She shakes her head.
He sighs.
“What do you women eat?”
She tries not to laugh as she scrapes the scrambled eggs onto slices of bread that he has arranged on two blue and white dinner plates. Each of them spears two crepes, which Sangita has doused with butter and pats of chocolate from an opened bag of miniatures.
“She’ll come back,” he says, as if continuing their conversation from earlier in the day, “and then we’ll see.”
She nods in agreement, not wanting to give voice to her doubts or to the increasingly tangled emotions she feels. Irony that he is trying to comfort her when he only knows half the truth. Fear that something serious may have happened to Hind and Ravi and there is no way of knowing. Anger that the two people she loves most in the world have put her in this incredibly awkward position. And confusion at the polite and easy manner of this man who till now has served only to embody male repressiveness in her friend’s stories of home.
“Let’s eat then,” he says with a smile. “You’re right. Never a bad idea.”
She slides into a seat next to him and smiles back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sangita finds it even more amazing, after they have finished eating, that Abdulla helps clean up, clearing the dishes, drying while she washes, and even putting them away. But as soon as the tasks end, the easy camaraderie ends with them. In the growing silence, the two of them are back to being complete strangers instead of the amicable acquaintances they were becoming.
When the phone on the wall rings, they both flinch.
“Hello?” Sangita says, half-wondering where to start, when all at once she hears: “Gita! Who is this man you were eating with in Maya Auntie’s restaurant?”
“Hiya, Ma.”
It’s just like her mother to launch into a conversation as though it were already going. And just like her to have the most up-to-date information. Sangita looks at the clock on the microwave. Only ten hours can have passed since the meal under discussion occurred. Sangita is surprised her mother has waited this long.
“Don’t you ‘hi’ me,” Mama says, not to be distracted.
“How are you?” she persists, wishing she could switch into Tamil but knowing it would alert her mother that someone else was in the room. They only speak Tamil when foreigners are around: in the movie theater line or when deciding how much to pay for something at the flea market.
“Maya says he was very handsome,” she says, unperturbed.
“A friend, Ma, just a friend.”
Sangita senses Abdulla wandering away from the counter top towards the living room and unhunches her shoulders. He takes up the BlackBerry again and scrolls through his contact list, or emails, she can’t tell which. She cranes over at the top of Abdulla’s bent head, hoping for a better angle.
Maya Auntie has sharp eyes. Sangita gives her that. At least her facts are right. What she doesn’t know – and Sangita hasn’t offered – is that Abdulla is named Abdulla. That’s all anyone in her Hindu community needs to hear before screeching from the room. The slave of God, abd of Allah, could never be a potential marriage partner for a high-caste Hindu girl.
But he’s not my fiancé, she reminds herself. I don’t have to feel guilty about anything.
A noisy sigh. Sangita pictures her mother worrying the thick rope chain from which hangs her five-gram thali, the Hindu woman’s equivalent of a three-carat diamond.
“You have enough friends, girl,” her mother is saying. “Find a man who will make a commitment to you. Speaking of which, I found two more potentials this weekend at Monica’s wedding.”
Sangita rolls her eyes, glad her mother can’t see her, but not realizing that Abdulla can and that he’s suddenly very interested in what she is saying. “I have to go, Ma,” she says, wishing her mother didn’t have such easy use of technology and resources when it comes to keeping tabs on her only daughter.
“Have you talked to your brother?”
Sangita flinches. If only Ma knew that Ravi was showing up in their natal village with a Qatari woman, there would be no stopping her from flying over on the first available plane, damn the expense, to drag the poor boy home by the ear.
“I’ll tell him to call you,” Sangita says, her standard line whenever the parentals expect her to be the go-between to their only son. Sometimes she wishes her parents had more children so that she could share the attention. She lays the phone back into its cradle and places both hands on the counter top.
“Mother?” Abdulla asks, and lifts both eyebrows, waiting for an answer. She shrugs as though to say you’ve lived abroad, you figure it out.
“Just tell them what you’re eating. That usually throws them off the scent,” he says not unsympathetically.
Sangita drums her fingernails on the countertop. But not always who you’re eating with, she adds to herself.
“Usually she gets off the scent pretty easily,” she says, thinking aloud, “but lately she’s just got it into her head that I’m on a time clock. And it’s not fair: Ravi is three years older than me.”
He comes around behind her, rummages in the fridge for two Cokes, pops them open using the bottle opener on the fridge door, and offers her one. They clink glasses with the unspoken commiseration that children of meddling parents share.
“I thought only Arab parents were this interfering,” he says, leaning a hip against the marble island.
She shrugs again, taking a long gulp, as though the Coke were something more fortifying than carbonated bubbles and sugar.
“From what Hind says, I gather they’re about the same. Ethnic parents want a say in everything.”
I’ve got to stop doing that, Sangita thinks, as she sees his posture stiffen. A casual mention of Hind’s name, and look at the pall it casts over their conversation.
“Do you do arranged marriages also?”
“The love comes later,” Sangita mimics her mother’s stance, one hand on her hip. “You learn to love each other.”
“Sometimes it’s true,” Abdulla murmurs, without the usual irony. From the look on his face, he has surprised even himself with this admission.
“Did you love your first wife? Hind wasn’t sure.”
He hangs his head for a moment, and then shakes it from side to side.
“Wasn’t long enough to tell.”
In the silence, she reaches out and presses his trembling hand flat on the marble countertop with her own. For a split second she thinks she sees a shine of tears as he clears his throat.
“You’re the girl, it stands to reason they would pressure you,” Abdulla says, as though stating a universal fact.
Sangita feels the hair on her neck bristle and the moment passes. She snatches her hand back.
“Well, that would be fine if I grew up in a village in India. Or in Africa. In… you know, Sudan. An example,” she shrugs. “But I didn’t.”
He raises the eyebrow again, glancing at her, then goes back to finishing his drink.
“So they need to back off,” she adds, making it, she hopes, less personal.
Abdulla sets the empty bottle on the counter. She sighs and drums the counter with her fingers. Abdulla hasn’t spoken.
“They just want to make sure I’m happy,” she goes on, “but they don’t realize how hard it is to meet someone. What should I do, go down to Tesco and pick out the right one?”
“I’ve got no sympathy for you, dear,” he says at last, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Look at the whole reason why I’m here.”
They regard each other in silence for a heartbeat, then two.
This is not your friend coming to visit, Sangita reminds herself. This is the man your roommate will marry, whether either of them likes it or not. She could think of nothing to say to that chilling thought. Turning attention back to herself would just seem selfish compared to what he and Hind are dealing with. Her dilemma is abstract, theirs immediate.
All of which is a rude reminder that the fiancée i
n question is nowhere to be found and the fiancé in front of her hasn’t the slightest clue that this is the case. Surely all the camaraderie they have built up will vanish in a second if Hind doesn’t show up fast. Sangita gulps down the rest of her drink, murmurs something about having an assignment to finish, and retreats to her room. There’s very little to say.
Abdulla watches her retreat and can’t help but admire what he sees. But here he’s done it again, run her off with his prickliness. She likes his fiancée, cares about her. She’s probably decided by now that he’s insupportable and, if she hasn’t already, will send off a hundred text messages telling her to call off the entire wedding. Which of course would suit him fine, but what would it say about him? That she’s evaluated him and found him impossible, a complete downer.
Suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, he doesn’t like the idea that this girl, this irrelevant Indian girl, finds him flawed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Abdulla is having difficulty finding his balance in the claw-foot tub in his fiancée’s bathroom. Standing up isn’t so bad, but having to hold the shower head with one hand and the soap in the other makes his balance on the slick surface precarious. He curses the English for their crowded lifestyle and, just as he feels his heel starting to slide for the third time, he turns off the water.
His eyes narrow as he catches a glimpse of his wet hair in the mirror above the sink, which is so small even a bird couldn’t take a bath in it.
Hind is tall, like him, so the mirror is a good height, easily framing his face. He can see the dark circles under his eyes starting to show. Three days, and the girl who was his childhood playmate is still nowhere to be found. He steps out of the bathtub slowly, first one leg, muscled from years of riding his father’s horses, and then the other, until he is back on the even black and white tiles of the bathroom floor.
Hind, unlike Abdulla’s mother or his aunts, has taste. She has never gone for the gold glitz you find in most Qatari homes, but instead sticks with one or two colors, generally solids from what he observes, augmented with complementary fabrics. The bath towels are black, the hand towels white, picking up the color scheme from the floor. There is no place here for the accoutrements of womanhood that fill Sangita’s bathroom. Any potions, lotions or perfumes Hind keeps in the massive dresser across from her bed. In the bathroom proper, it is all business.
He towels off and runs a hand across his chin. After three days it’s populated with wiry black stubble. His mother wouldn’t appreciate a bearded face; this was one of her favorite features of her young sons in contrast to the curled beards of his father and uncles. He mentally adds a shaving kit to the list of things Nigel needs to pick up. But no rush. Abdulla has not been in a hurry for years. Even after returning to Qatar from his last embassy posting in China, just before his marriage to Fatima, he never really came to heel in the ways that are proper for a soon-to-be married man, the head of his own household.
He steps closer to the mirror. Down the right side Hind has written a to-do list in bright red lipstick. GET NOTECARDS BEFORE FINAL; DRINK WATER; DROP LAUNDRY; CALL HOME. The last one brings him up short. If she has been calling home regularly, how do they explain her silence? Where do they think she is right now?
His sigh sounds like an old lady’s, but he can’t help it.
He dresses, pulling over his head the white t-shirt the girl has given him.
That Hind has befriended an Indian girl isn’t the biggest of surprises. Like their grandfather, she has never been a slave to convention – a girl who went to the LSE, speaks English fluently and graduated from an international university with high hopes. He should have known his mother had her eye on Hind as a backup, if only because of the occasional email she would pass to him with a news photo of his cousin next to Her Highness at some red carpet event. Not every Qatari family wants its daughter’s image printed for the eyes of the country to roam across. A girl who allows herself to be photographed has to be made of stern stuff. She must know her family will stand by her, and the girl in the photo clearly did. It was in her face, even in the grainy news images. The once-chubby cheeks of the young girl who used to eat sand in the family compound had receded into angular, assured cheekbones. A judicious touch of eyeliner – not the heavy band of black on top and green on the bottom – played up a sparkle in her eyes that the black and white of the newspaper couldn’t dull.
He should have known it was really Hind his mother was suggesting.
“Hind will need a firm hand,” his mother had said. “She has ideas, as all young girls do, and needs a good man as her husband.”
Abdulla had said nothing, merely inclined his head, thankful that no reaction was expected of him. He thought of Luluwa, still five years away from this kind of haggling, and repressed a shudder. Will it be better in half a decade? he had wondered in the majlis, as he and his father rose to kiss the cheeks of his future male in-laws to seal his engagement.
Pushing the thought aside, he had resolved to pretend to be the best husband-to-be he could to a girl he hadn’t seen in five years and had no intention of actually marrying. That she wanted to study for her master’s had been a good sign. Perhaps she wouldn’t depend on him to be home every night, as his friends’ wives did, always bothering them with some story or other about the maid’s laziness or a bargain in the mall.
He pulls on his trousers and buckles the belt. Both are well worn. He will need something else for however long this stakeout is going to last. He makes a mental note to call ahead to Thomas Pink for shirts, but just as he tries to leave the bathroom he finds the knob is frozen. After trying it several times he considers pounding on the door, but thinks better of it: the girl might come, so sleepy that he will feel guilty for waking her. Maybe half-dressed.
Maybe the shower was too hot.
What if she has bolted the door from the outside? Why would she do that? She hasn’t had a problem with him sleeping a door away from her, as any of the women in his family would. She just trails into her room and shuts the door.
One more try, and this time the handle gives slightly. He cracks the door open to the sound of female voices, but there is still resistance from the other side, something pushing back.
It’s the girl. She has her back to him, her hands behind her, and is holding the doorknob. Abdulla, a foot taller, can see over her shoulder into the living room where, only a few feet away, someone is speaking.
“Hanoodie knew I was coming,” another girl is saying, big lips flopping over into a pout. Something familiar in her face tells Abdulla he should recognize her. “Why would she go volunteer in Essex when we’re supposed to be shopping?”
A Qatari friend of Hind’s, perhaps, come to visit, or…
“Sorry, Noor, you know how she gets,” Sangita is saying, “She hears of someone in need and just drops everything and goes.”
“Are those guys’ shoes?”
Noor. Abdulla contemplates the bright pink lipstick and tight jeans. He hasn’t seen any of the girls since before they were all teenagers.
“Is there a guy here?” Noor begins scanning the apartment.
“My brother was,” the girl offers. “He forgot those. I need to get around to mailing them back.”
“Good taste,” she says, eyeing the leather loafers.
“I’ll tell Hind you came by.”
“So my own sister would rather do good than spend time with me,” Noor pouts, her lower pink lip sticking out. It is Noor, the skin-and-bones youngest girl cousin in the family, now a budding young woman.
Abdulla sucks in his breath and holds it, even though neither of them seems able to hear him. He’s not the only one in the family looking for Hind.
“Look, if she turns up, tell her it’s almost time,” Noor is saying, examining immaculate inch-long fingernails. “She may have a visitor.”
Abdulla shrinks back into the recesses of the bathroom.
“Is that right?”
“Well, Ubooy is trying to
convince her fiancé to come since they haven’t seen each other in so long.”
Sangita’s coughs.
“You know, the reception will be soon after Hind gets back and no one wants it to be awkward.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her,” Sangita strangles out.
Noor’s eyes narrow as if taking her in for the first time.
“I figure you know this already from Hind. And you’re not Qatari so this is okay.”
“Your secrets are safe with me.” Sangita leans forward in a conspiratorial whisper and tries to fake a laugh. It rings hollow.
“Can I use the toilet?” Noor asks suddenly. Abdulla hears her moving towards them.
“No!”
Noor pauses, very likely puzzled by the girl’s startled tone.
The girl coughs again and shoves back on the door. “I mean, the toilet is broken in this bathroom. Use mine, please.”
Abdulla waits until he hears the other bathroom door close, then snakes his arm out and yanks the girl in with him.
“What is Noor doing here?” he hisses, pinning her arms on either side of her.
“She’s here to buy Hind some saucy underwear for your honeymoon,” she shoots back.
Dumbfounded, he releases her arms and she sags against the bathroom door like a ragdoll.
“She doesn’t know where Hind is either.”
Sangita shakes her head.
Abdulla leans on the sink behind him, afraid to give it his whole weight. “If Hind isn’t with her… ” he starts.
“Sangita?” Noor calls. “Is there someone else there?”
Sangita claps a hand over his mouth. The contact of her slight frame against him is like an electric shock as they freeze in place. She presses a finger against his lips, unnecessarily, since speaking out is the farthest thing from his mind. For a moment, all he is aware of is the feel of her, slim and soft, poised against him. He is like a schoolboy, he thinks, at the first sight of a swimsuit magazine.
She moves toward the door and opens it a crack.
“No, I was just getting into the shower,” she says through the crevice. Noor doesn’t seem convinced.
Love Comes Later Page 13