***
At eight o'clock that evening, Raj took a final look around the Bay Ridge apartment before banging on Lucky's door. "Hey, man, you called the car service, right?"
Lucky quickly opened the door and shook his head like a bobble head doll. "Sure, sure. It will be here any time. No worries."
Raj didn't seem worried, but the look of depression on his face was unmistakable. "Where's Vijay?" Raj asked. Almost on cue, Vijay came out of his bedroom and slipped his phone into his pocket. He glanced at Lucky and nodded discreetly. There was an awkward silence as the three boys stood in the hallway looking at each other, not knowing how to say goodbye. Raj cleared his throat. "Look, guys, I know you don't agree with my decision, but I hope that you can?what? I don't know. Understand? Forgive me? Not think I'm a coward?" Raj stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
The doorbell rang and Lucky jumped. Raj opened his eyes and looked at his friends. "So, are you coming with, or are you saying goodbye here? If you want to do it here, I understand. I don't want you to have to pay for the ride back from the airport."
"Um, no, it's fine. We'll go with you. Let's go," Vijay said, motioning for Raj to take the lead.
Raj smiled and looked relieved. "Good! I don't know if I'm quite ready to say goodbye yet."
"I hope not," Lucky replied under his breath. Raj furrowed his brow at Lucky, then shouted towards the front door. "Yup, coming!" He threw his backpack over his shoulder and extended the handle on the larger bag, pulling it behind him as he opened the door.
A small woman was standing in front of him, nervously tucking her hair into her hijab. She smiled at him - a beautiful, shy smile. "Bhai?"
Raj stared at Hina, and then slowly took his bag off his shoulder and let it slide to the floor. He hadn't expected to see her again after the day they'd crashed her wedding and dropped her off at Carrie's apartment.
"Hina?what?what are you doing here?" Raj felt a lump in his throat.
"Bhai, please."
She called me 'brother,' was all that Raj could think.
"Bhai, I don't think my family is going to accept me, ever. I don't have any hopes to be with them again. I have lost them. I can't lose you, too. Allah sent you to me for a purpose in my life. Please don't leave me. Please?" Hina begged, her eyes glistening.
"So you know? Everything?" Raj asked slowly.
"Yes. Vijay called me last night and told me everything. About my mother, about Mohan and their love for each other. About how he died, and how you were saved, and how you had spent your whole life trying to find your family. It all sounded so incredible, but somehow I knew that everything he said was true. My?our mother," she corrected herself, "has always been a wonderful, loving mother, but there has always been a sadness in her, a part of her heart that always seemed to be grieving some kind of loss. And every year, at the same time in the middle of October, my mother would pray and fast, and I never knew why. When is your birthday, bhai?" Hina asked softly.
"October 20th, or at least, that's when they found me." Raj replied.
Hina smiled and took a step closer to him. "She prayed for you on your birthday, Raj. And she prayed for Mohan, too. The same day your father left our mother's world, you came into it, and her heart breaks every year on this day. And yet she gives thanks to Allah every year for you both."
A huge sob escaped from Raj's throat, and he didn't care what anyone thought. Hina tentatively took another step forward and extended her arms. Raj hesitated for only a moment before wrapping his arms around her small frame and embracing her, his tears creating an intricate pattern of grief, loss, and resurrection on her silk hijab.
"Bhai, our mother?you mustn't judge her. I am proud of her for pursuing love in the presence of so many restrictions, even though her love was stolen from her. I know that without Nadira's help and the protection of American laws, I would not be able to love Vijay openly. Don't you see? I have achieved our mother's dream. I have done what she was never permitted to do. And one day, I hope that she will find the courage to accept us both into her life."
Raj nodded in agreement, his cheek still pressed against the top of Hina head, his strong arms embracing the sister he never knew he had. "Me, too," he whispered. "Me, too."
Raj had his eyes closed and didn't see that Carrie was standing behind Hina at a respectable distance, watching the reunion unfold. When he opened his eyes and saw her, he bowed his head in shame. "Carrie?" he started, but choked on his tears.
Hina stepped to the side as Carrie approach Raj.
"Carrie, I'm so sorry?I?I don't know what else to say," Raj said, his eyes pleading with Carrie's. "I know it's not enough."
Carrie had been hurt, without a doubt. When Vijay and Lucky told her that Raj had bought a ticket back to India and hadn't intended to say goodbye, she'd been furious. A hundred different things had run through her mind, none of them positive. Had she really been so blind as to fall for a selfish playboy? A man willing to sleep with her, but not willing to include her in the biggest decisions of his life? Was Raj ashamed of her? Did he think she wasn't good enough for him?
Vijay and Lucky were on the unfortunate end of this barrage of questions and accusations, and it took a concerted effort on their part before they were finally able to calm her down enough to hear Raj's story. "And so," Vijay had told her, "If you love him, you'll understand that he has lost his parents all over again, just like he did when he was a newborn. He is devastated right now, and you just need to give him time to figure things out, without getting angry or taking his decisions personally." Then he'd asked her to put Hina on the phone, as he knew he needed to have a long and difficult conversation with her as well. By the time the call ended, Vijay and Lucky were both emotionally drained, and they passed out in Vijay's bed, waking only when Raj came back to the apartment with dinner.
Carrie now looked at the man she loved, and felt his pain as her own. "Ssssh, Raj, don't," Carrie said soothingly. "You don't have to apologize to me for being a man who feels things deeply. You don't have to apologize to me for loving your parents, and for grieving their loss for a second time in your life. You don't have to apologize to me for not knowing how to face me, when you've just had to face one of the most difficult and heartbreaking moments of your life," Carrie said, wrapping her arms around Raj. He hugged her to him fiercely.
"You might have to apologize to me, however, for calling me fat," she whispered in his ear.
Raj pushed her away and held her at arms' length, a look of incredulity on his face. "What are you talking about? I never called you fat!" Raj protested, and Vijay and Lucky giggled.
Carrie threw her head back and laughed. "I know. I was just teasing. But seriously, you were going to go back to India without even saying goodbye?" she said indignantly, slapping his chest. "You deserved that, and everything else you're going to have to endure to get back in my good graces," she said.
Raj wiped the tears off his face. "Let me guess?more subjugation of an Indian by a Brit?"
"Perhaps," Carrie replied coyly.
Lucky and Vijay couldn't stand it anymore. "Hey, sale," Vijay said, addressing Raj by the Hindi word for brother-in-law, "any way we could get in on this little love affair?"
"Yeah," Lucky complained. "I never had to talk so much in whole my life as I did tonight with these girls. You owe me, dude. You think you are so generous with the hugs, maybe you can spare one or two for us?"
Raj laughed and jumped at his friends, grabbing them in a big bear hug. Until now, Raj had cursed God for taking everything away from him that he thought was important. But standing in that doorway, surrounded by his sister and these friends who had become his family, Raj knew that he had gained so much more than he'd lost. The love of his friends would heal his heart. For ten years, Raj had wandered through life, a lost soul searching for answers and for his true
home. For ten years, he'd thought that until he'd found his parents, until someone stepped up and claimed him as their own, that his life would continue to be meaningless. That night, Raj realized that he was only partially right. Vijay, Lucky, Carrie, and Hina were not the people he had imagined that would heal his pain, and his life in America was nothing like he had anticipated. But these people - these people were the ones who had stepped up and claimed Raj as their own. And it was here, standing in this apartment in Bay Ridge, surrounded by his people, that Raj realized he was finally home.
Namaste New York: A Novel Page 45