy bars. I saw hordes of people inside punishing themselves on treadmills, in sessions of hot yoga, Pilates, barre class, kickboxing, boot camp with Cindy, functional with Danny, weight training. I saw them labouring so hard to become fitter, hotter, striving to be better versions of themselves. Fuck, I hate it when people say that and go all Oprah-stic on each other. Fuck that shit.

  Repulsed by that ‘happy hormone environment’, I returned my energy bars and asked for Cheetos instead. The leopard-print-wearing, bikini-bodied struggling model and part-time Equamix server/protein-shake-mixer operator lady looked at me and said with a wink, ‘I would NOT eat those, honey.’

  Bitch. Judging me. My lack of self-control. My greed for all that dunked-in-artificial-colouring, artificial-preservative-filled junk that Equamix probably did not even stock. What’s worse, she masked her judgement under a sweet, saccharine smile.

  Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.

  I smiled back at her. ‘You’re right. Self-control can be so hard.’

  Smiled again.

  Bitch. Again.

  I left with my 20-dollar protein shake, organic paper straw dangling from my lips. As soon as I exited the building, I threw the shake into a trash can and got into my car.

  ‘Let’s go home, Abdul,’ I said to my chauffeur.

  Being rich and polite is such a pain in the ass.

  3

  Summer, 1992

  The Young Eunuch

  Kherun dashed along the palace corridor to fetch the midwife. It was way past midnight, and the labour pains had started suddenly and prematurely. This was sad business. Unexpected, urgent and sad.

  The midwife hurried across the palace garden, muttering an old Arabic prayer. Something about new beginnings and souls, about birth and glory. As Kherun ushered her into the bedroom of the wailing, expectant mother, an old wise owl hooted. (Which old owl is not wise?)

  ‘Kherun! Get some hot water and sheets. Lots of sheets!’ ordered the midwife.

  As Kherun rushed off again, Miriam’s scream echoed in the birthing chamber. Poor girl, thought Kherun. It is going to be a long night for her.

  Once the preparations for childbirth were complete, Kherun had little left to do. She held Miriam’s hand and occasionally touched her forehead, muttering weak words of reassurance from time to time. In her mind all she could think was, You poor, poor khanabadosh girl.

  Miriam, a goatherd’s daughter, was barely fourteen and in childbirth. Kherun imagined the physical agony the girl was going through would be worse than anything she had ever felt before. Worse than being taken away from your family at ten years of age. Worse than being forcefully married off to a man three times your age. Worse, perhaps, than the first time he must have forced himself on you. Kherun shuddered. The thought of the sullen Khan forcing himself on this delicate child made her blood run cold. The Khan had a handsome face, but it was marked by the darkness he held within. Deep lines along the sides of his mouth, a cold gaze and his trademark Pathan nose gave him a formidable appearance.

  Maybe, thought Kherun, the Big Khan did love Miriam. Who knows with these things?

  Although, that seemed unlikely given his sordid reputation. The Khan, their Great Leader and King, had many wives and concubines. But not one of them ever entertained the idea of being loved by him—or even that he was capable of it. Kherun's thoughts wandered. What must it be like to have a woman’s body? To feel a man inside you? Have beautiful, soft breasts? Feel the rigours of childbirth?

  The only times Kherun fought with her Allah were in the dark moments of agony when she was acutely aware that her body would never change. She would never have the curves and crevices that women did. Her voice would never be as sweet as a woman’s. She would never know what it is like to bear a child, to give birth, to bring forth the miracle of life. In that moment, Kherun felt a simmering resentment towards the poor, withering girl whose hand she held. At least she didn’t have to fight her own body, her own sexuality.

  When a baby is born, they are assigned a biological sex - male or female - based on their genitals. But since Kherun was born intersex, with ambiguous private parts, she was branded a hijra at birth. Such children are often referred to as the 'Third Gender' in the Indian subcontinent. Yet, despite her intersex anatomy, Kherun felt every bit a woman and used the pronouns She/Her in Urdu and her native Shina to refer to herself long before it was suitably woke to do so.

  A scream.

  Miriam’s agonized cry jolted Kherun back to the present. She exchanged a knowing look with the midwife. They had suspected this all along: the girl was perhaps too young to survive the night.

  A few hours later, a tired and sleep-deprived Kherun rolled a cigarette and lit it. She took a drag and looked up at the night sky. This tobacco was exquisite. Stolen—no, borrowed!—from the King’s chamber. The Great Khan smoked the best stuff. He indulged in the best of everything, really. He was the King after all. Those who were loyal to him were rewarded, and his challengers routinely punished—flogged or killed. He was not an easy man or a kind one, but he did have a keen eye that saw through all sorts of bullshit. In the Kingdom of Khudir, there was no hiding from the Great Khan.

  Of course, Khudir was a tough kingdom to rule.

  Nestled in the rugged Himalayas, surrounded by subcontinent heavyweights India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and proximate to China and Russia, the kingdom had a turbulent and violent past. There was no doubt it needed a forceful iron hand to govern it, especially since the late 1980s, when the sudden discovery of oil changed everything here. Kherun was no expert in geopolitics, but she understood the tremendous changes that the presence of oil brought to the region and the tsunami of greed and power politics that accompanied it.

  Almost overnight, from being a forgotten and impoverished kingdom of nomads and goatherds in the Himalayas, Khudir became a coveted hotspot, rich with oil money, and its new king a powerful, sought-after ally. The West and the kingdom’s neighbours wooed him, and he let them. He knew he had a winning hand, and he played his cards right.

  The Khan was an ally of the West, and friendly to his neighbours. Often spotted at football games in Europe, at the Grand Prix, and various philanthropic events, he projected an image of being young, progressive and modern.

  But the reality was quite different.

  At home, his people despised and feared him. Public floggings and hangings were the norm. Yet, the outside world remained oblivious—or perhaps they simply did not care. Taking inspiration from his Taliban allies, he passed laws that stripped the women in his kingdom of basic rights. They were forbidden from going out unaccompanied by a male escort. They were not even allowed to read: any woman found reading a book could lose an eye or a finger.

  Cool king abroad. Despot at home. For the world, the poster boy of the good life. Starving people at home.

  Modern Muslim leader overseas. Autocrat at home.

  To this chaotic world, to this man, you are born, little child, thought Kherun. And you are not even aware of it.

  A girl. Hai, afsos.

  Pity. Pity.

  He is not an eager father waiting to know if you are safe and healthy, or how your mother is doing. He is not pacing up and down with anticipation, trepidation, or even the slightest nervous energy. Tonight, as you enter this world, he is not even in the country. Your father is not aware that you were coming—or that you have arrived.

  Welcome to the big, bad world, poor baby girl. Welcome to a shit life, thought Kherun. Maybe the child would mercifully die early of polio or chicken pox or cholera or measles or … whatever else killed infant babies nowadays in mountain kingdoms. Maybe she would survive a miserable childhood only to die just like her teenage mother was going to tonight.

  ‘Treshh!’

  Miriam was asking for water. Her lips were cracked. As the midwife handed her some water, the young mother’s pretty face drained of colour. Her body went limp, as if unable to carry its petite load anymore. Weakly, she asked for her baby and made a herculean attempt to nurse her. The baby seemed grateful for her first meal. It didn’t whimper or cry.

  Miriam lay back slowly. Aware that her body was crumbling from inside, having lost a lot of blood. In a soft voice, she mumbled, ‘This is not what I wanted. I never got what I wanted. Never. Not even once.’

  The midwife tried to pacify her, but the girl went on, delirious, ‘Abba. I forgot to shut the sheep pen. Sorry, Abba! Ammi! See my baby, Ammi!’

  Suddenly, she stopped and looked wide-eyed at the midwife. ‘I’m dying … Ammi. But I cannot leave my baby behind. Promise me … promise me that you will kill her before that Shaitan sets his eyes on her. Promise me!’

  Both Kherun and the midwife gasped. This was a dreadful wish. Her eyes brimming with tears, the midwife gave Kherun a pleading look and stood aside: she could not be entangled in this mess. Kherun stood next to Miriam in a daze.

  ‘Come closer,’ Miriam called out. Kherun knelt by her bedside. ‘You saw everything. You know everything. You could not save me, my dear Kheroo Appi. But save her. Please save her.’

  Appi. Appa. Elder Sister.

  ‘Tell him it’s stillborn. Please. Take her to a well and drown her. Offer her to the Almighty. But don’t let him see her.’

  With these words, Miriam breathed her last.

  CLIP-CLOP. CLIP-CLOP. CLIP-CLOP.

  Across the rugged terrain, Kherun rode for her life, her black steed galloping urgently. Sunrise was only a couple of hours away. She needed to reach her destination before that, before anyone spotted her. Under the dark, stormy sky she rode, right up to the mouth of the holy spring Zsa Zsa.

  It was in those holy waters that she would lay the baby to rest. It was murder. Infanticide. Kherun knew it was wrong. But it was also a mother’s dying wish. Her mind was a whirlpool—of guilt and horror and her commitment to duty.

  Meanwhile, back at the palace, the kind midwife was taking care of Miriam’s last rites. Washing the body and scenting her. Preparing her before she was laid to rest in a grave. Kherun had had to convince the midwife to tell the palace officials that the baby was stillborn. That both mother and babe had died during childbirth. She knew no one would care.

  At first, as Kherun swaddled the baby in layers of cloth, the tender-hearted midwife had protested. Why not let the baby live? Give her to someone? Hide her!

  But Kherun knew it would be too dangerous. Royal blood given to commoners? It was unthinkable.

  If found out, they would both be beheaded for treason, or skinned alive. The Khan might not care about this baby, but the hurt to his honour would be enough for him to hunt down and slaughter all those involved. It was just too risky.

  The sky was just about lightening as Kherun reached the holy spring Zsa Zsa. It was dead quiet. She had had to take a longer detour to avoid the guards who protected the entrance to the holy site. Kherun dismounted from the horse and walked towards the spring. This was easily the most difficult thing she had ever had to do in her life. She looked at the horizon and said a soft prayer. For compassion, for forgiveness.

  Tearfully, she kissed the baby on the forehead. The baby’s face as she slept blissfully, unaware of her fate, tugged at Kherun’s heart, but she knew she had to do it. There was no turning back now. Slowly, painfully, reluctantly, she placed the baby in the spring and let her drown.

  Kherun fell to the ground, crying. What had she done? How would she ever forgive herself for taking an innocent life? She turned to her Allah, unsure if she could have done anything differently.

  Just then, the air resounded with the morning call to prayer. The Azaan.

  The sound brought Kherun back to the present. Still unable to stop her tears, she quickly climbed onto her horse and stealthily hurried back to the city. She would have to return before anyone suspected something was amiss. She could not help the feelings of guilt that surged inside her. The baby had come and gone. An escape from this cruel world. An early and quiet departure from all the tyranny and sorrow and fear. Without any fanfare. Without leaving a mark that she had even existed. Without even a name.

  A girl without a name died today.

  And no one gave

 

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