I shrank away from Noor as two girls in high heels swayed towards her. One of them crouched down and peered at Noor, laughing as she said something to her friend before disappearing inside.
‘Are you okay?’
I turned to see an older boy leaning against the door frame smoking.
‘Yes, I –’ I said. ‘No, actually. I need to get my friend home. Do you know if there are any taxi companies here that I could call?’
He looked at Noor and then at me. ‘That might not be the best idea,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Isn’t there someone you can call?’
He was right, I thought, remembering the way the taxi driver had leered at us on our way to the party. I ran through the options in my head as I scrolled through the contact list on Noor’s phone. I could call my granddad, of course, but I couldn’t bear for him to see me like this. Noor’s parents were out of the question as well. I lingered on Faraz’s name, but I was scared to think how he might react when he found out that we had been here with Sameer, when he found out what I’d seen in that bedroom. There was only one option, really. As much as I resented her, when it came to Noor, I knew that she was the only one I could trust. I scrolled further until I saw Sabah’s name and pressed call.
SABAH
I’m the one who breaks the silence.
‘It’s nice to see you,’ I say, giving Alia an awkward half-hug.
I look her over. Even in her politician’s sari, she’s an haute couture, high-end version of the scholarship kid I’d known in school. Her face has the sheen that can only come from regular facials and expensive skin creams, diamond solitaires twinkle in her ears, and her hair, though worn simply down her back, has subtle highlights that catch the light as she moves. And then there is the ring on her finger. A glittering, two-carat statement in itself.
If life has treated someone well, it is Alia Sharma. Though judging by how quickly and completely she had ingrained herself into Noor’s life and later the Qureshi family’s, this transformation isn’t down to pure luck or hard work. This is a modern-day Cinderella and she’s anything but innocent.
We end up in the hotel’s coffee shop.
‘So, how are you?’ Alia says, settling back into the chair, the nervousness I’d noticed earlier replaced by an easy smile. The practised politician. I play along as we slip into the usual niceties, acting as though this unplanned visit is nothing out of the ordinary. We skip over the fact that there is a conference next door where she is probably required and as she asks me about my work and my life in London, I find myself pulled in, unable to resist. I’d vote for her, I think at one point and I have to remind myself that her charm is entirely manufactured, designed to hide the crude social climber lurking underneath.
I realize that I’ve spent the past hour answering questions instead of asking them and I switch gears. I repeat the pitch I’d sent to her office, going over the timeline and expected release date.
Alia nods, a slight frown punctuating her features. ‘Who else is involved?’
‘The Qureshis are on board,’ I say and she nods. ‘I’m also planning to interview Saloni, Addi, Yash, Niv and a few of the teachers from school.’
Something crosses her face at the mention of Niv but she doesn’t press for details and I don’t offer any. I pull out my notebook and skip ahead to the reason I’m sitting across from her. Noor had already been drunk by the time I saw her that night, but Alia had spent the entire afternoon with her.
‘How did she seem that day before the party? Did you notice anything strange?’ I ask.
A memory arrives. Me, earlier that day, telling Alia to go to Noor. Telling her exactly what to do.
‘She was upset. Tetchy,’ Alia says. ‘I guess, after everything that had happened, it was understandable.’
‘Did she say or do anything out of the ordinary?’
I can see that she’s waiting for me to say more, to explain why fifteen years after I used her to get to Noor, I’m asking her to explain how it played out. I consider telling her the truth but the words dry up in my mouth.
I don’t need anyone to tell me how much of this is driven by my own guilt, how my desperation to find someone to blame is really just a way to come to terms with what I did all those years ago.
What I made Alia do.
Alia closes her eyes for a long moment. When she finally looks at me, I can see the tears shimmering in her eyes. It strikes me that despite how I feel about her unscrupulous path to the top, I can’t fault her when it comes to Noor. She worshipped the ground Noor walked on. That was a large part of why I could never stand her, why I took every opportunity I could find to belittle her. ‘She took ages getting ready. She had no idea what we had planned. She thought –’ Alia says, her voice breaking at the mention of our betrayal. ‘She wanted to go to that party, Sabah.’
My voice, when I finally get it to work, is barely a croak. ‘Why?’
‘She wanted to see you.’
ALIA
Fifteen years ago
‘How could you be so stupid?’ Sabah asked, jumping out of the car and going straight to Noor.
‘Noor,’ she said, sitting down next to her. ‘Noor, wake up. What did she take?’ Sabah asked me.
‘She smoked a joint, and then there were some pills. Ecstasy. She was fine. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, she was gone. Maybe she did some coke. I don’t know.’ I was blabbering. Now that Sabah was here, calm, controlled Sabah, it was as if I could finally allow myself to feel scared.
‘Alia, get a grip,’ Sabah said, without turning to look at me. She pulled out a bottle from her bag and splashed some water on Noor’s face. ‘Can you hold her hair back?’
I crouched down behind Noor while Sabah forced her mouth open. Their touching was thoughtless in a way that I couldn’t understand and yet desperately craved.
‘I need you to puke now, okay, Noor?’ Sabah said, slapping her lightly. ‘Can you do that?’
Noor nodded and let Sabah stick a finger down her throat.
I pushed my seat back and closed my eyes, listening as Sabah called Noor’s parents from the car and explained that Noor and I were at her house and that we were just going to stay there seeing how late it was. There was a practised ease to Sabah’s actions that unnerved me despite my own sorry state.
‘Of course not, Uncle,’ she spoke into the phone. ‘Honestly. I can wake her up if you want?’
She paused to listen to what Noor’s father was saying, before adding, ‘No, I know. It’s nothing like that. She just fell asleep watching a film . . . you know how she is. Alia’s here as well.’
I twisted to look at her in the back seat. Noor had her head on Sabah’s lap and Sabah was stroking her hair while she assured Noor’s father that his daughter was fine. I watched Sabah finish that call, then make another one to her own mother to let her know Noor and I would be staying over.
‘She does this every now and again. It got really bad last year. That’s why her parents sent her away before the school year started,’ Sabah said softly after she hung up.
‘Sent her away . . .’ I said slowly, my brain processing what Sabah was telling me as the memory of Niv threatening Noor on the first day of school reappeared. ‘Like, to a rehab centre?’
‘Singapore,’ Sabah nodded.
I turned around, my eyes fixed on the road ahead. It didn’t make sense to me. I knew that Noor thrived on drama but she had everything. Why would she risk it all for a few hours of escapism?
‘I tried to warn you,’ Sabah said. ‘She’s not all light and sparkle, Alia. There’s a darkness inside her that someone like you can never understand.’
I woke up to the sound of Noor and Sabah whispering. It was early, really early, the light filtering through the window milky instead of the warm, orange light I’d come to associate with Delhi winters. I turned on my side, the pull-out bed Sabah and I had made up for me creaking as I moved. I opened my eyes a sliver. I could just about make out Noor and Sabah on the double b
ed across the room.
‘If I’d known you were struggling again, I would’ve—’ Sabah was saying.
‘You would’ve what? You knew. You’re the only one who knows what it’s really like and you – you just abandoned me. Faraz is being a prick as usual and Abbu’s threatening to send me away.’
‘I don’t think he would—’
‘Of course he would. All he cares about is how I make him look,’ Noor sighed. ‘I didn’t have anyone to talk to.’
Noor’s words made me flinch. She had me.
‘I didn’t realize things were so bad,’ Sabah said. ‘You seemed fine . . . and I was angry, but you know I’m always here if you need me. Why didn’t you say something?’
‘After what I did . . . I just – I’m so sorry, Sabah. I don’t know what I was thinking. Our friendship means much more to me than a boy,’ Noor said, her voice breaking.
‘I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have ratted you out. I was being petty.’
There was a pause in the conversation and I adjusted the duvet, inching closer until I was at the edge.
‘Can we just pretend the last six months never happened and go back to being us? I’ve missed you. Plus, Faraz has started seeing this new girl and we need to bitch about her.’
Sabah laughed. ‘Tell me everything.’
I listened to Noor babble on about Faraz and his new girlfriend, telling Sabah things she had not even mentioned to me.
It felt as though someone had pulled my heart out of my chest and was squeezing it until there was nothing left.
I closed my eyes and let the sunlight dance on my lids. I tried to count in my head all the things she had told me that Sabah didn’t know about.
Less than a handful.
‘Say you’ll forgive me?’ Noor said when she had finished recounting the saga that was Faraz’s love life.
‘There is nothing to forgive. We’re sisters.’
ALIA
It’s one a.m. and I’m wide awake. I curl onto my side, the sheets a tangle around my waist, my skin hot and clammy despite the cool November night.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to will myself back to sleep but my brain draws me back, again and again, to the conversation with Sabah and, of course, to Noor.
For years I have managed to keep Noor boxed away, every thought, every memory folded away in the furthest corner of my brain for those rare moments when I felt strong enough to face her. Thinking about her hurt. A lot. And with no answers forthcoming, the only way I knew to survive was to push her away.
Denial. That’s always been my go-to tactic.
But the truth is that these days Noor is never far from my thoughts. I see her every time I watch a teenage girl throw her head back in a delighted ripple of laughter; I hear her every time someone utters the word ‘seriously’, their tone dripping with sarcasm; I smell her every time I get a whiff of that intoxicating perfume. The same perfume that I’d smelled on Sabah last night.
Arjun thinks it’s unhealthy, this fascination with what he assumes is nothing more than a gruesome chapter of my life, so brief it was over even before it started. The way he sees it, the past belongs in bittersweet anecdotes and photo albums that you occasionally stumble on and quickly put away.
I wonder if he would look at things differently if he knew the gory details of what happened back then, if he knew what I did and, more importantly, what I didn’t do. I had never intended to lie to him, but I couldn’t exactly come out and say it, so I held back, letting him paint his own picture, a composite of the little that I told him and the things that he’d already read in the papers. Somehow, I came out blameless in this version, and that became the baseline of the narrative that I would rely on years later to make my political debut.
Every time I wake in the night, my skin clammy, the sound of those fireworks echoing in my ears, all I want to do is tell him. I picture waking him up and explaining to him why it bothers me so much, why after all these years, the same questions still haunt me, why the guilt sometimes feels so heavy, it seems like it might crush me. But any new account I give him would need to be preceded by a confession and when it comes down to it, I buckle. I keep it to myself, the secret getting heavier every year, and the questions becoming darker as I run through the sequence of events again and again, trying to fill in the blanks and figure out just where I fit into it all.
Trying, more than anything, to find an alternate narrative that might lessen my guilt, that might help me convince myself that there was nothing I could’ve done to help her. But my brain argues back. Every single time.
I try to distract myself by thinking about the campaign instead, but Saeed’s threats and Faraz’s disloyalty eclipse any deliberations of election strategy. I flip onto my side and edge myself closer to my husband.
He turns and drapes an arm around me, murmuring lightly in his sleep, instinctively sensing my need to be held. As he pulls me in, it’s all I can do not to bury my face in his neck and tell him everything.
This guilt is mine and mine alone.
Morning arrives eventually. I drag myself out of bed and into the office. Door closed. Steaming cup of coffee in front of me. I try to focus on the draft bill on my desk but my brain keeps deflecting, taking me back to overheard conversations and tightly held secrets, Sabah’s calculated words and Noor’s nervous laughter.
A knock at the door forces me out of my thoughts.
‘I’ve got the reports that you asked for,’ Omar says, placing a file on the desk. I give him a blank look. I can’t even remember what it was that I asked him to bring me. ‘The shortlist for the sexual harassment committee,’ he adds.
I had asked him to get me in-depth profiles for all the women on the shortlist. They’re all great candidates, women known for their brilliance and professionalism, but it is their integrity that I care about the most.
As if I’m one to speak.
Show me a woman who has shattered a glass ceiling and I’ll show you the ghosts she carries with her.
‘I’ll look at it this afternoon,’ I say, turning back to the Excel sheet in front of me. When I look up a minute later, Omar’s still hovering.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s not on the news yet but Saeed’s son has been cleared,’ Omar says. ‘He has an alibi, apparently.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘He was with his parents on the night of the . . . death,’ he says, stumbling over the word.
My hand tenses around the handle of the coffee mug, the dark swirl of liquid trembling as my grip tightens.
I look at Omar. Fury looks the same on everyone.
We both know it was murder.
We both know there is nothing more we can do about it.
‘The other boys have alibis as well. And since there was no rape kit . . .’ He trails off, the meaning behind his silence unmistakable. ‘We should expect some backlash from Saeed,’ he adds.
The anger and frustration twist into a dark knot in my throat, a roar building inside me. Saeed will turn this into a political play, Divya will be forgotten and her rapists, her murderers, will roam free, safe in the knowledge that they are untouchable. It happens every single day and that is the fucking problem.
My face tightens into a mask as I walk out of the office without a word, but underneath it all, my heart is screaming.
SABAH
‘Why?’ Alia demands, her voice hurtling in before she’s even stepped through the door.
There is an odd, frantic energy to her and I move aside to let her in. ‘What—’
‘Why are you making this documentary now? And don’t you dare give me that random anniversary bullshit again. You haven’t looked back in fifteen years.’
I consider her for a moment. The girl who had transformed herself into a near replica of Noor, who had all but moved in with the Qureshis, who had been nothing but a nuisance to me for the entire time that I had known her. She is without doubt one of the most successful women in the country now, yet there is
a sadness about her. I can see the same guilt and shame in her eyes that I have lived with for years. I have not been able to escape the destruction of that night, and as I look at her, I realize that there’s been no closure for her either. Noor’s death had left us both devastated and, yes, we had both nursed our wounds in entirely different ways, but it occurs to me now that we are both searching for answers to the same question.
Noor had trusted her. Perhaps it’s time I did too.
‘Come on,’ I say, walking quickly up the stairs.
She follows me into my bedroom as I go to my desk and unpin the piece of paper that I’ve been obsessing over for weeks.
‘This was sent to me,’ I say, holding it out.
I can see the recognition in Alia’s eyes as she catches a glimpse of the handwriting on the page.
Her hand trembles as she reaches for it.
Her eyes skim over the sheet, quickly at first, then back again a second time.
‘This is –’ She struggles to keep her voice under control.
‘A page from her diary, yes.’
She thrusts the paper back at me and takes a step back, tears streaming down her face.
‘This is why,’ she whispers and I nod, the unspoken words humming between us.
Almost automatically, my gaze is drawn back to the page, Noor’s hold on me just as strong even after fifteen years. I reread the words I now know by heart.
and that’s what scares me the most. I know I’ve done some terrible things but I’ll fix them. I’ll apologize. I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right. I’ll even start praying, for real. But I don’t know if that will be enough. What if the next time I’m not so lucky? What if the next time I shout for help, there’s no one there to hear me? I am so scared. I don’t want to die. I really, really don’t want to die.
Alia’s eyes are on me when I look up.
There is so much about Noor’s words that doesn’t make sense, but then Noor had always loved her secrets and that year, for the first time in years, the keeper of her secrets hadn’t been me.
Can You See Me Now? Page 14