Stealing Nasreen

by Farzana Doctor

  “You’re sounding quite the Indophobe. Hey, but you know I’m just learning to speak Gujarati. Did I tell you about my class? Why don’t you come with me? Mrs. Paperwala, the teacher, is werry charming, and such a lawelly cook too,” Asha falls into a bad Indian accent, “Really, she’s great. Just twenty bucks for a two-hour class and she never lets me leave without a fresh parantha.”

  “Gujarati classes? I don’t know, Asha –”

  “Come on, it will be fun. I never see you any more. We can practice together.”

  “Well, it would help if I could communicate better…”

  “Great. Maybe she’ll give us a discount if there are two of us. Geez, I sound like my mother. Chalo, Mrs. Paperwala, I’m bringing you extra student. Give us good price, yaar. I’ll pick you up next Monday at your work? I have to go. I’ll be late for my Rhetoric and Meaning class. Bye.”

  “OK. Bye.”

  Nasreen hangs up, feeling a bit stunned. She wonders how she is so easily talked into things, so effortlessly swayed to join in with another’s agenda; first her father’s trip to India and now Asha’s Gujarati classes. But Nasreen also feels a sense of excitement and energy, a rush of possibilities that has been absent for some time. How long? She rests her face in her hands, her elbows leaning against her desk. She picks up her pen and writes in her day-planner: Asha, 6:00 p.m., Monday. Who knows, maybe she will become fluent in Gujarati. Maybe the trip to India will be fun. Maybe her father will get so cheered up he’ll stop leaning on her so much. Maybe she’ll meet a nice woman there and live happily ever after. She catches herself laughing out loud.

  She is on a roll and so she dials Mona’s number. After four rings, the machine picks up and the recording begins with Mona’s deadpan voice delivering a joke. These ones are new. “What’s the only good kind of Tory? A suppository!” “Have you heard the one about the Liberal Member of Parliament with a big heart? Yeah he bought it last week with your tax dollars!” There is a beep and Nasreen says, “Hi Mona, it’s Nas, sorry it’s taken me so long to return your call –” There is an electronic squeal as the receiver is picked up. “Hello? Nas, is that you?”

  “Yeah, I’m finally calling people back. What are you doing home?”

  “I took today off to use up some of my overtime. Our big funding proposal was due yesterday. I sent it in just under the wire.” Mona is known for being one of the best fundraisers in the nonprofit sector. “All I’ve been doing lately is working. Like you, I’ve heard.”

  “I suppose I have been working late to avoid my empty apartment. Well, I shouldn’t say empty. There is Id, my steadfast and loyal feline companion.”

  “The best kind there is, eh?” she laughs. “But you should have called me. I would have been there in a flash.”

  “You know how I am. Sometimes I need to be alone to work things out.”

  “Yeah, I do know. You don’t take your own advice. Don’t you always tell everyone to talk about their feelings? You’re like a gardener who lets her own yard get weedy. Are you still seeing your therapist, at least?”

  “Well, sort of. I had to cancel the last couple of times.”

  “Uh huh. Well, I’m glad that you’re finally emerging from your isolation tank. Let’s go out and celebrate that.” Mona suggests dinner and then clubbing. Nasreen hesitates but agrees before she has a chance to turn down Mona’s invitation. Perhaps it will be good to get out, she thinks. It’s as though something unclasps in her mind, allowing fresh air to whoosh through its inner chambers. She packs up her things and decides to leave work a few minutes early.

  The phone rings at two p.m., shaking Shaffiq from his deep sleep. Still horizontal, he reaches for the phone and looks at the red numbers on his digital clock, trying to make sense of them. He hears the enthusiastic voice of his Housekeeping supervisor, James.

  “Hey how are you Shaffiq? I hope I’m not calling at a bad time. I’m looking for someone to go in a few hours early to cover for Ravi. He’s sick. Think you can make it in for five?” Shaffiq wants to say no, wants to return to his slumber, but realizes it is probably too late for that.

  “Yeah, okay. I will be getting overtime, right?” He considers The Girls’ University Fund that he and Salma started two weeks ago and calculates that the extra pay will allow for a nice deposit into it. So far the balance is a meager forty dollars, a small sum for sure, but at least it is a start, isn’t it? They celebrated their ability to start the fund by taking the children to Gerrard Street. They had bhel puris and chaana bhatura and later he had an extra big paan that he chewed for almost an hour. He estimates that if they continue to save at this rate, they may be able to help each child through their first year of university. Maybe two years if things go well.

  By four-forty-five he is ready to start his five o’clock shift. Tonight he will be cleaning his usual areas as well as covering Ravi’s two floors. He wheels the cleaning cart to the elevator, passing employees leaving for the weekend, their shift ending as his begins. He presses the elevator button and waits. As the doors open a group of teenagers unload, laughing and shoving each other out of the elevator. Shaffiq thinks it is curious that all their pants are so big that they drag across the floor, bagging at their rear ends, making the boys walk with an exaggerated swagger. Maybe that’s the point, Shaffiq muses. The last of them vacate the elevator, and then she steps out. Nasreen.

  “Nasreen, hello! How are you?”

  “Just fine, thanks.” She maneuvers herself gracefully around and past his cart.

  “You are from India, no?” He is breathless, searching his head for any words, any topic to make conversation, to keep her there even for a moment.

  “Yes.” She starts down the corridor, but then hesitates, slowing her steps. She looks over her shoulder at him. “Well, I was born here. But my parents are from Bombay, um, well, I guess it is called Mumbai, now.” She smiles, her white teeth flashing bright between cherry-red lips. Then she quickens her pace and is gone.

  As he gets on the elevator, he sees that every floor button is lit up, the result of the swaggering-loose-pant-fitting-youth prank. Hooligans. No respect. But his mind is busy with something else. From which floor did she get off? Bombay. Her parents are from Bombay. Of course she was born here. No wonder she is so western looking. But today she seemed a little friendlier, letting out a few words before the rush-rush away.

  After stopping at the second and the third floors, he finally reaches the fourth. He pushes his cart down the hallway to the first bathroom, opens the door and begins the ritual of spray, wipe, spray, flush, spray, scrub. By seven p.m., Shaffiq is finished with the washrooms and heads toward the offices to begin vacuuming. He reads the name plate on the door of the first office he gets to, “Randolph Volitis.” Shaffiq likes to say names out loud, and guess their origins. This game is more difficult here in Canada compared to in India, where he was quite adept at hearing a person’s name and then placing their religion, state, language. He could accurately guess if a person was Muslim, maybe even identify whether they were Sunni or Shia.

  Of course, religion caused problems for him. No pay raises, no promotions for the minority man in India. But those subtleties don’t seem to matter here, Shaffiq thinks. Here they mix us up, think we all look the same. A few times his supervisor has called him Ravi and then apologized profusely for the mistake.

  Whatever Randolph’s origins, he certainly is a tidy sort. Randolph Volitis, Shaffiq says, sounding out the strange name, still unable to guess the man’s ethnicity. He finds nothing out of place, no client files open on the desk to peruse, nothing of interest even in the garbage bin. He pulls the vacuum out of the office, turns off the lights and moves down the hallway to a room with nine blue chairs in an almost perfect circle. On his training day, his supervisor called this room a group therapy room and Shaffiq guesses that this is where classes of some sort take place. He doesn’t like vacuuming here; there is too much
furniture to move and the mounted cameras and blinking red lights on the ceiling microphones make him nervous. Shaffiq ensures he never does anything unusual when cleaning these rooms and he doesn’t make eye contact with the cameras either. He empties the garbage can and is meticulous about cleaning in the corners just in case he is being spied on.

  Shaffiq checks his watch and decides that it is time for a break. He stops in a waiting area, pulls out his plastic thermos and pours a cup of hot chai. He inhales the fragrant steam escaping the thermos. Salma packed him some snacks, but he will save those for later. Yesterday, she told him that chai is sold in the coffee shops for $3.75 a cup.

  “No, it’s not true!” He laughed. He couldn’t believe it.

  “Shaffiq, I think they find Indian things exotic. Imagine, paying so much for a cup of tea!”

  “Maybe we should go into business! We could make a killing selling ordinary Indian things and marketing them as exotic.”

  “Perhaps we could sell small bags of salt and call it Gandhi Holy Salt. What do you think, Shaffiq?”

  “Or maybe tiny bottles of vegetable oil. We could stick on labels that say Karmic Elixir!”

  He takes out the Walkman and sits back to rest. Sipping the warm liquid, he surveys the waiting area and the long hallway ahead of him. Except for the fact that this floor is two above his usual areas, it seems indistinguishable from those below. The walls are painted the identical listless grey and the floors are all of the same used-up yellow. Even the smells match up: cleaning solvents and coffee. He checks his watch and sees that he is still entitled to nine more minutes of his break. He stands up, stretches and scans the magazines piled messily on the tables. He picks up a thick glossy one with a picture of a laughing blonde woman on the cover and reads through the headlines: Winter Fashion Guide, How to Look Hot in the Cold; Easy Holiday Entertaining Ideas; Arranged Marriages, One Woman’s Agony. He flips the magazine open to the last story and reads about an Indian woman who was forced to marry a man she did not love. She soon became suicidal and eventually tried to slit her wrists. Shaffiq closes the magazine. He doesn’t want to read anymore and his break is almost over anyway.

  Shaffiq and Salma came from opposite sides of Bombay. They had never met before their first formal meeting, but they belonged to the same religious community. Later, their mothers realized that they had been classmates years before at the St. Theresa Convent Girls School. Shaffiq and Salma were not an obvious match, but his mother was no longer being picky. By this point, Shaffiq was thirty-one and had been introduced to twelve prospective brides already. He had come to think of these arranged meetings as embarrassing and unsuccessful shopping escapades; he would start out full of hope but always went home empty-handed and unsatisfied. His mother chided him for being too fussy and difficult and he knew that he would eventually have to choose one of the women, marry her, and have children. But he just knew that not one of the twelve potentials was the one for him. How did he know? He had never before been in love, never had a previous relationship. He had kissed only two girls before, and one of those had been his own cousin-sister. But as he made awkward conversation with each of the twelve nervous women while their chaperones looked on, he had a strong sense that each of them was not to be his Mrs. Paperwala.

  Salma was the thirteenth to be presented to him in her family’s sitting room. Shaffiq’s mother wondered if the girl was too old already and besides that, she had heard distressing gossip about Salma’s mental instability and independent streak. But she was desperate and more than willing to overlook these rumours to give the girl a try. At least she was pretty and came from a good family, unlike a few of the ugly-puglies she had previously introduced to her son.

  The adult children sat stiffly across from one other, a plate of pakoras the neutral territory between them.

  “Salma has just made these fresh,” said her mother, doing her best to be positive, “taste them. Already she is so good at cookery.” Salma smirked at her mother’s lie. It was true that she was a good cook, but her mother had fried the snacks herself that morning.

  He dutifully took one and responded, “Oh yes, very nice. And such good chutney too.” Her mother smiled approvingly at him. He remembers that Salma wore a yellow shalwaar kameez and a hard, almost stubborn expression. Beneath this, he thought he saw sadness in her long-lashed eyes. He liked the way her hair hung unconventionally loose around her shoulders, like a thin woolen shawl, making her look simultaneously tartish and chaste.

  The pair made strained conversation about the recent rainy season and then their mothers left the room sharing matching looks of hopelessness for their unbetrothed children. Despite his discomfort, something about Salma interested Shaffiq. After they were left alone, he leaned in closer.

  “So how many times have you done this? Me, myself, this is the thirteenth time! I sat down yesterday and counted them up. Twelve meetings like this before today! Can you believe it? My poor ma is getting fed up.” Salma looked up at him, blinking hard. She frowned, and then began counting under her breath and on her fingers.

  “What’s wrong, did I say something wrong? I guess I’m not exactly doing a good job of selling myself as an eligible –”

  “Shhh. Hold on a second.” Shaffiq watched her as she continued to count. “Sorry, how many?”

  “Pardon me?” Shaffiq was growing increasingly unconfident with this girl. Unsure of what to say, he instead stuffed a pakora in his mouth.

  “How many times did you say you’ve done this? How many girls have you met?” She was now perched at the edge of her seat, her face just a few, indecorous inches away from his.

  “Twelve,” he responded obediently, surprised at the urgency in her voice.

  “Bloody hell,” she whispered, “me too.” She sat back in her seat and they both looked down at the pakoras and contemplated the coincidence.

  Then, she started to talk. She told him that she was a Standard Five teacher and loved her work and independence. She admitted to Shaffiq that she had not wanted to be married and had intentionally acted rudely with previous suitors. Still, there had been a few proposals, each one turned down. She told him that as each year had passed, she noticed her rebellion growing wishy-washy and felt herself giving in more readily to her parents’ urgings. Perhaps she would try to settle down with someone, but he had to be the right person, she said, with a stubborn air. Shaffiq listened to her speak for many more minutes, noticing that their mothers were looking in periodically, his own shooting him alternating looks of concern and approval. He listened carefully to Salma, knowing that he needed to remember everything she had told him. He studied her dark eyes, her full lips, the small birth marks dotting their way down from her temple to her chin. He noticed how her hair seemed to tickle her neck just before she brushed it away and down her back. When she stopped speaking, he said, “Thirteen is now my lucky number.”

  Within a year of that meeting they were married.

  So does he believe in arranged marriages then? He’s not sure. Hadn’t things worked out well for him? And don’t these Canadians have too many divorces even though they have so-called love marriages? He throws the magazine down in a huff and walks away.

  He turns on the floor polisher and pushes the heavy rumbling machine down the deserted hallway. As he approaches the first office on the left he looks up to read the metal name plate on the door: Nasreen Bastawala. He gasps at the familiar name, the tell-tale surname suffix that conjures up the salesmen, the merchants, the businessmen who constitute his own clan. Nasreen Bastawala, he says aloud. Nasreen Bastawala, I knew you were one of us.

  Chapter 3

  NASREEN SUMMONS UP HER courage, arranges a last-minute appointment with her hairdresser, and searches her closet for something worthwhile to wear.

  Each time she has been ripe from a break-up, her friends have prescribed a night of clubbing, a lesbian household remedy. And so she complies, hoping tha
t this time it will deliver some relief for her condition.

  Her hairdresser is a young guy named Stephane who works in a collectively-run salon on Queen Street near Trinity Bellwoods. On each visit, he sports a different coif, often in experimental colours. His last hairdo was a spiky magenta creation that made him look like a purple porcupine. This afternoon, he surprises her with a less inspired look: a Blue Jays cap over what looks like a brush cut. He takes her to the back and washes her hair, massaging warm half-circles into her scalp, while she sighs gratefully under his strong, soapy fingers.

  “So, what would you like me to do?” He asks, toweling her head maternally.

  “I don’t know. I just want something … different,” She peeks up at his face looking down at hers, “I suppose that is a bit of a cliché in your business. I must say that each time I’m here.”

  “Honey, a hairdresser is just like a bartender. Or maybe like a therapist. I hear everything. So tell me, what’s the occasion? No, let me guess. Your man walk out on you?”

  Nasreen is somewhat taken aback by his flippancy. “Actually, I asked her to leave a couple of months ago.”

  “And what did she do to deserve that?” Stephane pulls a comb gently through tangled hair.

  “Well, for starters she cheated on me with her best friend,” Nasreen says coolly, wondering how this detail could so easily roll off her tongue. A week ago, the mere mention of Connie put her either into a rage, or made her cry until her eyes were red and puffy.

  “Uggh, the best friend. How tasteless. It all makes sense then. You came to the right place. A haircut will fix you right up.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt, I guess. Good to cut off the dead ends, you know what I mean?”

  “Girl, do I. I did the same just last month. Dumped his ass, then shaved my head. Got rid of it all so something new could take root. You like my new look? Sorta butch, eh?” She smiles at his joke. “But how about I just give you a trim? A little layering in here,” he says pointing to the back of her head, “and maybe a touch shorter than usual. But I refuse to cut it all off. You have such beautiful hair.”