After a while, Bisma sighed, put her pen down, and looked up at me. “What?”
“This book is so boring.”
“And looking at me is not boring?”
“It really isn’t.”
There was that little hint of a smile again. “You’re an idiot.”
“A lot of people say that.”
She frowned. “I didn’t mean it the way they probably meant it.”
“I know. Come on. Let’s get out of here and do something.”
“Like what?” Bisma asked, almost cautiously.
“I don’t know. What do you do for fun?”
Bisma held her arms out to her sides, like she was embracing the whole library. I rolled my eyes and reached for my backpack. “That’s sad.”
“It’s okay to be a little sad,” she said. There was no smile this time. It almost sounded defensive.
“Yeah… but that’s more than a little sad. You like Zareen’s, right? Let’s go there.”
“Who’s Zareen?”
“Dude. It’s just a Michelin Guide Pakistani restaurant right here in the Bay. How do you not know it?”
“Michelin? Like the car tires from the commercials?”
I stared at her, too stunned to speak.
It must have been some look, because Bisma started to laugh, which drew irritated stares from the other people in the library, who’d already moved away from us because we hadn’t exactly been silent till now. “We’ve got nothing in common, do we?”
“I can think of one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“We’re both going to Zareen’s.”
Bisma looked around the small restaurant, eyes bright. It was a little depressing actually, because these few moments when her guard was down made me realize that this girl was living in a constant eclipse.
“This place is awesome,” she whispered as we stood in line.
A strange thing to say about a restaurant before you’ve even tried their food, but she was talking about the decor. Zareen’s had been decorated by someone who loved books. They dangled from the ceiling from tiny ropes, and there was a shelf where I think you could take a book if you left a book. The walls, a burnt-orange color, had comments from customers handwritten all over them with dark pens and markers.
“It’s like you and I came together and became one.” She turned a little pink when I raised my eyebrows, then bumped my arm with her elbow. “With the books and the food and everything, not…”
She seemed so ridiculously embarrassed, I had to let it go, though it would’ve been a perfect moment for me to show off my world-class funnies. “Do you know what you’re getting?” I asked instead.
“You can order for me. I trust you.”
I whistled. “I don’t even trust my mom that much.”
“I’m a sweet girl.”
“I know you are.”
“Stop it.” Bisma grinned. “I meant I’m a sweets girl. I like desserts.”
“Your favorite?” I asked.
“Anything chocolate.” She nodded toward the cashier. “They’re ready for us.”
Zareen’s serves the closest thing you’ll get to Karachi street food in the Bay Area, so they have some really awesome menu items, but there is nothing they do better, in my opinion, than gola kababs. I ordered two plates of those, along with sheermal, which is kind of like a naan, but the slightest bit sweet, with a kiss of saffron. The soft but crusty ghee-infused bread went perfectly with the velvety beef of the kababs. It was really something.
I ate while Bisma told me more about Rat Queens and some other comic book called Saga. Then she started in on superheroines.
I’d never really appreciated how many superheroines there were until then. Everyone knows the major ones, obviously. Wonder Woman and Black Widow and Batgirl. But there was also a girl called Violet Parr, who Bisma was especially fond of, and another called X-23, and so on.
It dawned on me that there were entire worlds Bisma knew about that were foreign to me, and she obviously liked to talk about them. So I listened without interrupting, except to ask a question or two, because I liked her voice, and I liked how much she enjoyed the topic.
“Sorry,” she said eventually. “I know you don’t care about that stuff. I just—”
“It’s cool,” I said. “Not every conversation can be about food, right?”
“I guess not. But you were right. The kababs were really good.”
It was an understatement, but not enough of one to call her on. “Better than your Arab food place?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “Less poetic, though.”
We went to Tin Pot for dessert. On the short drive over to the creamery, Bisma fiddled around with the radio, found nothing that she wanted to hear, and shut it off. Then after looking at me for a while like I was a math problem she was trying to figure out, she said, “You never told me why.”
“Why what?”
“Why speaking up about the Bengal Famine is so important to you.”
I shrugged. Truth be told, it was more than important to me. It haunted me. But I hadn’t figured out why, which felt weird. People should know themselves. If I couldn’t understand me, then who could?
My first thought was to come up with some way to dodge her question, except there was something about Bisma that made me think she’d like it if I were honest about how I felt. And I wanted her to like me. Her regard felt like it was something worth earning.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was the pictures I saw. I can’t get them out of my head.”
Bisma nodded, but she didn’t seem satisfied with the answer.
“It doesn’t bother you?” I asked.
“Of course it does,” she said. “But, honestly, I’ve seen the pictures too, and I don’t think I would risk failing a class just to give a speech about them. It almost seems… personal to you somehow.”
“It is. Somehow. Did I tell you that my grandfather fought for independence from the Raj? That could be it.”
I drove in silence for a while. Then Bisma said, “Maybe. Or maybe it’s the food.”
“What?”
“Those people who died, they were denied food. I think, maybe, that’s why you can’t… Maybe that’s why it’s touched you so much. You love food more than anyone I know.”
I felt a light bulb flicker and then, reluctantly, go off in my brain. What had Brodeur said when I’d told her about the famine?
Good. Maybe you’ll be a chef after all.
I shook my head. Why couldn’t she have just said it like Bisma? Maybe she’d wanted me to figure it out myself, but that never would’ve happened. I have zero curiosity about what goes on in my own brain. It was kind of awesome that Bisma got me, though.
“You don’t think so?”
“No, I think you’re right,” I said. “When you understand what food is, the idea of shipping it away from hungry people… it’s monstrous. Food is a miracle. It is life. I mean like… literally, you know? And one of the guys responsible for it all gets to be a hero? It isn’t right. And I’ve got to do a good job explaining why to everyone.”
“You will,” Bisma said. “I promise.”
A croissant looks like it’s easy to make, but it isn’t. Making one perfectly requires a lot of patience and skill. It’s worth it, though. When it’s just right, its delicate, crunchy outer shell collapses effortlessly into smooth, flaky layers of divine deliciousness.
I love croissants. Unfortunately, I’m not all that great at baking them.
This isn’t entirely my fault. Chef Brodeur is partly to blame.
Remarquable isn’t a patisserie, so we don’t usually have croissants on the menu. Every once in a while, however, Brodeur will reluctantly use them to make sandwiches for lunch specials, while complaining bitterly about having to cater to American tastes.
No one else who works here seems to have a problem with their croissants, but I’m sure that is only because they get to use a machine, while I hav
e to make them entirely by hand. It is, I’ve been told more than once, critical for my development.
Making a croissant takes three days, which is why some people say that croissants aren’t made; they are grown.
You begin with a poolish, which ferments and bubbles nicely. Then you make the dough, let it rest, and add a large slab of butter. After that you have to stretch the dough out really far to get layers. That’s where my troubles start.
We have a sheeter that everyone else uses but I’m not allowed to touch. I have to use a rolling pin. That gets painful. I complained once, a while back, and Brodeur responded by keeping the sandwiches on as specials for a month. By the end of it, my hands were bruised.
I’d finished with the rolling pin yesterday, so that part of the process was over. Today, I cut the delicate dough into triangles and began to shape it with my fingertips. The process felt familiar and repetitive, which was a good sign.
My mind drifted to Sohrab, because I always thought about Sohrab when I was making croissants. He’d suggested once that it wasn’t proper for Muslims to eat them because, apparently, some seventeenth-century Polish baker had created their crescent shape to celebrate a Christian victory over Islam.
As I put the croissants—which I was definitely going to keep eating no matter what Sohrab thought—in the proofer, I literally crossed my fingers. I was going to get it right this time. I was. It had to happen eventually, right?
The saucier saw the gesture and chuckled, patting me on the back as he went by. I smiled. One reason I loved being in a professional kitchen was that you were surrounded by people who understood food was important to you because it was important to them. No one else ever seemed to get that.
Except for Bisma Akram, I guess. She’d figured out that the Bengal Famine mattered to me because of my connection with food, which was amazing. She’d understood something about me that I hadn’t understood about myself.
Best of all, she believed I could do well in Renaissance Man and take on Churchill at the same time. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had believed that I could succeed, in the contest or in life, by doing what I wanted to do.
Once the first batch of croissants was ready, I brushed on egg wash and baked them. For all the slow, careful steps that it took to get to this stage, the end was fast. You had to bake croissants at high heat or they didn’t rise.
The kitchen was flooded with a warm, buttery smell when Chef Brodeur came by. She looked at my work, which was exactly the right shade of golden brown. When she picked one up and broke it open, it shattered, steam escaped, and the insides looked beautifully delicate and soft.
Brodeur gave an appreciative nod, then took a small bite. “Bien,” she said a moment later.
I waited for the hammer to drop. “But?”
“But nothing. It is well done.”
I grinned, trying really hard not to pinch myself or break into a victory dance in front of Chef.
I’d done it. I’d done it! I’d… done it?
“Really?”
The woman who was both my mentor and tormentor seemed irritated by my surprise. “I do not have time to stand here and reassure you of your own competence. I notice, however, that today you did not grumble as you usually do when making these. That is probably why they turned out well. You know, of course, what the most important ingredient in French food is, yes?”
“Butter?” I ventured.
Brodeur sighed. “No, Danyal. It is but a touch of love, and it makes all the difference.”
The last few weeks had convinced me that asking Bisma to help with Renaissance Man was one of the best decisions I’d ever made. Yes, I was losing out on time with Kaval, but she’d said she wouldn’t help me if I decided to write about the Bengal Famine, so studying up on Churchill and the Raj with her wasn’t an option.
I’d asked everyone I knew for help with schoolwork before. Well, everyone except for my dad. He’d volunteered. But his attempts to teach me usually ended up with him yelling. Mom was way nicer, of course, but she mostly just patted my head and told me not to worry about the answers I was getting wrong. When you’re getting almost everything wrong, that is more aggravating than reassuring.
Sohrab always ended up going on about how memorizing the Quran improved one’s memory and I should do more of that. Zar just handed me a controller so that we could play one game before hitting the books, which we never ended up doing. He was my favorite, and least effective, study buddy.
Bisma was different. No one had just let me talk like she did. They tried to discipline me or soothe me or teach me or distract me. But maybe I just needed to be frustrated for a while. Maybe I needed someone to see how difficult it was for me to do stuff that seemed so much easier for other students.
Bisma never tried to fix me. She didn’t even interrupt when I started to vent. She just let me complain until I asked her, “So what do you think I should do?”
That was when she’d say something like “Let’s come back to it later, Danyal,” or “You just need some distance.”
A lot of the time she was right. If I went back to an argument after a day or two days, I could see its flaws more clearly. Connections that I’d missed became apparent. Sentences I’d written that had looked perfect suddenly sounded awkward. Even typos became easier to spot. It was amazing.
“You’re doing that thing where you just sit there and look at me again,” Bisma said.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about…”
She waited for me to figure out how to explain myself.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s going to sound weird if I say it out loud.”
“I like weird.”
I tried to find the right words. “It’s just… I like hanging out with you. It’s like you know I’m stupid, but you’re cool with it, and that makes me feel less stupid.”
Bisma frowned. She didn’t like it when I called myself dumb. It wasn’t allowed in our study sessions.
Before she could scold me, I went on. “I feel good about myself when I’m around you. Whatever. Like I said, it’s weird. Can I go back to reading now?”
“Now, there’s a sentence you don’t hear Danyal Jilani say every day.”
I felt my face do that thing it did around her, where it got all warm. I decided to pretend that the last two awkward minutes had never happened and went back to my research.
After a moment, Bisma said, “Hey, Danyal?”
Oh God. How was this conversation not over? I mean, I’d totally embarrassed myself as much as possible already, right?
“Yeah?”
“I like hanging out with you too.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At our next study session, Bisma looked up from whatever she was working on, obviously surprised by the question I’d asked her. I guess “Have you ever been in love?” isn’t the kind of thing you expect to be asked in a library.
“What? Where’d that come from?”
“I was just thinking about this friend of mine—Intezar—who won’t shut up about this girl he likes. That’s why I was almost late today. He says it’s love. I think it’s spring fever. That’s a thing, right? It’s hard to tell the difference.”
“Maybe you should stop trying to tell the difference and think about Churchill instead.”
“Not an answer to my question.”
Bisma sighed. “No. I haven’t.” Then she paused, and I was sure she was going to tell me to focus on the project, but instead she said, “What about you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I mean, you know, I’ve been in like with people, like that girl I told you about… but nothing like in the movies. I mean, if you’re going to be in love, it has to be epic, right? Like the girl’s hair starts blowing in slow motion and lightning strikes from the sky. I haven’t ever felt that.”
Bisma laughed. “I don’t know about all that, but… I think it’ll happen for you. I’m sure of it. You’d be easy for a girl to fall in love with.”
What did that mean? “Well… thank you. I should start working, I guess?”
“Sure,” Bisma said. She didn’t move, though. Instead she looked at me like… I don’t know, really. My mom watches this show where people bring their super old stuff to get priced, to see if it is worth something. Sometimes the things they bring are worthless; sometimes they’re really valuable. The way the hosts on that show looked at the antiques was the way Bisma was looking at me then. “Can I ask you something?” she asked hesitantly.
“Sure.”
“Suri told me…” She glanced away and then leaned forward. She whispered so softly that I had to lean forward too, until our noses were almost touching across the library table. I could see my reflection in her light brown eyes. “Suri told me she stole… the tape and gave you another chance to take it.”
“She said if I married—”
“I know. She’s an idiot. What I’m saying is that you could’ve taken the drive from her and never followed through on the second part. Most guys, I think, would have. Why didn’t you?”
I didn’t think she was right about that. In fact, I didn’t know anyone who’d behave that way.
“I’d never do something like that to you. Or anyone.”
Her eyes were bright, shining at me, and she shook her head a little. Her light brown hair grazed my cheek.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just… you’re brilliant.”
I had to laugh at that, library rules or no library rules. “No one I know has ever said that about me.”
“Well,” Bisma said, “I think they’ve all been wrong.”
I was about to sit back down, but she leaned farther forward suddenly and kissed me on the cheek. I stared at her, and she blushed furiously, cleared her throat, and said, “So, like you were saying, back to work.”
“What?”
Bisma grinned. “Back to work, I said.”
“Right. Sure. Yes. That… is why we’re here.”
I stared at the book in front of me without reading it. It seemed like Bisma was doing the same, but I couldn’t be sure.
More Than Just a Pretty Face Page 15