by Sara Jafari
The sun shone down oppressively onto her dark hair, causing her to perspire under her heavy gown. In pictures the day would look special, glamorous even. But the sound of traffic roaring down New Cross Road, and car horns in the distance, somewhat dampened the effect.
She stood down the side of the building, away from everyone else, by the large rectangular rubbish bins.
She rang her sister Parvin for the third time.
“Soraya?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She forced herself to speak slowly. “Where are you guys? The ceremony starts in ten minutes.”
“We’re nearly there. The traffic has been so bad. Can you believe it’s taken us nearly two hours!”
Count to ten.
At four, she said, “I told you it would take that long. I checked Google Maps, remember?”
“Yeah, well, Amir didn’t want to leave that early. Anyway it’s done now. We’ll be there in five minutes, honestly, just relax. Bye!”
Parvin hung up.
Soraya began to pull at the skin around her nails, becoming aware of what she was doing only when she looked down to see her maroon nail varnish was chipped. Her index finger bled. She pressed it against her black gown.
She composed herself and went to rejoin her friends in front of the building.
“I can smell it on you,” she heard a male voice saying from around the corner. His Yorkshire accent was deep, elongating the last word. “You can’t even walk straight. It’s ten a.m., Dad…”
“It’s my son’s graduation—can’t a man have a drink on his only son’s graduation day? Jesus Christ!” another male voice said, though this one sounded older.
“Paul, I think what Magnus means is, we’re a bit worried about—”
The woman’s voice was cut off.
“Oh, you’re both too bloody dramatic. Always fucking worrying. Be quiet, the pair of you. I’m off to the gates for a fag, or are you going to tell me off for that too? Maybe I should just go home while I’m at it. Wouldn’t want me to embarrass either of you, would you, eh?”
Before anyone was given the chance to respond there was the sound of retreating steps and then a small sigh.
“He’d been doing so well,” the woman said softly.
“Well, he’s pissed now. What if he does something in the ceremony? In front of everyone I know. God, he’s just…”
“I’m sorry, love. I’ll go and check he’s OK. See you inside? Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he behaves.”
There was a long silence. As Soraya stood away from the wall, Magnus Evans rounded the corner. Without looking at her, perhaps not even realizing she was there, he punched the brick building hard.
“Fuck!” he said, grasping his hand, as though surprised it would hurt.
Soraya stood very still, wondering, What am I even doing?
“Are you OK?” she asked him.
He looked towards her then, his head jerking in surprise. “Oh,” he said.
Magnus’s unkempt, curly hair seemed to have lightened in the sun over the summer; it was nearly blond now.
They had been in some seminars and lectures together during their three years at Goldsmiths, but had never spoken directly to each other before. All she really knew of him was that more often than not he was the only person in their seminars who had read the assigned books, and that he was something of a ladies’ man, even though she hated that expression.
She couldn’t help but notice now how broad his shoulders were under the graduation gown and wondered, not for the first time, if the way his broken nose had been set bothered him. It bent ever so slightly to the left, and was crooked in a different way from hers. She imagined this quirk only made him more attractive to girls, gave a bit of an edge to his otherwise perfect physique. She was reminded of Angela Carter’s Mr. Lyon, how his broken nose was described as akin to that of a handsome retired boxer, and thought it an apt description of Magnus too.
She looked at his hand. “You’re bleeding.”
He shook it.
“It fucking hurts too.” He laughed then. The sound rang hollow. He locked his gaze with hers for a moment, and in the sunlight his eyes looked deep brown, striking. “I feel like a knob, I didn’t know anyone was here.”
The compulsion to tell him she understood was overwhelming. Because she did. She knew all about disappointing parents. Knew how even though you expected them to let you down, it still felt like your insides were being shoveled out when they did. You should never let yourself hope when it came to a parent like that, but sometimes it was unavoidable.
“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?”
“No,” she said, and pressed her lips together to stop herself from saying anything else.
“I’m not the only one that’s bleeding.” He looked at her finger, where a bright red streak was oozing from her fingernail.
She hadn’t noticed she’d pulled it again. During her time at university, when her anxiety worsened, she had learnt to accept that the skin around her nails would always be sore. That washing her hands would have to hurt due to the damage she was unconsciously inflicting on them.
Unlike for her friends and peers, studying English literature did not come naturally to Soraya. She enjoyed it; her own life was so staid at times, so rowdy at others, that being transported into detective stories, happily-ever-after romances, intense literary fiction, and epic historical novels was more of a need for her than a pastime. Their love of romances was one of the few things she and her mum had in common. But none of this meant Soraya was academically gifted. She had to work twice as hard to get worse grades than students who wrote their essays in one stint the night before. For this if for no other reason, she was glad university was over.
She shrugged. “Weird.”
“What’s your name again?” he asked, even though she knew he already knew. They were Facebook friends; he had occasionally liked her photos, which she found odd. He was a popular rugby player, and she was a quiet nobody, who admittedly dressed very well. He knew, but was doing the typical male thing of pretending he didn’t. She might never have had a boyfriend before, but she knew what guys were like.
“Soraya, and you’re…?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, still cradling his hand. Up this close, she noticed his dark eyebrows almost met in the middle. She thought if anyone else had let their hair grow in this way it might look unattractive, but perhaps it was the fact that this was a deliberate move that made it work for him.
“Magnus,” he said. “We had seminars together.”
“I thought you didn’t know who I was?”
He shook his head and a glimmer of a smile traced his lips, but it was obvious he was distracted, his mind on other concerns. “I guess I did.”
There was a short silence, in which neither of them made any move to leave.
He cleared his throat before asking, “You had a good summer, then?”
She had spent it between London and Brighton, and on the whole it had been unremarkable, though her sleep pattern had been worrying. Most days she woke at 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. and spent the afternoon applying for jobs in between Netflix TV show marathons.
“It was OK. Didn’t do much, to be honest. How about you?”
“I started a new job a few months ago, so have been working all summer. Anything to not move back home.” He shuddered at the thought, and she laughed.
“Yeah, I really don’t want to go back home for good.”
They looked at each other for a moment, and despite the fact that they were both now joking, smiles on their faces, she noticed that the sadness in his eyes remained. She wondered if he was seeing the same thing in her eyes that she saw in his. She thought so, because he gave her a smaller, soft smile, as though in acknowledgment.
Her phone pinged.
Parvin: We’re w
alking up now.
“Oh, my family are here. I’ve got to go. See you later, I guess.”
She turned away and rounded the corner to see her mum, brother, and sister making their slow way towards her. She power walked over to them, getting away from Magnus to prevent any meeting of the two worlds she had endeavored for so long to keep separate: her university life and her home life.
The first thing she noticed was Parvin’s figure-hugging dress. It was calf-length, so didn’t show any flesh that could be deemed incriminating by the men in their family, but it still outdid Soraya’s. Not because the dress was particularly nice but because Parvin was Parvin. She was blessed with a flat stomach, big bottom, and tiny waist—a Betty Boop body type only she could be gifted with. Today, her long bleached-brown hair was curled into beachy waves, and Soraya noticed boys and girls checking out her sister.
Despite being twins, Parvin and Amir looked starkly different, which was exactly what Parvin wanted. Amir’s thick, shiny almost-black hair was slicked back, which served to emphasize his slightly receding hairline. His beard was sharp and well groomed, giving his face a chiseled quality.
Her mum resembled a mother hen, standing between her unruly children, her hijab sharp and floral-patterned, matching her yellow A-line coat.
“Where’s Dad?” Soraya asked, noticing an absence in the group. In actual fact there were two absences, but only one was spoken about.
The front of the building had quietened down, with just one family apart from Soraya’s remaining.
“Everyone with a ticket needs to go in now. The ceremony is about to start!” an administrator called. The woman walked towards Soraya. “You too, come on.”
And with that she was escorted away, her question left unanswered.
* * *
—
The ceremony was both anxiety-inducing and dull.
It seemed like everyone was competing to receive the loudest applause.
When her name was called, Soraya heard some weak clapping, and what she was sure was her best friend, Oliver, giving her a “woo.” There was also a large booming yelp. It definitely did not come from her family but arose from a classmate.
As she was handed her certificate, she concentrated on not tripping over or drawing more attention to herself than was necessary while onstage. Once down the stairs and out of view, she looked towards the students who were sitting down. Magnus was looking over at her with a broad grin on his face.
He was known to be a flirt, but he’d never directed his attention towards her before.
A marquee reception on the college green followed the ceremony, with waiters dressed in tuxes serving elegant-looking canapés. The students were released onto the green first, and then parents and family members joined them shortly afterwards. The air there was fresh, a welcome change from the suffocating hall.
Soraya could see Magnus in the distance with a group, clearly his rugby friends. They were built. And they were loud. Full-bodied laughter came from them. It made Soraya want to cover her ears and escape. She hated the pack mentality lads had when they were together. They reminded her of the boys who’d laughed at her all those years ago at school, the ones who had commented on the dark hair on her fingers, on how different she supposedly was. Despite her school days being so long ago, their words stuck with her, pervading her thoughts unhelpfully.
She distinctly remembered a picture of Magnus on Facebook after a varsity match, his shorts riding up to expose his strong, muscly legs, with a group of cheerleaders around him. He was covered in mud, and Soraya got the impression at the time that he, and the girls around him, thought he looked handsome.
Rugby players at Goldsmiths, like at most universities, were a special breed; loved by some, hated by others. Soraya’s friends fell into the latter category. Rumors went around that some of the previous year’s had date-raped girls. They could often be found together in the student union, or the local pub, after a game, rowdy and excitable. Yet from seminars she knew Magnus was intelligent, even quiet sometimes. In many ways, she wasn’t sure he fitted in with his crowd.
In one of their third-year seminars she remembered they had been studying a text which explored a dysfunctional romantic relationship. The class was quiet, as was often the case when people hadn’t done the reading. The seminar tutor began to pick on people to get their opinions in an attempt to spark some kind of debate.
Most of the people who were selected to speak gave generic observations, commenting on the style of the writing, or the time period in which the text was written and how that affected it. However, what Magnus said when he was chosen to speak remained in Soraya’s memory.
“I think it’s a commentary against marriage, against the idea of belonging to another someone, which was a bold move in the nineteenth century. Even now, it would be a bold comment to make, but one I ultimately think is true. You can’t belong to another person. It’s no wonder marriage often ends in divorce—or worse, people sticking together when they can’t stand each other. And is it even really right for human beings to be attached to another person for life?” He gave a small laugh after saying this, lightening what would otherwise be a bleak look at society.
She remembered him saying this for many reasons, one of them being that while he provoked a heated debate in the class about marriage on the whole, she noticed how pink the tops of his ears were after, as though he had accidentally revealed his opinion, despite his cool, controlled tone.
He was clearly speaking from the point of view of someone who disliked relationships, perhaps because he preferred more casual affairs. But still, she was surprised by how strong his feelings about it were.
It was difficult to judge Magnus’s character, though, because she had never seen what he was really like outside the university classrooms and lecture halls. They did not go to the same parties. She, quite unlike Magnus, had spent the last three years with a select few individuals, who spent most of their days flicking through fashion magazines or talking about books they had read, preferring to spend their student loans on clothes rather than nights at the pub. Soraya’s and Oliver’s favorite pastime was spending hours in Selfridges looking at designer garments they could never afford.
Oliver appeared next to her then carrying two tall glasses of clear liquid. He wore a navy blue cord suit with a maroon bow tie and had grown out his afro, parting it to the side, a new look he had developed over the summer. It flattered his face nicely.
“Gin and tonic,” he announced, taking a sip.
She downed hers in one, which was quite an effort.
“OK, then,” Oliver said slowly, giving her side-eye.
“I can’t drink in front of my family, remember?” Soraya quickly discarded the glass.
“Well, by all means then, down away.” Oliver’s dryness was something Soraya had acquired an understanding of a few weeks into their friendship, three years ago. He often spoke in a monotone, and when they’d first met, in freshers’ week, she worried that she bored him. She soon realized that this was his tone with everyone, and that actually he quite liked her.
Despite coming from a different background, Oliver was the only close friend she had who truly understood her.
“I heard Margaret cheering for you,” he said, lips pursed as he looked down at her.
“Margaret?” Soraya found herself smiling.
“Yes, Margaret Evans.”
“Why are you calling him Margaret?”
“Because it’s funny.”
Despite smiling, she did not find it particularly funny.
“Since when were you two friends?” he asked.
“We’re not.”
“Maybe he likes you,” Oliver said, amusement on his face, as though such a thought had to be humorous. She tried not to be offended.
“I mean…” She mock-shuddered.
She w
ouldn’t tell Oliver what she’d overheard; some things were not gossip-worthy.
“Well, be careful, you know he’s a player,” Oliver said. “Damn, though, his ass looks good even with that robe on.”
Soraya narrowed her eyes at him, opened her mouth to say something, then shook her head. “I have nothing to say to that.”
When the families were let in, Oliver was swept away as his five siblings, parents, grandparents, and two cousins clustered around him. They had arrived even later than Soraya’s family, despite him giving them directions all morning.
“I knew you should have worn your father’s suit,” Soraya heard his mother say.
“And why do you have your hair like that? Couldn’t you have trimmed it for graduation?” his father added. “You could at least have made an effort, Oliver.”
His family put exceptional pressure on him to be perfect. He said he thought it was because his parents were unhappy with their own lives, with what they hadn’t achieved, that they were now attempting to live through their children. The plan they put in place for him, before he was even born, did not include him studying English at an arts university, or being gay. Therefore, of course, they did not accept either.
Soraya did not have long to dwell on Oliver’s family because her own were walking towards her. Despite their distinctly different styles, they all had dark, well-defined eyebrows, large hazel eyes, and light olive skin.
Her mum was petite with strong cheekbones, tattooed black eyebrows, thin lips, and a cluster of freckles across her nose. Her hijab was moderately tight on her head, and she had a gold pin under her chin to fasten the silk fabric in place. She wore a thin trace of eyeliner—something she did only on special occasions. Parvin no doubt had drawn it on her. Her mum was hopeless at doing her own makeup.