She looked up and gave me a huge grin as I approached. “Hi,” she said.
I sat down across from her. “Hey. What are you doing here?”
“I came looking for you. I heard you worked here.”
“I figured that part out,” I said with a smile. “Why are you here?”
“That,” she said with an approving nod, “is a better question.”
“Uh… thanks. Are you going to answer it?”
“I came to tell you,” Suri said, drawing the words out slowly, then pushing the rest out as quickly as she could, “that I’m sorry about the other night and that shouldn’t have happened and Abbu can be so awful and it’s so unfair and that I think you should totally marry Bisma because she’s so awesome and like no one gives her a chance because of one mistake and I think that’s terrible and that you were kind of awesome too so you’d be good together.”
I let her catch her breath, wondering if she’d go on.
She did. “And also that I don’t want to live there anymore because I ran away from home and I told everyone at school that I’m living with you now so can I please live with you?”
“What?” I asked, my surprised shout echoing across the empty room.
Suri giggled. “That last part was a joke.”
“Oh. You’re hilarious.”
“Totally hilarious,” she agreed. Suri quickly bent down to reach for her backpack but hit her head on the table on her way back up. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“Language,” I said.
“God,” Suri said. “Don’t be such an uncle.” She fumbled around inside her pack and pulled out a USB drive. It looked identical to the one that her father had offered me the other night. “I stole it from Abbu, and I’m going to destroy it. Unless… I mean, have you rethought his offer? It’d be really messed up if you did, but I guess you can have this if you’re going to marry her.”
“What? No. Dude, this whole thing is… so weird.”
“Yup, it’s totally fucked up,” Suri agreed enthusiastically.
“Can you stop swearing? You shouldn’t be talking like that. How old are you? Twelve?”
“I’m fifteen.” She probably couldn’t have sounded more offended if I’d said something blasphemous. She didn’t look or act her age, though, so I’m not sure it was my fault I’d gotten it wrong. “Mostly.”
“Anyway, I don’t…” I took a deep breath. “There isn’t anything wrong with Bisma. She seems lovely.”
“She is.”
“I just don’t think we’re a match.”
“That’s only because you don’t know her yet,” Suri insisted.
“Maybe, but—”
“So, I guess it’s a good thing she’s on her way here now.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. This was a dream. A bad one. Wasn’t it? Nope. Suri was sitting before me, looking at me with pitifully pleading eyes. “Look,” I said, “I appreciate that you want your sister to be happy, but I can’t marry someone because I feel sorry for her. That’d be stupid.”
“It’d be totally stupid.” Suri nodded, her tone cheerful. “Which is why I didn’t ask you to do that. I asked you to marry her because she’s the nicest, sweetest person ever in the history of people everywhere.”
I started to say something, but she was not done talking.
“I mean, yeah, she did a stupid, stupid, stooooopid thing, but it’s like totally our hang-ups, right? I mean, other people do it all the time, and like, isn’t there a huge population boom problem in India and Pakistan? All those babies are coming from somewhere. People are drilling a lot of rods into a lot of holes, is what I’m saying, and Bisma’s screwed for life because she didn’t, like, sign the proper forms before she did it?”
“I—”
“And now she has to live with all this patriarchy bullshit, while the guy who recorded her totally got away with it because Bisma and our parents didn’t want to report him and make a big scene. That is such weak sauce.”
“Do I get to say something soon?”
“No,” Suri joked. At least, I think she was joking. “Just, like, have lunch with her or something, you know. What have you got to lose?”
That was a fair question, I guess.
Suri’s phone rang. “It’s her,” she said, hopping off her chair and jogging to the front door. “Yeah. I’m going to let you in. No, I’m not coming outside. Danyal wants to see you.”
I groaned and got to my feet. This was going to be awkward.
Bisma walked in moments later, saw me, and blushed prettily, looking away for a moment before glancing back. She was wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt today, with a pair of jeans that highlighted her slender legs. “Hi,” she said.
“Hey.” I smiled at her, and then realized something was different. “You’re not wearing your glasses.”
“She wears contacts almost all the time,” Suri said, “just not on rishta meetings. She thinks it’s dishonest. Isn’t that awesome?”
Bisma shook her head. “Yeah. I’m a paragon of virtue. Let’s go, Suri.”
“But I thought—”
“Suraiya.” Bisma’s tone was sharper than one of Chef Brodeur’s knives. “Right. Now.”
Suri gave a world-weary huff and stomped her way back to the table we’d been sitting at.
“I’m sorry about her,” Bisma said. “This is really unfair to you. All of this has been.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. We’re not awful people. Really.”
“I don’t think you’re awful.”
“He totally doesn’t,” Suri called from the table. “In fact, he wants to go on a date with you next weekend.”
I turned to look at her, surprised, but Suri had a perfectly innocent expression on her face, as if all the truth in the universe was collected within her.
Bisma had apparently seen this look before. “Can you please not embarrass me any more than you already—”
“No,” I said, “it’s true.”
I don’t know why I said that.
Okay, I know exactly why. Because there was nothing else I could bear to do. I’d met Bisma all of two times, and I’d seen her go through more than I’d ever seen anyone else put up with. I didn’t want our third meeting to be humiliating for her too.
Bisma stared at me, as if she couldn’t believe I was really there. Then she shook her head. “No. Don’t. Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“You know what. You’re trying to be all noble and chivalrous, and just… I don’t need to be rescued.”
I held up my hands. “Not trying to do that. I just… I had fun when we got coffee. We should hang out. Like friends. You seem like a cool person.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, as if I were a pet store owner trying to sell her a weasel by telling her it was a cuddly little bunny rabbit. “Friends?”
“Friends. You… have friends, right?”
“A few.”
“Then maybe you could use another one?”
Bisma crossed her arms and studied me for a galactically long time. It felt like my soul was being weighed by the scales of Libra. “Fine,” she said. “But I’ll pay for my own food.”
“Sure. You can pay for my food too if you want. I’m pretty much always broke.”
That made her smile, and Suri gave me a thumbs-up, and for like a second, it looked like this was miraculously going to end well, when Chef Brodeur stormed into the room, a scowl on her face, waving her toque in the air, as if trying to get rid of a particularly annoying bee.
“What is all this chatter? I am working on the books, Mr. Jilani. Do you know how much I hate account—” She saw my two visitors, and all of a sudden there was a wide, gracious smile on her face. “Ah, we have guests.”
Of course, I thought. Did she think I was out here just talking to myself?
“Yes, Chef,” I said.
She ignored me completely. “Lovely guests, at that. You are, of course, most welcome. Unfortunately, as you
can see, we are closed at the moment. So, I can only assume that this imbecile let you in.”
“We were just leaving,” Bisma said. “I’m so sorry for our intrusion.”
“Not at all,” Brodeur said magnanimously. “I’m so entirely charmed to meet you, my dear. You are?”
“Bisma. This is my sister, Suri.”
“So, you are the girl my chef was thinking about on Friday.”
Bisma blushed and looked away.
“He made pasta because of you. I’m not a particular devotee of pasta myself. But given how unexpectedly well it turned out, I do hope that you make Chef Danyal cook for you all the time. And that his food gives you plenty of little deaths.”
I stared at her. Chef Danyal? Where had that come from? I was a line cook. And little deaths? Wasn’t that French for orgasms? She was asking Bisma if I’d given her foodgasms! I wanted to die.
“Chef,” I begged, hoping she’d stop talking.
“What are you doing standing there?” she said. It was a bark more than a human noise, the good old Brodeur I knew and vaguely disliked. “Go make these girls something to eat.”
“The kitchen is closed, Chef.”
“I know that, you idiot. Open it.”
“No,” Bisma said. “Really. Thank you. We’ll come back at a more convenient time. We were just leaving.”
“And actually, I’m not scheduled for a shift today, so I’ll just—”
“Go to the kitchen and start preparing for the day’s work,” she said.
I nodded. “Right. Absolutely. That’s exactly what I was going to say.”
A few days later, I met Bisma outside Powell Street Station. She’d put on a black leather jacket and black jeans. Today she’d worn her contacts and tied her brown hair up, and she looked really nice. She was wearing another superhero T-shirt, red with a yellow starburst pattern on it. I couldn’t identify the symbol, but I stared at it for a little too long, trying to place it.
“Are you staring at my chest or at my shirt?”
My ears grew warm. How did she keep doing that? I straightened to my full height and said, “I’m not sure what the right answer to that question is.”
“It’s Captain Marvel.”
“Oh right. Him.”
“Her,” Bisma said. “This date is not off to a good start for you.”
“I thought it wasn’t a date,” I said.
“Did you?” She nodded at me, at my clothes actually, and my whole face felt hot now. So I’d dressed up a little. I was wearing my best button-down shirt, a Brooks Brothers one that I’d gotten in an amazing sale online, with gray slacks and Spanish leather loafers I’d saved up to buy. I’d also put on a maroon wool blazer, which it was still a little too warm for.
I stared down at my feet. “We agreed to go to dinner.”
“Yeah. To like a falafel place or something. I didn’t realize you were going to get all fancy.”
“Sorry. We never actually talked about where we were going, though.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You look good.”
“That can’t be helped.”
She shook her head. “There’s that confidence again.”
Without asking me where I wanted to go, she started walking, setting a brisk pace. I followed without complaint. The tall, glitzy shopping plazas around us vanished abruptly as we walked, entering a less-than-ideal-looking neighborhood.
The thing about San Francisco that surprises a lot of people is how sudden it is. You’ll be in a perfectly nice area one second, and the next, everything is janky, and then things go back to being posh. The city is fused together in unexpected ways, like it wasn’t thought out, which I suppose it wasn’t. This makes it feel like an organic, living thing.
After a few minutes, Bisma slowed and came to a stop outside a small shop with a faded sign that had once been a deep blue, I suspect, but now was the blue of the sky on a clear day. The place was called Arab Food Restaurant.
“Creative name,” I said.
“Accurate, though.”
It took me a moment to realize that she was waiting for me to open the door for her, and I did, letting out a rush of air carrying the charred smell of overdone beef and the welcoming embrace of freshly baked bread. I followed her in and saw that the restaurant was basic, which I suppose is fairly typical of shawarma spots, with cold white walls and uncomfortable plastic furniture.
“Is the food here really good?” I asked.
“No.”
I wanted to ask Bisma why we were here, then, and I almost did, but there was something in the way that she was looking at me, with those expressive brown eyes of hers, which made me realize she wanted me to ask that very question. For some reason, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.
I ordered what she ordered, a combo plate that came with shredded beef, chicken, and lamb served on yellow rice—way too much food coloring, in my opinion—and some pita bread, along with a “salad,” which was just lettuce, a couple of tomato slices, and a little radish.
And Bisma was right. The food was mediocre. She sprinkled a bunch of sumac on top of the meat as soon as it arrived, and with just one taste, I knew why. It was so terribly underseasoned that my resolve to not ask why we were here broke. “Is this a joke?”
“What?”
“This place. Taking the wannabe chef to a really bad restaurant, I mean.”
Wordlessly, she slid the tray of sauces that we’d been given across the table. I tried the tahini, and it was really good tahini, without too much garlic, and the hummus was smooth and light.
“I like to come here,” she said, “because it’s like… a reminder, you know, that you can screw up everything you do, but if you do one thing right, maybe that redeems you. It’s hopeful food.”
I smiled at her. “I like that.”
“Are you ever going to come back?”
“Never,” I said.
Bisma laughed, and I was struck by how different she seemed when her guard went down and she just existed, without worry, without pain. It wasn’t an infectious laugh, or very loud, or musical. It was just… pure.
I wished she’d laugh more, but people laugh when they have a reason to laugh, and people who have joy in their lives laugh more than people who don’t.
I was taught that there is a Book of Destiny in which the details of our lives are written. When we will be born, how long we will live, and all that. Some people think that the details are specific. They’d say it was written that I would come with Bisma to eat this meal, and that every little moment leading up to this moment, and every moment spreading out from it, has already been plotted.
Others say that there was more freedom in one’s life, like maybe Bisma and I had to come here, but what we ordered was up to us, and that choice, more than anything else, determined the quality of our experience.
Whether the Book is general or whether it is specific, the quality of the life we are given, I think, may not depend on how long it is, or how rich we are in it, as much as it depends on how much laughter is given to us.
“What are you thinking?” Bisma asked.
“You’ve got a pretty laugh.”
She ducked her head a little, and I think she was pleased with the compliment.
I said, “So what’s with the superheroes?”
“I’m a nerd.”
“Lots of people are nerds. Not everyone wears Supergirl underwear.”
“Hey. I don’t—”
“Suri told me.”
“That little… I can’t believe she told you that.” Bisma narrowed her eyes at me. “Wait. You’re lying. She didn’t tell you.”
“You just did, though.”
Bisma sighed and turned her attention back to her food. The way she ate annoyed me. She was eating quickly, efficiently, without joy or pleasure. I don’t understand people who eat without taking time to appreciate their food. Then again, there wasn’t a lot to enjoy here.
Just when the silence was getting awkwa
rd, Bisma made it worse. “I’m sorry about my father.”
“Uh… it’s okay.”
“No. It’s not.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “It was worse for you than it was for me.”
“I’m used to it.”
“That’s… rough.”
Another silence.
“My father is a very angry person,” she said. “He’s been angry his entire life, or my entire life, anyway. He kind of hates me, hates us, so…”
I wanted to tell her that he didn’t hate her, but what the hell did I know?
“You know what watta satta is?”
I did. It was a custom in some parts of Pakistan, a trade. You’d have two families, each with a son and daughter of marriageable age. The son from the first family would marry the daughter from the second family, and the son from the second family would, in exchange, marry the daughter from the first.
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, my aunt—my dad’s sister—there was trouble getting her married, I guess, though no one has ever told me why, and my mom’s brother agreed to marry her.”
“In exchange for your dad marrying your mom.”
“Yeah. Anyway, my mom says that my dad was head over heels for this other girl—can you imagine?—and he was heartbroken to have to marry my mom, but he did it for my aunt’s sake.”
The Love Story of Jaleel Akram. Who’d have thought?
“I think he’s always resented my mom, though it wasn’t her fault, and I think he also resents us—Suri and me—a little. The life he’s living now, it wasn’t the life that he wanted for himself. So, he’s angry all the time, and it builds up inside him, and he has to let it out. I learned early that if I acted out, if I gave him a reason to scream at me, then he wouldn’t take it out on my mom. She’s a gentle soul. I felt like I had to protect her.”
“Like a superhero.”
Bisma smiled. “Yeah. It’s stupid. I know.”
“It’s not stupid.”
“Anyway, I’m like totally oversharing, but I thought, given everything, you should know why my family is so weird. My dad isn’t like… a villain or something. He’s just doing the best he can.”
Was he, though? The guy had been in love with a girl and was forced to marry someone else. That totally sucked, but how long could he use that to justify being an asshole? Six months? A year? Not twenty years, that was for sure. Mr. Akram had held on to his anger way past its expiration date.
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