Mehendi TidEs
Mehendi
TidEs
A NOVEL
siobhAn Malany
NEW YORK
NASHVILLE • MELBOURNE • VANCOUVER
Mehendi TidEs
A NOVEL
© 2018 Siobhan Malany
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other‚—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Some places are factual but used in a fictional setting.
Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com
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ISBN 978-1-68350-400-9 paperback
ISBN 978-1-68350-401-6 eBook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017900290
Cover Design by:
Rachel Lopez
www.r2cdesign.com
Interior Design by:
Bonnie Bushman
The Whole Caboodle Graphic Design
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To my parents—
For giving me the gift of international travel in my youth, and with it the confidence and compassion to discover.
I love you.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Butterfly Wallpaper
Chapter 2 Wrapped in Faith
Chapter 3 Rockfield to Bombay
Chapter 4 Visitor at Eid
Chapter 5 Sister Cities
Chapter 6 A Sacrifice
Chapter 7 Banjara Hills
Chapter 8 Letters
Chapter 9 White Mosque, Black Stone
Chapter 10 Are You Listening, Lord Ganesha?
Chapter 11 Garden at the Tombs
Chapter 12 Summoned to Marriage
Chapter 13 Rain on the Windshield
Chapter 14 Road from Begumpet
Chapter 15 Krishna’s Darkroom
Chapter 16 Bombing of Bohri Bazaar
Chapter 17 Second Chances
Chapter 18 Parade of Trays
Chapter 19 Raji’s Charm
Chapter 20 Dance in the Pines
Chapter 21 Silk Lining
Chapter 22 Returning Home
Chapter 23 Legacy
Chapter 24 Souls
Chapter 25 Debut
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Mario, my husband, my best critic and supporter, for your insight into the characters’ development and for the many weekend outings you took with our boys that gave me precious time to write. I could not have written this book without you.
Lucas and Lennox for inspiring me everytime I look at both of you.
Arshia, my forever friend, for taking me with you.
Indira for your friendship, visits, and inspiring conversations.
Safia and Mohammad for being my family away from home.
To all of the families and friends that shared their homes and lives with me while I was traveling overseas in the countries of India, Pakistan, Australia, Wales, Germany, Croatia, and Macedonia.
Caitlin Perry for your editing and patience through many, many versions of this story.
Shae Vasile for your wonderful illustration of India.
To my family for their love and support.
Principal Characters
(In Alphabetical Order)
Anees Nasreen’s cousin and brother to Rahim and Tariq
Arwah Nasreen’s cousin
Aunty Samina Nasreen’s aunt; mother to Hari, Max, Yasmine, and Azra
Aunty Zehba Nasreen’s aunt; mother to Rahim, Anees, and Tariq
Azra Nasreen’s young cousin; sister to Hari, Max, and Yasmine
Dean Rowbottom Dean of Kate’s graduate college
Dr. Crone Kate’s new graduate advisor
Dr. Khan Neighbor of Nasreen’s family
Dr. Schwitz Kate’s PhD advisor
Dr. Elber Chair of the biochemistry department
Faiz Haseena’s cousin, who is attracted to Nasreen
Haroon “Hari,” Nasreen’s cousin; brother to Max, Yasmine, and Azra
Haseena Rahim’s bride
Ian Kate’s father
Kate McKenna Protagonist; Nasreen’s and Krishna’s childhood friend
Krishna Desai Protagonist; Kate’s Hindu-American friend
Laila Nasreen’s mother
Mamujan Nasreen’s eldest maternal uncle
Maqsood “Max,” Nasreen’s cousin; brother to Hari, Yasmine, and Azra
Marah Bahri Nanima’s sister-in-law
Mona Nasreen’s neighborhood friend
Mumanijan Nasreen’s eldest uncle’s wife
Mustafa Nasreen’s husband
Nanima Nasreen’s grandmother
Nasreen Abdel Protagonist; Kate’s Muslim-American friend
Neil Kate’s ex-boyfriend
Nishi Raji’s brother
Rahim Nasreen’s eldest cousin
Rahmsing Nanima’s servant
Rayah Anees’s fiancé
Sameer Nasreen’s twin brother
Sana Nasreen’s younger sister
Sara Nasreen’s friend; Shabana’s sister
Saritha Krishna’s mother
Shabana Nasreen’s friend; Sara’s sister
Suneel Krishna’s father
Tariq Nasreen’s cousin; brother to Rahim and Anees
Yasmine Nasreen’s closest cousin; sister to Hari, Max, and Azra
“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.”
—WENDELL BERRY, American novelist and poet
Chapter 1
Butterfly WallpapEr
Chicago 1987
Sixteen-year-old kate hurried in the chill of the afternoon, past the blue Chevy Malibu in the driveway, gave a quick rap at the door to her best friend Nasreen’s house, turned the knob impatiently, pressed her shoulder against the door until it opened, and scuffed across the shag rug. Warm scents of marsala and cinnamon immediately enveloped her senses.
She kicked off her shoes in the foyer and left them among the mound of sneakers and chappals.1*
Sana, Nasreen’s intuitive younger sister, was the first to greet her.
“Hi Kate,” she said, excited. “Will you play with me? Nasreen is crying again.”
“She is?” Kate asked. “I’ll see what’s up and then I will play with you.”
“Promise?”
Sana was holding a ragdoll and brushed the yarn hair from its face.
“I promise.”
Sameer, Nasreen’s twin, was on the phone, pacing and speaking Urdu and English, switching back and forth rapidly between both tongues. As twins, Nasreen and Sameer had the same walnut-shaped eyes and brown-black wavy hair, and both were tall, but Sameer’s lanky shape and gaunt face resembled nothing of Nasreen’s full, curv
y figure. Sameer noticed Kate as she reached the top of the stairs and gave a quick arrogant nod in her direction. She dismissed him and followed the spiced aroma into the kitchen.
Nasreen’s mother, Laila, pushed plump meatballs coated with mustard seeds and red chilies around in sputtering grease with the tip of a spatula. She removed the lid from the large copper blackened pot on the back burner. The pot, dented from years of use, was probably passed down through generations of Indian wives. Steam and scents of South Indian cuisine billowed forth, covering the spice rack on the shelf above the stove. Laila leaned forward to peer into the pot.
“As-salaam-alaikum,” Kate said, smiling.
“Oh!” Laila, startled, looked up to see her daughter’s closest friend in the doorway. “Wa-alaikum-salaam,” she returned. “I did not hear you come in.”
She wiped her glistening brow with the back of her hand, her fingers smeared with bits of beef and spices. Several strands of black hair and sprigs of gray had escaped her bun and stuck out in a thick wave across her forehead.
“There is a moving van in front of Dr. Khan’s house,” Kate said, attempting small talk.
Dr. Khan, a slight-framed, attractive Indian doctor fresh out of residency, had just moved into the neighborhood with his young wife a few months ago, right before the holidays. He worked at the cancer clinic in the city. Two weeks earlier he had been attacked walking to his car after late-night rounds and suffered cuts, a broken nose, and bruised ribs.
“Oh, the poor man!” Laila exclaimed. “It is no wonder he and his young wife do not feel safe here. It is a shame. Such random violence in our city! They are moving to Michigan. We liked them very much.”
Kate nodded, not sure what to say.
“Is Nasreen in her room?” she finally asked.
“Yes. She will not talk to me,” Laila said, rocking her head side to side in a pendulum motion. “I do not know what is wrong. She is being very, very difficult.” She motioned with her greased hand as a kind of surrender. “First she cuts off all of her beautiful long hair. If I did that when I was her age, my Ammi would have locked me in my room for two weeks!”
Kate knew Laila would never lock Nasreen in her room.
“Now she will not stop crying,” Laila continued. “She says she is ill and cannot go to mosque. You go, please,” she urged, replacing the lid on the dented pot and picking up the spatula again, signaling an end to their small talk.
Down the yellow striped wallpapered hall, Kate knocked on Nasreen’s bedroom door.
“It’s Kate,” she whispered, placing her head against the door.
A classic tune played softly inside. She opened the door slowly and scanned the familiar white and pink bedroom with butterfly wallpaper.
“Nasreen?”
“Here,” Nasreen answered. “I thought you were my mother.”
Kate peered over the bed. Nasreen was sitting on the floor, hugging her long legs, glancing through the soft chiffon curtains through raw, puffy eyes.
“Why are you crying over listening to the musical La Bohème?” Kate asked.
Nasreen looked up at her friend in the doorway and glared. Kate recognized the pained look of bygone love on her best friend’s face.
She closed the door behind her and lunged across the bed. Her chin rested on her fists, elbows sinking into the soft white flowered comforter.
“Your hair is growing out. I think it looks sophisticated,” Kate said cheerfully.
“Tell that to my mother,” Nasreen quipped. “She acts like I have summoned the evil spirits by cutting my hair so short. I have been covering my hair with a headscarf to calm her nerves. On the plus side, my mother has bought me several new scarves.” She smiled cheekily.
“I was talking to your mom about Dr. Khan. He’s moving!” Kate exclaimed.
Nasreen shrugged. “Yes. It is for the best. Considering what happened…that he was beaten. He should take his wife and move to a safer city.”
“Do you think it was a hate crime? Because he is Indian? Why didn’t they steal his wallet?” Kate asked, still baffled by the troubling event.
“How can you rationalize the madness? He should have known better than to walk in that area late at night.”
Kate thought that Nasreen seemed strangely indifferent, even mean-spirited as if Dr. Khan deserved it.
“What is wrong, Nasreen? Sana says you have been crying, and I can see that look in your eyes. Tell me!” Kate demanded.
“We are going to India and Pakistan.”
“India? Pakistan? When? How long?” Kate asked excitedly.
“June. Eight weeks. We are going for a visit. And a wedding,” Nasreen mumbled.
Kate sucked in her breath. Her mind rattled with thoughts of Nasreen married off to someone strange, someone old. She is not yet seventeen. What about the rest of high school? No! It’s too soon!
“Rahim is arranged to be married to a girl in Karachi,” Nasreen announced.
“Oh thank God!” Kate sputtered, releasing her breath.
“What?” Nasreen shot her a look of annoyance.
“Nothing. I just thought…never mind.” She shook her head.
“You thought it was me,” Nasreen said matter-of-factly. “I am not getting married. Not now, anyway.”
“I don’t get it,” Kate said. “Why are you crying over your cousin Rahim getting married or that you are going to India? Both seem exciting.”
“Aunty Zehba arranged Anees’s engagement too. While shopping for one son’s bride you might as well find the other son a bride,” Nasreen remarked caustically. “Rahim’s wedding is first because he is the eldest, and Aunty Zehba expects everyone to attend. Anees’s wedding will be sometime next spring. She is planning a large engagement party when we are in Pakistan.”
“I’m sorry,” Kate said shyly. “I’m sorry Anees is engaged.”
“What is there to be sorry about?” Nasreen snapped.
She gazed out the window again. There was, so it seemed for Nasreen, something deeper than teenage heartache.
“It was never in our fates to be together. He is twenty-three now and needs a bride,” she said after a pause. “He always told me he would marry whoever his mother chooses. I respect that.”
“Why doesn’t she choose you? She is your aunt. Why not ask her? I mean, if it is what you both want?” Kate asked awkwardly.
She had never fully grasped the depth of Nasreen and Anees’s infatuation, if that’s what it was—the close bond between cousins whose difference in age spanned adolescence and young adulthood.
Kate was jealous of Nasreen’s maturity when it came to romance and intrigued by her power to attract the attention of a man—not a boy, but a man. Kate learned about love from conversations with Nasreen, a girl forbidden to date and whose matrimonial fate would soon be arranged in accordance with Indian culture.
“Aunty Zehba would never choose me,” Nasreen snapped. “And she will never know!” She flashed Kate a look of warning.
“Why? Because you and he are cousins?”
“Cousins get married all the time in our culture,” Nasreen said firmly. “But no! Anees is her favorite son. Only a wife from Pakistan is suitable. Not someone who grew up in America,” she added defensively. “I just wish he had the courage to tell me himself, you know? My mother told me!”
Kate did not reply. She listened instead to the soundtrack streaming from the tape deck on the floor. Vinyl records and cassette cases littered the pink speckled rug.
“I know it hurts, but there is time for you,” Kate said. “Just promise me you will not run off and get married our senior year and leave me here alone in stuffy, cliquey Rockfield High. You’re my best friend!”
Suddenly, Nasreen broke into violent tears. She rocked back and forth still hugging her knees, heaving.
“Nasreen! What is it?” Kate shouted in panic. “Should I get your mother?”
“No!” Nasreen said, a look of apprehension in her eyes.
“What is goi
ng on with you?”
“I’m late!”
Kate was shocked.
Nasreen wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“What? You and Anees were having…sex?” Kate’s mouth fell wide open.
“It was a mistake,” Nasreen blurted.
“A mistake? He is twenty-three! And now he is engaged!”
“It’s not his fault,” Nasreen said breathlessly. She started to say more but did not.
“Why are you defending him?” Kate was visibly angry now.
“I shouldn’t have told you,” Nasreen snapped.
Nasreen had too much religious conviction to be so careless. It didn’t make sense, Kate thought. Her head was pounding. Then she realized someone was pounding on the bedroom door.
“Go away!” shouted Nasreen.
“Krishna is on the phone,” Sameer’s muffled voice said from the hallway.
“Ugh,” Nasreen moaned. She got up and swung the door open to find Sameer leaning against the doorframe.
She grabbed the white phone and receiver, grayed by fingerprints. The phone cord snaked down the hallway from their parents’ bedroom. Nasreen yanked the cord. Sana stood in the hallway singing a lullaby to her ragdoll.
“Will you and Kate play with me now?” Sana pleaded.
“No!”
“You’re mean,” Sameer snapped. “What are you listening to?” he said, poking his head into his twin sister’s bedroom.
“None of your business,” Nasreen barked as she pushed the door closed, causing Sameer to jump out of its path.
“Hello,” Nasreen said hoarsely into the receiver. “Yes, I’m fine. Just have a slight cold.”
“You’re going to India?” Krishna’s voice shrieked loudly through the phone line.
Nasreen cringed and lifted her head away from the receiver.
“Wow. So are we!”
Krishna’s long, piercing pitch filled the room, shattering the melancholy tone diffusing from the tape deck.
Kate watched Nasreen pace across the bedroom.
Krishna tended to be overzealous at times. She lived a few streets over from Maple Street and often pedaled her powder-blue Schwinn bike to Nasreen’s, her long black braid swinging as she rounded the block. Nasreen had known Krishna since they were toddlers and their emigrant Indian mothers met in the middle of the afternoon pushing the little brown-eyed girls in strollers.
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