Love Comes Later

by Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

  Abdulla is waiting for her at the bottom of the building, and outside a blue Range Rover idles with an anxious looking young woman in the passenger seat. Sangita crosses the marbled lobby, glad once again for the abaya that hides her from the prying eyes of the South Asian guards who gawk at the sight of her greeting a Qatari man.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hello,” he says.

  They pause for an awkward moment, aware of the camera in the lobby and the guards at the reception desk.

  “I need to talk to you,” he says.

  She glances at the girl in the car, who she surmises is Abdulla’s cousin, impatiently waiting for them.

  “The blog,” he says.

  He has her full attention now.

  “You’re posting about Arabian women and dress,” he says.

  “What am I supposed to do all day while you’re at work?” From the look on his face she can tell it came out more harshly than she intended.

  Abdulla sighs.

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” she mutters. Standing in the lobby, covered from head to toe, she has never felt so exposed.

  He takes her hand and the gesture in public surprises her.

  “I know this is hard,” he says. “But remember, if you’re going to make a life here you don’t want to make waves.”

  “I can’t make a life here if I’m shut up in an apartment all day.”

  He squeezes her hand.

  “I’ve got to work on a few things to get you out of there,” he says. “But in the meantime, at least Lulu can show you around.”

  “I can keep posting?”

  “Under an alias,” he says.

  She feels buoyed by their resolving a disagreement, however small, with a compromise.

  Under the gaze of the guards, Sangita gets into the back seat of a car driven by a Qatari, which from their animated chatter she imagines will be gossip fodder for the rest of the evening. Luluwa, her face beaming with delight and triumph, takes Sangita by both hands, twisting around from the front seat, kissing her on both cheeks in rapid succession and squeezing her into an awkward hug.

  “Why is that guy flashing us?”

  Abdulla pulls the car into the next lane as a white SUV speeds past them.

  “Everyone’s always in a hurry,” he mutters under his breath.

  “You could kill someone going that fast.”

  “People do.”

  They share a glance. Sangita remembers the night he told her about Fatima, the night that put everything in motion. As if he is also remembering, Abdulla squeezes her knee. His hand rests there.

  “This is so romantic,” she whispers to Sangita when Abdulla takes a call on the car’s speakers. “Abdulla has never done anything like this before.”

  “Tell me what he normally does,” Sangita says. She feels like giggling in the presence of the younger girl, which comes as a relief after the tension of the day and the loneliness of the apartment.

  “Oh, he’s like a stone, this one,” Luluwa replies.

  “Luluwa,” Abdulla says, his eyes meeting Sangita’s in the rearview mirror. “Remember our terms for this dinner.”

  Luluwa sticks her tongue out at him before flipping down her mirror to give Sangita her own look.

  “See what I mean?”

  At a stoplight Sangita feels the weight of stares on her neck, as though of a crowd. She turns her head and finds a wall of eyes: men hunched in an out-of-date school bus, their dusty blue overalls identical to those she has seen on workers finishing a new tower at The Pearl. Thirty or so men crammed into what she would refer to as “the short bus” at home with her friends, and they are all Indian.

  Thankfully the lights change and Luluwa asks her a question, giving her an excuse for turning away. They arrive at Chili’s, a location that surprises and comforts Sangita. Like the McDonald’s, Applebee’s and Dairy Queen they have passed, it is a small piece of home, her other life in America.

  “Lots of American chains,” Sangita says as they pile out of the Range Rover. On the way in, they pass a family coming out, including a small boy who can’t be more than six years old, basically waddling along in his child’s version of a thobe.

  She pushes another tortilla chip into her mouth as Luluwa tells her about the big fight she’s having with Noor.

  “She just doesn’t get that you’re so much better for him,” Luluwa says intensely, patting Sangita on the hand.

  Great, so I’m the corrupter of all Qataris’ lives, not just Abdulla’s, Sangita thinks, remembering the look of rage on Hind’s sister’s face. She is starting to understand all the articles she’s read where people rail against observers upsetting the environments in which they work. First Hind runs off to India, and now Abdulla breaks off their engagement. Sangita can’t really explain to herself why she didn’t try harder with her friend, or whether she would give Abdulla up if Hind said that’s what she wanted. But one thing is clear: Hind forfeited her fiancé when she left him for her “adventure”. That would be the same in any culture.

  “I love Bollywood,” Luluwa is saying as Abdulla joins them at the table. “Have you ever met anyone famous?”

  “Well, no, I grew up mostly in the U.S.,” Sangita explains, despite herself, “but my parents wanted us to remember we were Indian, so we watched movies all the time. What’s your favorite?” She feels her heart warming to the girl, thinking how they could teach each other about their respective cultures, these feelings warring with Ravi’s reminders to be cautious. Gratefully she is taken in by Luluwa, who strikes her as delightful. She bubbles with the artless enthusiasm of a girl on the brink of becoming a woman.

  “You are not such a rebel,” Luluwa says, pointing a French fry in Abdulla’s direction. “Yadd Jassim would be happy she’s Indian.”

  “Luluwa,” he warns in exasperation. “We’re supposed to be showing her the city.”

  “He would agree, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Agree to what?” Sangita looks from one to the other, but after another look from Abdulla Luluwa shakes her head.

  Abdulla keeps eating, but Sangita enjoys the banter between siblings and tries not to think of Ravi. If she goes through with this thing, either Ravi or her father will have to sign the agreement on her behalf. They will have to come here. She starts to flush, remembering her mother’s shock as she tried to explain the events of the past two weeks in a Skype call to her parents.

  *

  Two days later, as the fog of jet lag lifts, Sangita finds herself on a girls’ afternoon out with Luluwa and one of her friends. The teenagers, much more sophisticated in their fashion sense than most of the adult women Sangita knows, chat about hairstyles, colors of makeup, and shoes, adjusting their clothes and double-checking their lipstick in the car with Luluwa’s driver Narin as he takes them all to the salon. Arabs, like Asians, never do anything alone, and for once Sangita is grateful for the company as she enters the imposing salon, drifting behind the girls past the Ladies Only sign at the entrance. She has been scribbling notes to herself about the love of all things designer: from their shoes, to handbags, to earrings, these girls are decked out in a way that makes Sangita realize Hind toned down for life in London. The comparison brings her the title of her next blog post: something about locals abroad and at home. She writes furiously, trying to keep track of all her ideas, wondering if there is a book somewhere in all of this material.

  Inside, the abayas come off and are draped onto hangers. Yards and yards of hair are shaken out from underneath the shaylas. Sangita tries not to gape at these statuesque young women who, underneath their modest robes, are wearing only halter tops and micro minis. Luluwa and her friend move on into the salon itself as Sangita takes in the other female clientele, women whom she may have passed in cars on the way here, though she wouldn’t have recognized them wearing their abayas and shaylas. Filipino women in white uniforms are seating Luluwa and her friend in black leather swiveling chairs.

  In the waiting
room a row of women in various colored uniforms and headscarves sit with arms folded, looking straight ahead, and several minding very small children. She remembers the conversations with Hind about the never-ending service in Qatar, much of it South Asian, as she’s already seen from Noor’s driver.

  Everyone at the desk turns to her, and a Lebanese woman with dyed blonde hair and fake nose (Hind warned her about the noses) eyes her with suspicion. Luluwa hovers at Sangita’s side to ensure she receives proper care thereafter, but the woman’s assumption and then double-take lodge in Sangita’s mind. The girls fan out in one corner of the salon, chatting easily about Qatari life so as to prepare Sangita for the gauntlet of female family members she may meet that evening if Abdulla’s talk with his mother goes well.

  “What should I know?” Sangita asks as the hairdresser starts combing out her hair.

  “Stand up every time someone comes into the room,” Dana says, as the hairdresser working on her begins brushing out her hair. “And don’t touch any men, not even his uncles.”

  Sangita pauses from taking notes as the Arab woman working on her hair jerks her head backward to reach the crown of her scalp. Tears come to her eyes from the action.

  “Dana, that’s not true,” Luluwa says, squinting at her friend. “Greeting the uncles is fine. But why would they be there?”

  Dana leans over to confer with Sangita, her legs outstretched as a Filipino woman gives her a pedicure. Sangita leans back, taking in everything Dana has to say, ignoring the tsking sound of the Lebanese hairdresser who is blow-drying her newly-cut hair into waves around her face.

  “In India, if you’re on your period you can’t touch anyone," she confides. “That is, if you haven’t had a bath.” The girls break out in giggles.

  Her mother’s family being very traditional, Sangita had to sleep on the floor and be the first to rise on those mornings, first washing the clothes she had slept in, then her body, before anyone else could see her. When he was a little kid, Ravi didn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to sleep near Sangita certain nights during their summer visits to India. One morning, as she went outside to throw away her used pads, she ran into her uncle on the way back into the house. The thought that he knew what she had been up to and the reason for her being up so early made her blush furiously.

  “What kind of job do you think I could get here?” Sangita asks when it is her turn for a pedicure. “I was thinking about AlJazeera English.”

  “You’re going to work?” Dana says, glancing at Luluwa.

  Luluwa is looking at Sangita with interest.

  “Well, what else would I do?”

  “Have babies,” both girls say simultaneously.

  Sangita can’t help breaking into laughter and apologizes to the Filipino woman who is trying to cut her toenails. She realizes that Dana and Luluwa aren’t joining in. Have babies – they are in earnest.

  “But I have a master’s degree,” she says.

  “There aren’t that many female-only offices left,” Dana says with a sigh. “Only in the government, and those go mainly to Qataris, not foreigners.”

  “Dana,” Luluwa warns. She’s about to say more when the plump Indian technician indicates it is her turn to have her eyebrows threaded.

  “Even AlJazeera is under Qatarization,” Dana says, as if in contemplation.

  “An office with only women?” Sangita says, pulling a notebook out of the designer handbag Luluwa gave her that morning so that she wouldn’t “embarrass herself”.

  “What’s Qatarization?”

  “Getting more Qataris into the workforce to balance all the foreigners,” the girl says succinctly.

  “What color would you like on your toes?” Luluwa asks Sangita, while shooting her friend a look.

  Scribbling notes to herself about the whole exchange with Dana, the girl’s tone and her warnings, Sangita notices the designer bags on the tables in front of the other customers. The various shades and styles of leather explain why Luluwa had thought Sangita might like to carry another purse in place of the Bitch magazine tote bag she had slung over her shoulder earlier that morning.

  “They’re domesticating me,” Luluwa had said, passing Sangita a red number in leather with a small smile. “I didn’t think I’d pass on the favor.”

  “You’ve got to tell me about everything,” Sangita had said, returning the smile. “I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”

  The confession, even if only to a teenager, had felt like a weight off her shoulders.

  “Your life here will not be easy,” Dana says, leaning over Luluwa’s seat, pressing Sangita’s forearm. “His family may not accept you; they will disown him. There will be no money.”

  Sangita is unnerved by the intense look on the girl’s face, all sense of playfulness gone in the downward turn of her mouth, as though underlining her point.

  “I’m not here for money,” she stammers, and breaks eye contact with them. Sangita tries to ignore the nagging idea that this is what Abdulla’s family might think.

  “My father owns a hotel chain,” Sangita says, raising her chin. “I paid for my own ticket here.”

  “Then why do you need a job?”

  “What?” Sangita is speechless.

  Dana settles back against her chair as the stylist begins teasing her hair into a fashionable bun.

  “If you get homesick, will you try to take your kids with you?”

  Sangita can't form an intelligible reply, simply because thoughts that far in the future haven’t yet occurred to her. The idea of not working, of staying at home and having babies, is one thing she and Abdulla haven’t discussed – one on a long list of things Ravi would probably say she was foolish for not thinking about. But a country where women don’t work because they don’t have to? Can she really see herself here?

  “All done!” Luluwa says, returning to the main room, her perfectly arched brows showing no sign of enhancement. Her phone begins blaring a Justin Bieber ringtone, which she catches just before the chorus. Rapid-fire Arabic in dialect, and she is squirming in her seat.

  “We’re going,” she says, sliding the phone closed with a click.

  Dana and Sangita exchange glances.

  “Who?” Dana asks, as if speaking to a child.

  “Abdulla says we’ll go over in his car and wait for his call to go into the house.”

  Sangita draws in a deep breath. Of course this is a necessary step if their relationship is going to be official – the only way they can have any relationship at all in Qatar. But if they are all like grown-up Danas… Sangita hopes Luluwa is more representative of the women in Abdulla’s family.

  “If someone offers you something to drink, take it, even if you aren’t thirsty,” Luluwa says, launching a litany of advice that lets Sangita know she is nervous for her. Sangita is glad of the girl’s presence. She was skeptical when Abdulla had said that they could count on Luluwa. But thus far the girl has kept her opinions on their plans to herself and been the soul of Arab hospitality, sharing clothes, abayas and company.

  So far, Sangita has been relying on the commonalities of Arab and South Asian culture. Being raised South Asian, she knows without having to be told, for instance, that the hostess is always offended if you don’t clear your plate and ask for at least seconds, if not thirds. It almost seems that life as an Indian has prepared Sangita for entry into Qatari society. Other than the fact that women cover their hair and pray five times a day, she can’t make out any visceral differences. Many of her cousins have had to do the same kind of sneaking around she is doing with Abdulla to make their parents think the boy they’ve met in college is the best bridegroom around, dropping hints about his family or likely high position after graduation to pique parental interest. What is the difference between a marriage arranged by matchmakers and one introduced by fate? She twists the heavy gold braid of the jellabiya sleeve and resists the temptation to bolt from the room. Her mother would be aghast if she knew that her daughter, the proud, indepe
ndent one who insisted on moving away from the family holding of hotels and making her own name in languages, was docilely sitting in a waiting room to be judged by a parade of Arab women.

  “Is this what your women’s liberation is about?” her mother was always asking her as Sangita and her college friends came home for Thanksgiving break, their stories of the semester full of who was seeing whom and when a ring was expected. “We want love too, Ma,” she would say, as the girls passed around photos of the latest sorority ball.

  “You want everything,” her mother would say, not angrily, and take a look at the photos when they reached her. Sangita never had more than a semester’s flirtation with anyone. Ravi often accused her of going through men like he went through gym shoes for his various sports. There never seemed to be anyone, Indian or American, who could keep up with her quest for adventure and travel and interest in other cultures. Never, that is, until she met Abdulla, the modern religious Muslim. He wasn’t secular like her brother or all the other men she knew at university. Certainly not casual about love like the Brits, who would just as soon ask you to leave as stay after a night together. Here was someone who wanted a family and profession and a partner who would build a life with him in the most unlikely of circumstances. And he also wanted real love.

  She hasn’t told Ravi any of this in their recent flurry of emails and phone calls. He has had issues enough with Qataris expecting people to convert in order to share their lives together.

  The truth is, right now the hard stares of people as she eats with two Qataris at a restaurant or exits the hair salon with women clad in abayas is a reality Sangita isn’t sure she can live with day in, day out. This culture is like an onion, she observes. Every time she thinks she understands, there is yet another layer.

  Then, as if in a blink, she is in the car, on the family compound, waiting to go into the sitting room with the overstuffed gilt edge furniture Luluwa has described. Sangita clasps and unclasps her hands, wearing so much make up it is a toss-up if she is going to an Indian wedding or a drag show. She tries not to tangle herself in the purple satin jellabiya Abdulla brought by the apartment this morning before going to work. Now she sits in the passenger seat, waiting to be summoned to meet Abdulla’s mother, and for everyone to know the news. Sangita doesn’t know which is worse, the idea that she has chosen for herself the very fate her parents made sure she would never face – a prospective bride-viewing – or the fact that she actually enjoyed being fussed over at the salon in readiness for this moment.