Stealing Nasreen

by Farzana Doctor

  A man approaches from behind, hesitates a moment, and then reaches for her. He tugs her backpack, pulling her back from the yellow line.

  “Careful, there, the wind from these trains could knock over a young lady like you.” She turns to see a middle-aged man, his pale face made ruddy by a recent blush. The doors of the train chime open and the man says, “after you, miss.” She walks past him and looks for a seat at the back of the car. She wants to be far away from him and his good Samaritan’s concern for her. The doors chime closed and the train readies itself to leave again.

  Chapter 17

  IT IS ANOTHER MONDAY evening and Nasreen rushes to finish her case notes before Asha comes to pick her up. She feels guilty that it’s been at least a couple of weeks since their last class. Both she and Asha have been busy, Asha with her papers and she with work and therapy, and they’ve had to cancel on Salma. Nasreen hopes she will have some time to review her Gujarati notebook on the way over in the car. She glances at her watch, shuts down her computer and turns off her desk lamp. The phone rings, and guessing that it is Asha calling from her cell outside the front doors of the building, Nasreen picks up.

  “Psychotherapy program, Nasreen Bastawala speaking,” she says automatically.

  “Hi,” the quiet voice makes Nasreen pay attention. “It’s me, Connie.” Nasreen stays silent a moment, a haze of emotion stopping her from responding. Anger and relief form a fog so thick she can’t see through it to speak. She turns the desk lamp on again but it doesn’t help.

  “I’m sorry to call you at work, but I’ve tried you at home a few times and haven’t been able to reach you. I needed to ask you about something,” Connie speaks quickly, as though she is afraid that Nasreen will hang up. Her tempo signals to Nasreen that this is a possibility. I could just hang up, she thinks. The haze in her head clears.

  “Yes?” She hopes her voice sounds cold to Connie.

  “I think I left my passport back at the apartment.” Nasreen makes the correction in her mind – my apartment. “Can you check for me? I’m going to New York next week. I started looking for my passport and I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I figured I must have left it behind.”

  “OK, I’ll check for you. Where do you think it is?” But Nasreen already knows the answer. She saw the passport in a desk drawer a few weeks ago. She fingered its pages and read its contents like a prime time TV detective hoping to discover some clue to the mystery of their break-up. She’d planned to hold onto this piece of Connie unless she asked after it. A petty act of vengeance. It’s my apartment.

  “Check the desk.” My desk. “I think it’s in the middle drawer. By the way, if there is anything else there that’s mine, could you give me that too? I can come pick up everything later this week, if that’s alright with you.”

  “This week? Um, what day?” The fog rolls back in.

  “Well, how’s Thursday night, maybe around eight?”

  “Thursday? Um … I think that’s fine.”

  “Thanks Nasreen. So,” she says awkwardly, “How are things? You OK?”

  “Yeah, just fine. I have to go. Asha’s picking me up.”

  Nasreen steps out of the building just as Asha’s car pulls up.

  “Hey, you don’t look so good. Did something bad happen at work?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Lots of stuff has been going on lately.” Nasreen tells her about the phone call from Connie.

  “She’s coming to your house? You’re going to let her in?” Asha asks, a tone of disapproval in her voice.

  “Yeah, I guess so. I mean … it will just be a short visit. She just wants to get a few things. Her passport and some other papers. She said she’s going to New York.” Nasreen says matter-of-factly, trying to convince herself that Connie’s brief visit won’t be a big deal.

  “Why now? I mean, doesn’t she still have a key? She could have done this weeks ago.” When Connie moved out, Nasreen had not thought to take the key back and Connie did not offer it up.

  “I don’t know. I guess she realized she was missing the passport when she starting planning her trip. I suppose I’ll have to get the key back when she comes.” Nasreen never imagined Connie coming back to the apartment, at least not in this way. Not just to pick up a passport.

  “Is that going to be OK? Maybe you should have someone with you. What time is she going to be over?”

  “Eight.”

  “I’ve got a class until nine. Maybe you should ask someone to be there, though. You could ask Mona,” Asha suggests, knowing that Nasreen isn’t likely to ask anyone for help.

  “Yeah, maybe. I hope she doesn’t show up with anyone. Would she do that? Bring the new girlfriend? I bet she’s going to New York with her.”

  “Who knows. That would be just the kind of thing the big jerk would do. Like I said, you should have someone there with you,” she says firmly, hoping her friend will listen to her advice for once.

  “Yeah, someone to pose as my new girlfriend,” Nasreen sighs, “Or maybe not just pose. Maybe one will magically appear by Thursday.” Asha rolls her eyes.

  “Speaking of new girlfriends. Let’s go see our Mrs. Paperwala, oh, I mean, your Salma,” she quips sarcastically.

  “Hah, hah, very funny.… But hey, let’s do some vocabulary practice before we get there. I don’t remember much from two weeks ago,” Nasreen says, attempting to change the subject. She flips through her notebook.

  “Fine,” Asha says, giving in, “Gujarati ma waat.”

  A few minutes later, Asha pulls into the parking lot at Salma’s building and fits her hatchback into a guest parking spot. They quiz one another on the previous class’s material as they walk into the building and ride the elevator up to the fifth floor.

  Later, in the Paperwala apartment, Nasreen and Asha pour over Gujarati-English flash cards, Salma cajoling her students through the vocabulary game. So far, Asha is winning by a small margin.

  “Nas, concentrate. How do you say this one, ‘Take care of your health’?”

  “Umm, OK, I remember this one. Tabiyat sambhaljo.”

  “Great!” Salma squeezes her arm and Nasreen feels it grow warm under Salma’s slim fingers. She looks away from Salma and catches Asha’s mischievous smirk.

  “Now just watch your pronunciation.” Salma mouths the words slowly and her students repeat them. “OK, since you two are now even in score, let’s go for one last question, a tiebreaker.” She flips through her homemade cards. “Ah here’s one. ‘Are you married’?”

  Nasreen and Asha look at one another, both knowing this question by heart. They respond simultaneously, competitively, “Tu parneli che?” The two students erupt into laughter.

  “So you know the question well. Now we need another tiebreaker. How about you both try to answer in Gujarati?” says Salma, laughing with them.

  “Finding the right answer to that would be worth a lot. It’s guaranteed that the question is going to be asked by one nosy Aunty or another,” Asha giggles.

  “I agree. An answer that would stop the questioning forever would be priceless,” Nasreen turns to Salma, “Maybe you can help us find the words for this one.”

  “Yes,” Asha continues, “Something along the lines of will you stop asking me that bloody question, or –”

  “It’s none of your goddamn business!” Nasreen exclaims. Unsure whether she understands the joke, Salma watches the interchange with an uncomfortable smile.

  “Or, even if it is legal for me to marry my partner, I still don’t want to get married because it’s a patriarchal institution!” Asha announces triumphantly, “actually, I want to say that I am in a common-law relationship with my female lover. Yes, I want to know how to say that!”

  Nasreen looks over at Salma, and sees that she is no longer participating in the joke. Salma gazes at something in her lap.

&
nbsp; “Well, you could say something like, ‘Na hajo to vichaar nuthi,’” Salma says, her eyes still averted, “which means that you aren’t thinking about marriage right now. That would be one way to answer the question.”

  “But not really the point, is it?” Asha counters.

  “So you’d want to say that you are living with a woman?”

  “Well, yes, and that we are in a relationship.”

  “Or that I’d like to be but I haven’t had any good offers lately,” adds Nasreen, laughing, trying to ease the new tension in the Paperwala kitchen.

  “I don’t know how to say that. And I don’t think you really should anyway. At least not to your grandmothers,” says Salma, gathering up the cue cards and pulling an elastic band around them. “OK, good work. I declare this game a tie.”

  But the conversation didn’t end there, at least not for Salma, who stands in her living room, looking at the raani and her servant at four a.m. She has been up for hours, transfixed by her own memories, and voices from within the painting. Could it be possible that the painting has been talking with me for the past few hours? Except for brief interruptions in which Salma stopped herself, scolding herself for acting like someone insane, the dialogue between her, the raani and the servant, has been continuous, unbroken. Sometimes, they’ve spoken in English, and at other times have broken into a Gujarati-Marathi blend she has to strain to comprehend.

  What has she been discussing with them through the night hours? Her scandalous disclosures began with a story from long ago. She’s crossed the ocean and many years with her confessions, dredging up history she has not considered for over a decade. When she is finished with her tale, she takes in a hungry breath, inhaling deeply, as though she has been starved for air all night. She decides that she has said enough for now, and feels a little lighter and more innocent. She unhooks the painting from the wall, sets it down on the couch and kisses the raani on her painted cheek in thanks for her listening ear, leaving a small greasy smudge on the glass. This gush of gratitude leaves her feeling a little silly and she hastily wipes the glass clean with the edge of her sleeve.

  She is about to return the painting to the wall again, but hesitates. She scrutinizes the servant’s eyes, blinks and then turns the painting face side down on the couch. She looks at the back of the canvas, searching for the treasure she hid there weeks earlier. In the dim light she spies the shine of plastic and metal and carefully removes the earring from inside its wrapping. She takes the silver teardrop into her palm, rubs her index finger over the smooth metal, the earring a kind of talisman to another place, another world, a reality different to her own. After a few moments of this devotion, she replaces the package from where she found it, turns the frame over again and returns it to the wall.

  She inspects the painting to ensure that she has hung it plumb and notices from the servant’s strange expression that something is amiss. Yes, it seems her face has changed. Her eyebrows have arched, her eyes have widened and her red lips have pursed as though she is trying to tell her something. But what? What could be bothering her? She studies the servant’s odd countenance. Although it is still not morning and the living room is dark, Salma thinks she is able to lip-read the servant mouthing the words, “It’s been moved.”

  “What?” Salma gasps, peering more closely at the painting, but the servant’s lips are still, the warning unrepeated. Hurriedly, she takes the painting down from the wall and turns it face side down once again. She calculates the position of the plastic bag with its hidden treasure and sees it. Yes, that’s what’s different. The earring is in the wrong place, relocated to the opposite corner from where she had placed it days before. She knows, is in fact positive of this fact, because she had put it in the right hand corner of the photo, where she surmised her Highness’s heart would be. She had not placed it under her feet, where it lies hidden now. Was this her mistake, made just a moment ago? She tries to remember. No, she is sure this is where she found it when she first searched for it tonight. She turns the painting over again and examines the women’s visages for anything that will give meaning to this relocation, this trick being played on her. The raani tells her nothing and neither does the servant. She anxiously turns the painting over again and snatches the plastic package out from the frame’s edge, sure that her hiding spot has been violated. Shaffiq. Her heart pounds so fast now, she is forced to sit down on the couch beside the raani and the servant.

  Trying to find a place of calm within herself, she fingers the smooth silver earring and considers the soft ear to which it once belonged. She rubs the teardrop slowly against her cheek, feeling a warm flush spread across her face. She furtively guides its stem through the tiny hidden hole in her earlobe, feeling the metal sliding through, penetrating it. The heat from her cheek prickles her ears and rushes down her neck, across her chest before heading down through her stomach and between her thighs. She closes her eyes, exhales languidly. She runs her fingers through her hair, thinking about Nas’s tresses, so lustrous, long, and shiny and then the hair in her imagination starts to change form, becoming short. It morphs in thickness, develops waves and takes on a hint of sandalwood. Raj.

  She opens her eyes, interrupting the reverie and pulls the earring from her ear. She replaces the plastic wrap and her body slowly begins to cool itself. She tells herself that she should be reasonable. She is not that kind of woman, not like her two students.

  And this is really the heart of the matter, the spark that ignited her insomniac night with the raani and the servant. Salma is truly caught off guard by her students’ recent disclosures. She never thought that Asha and Nas were that way. Lesbians. Well, maybe Asha, but not Nas, certainly. Not that she is an expert about women with queer ways; she had only known a couple like that in India.

  Now that she knows about her students, does it change anything for her? Maybe. Before she puts the raani and the servant back on their perch, she takes some tape from the kitchen, and repositions the plastic pouch. She fastens it to the centre of the backing, making a kind of bull’s eye. Yes, that’s how it changes things for her. Her students’ desires make her own longing, the longing she has been feeling all her life and now so recently with Nas, all the more visible. It gives it a name.

  Salma told the raani and her servant something that no one else knows:

  Salma and her closest friend, Ritu, used to meet after work at a little Bandra café. Not only was Ritu her oldest friend, but she was a neighbour, an old schoolmate and now a fellow teacher. Just as they had walked to school together when they were young, the two women continued on a similar path as young adults, both going to teacher’s college and becoming primary school teachers at local schools. Baldev’s was a convenient place to meet one another at the end of the teaching day.

  Despite their similarities, the two friends had developed vastly different opinions on many of life’s questions. Perhaps it was their fondness for one another that allowed them the comfort of expressing their opposing views with such vehemence.

  That day, they found themselves arguing about the topic of marriage: Ritu’s upcoming wedding and Salma’s determination to never wed. The argument was becoming quite heated.

  “You are only marrying Madhu, who you know is so incompatible with you, so that you won’t end up an old maid. You’re bowing to your parents’ pressure,” Salma scolded her friend.

  “Well maybe my parents do know what’s right for me. After all don’t they seem happily married? And look at us! We’re already twenty-four. We need to settle down soon before we get too old. You’d better start taking this seriously yourself.”

  Back then, Salma and Ritu were firmly wedged in an age group where all their contemporaries were either already married, or were about to be wed. So, just a few months earlier, Ritu had celebrated her engagement to a young engineer from their neighbourhood. Salma found Madhu to be somewhat square, the opposite of fashionable Ritu who loved to go ou
t to watch all the new films, listen to the latest music coming from Britain, and challenge her parents’ rules. But somehow Ritu had acquiesced to her parents’ conservative choice and was even showing a measure of excitement about her upcoming betrothal. In fact, all she talked about those days was Madhu this, Madhu that. She could spend entire afternoons talking non-stop about how pretty her sari would look and how much delicious food had been ordered for the celebrations. Salma yawned through these discussions and wondered what her friend could possibly find interesting about Madhu or the elaborate wedding arrangements.

  Each year since completing her A-levels, Salma had become more vocal about her anti-marriage sentiments and she loved having this familiar argument with Ritu. It made her feel sure about herself, articulate, progressive. In truth, Ritu was an easier target for her diatribes than her own nagging parents. With them, she was more passive. She went along with their plans to meet this cousin’s cousin or that uncle’s friend’s son. She got dressed up in her best clothes, made small talk and then one by one rejected each suitor. This strategy, although admittedly labour intensive, was easier than being honest with her parents. They would never understand her views. Rather than trying to convince them, she hoped to tire them out until they finally gave up on her.

  Salma and Ritu did not only have arguments. They sometimes talked about the children they taught, a mutually pleasurable topic of discussion. They also liked to watch the stylish crowd that packed Baldev’s after work. While they sat eating mango kulfi, Ritu and Salma eyed the smart- looking couples and handsome men drinking coffee. The two entertained one another with their appraisals of the customers around them.