Stealing Nasreen

by Farzana Doctor

  Nasreen rises from the chair feeling lighter after her salon confessions. She tips Stephane well and even allows him to sell her a bottle of stupidly expensive hair gel.

  She meets Mona for a late dinner at a little Greek restaurant on Church Street. They get a window seat so she and Mona can watch people while they dig into their souvlaki platters. Although it’s a cool night, the street is packed with dressed-up men walking arm-in-arm, looking as though they are on their way to some important, stylish party. A few women pass by on the sidewalk too, some noticing her gaze and responding with their own direct or furtive glances.

  Later, they go dancing at Tango. Despite the chill of the autumn night, the air inside is humid and saturated with that familiar blend of smoke and beer that sticks to skin and hair until scrubbed clean the next day. Mona and Nasreen scan the collective gyrating on the dance floor, recognizing and waving to people they know. Mona notices her first.

  “Well, if it isn’t our favourite gal pal over there.” Mona yells hot breath into Nasreen’s ear.

  Nasreen spots her too. The contents of her stomach tip sideways, and she holds onto Mona’s arm for support. She watches Connie slow dance with a woman with long blond hair. Blond on blond, Nasreen observes. At least they match, she thinks, bitterly. In the dim light, Nasreen sees Connie’s left hand holding tightly onto a thin waist, her thumb sinking into bare midriff. The woman dancing with Connie wears a short skirt and a tiny halter top. Connie’s right hand slides down the woman’s bare thigh and Nasreen wonders what has become of Laura, Connie’s best friend, the first Other Woman.

  “Are you OK, do you want to go? We can probably still get the cover charge back –”

  “No, I expected she’d be here. I mean, there is only one good dyke bar on Church and this is her favourite. I’ll be fine. I need to stay. I can’t keep trying to avoid her, can I? I’m going to have a good time tonight and just ignore her.” “Maybe you should try to act normal, like maybe go talk to her later. Be casual,” Mona advises.

  “Nah, I like our communication breakdown.”

  “Who’s that she’s with? That’s not the skank she was cheating with, is it? I don’t recognize her.”

  “No, it’s not Laura. I don’t know who that woman is. Never seen her before.”

  “Nas, I am so glad you kicked her out,” Mona says, and Nasreen feels the weight of her friend’s sympathetic brown eyes on her.

  “Yeah,” Nasreen says, turning away. “Let’s get a drink.”

  At the bar, Nasreen surreptitiously looks over at Connie and her dance partner, watching their pelvises grind to the beat of a bangra song. Mona mocks some of the off-rhythm moves of the dancers and Nasreen nods smugly. Despite Mona’s best efforts to distract Nasreen with gossip, jokes, and cutting remarks about women’s outfits, Nasreen’s eyes find their way back to Connie and her thin femme date. The music changes and Connie looks up and notices Nasreen’s gaze. It takes them both a moment to look away.

  Later, the DJ spins an old Prince record and Mona jumps up and pulls Nasreen to the dance floor. They take care to stay at the edge of the parquet border, far from Connie, but by the middle of the song, Connie has migrated across the dance floor to Nasreen’s side.

  “I haven’t seen you around for awhile,” she says, her expression friendly.

  “Yeah.” Nasreen sways to the music awkwardly and looks for Mona, who, with eyes closed, is engrossed in herself and her dancing.

  “How have you been?” Connie’s touch is like melted chocolate on Nasreen’s arm, her sweet damp fingers wrapping Nasreen’s elbow, her thumb pressing into the soft skin of her inner arm. A heat rises up and through Nasreen’s pores. She pulls her arm free.

  “Look, Connie, I’m not interested in talking, OK?” Nasreen’s pulse quickens, “Go back to your little girlfriend over there.” She instantly wishes that she could take her words back, wishes she could feign indifference. Connie looks over at her date. Nasreen unsuccessfully tries to get Mona’s attention, but Mona dances, as though in a trance, singing along with Little Red Corvette.

  “But I’ve really wanted to talk to you. Don’t you think it’s time we had coffee, discussed it, you know … had some closure or something?” Nasreen notes Connie’s awkward use of psychobabble.

  “Baby you’re much too fast,” Mona sings, out of tune.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Connie, I have closure. I didn’t need to talk to you to achieve that.” Connie looks at her, quizzically. “Perhaps you should talk to someone else if you need help,” she hisses. “Maybe you should see a therapist and figure out why the hell you’re such a fuck-up.” Nasreen’s words come out like sharp stones. She watches as they hit Connie and make their mark, reddening her face. Connie turns away and strides out of the bar, her date running after her.

  A warm wind of calm rises through Nasreen, starting in her groin and moving up to her skull. I won, she thinks. I chased her away.

  “What’d she say to you? I saw her coming over but wasn’t sure if I should step in, you know, interfere…” Mona says, her eyes darting between Nasreen and the door through which Connie just exited. Nasreen is surprised that Mona did not hear the argument. In her mind the music stopped, time slowed down, and she yelled so loud that everyone in the bar would have paused to witness her victory. But as the rest of Tango’s patrons continue to vibrate as one collective rhythm, oblivious to the battle that has just transpired, Nasreen’s triumph withers. She orders another drink.

  Shaffiq finishes all of the other offices on the fourth floor before cleaning Nasreen’s. Wanting to ensure that he is completely alone, he circles the dull grey hallways once more, stepping carefully over the yellowing linoleum. Sure enough, not a soul is to be found in the clinic this late on a Friday night. He slides his master key into the lock and takes a deep breath before entering Nasreen’s dark office.

  He stands at the door, surveying the room. He wants to get a wide-angle look first and then focus on the details. Like the other offices, hers is the usual rectangle with a small vertical-blinded window. Facing into the wall, there is an old wooden desk, and a newish looking computer. A flashing green light winks at him from its monitor.

  There are three blue chairs, spaced more or less in a triangle. At the back wall is an old beaten-up filing cabinet. A plastic plant sits on the window’s ledge. He studies the leaflets and flyers tacked haphazardly to the bulletin board over her desk: advertisements for women’s therapy groups, self-defense classes, a list of women’s shelters. So she must be a psychologist then, he considers. A women’s psychologist. She definitely is not one of the administrators, who have different sorts of work spaces, with spreadsheets and charts and dry erase white boards. In those offices there are no seats in circles, or triangles, or any other shape. Rather, a generous, cushioned chair usually holds court from behind an imposing desk while lesser chairs sit patiently and submissively before it. He knows those kinds of offices; his bosses in Bombay had them.

  He finds Nasreen’s metal garbage can and empties it into the bag attached to his cart. Inside it is a carry-out container with a lonely tomato and a few bits of wilted lettuce. She is a salad eater, then. He puts down the garbage can and picks up her recycling bin, which is half-filled with the classified section of a newspaper and some empty water bottles. Below all of this are a few pieces of paper. He shuts his eyes and reaches in to randomly extract one of them. He unfolds it and reads the scrawled red handwriting: “Bombay, Air India Flight 360, December 3, 17:40 (5:40 p.m.).” He tucks the paper into his pants pocket.

  He scans the top of the desk. There are neat stacks of memos, blank forms, a few binders and a gold lacquered box at the far edge of the desk. It’s the kind of box easily found in Indian craft shops, with gold paint and raised swirling designs. He opens it gingerly, holds his breath, closes his eyes, and waits for a moment to take in the possibilities that it might hold. He has a feeling about th
is box. He opens his eyes again and inside is a photo of Nasreen, holding hands with another woman. It looks like a sunny day by the way the light shines on their hair. They look like opposites to Shaffiq: one blonde and thin, the other dark and round. He focuses on the hands clasped together. Brown and white fingers interlaced. Not the way friends hold hands back home as they stroll through the streets, he thinks. No, this is different. It is all in the eyes. He takes a second look at Nasreen’s brown eyes looking at the other woman and recognizes it. He sees love in her face, but not just that. He sees adoration. He sees devotion.

  He arrives home to Salma awake in bed.

  “What’s wrong, why are you awake? It’s still early Salma, go to sleep,” he says, noticing the dark under her eyes.

  “Oh I couldn’t sleep. I woke up and couldn’t fall back again so I thought I would wait up for you. I thought we could talk a little while.”

  “OK. What do you want to talk about?” he says, cautiously, sitting down beside her, the mattress slumping under his weight.

  “I don’t know. Nothing really. Just talk. Sometimes I miss seeing you. Since you’ve had this job you are either coming or going or sleeping.” She shifts down a little, onto one elbow. He watches her eyes carefully. “I don’t like it this way, Shaffiq.” She releases a long sigh. He searches his mind for something to say.

  “But what can I do, Salma? We’ve talked about this many times now. This is how it is. At least now I have a job. I wish I didn’t have to work the night shift. But what can I do?” He feels his back stiffen, the fatigued muscles roping around him defensively. He watches her lie down onto her back, her heavy breasts settling down on her chest. His tone softens, “And tonight I earned extra. Maybe I’ll put another twenty-five into The Girls’ University Fund.” He calculates, “hey that will bring us up to sixty-five dollars.”

  “I don’t know Shaffiq. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just feel so –” her chest heaves and she begins to cry, the tears sliding down her cheeks and onto the pillowcase. He scrambles down beside her. He has learned how she needs to be comforted. Only tonight, he wishes he didn’t have to. What he’d like to do is to wrap himself in Salma’s warm blankets, and close his eyes.

  “Oh Salma, what is it? Don’t cry.”

  “I’m just being silly, I guess. Sometimes I feel so … so lonely. Sometimes I wish we were back home. Not here. Like we made a huge mistake.” He reaches for a tissue from the side table and wipes her face. He hands her another. She blows her nose.

  “I know. I know. But this is home. This is home now. Don’t worry Salma, it just will take time. Don’t cry … they say all new immigrants feel this way. Remember that newcomers’ pamphlets they gave us when we first arrived? It said that there would be hard times. We’ll be okay. You’ll see.” She puts her head into his lap. She stops crying after a while. Shaffiq relaxes.

  “I miss Bombay. I miss teaching, I miss the students. I miss my brothers and even my mother,” she says sniffing. Shaffiq rubs her back. “I don’t like working at Blue Dove Dry Cleaners, Shaffiq. I have no real friends here. Sometimes I wish we could just pack up and go back. And the children. You know Saleema is really having a hard time adjusting, and it has been two years already.”

  “But they will adjust, Salma, and so will we. You’ll see, things will be fine.”

  “Do you really believe that, Shaffiq? I mean, aren’t you just a little tired of this? You can’t find work in your field, you see what is happening with the girls, how they are changing.”

  “Well yes, I do see the girls becoming more like the Canadian children, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? And we can have some control over what they are exposed to, I think,” Shaffiq says, stiffening. His mind travels to the photo of Nasreen and the blonde girl. He shakes the thought away. “Salma, we just have to be patient and persistent. I’m going to start looking for a better job soon and once we’re more settled, perhaps in a few years, you can go back to university to take those courses you need. And you just got your accreditation.” He smiles at her and she wipes her face, then blows her nose again.

  “Yes, it’s so stupid. I am a fully trained teacher, but to even be considered for a job I need more courses.”

  “Yes, it is stupid. But just wait, in time, once we are more settled, we will be able to afford it.”

  “All right, all right. I’ve had enough crying for now. So, what strange thing did you pick up today?” She says with a forced smile. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a small scrap of paper. She reads the red letters and numbers.

  “I suppose I’ve been feeling a little like you, Salma. See, it’s part of an itinerary, I think, someone going to India. I saw it and it looked like a good luck charm. It was in one of the counsellor’s offices.”

  “Shaffiq, you didn’t just take this from someone’s desk? You need to be careful. These people here, they will think –”

  “No, no, it was in the garbage. You know how I am. I always look before I throw away.” He smiles down at her. She is still studying the scrap of paper.

  “This is a woman’s writing, I can tell. Look at the way she loops the top of the ‘d’,” she says, participating in the sleuthing game she knows he loves.

  “Yes, you may be right,” he says. He is not sure why, but he doesn’t want to tell her about the paper’s exact origins right now. He will talk about Nasreen Bastawala another day. “I need to sleep now. I worked eleven hours today, or yesterday, or whatever day I worked.” She passes the paper back to him and he puts it in his bureau drawer, tucking it away with the rest of his special finds. Salma watches him as he removes his clothes and gets into bed. She snuggles in beside him. He listens as her breathing calms and deepens. Then, lying awake, he ponders Nasreen, the gold box, and the woman with her in the photo.

  Half-asleep, Nasreen turns over and reaches across the bed for Connie. She feels around for the warmth of her lover and instead touches velvety fur. She opens one eye and sees Id staring at her.

  “Oh god, I’m so pathetic, Id.” Id meows and she takes this as feline agreement. Nasreen rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling, tears filling her eyes.

  She used to love waking up beside Connie, her body heavy and warm, like the damp heat of a hot water bottle. Nasreen would nestle in close and wait for Connie to stir. She used to believe that she would wake up next to her for the rest of her life. And hadn’t Connie felt the same way?

  Now, Nasreen feels foolish. She sits up and Id moves onto her lap, settling in for some morning petting.

  “Even you make me out to be a sucker. You’re only here for the food and the odd bit of affection and because you can’t go anywhere. I’m sure if you were an outdoor cat, you’d have disappeared by now too.” Id purrs louder, his kitty-motor warming up.

  There is not much of Connie left in this room. She moved in with very little and left with the same. She did not even take the crockery set they bought together, which Nasreen was glad for. Connie owed her at least this much. According to Nasreen’s grief logic, since Connie broke her heart, the dishes should be left behind.

  Nasreen swings her legs out of bed, relocating Id to the floor, and opens the drapes. Raindrops dot the window and grey clouds threaten more rain. She consults the clock and remembers that she made plans to see her father for lunch. Why had she agreed to meet him so early? She heads to the shower and checks the cartoon cat calendar hanging above the toilet. The fat felines smirk at her, and the writing beneath indicates that this is breast examination day. Under the steam of the hot water, she raises her left arm and palpates her breast with her right hand. Under the armpit, around the aureole, and down to her ribs. Then the other side. She is never sure if she is doing it correctly and is unable to tell normal breast tissue from cancer. She gives up the self-exam and begins the more satisfying routine of soaping up with some expensive raspberry body wash.

  Nasreen stand
s on the westbound platform at Exhibition station, waiting for the GO Train. When she was a teenager, she travelled in the opposite direction every chance she got. She and her friends would take the subway to Queen Street where they would check out the second-hand clothing stores that used to predominate before the fashion chains took over. She loved going downtown and imagined herself living there after high school, a cool Torontonian, free from the conforming pressures of suburbia. However, when she finished grade thirteen, her father convinced her to stay at home and commute to her classes.

  “Beti, you’ll be leaving home soon enough. Stay a few years more at home. We can save a lot of money not paying residence fees.” He even bought her a used Honda Civic, which has long since broken down, for the commute to York. At the time, the car seemed like a good trade off for staying in Mississauga.

  While in university, she was again lured back to Queen Street, but not for the fashion. Instead, she and her friends headed to the Boom Boom Room, a bar that hosted a dyke night on Saturdays. The bar’s gloomy interior and dance floor was full of every kind of lesbian: leather dykes, stone butches, high femmes, S/M lesbians, and more run of the mill women like her. She used to be both scared and titillated by the women at the bar. She and her friends would dance late into the night and she met a couple of her first girlfriends there.

  She managed to keep her love life secret from her parents until her third year of university, when Muriam Bandukwala saw her kissing Rita Mirelli on Yonge Street. Rita and Nasreen didn’t date for very long, but their short fling had far reaching consequences for Nasreen. Muriam Bandukwala set the community phone tree into action, telling the news to a third cousin in Idaho, who called Nasreen’s aunt in Rhode Island, who then phoned her mother in Mississauga two days later. The result was a serious, dining-room family meeting where her mother asked embarrassing questions while her father paced in the hallway like an angry lion. Phrases like “this must be a phase” and “you will be unhappy in the long run” streamed from her mother’s mouth while her father wanted to know which “bad influence” had “corrupted” his daughter.