Love Comes Later
Page 12
“No point in my trying then,” he murmurs, scrolling through emails on the ever-present BlackBerry.
She has to consciously resist sprawling in the chair, the usual position she assumes when she and Hind discuss everything from the future of the two-state solution, to getting their first periods, to why Hind going to India is the worst decision she could ever make. Instead, Sangita perches on the red sofa, straight-backed, erect, careful not to cross her legs or show the bottom of her feet to Abdulla, who slumps down heavily across from her in Hind’s leather armchair.
“I must make some office phone calls,” Abdulla says, popping up again almost as soon as he has settled. “Excuse me.”
Sangita points towards Hind’s room where he can make them in relative privacy. As soon as he’s out of range, Sangita reaches frantically for her own phone to try the satellite again. This time someone answers.
“Sarfraz!” Sangita shouts in relief, and then lowers her voice, trying to speak intelligible Tamil to the in-country program coordinator.
“Sarfraz, it’s me, Sangita.”
Sarfraz’s static-filled reply sounds more robotic than human.
“Tell Ravi to call me,” she says, knowing it’s futile to hope anyone could make sense of what she is saying over the static of the line.
Still, it’s a start. She’s made contact. She can try again later, when the connection might be better. She’s gotten their attention; now maybe they’ll leave the phone on. It was only meant for this, after all. No one in the villages calls each other; most people use SMS because it’s so much cheaper than voice calls or a landline. She types out another furious email and short direct messages on both Twitter and Facebook, noting that neither Ravi nor Hind have updated their status on either. They must know now that it was an overseas call.
Sangita prays that Sarfraz will think to call her first and not her parents, who are major benefactors of the school reconstruction project. It’s been almost a decade since the tsunami devastated the area so near their native village. Most people have forgotten about the destruction, but not her parents, nor her brother. This is his annual trip to check on the orphanage and school his parents started immediately afterward.
She’s startled by the voice of Abdulla, just behind her. “She has been living with idols,” he breathes.
Sangita follows his gaze to the small altar she has made in her bedroom – a single poster of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, sitting cross-legged on her lotus flower, and above it a small shelf with a bronze Ganesh and a basalt Shiva.
“These are Hindu gods,” she says, as he approaches them warily.
Abdulla links his hands behind his head and stretches, taking the room in at a glance, the raw silk bedspread with a sari border, the mini-rainbow of color spurting from the clothing in the closet, the piles of books on every available surface marking a path to the door.
“There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet,” he says automatically, hollowly, as if half-wondering why he is bothering, since no one is there to tell on him if he doesn’t. The words have probably been fed to him from his earliest days, Sangita thinks, a Qur‘an behind his head in the bassinet from birth. From the ashen look on his face, Sangita half-expects him to take out a string of garlic and a stake.
“Change that to ‘Jesus’ and you’d make a fine Christian,” she says.
He laughs, this time without trying to disguise it, even though his eyes return to her altar.
“How do you come up with those one-liners?” he asks. “You have an answer for everything.”
“The world’s largest Muslim minority lives in India,” she says for the second time that day. Even though her family isn’t overly religious, they would be proud if they knew she was defending their religion.
“A pluralist,” he says, but it sounds more like a question.
Sangita shrugs both at the title and at his scrutiny. “That the divine is everywhere is a tenet of Hinduism. You can pray in there if you like,” she says, pointing toward Hind’s room. “There should be some rugs that visitors use.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he says, but makes no move to leave.
Abdulla looks as tired as she feels, and he is battling not only the knowledge of whatever he wants to discuss with his carefully chosen wife, but also an early morning flight and slight jet lag.
“I’m going to take a nap,” she says, faking a stifled yawn. Sangita doesn’t know if it is just her imagination or the tension of entertaining him, but somehow she is starting to like him, his taciturn ways, his precise manners. She trails into her room and moves to shut the door, only then remembering he has nowhere to stay.
“She has a queen bed in there,” Sangita says, poking her head out the door and waving a hand toward Hind’s doorway.
The sun still burns bright through her tiny window due to the longer hours in summer, and yet, at eight o’clock, the day is spent. She still has a man, a relative stranger, in the apartment. Sangita suddenly feels weary, still full of food from lunch, wanting to climb back into bed and pull the covers over her head. Maybe when she wakes up Hind will be here, brewing mint tea and going on about how poor people could hold on to their dignity if they had more clothing.
“Wherever you are,” she sighs, a tiny tear slipping out the corner of her eye before it closes in sleep, “you’re gonna get it when you get back.”
Abdulla eyes the door with a mixture of horror and fascination, starting a little when Sangita shuts hers firmly. He hasn’t ever been in a woman’s bedroom, if you don’t count the single rooms at university he and his friends snuck into on weekends. Fatima was not a fussy person and kept their apartment in measured tones of Armani rather than feminine gone berserk. Since moving back to his parents’ house he hasn’t really even spent that much time around women – Luluwa is well past the age where he or his brothers could roam around her freely unless she sought them out. He has no idea what sort of person Hind really is. Would she have frilly pillows on the bed or more posters like the one in the living room?
As if entering a sacred temple, he turns the knob and enters.
Chapter Twenty
Again, for the second time that day, the sound of rhythmic pounding in the apartment wakes Sangita from a deep sleep. But it’s only been minutes, she thinks, rubbing her face. She ignores the pool of moisture on her pillow – a sure sign of her exhaustion – and unrolls from the bedspread. Stretching, her arms reaching for the ceiling, she’s aware of something urgent, something forcing her out of bed, prompting her to move quickly. She wakes slowly, taking in the objects she’s spent over two months placing in their respective spots: the precise line of perfume bottles and makeup brushes, the earrings hanging from a mesh wire jewelry holder, the full-length mirror slanted at an angle. No time for ambiance.
She pulls on an oversize t-shirt and leggings and steps outside her room, where the sight of her roommate’s fiancé-turned-surprise-visitor brings the events of the day rushing back. He is pacing in the living room. Abdulla moves with the litheness of a caged predator, his long strides taking him across the teak flooring.
The pounding this time is from a tennis ball he is bouncing along the floor as he walks. He must have dug it up out of the couch cushions, a relic of one of the many times the roommates have vowed to make exercise a part of their weekly routine. “It’s London,” Hind had said pragmatically. “We walk all the time – those are our workouts. In Qatar we only drive.” Sangita wasn’t convinced by this rationale, nor by the ensuing stories of how in Doha it was possible to drive up to a McDonald’s, beep your car horn, and have someone take your order from the parking lot. The Qataris apparently had an even faster idea of fast food than most people.
Abdulla has not been occupied in the same way as Sangita.
“Sleep at all?” Sangita asks, though the lines on his face tell her otherwise.
He pauses in his stride and shoots her a look that says he hasn’t forgotten any of yesterday, including her fi
rst appearance at the door in more than she has on now. Too late, Sangita remembers the tunic sweater dress crumpled on the floor next to her bed.
“Everyone spends the afternoon asleep waiting during Ramadan,” he says, taking a seat in the brown leather armchair. “I never could.”
Sangita trails over to the sofa as he dangles his arms across his knees, bouncing the ball against the opposite wall.
“Isn’t that like cheating?” she asks.
He catches the ball and rolls it between his palms.
“You sound like my grandfather,” he says laughing. “Are you religious?”
“God is with us,” she says, “in many forms.”
He tilts his head back as though seeing her for the first time.
“How did you say you come up with those one-liners?”
“Big family,” she shrugs. “You always have to be ready to defend.”
Abdulla seems to contemplate this. For some time he has been watching her, with peripheral vision as she moves around the apartment perhaps, she knows. He doesn’t think so. He almost doesn’t care. The truth is Abdulla is revaluating this slip of a girl he hadn’t even known existed before this eventful day. He has come to find Hind and hopefully a loophole through which he can call the whole thing off. Instead, he finds himself engaged in a completely unanticipated encounter, and is intrigued by Sangita with an interest he can’t remember feeling for at least the past year or so.
“How many brothers and sisters?” he asks.
“Just the one,” she says softly.
Sangita feels some of the defiance leaking out of her straight spine. She eases against the cushions, wondering if the mention of Ravi will somehow destroy their growing rapport. Can he somehow sense the connection between her brother and his absent fiancée?
“Not so many,” Abdulla says, his mouth loose, apparently never suspecting anything.
“Lots of aunties and cousins,” she goes on, “but only the one brother.”
Sangita draws a deep breath to ward off the sudden stab of longing she feels for her older brother at that moment. His certainty has always paved the way for her. Without it, she would never have made the journey here. She would never have found her kindred spirit, Hind. Now she needs Ravi more than ever.
“I have an adopted sister,” Abdulla says, almost as if he is admitting weakness. He is no longer hiding the weight of his eyes in the corners of thick lashes. His gaze rests fully on her now.
“I thought Arabs didn’t believe in adoption,” Sangita says.
“Her father is one of my uncles. He sort of abandoned her after my wife… ” Abdulla falters and breaks off. He clears his throat. Sangita sees this is hard for him. It occurs to her that he probably hasn’t spoken of Fatima outside his family in all this time.
Abdulla steadies himself and continues. “Her mother, you see, went to her brother’s because, well, frankly, her father... ” he trails off momentarily, searching for the right word. “He... remarried and didn’t want anything to do with her.”
Sangita nods, realizing from the gruffness of his voice and his sudden awkwardness that he is not used to telling this story.
“Luluwa is the only girl in our house of five,” he says, the tennis ball now wedged between his thigh and the chair.
She smiles at the thought of a young Arab girl, not unlike Hind at that age, dangling a household of men from her pinky finger.
“She never liked the idea of my marrying Hind,” he says suddenly, as though their shared confessional mood has jostled something within him.
All at once Sangita realizes this is going beyond being simply a polite social call with a handsome man who has happened by her apartment. The subtle outrageousness of it hits her in an instant: she is sitting with Hind’s fiancé. Said fiancé hasn’t the slightest clue he is talking intimately with someone who is complicit in helping his affianced break one of the biggest taboos of Gulf Muslim society: traveling alone with a non-relative male to another country. And, in slightly altered form, it is the same rule Sangita herself is breaking with Abdulla at this very moment.
“The sun’s down,” she says, jumping up and then turning to look at him as he remains immobile. “Aren’t you going to pray?”
Abdulla is startled by her sudden shift in mood, as well as the directness of the question.
“I haven’t fasted in a long time,” he admits to this near-stranger who is starting to feel more and more like the closest approximation he has to a friend. “The last time was nearly four Ramadans ago, when Fatima was still alive.”
The look she gives him isn’t shocked or outraged or angry, as his mother’s, or any Muslim’s, might have been. She merely nods as if what he has just described is the most reasonable thing in the world, and he isn’t endangering his soul.
“Praying and fasting aren’t the same,” she says.
He drops his head. In the past few years his fast has barely counted, since he has had no appetite anyway. It isn’t like he is giving up much. If he appreciates Ramadan at all, it is as a good excuse to avoid the fact he has no desire to eat.
“God will be there whenever you are ready,” she says.
“In Islam we can never lose faith,” he says. “We can’t object to God’s will.” The droop of his shoulders says he already has.
“God can take it,” she says. “Otherwise what’s the point of being God?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I’m going to make some food.”
Abdulla pulls himself out of the chair and begins rolling up his sleeves.
“I’ll wash up.”
Sangita busies herself in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, though they both know there is little there in terms of nourishment.
“Want some eggs?” she says, but before he can accept or decline the offer a rush of vulnerability overtakes her and she shoots across to the kitchen to be closer to the exit. She is, after all, an unprotected female, and no matter how well-mannered he might be, he is a male. But Abdulla doesn’t fit the profile of the lecherous Arab. At least not yet. The fact that she has again come out half-dressed, as polite Muslim society would see it, doesn't seem to faze him as much as yesterday. Then, as quickly as it came on, the feeling turns to what is really is, panic at being separated from both her brother and her best friend and alone with this man who seems so fragile, his grief so fresh on his face.
“Eggs?” he is saying, holding a half-filled egg carton as he comes back into the living room.
“Sure,” she says, taking the egg carton away from him and going for a spatula from the drawer, a skillet from a cupboard and butter from the fridge, anything to avoid the rising feeling of doom.
“I hope your eggs are better than your tea service,” he says.
His lips bend into what she is learning is his version of a smile. She replies by sticking out her tongue. He laughs, and this time his laugh is looser and less strangled than before.
She curses the placement of the stove’s burners, set into the top of the island itself so that it’s impossible for her turn her back on him like her mother does when avoiding the rest of the family. In the modern kitchen there is no room for secrets.
She turns the knob halfway and waits for a slab of butter to melt.
“If it weren’t for eggs,” she says, “I would never have made it through the first term. Protein in a one-pan meal.”
She cracks four into a glass mixing bowl, grabbing the whisk from the utensil holder on the counter top. She is about to begin beating when he comes around to her side.
“Let me,” he says. “I can at least do crepes.”
“You know how to cook?”
He smiles, this time a smile stretching across his face. “I’m an excellent assistant,” he says, reaching out a hand. “Pass me the bowl and whisk."
This is hard for her to imagine: Abdulla being helpful to anyone beside himself.
“No maid?” Sangita probes.
“Not at LSE,” he replies.
“While you were sleeping, I got Nigel’s advice on a grocery,” he says. She looks on with raised eyebrows as he begins measuring flour and sugar for the batter.
Sangita is surprised but delighted by his foresight because she’s ravenously hungry. She starts on a large red onion that has turned up in the fridge’s veggie box. She chops, almost absentmindedly, as Abdulla uncaps a small bottle of milk and pours half a cup in with the whipped yolk. She adds the onions to the warm butter, turning them as they became iridescent, and makes way for Abdulla, who is pouring crepe batter onto a second warming skillet. Pouring carefully, he waits a moment, and then peels them up just before they turn brown.
“Scrambled eggs,” they both say in agreement.
It is strange, the sound of water behind her as he fills the kettle, then the hum a moment later as it turns on; the precise way he chooses a knife from the block to slice a baguette. Strange because these are the companionable things one does with a roommate – or a spouse, she reflects, thinking guiltily of Hind. How much longer can she delay the news of her friend’s planned disappearance? They have reached the end of one day. Maybe one more? Sooner or later she will have to explain.
They settle into preparing a modest breakfast for dinner as if the elements were commonplace. Hind should be here, Sangita thinks suddenly, when Abdulla begins opening cupboards and looking for serving dishes.
“Careful,” Abdulla is saying, and she realizes she hasn’t stirred the eggs in a while. They are starting to stick, a congealed mass. She scrapes the skillet until the clumps break up, bits of onion distributed all around.
Meanwhile he has a stack of golden, neatly folded crepes.
The kettle sounds. She turns off the heat.
“Toaster?” he asks.