I didn’t say that, though. It wasn’t my place. If her dad’s curdled frustration helped Bisma see him as a better person than he was, what good would come from disagreeing with her?
“Your turn,” she said. “Tell me something you wouldn’t tell a stranger. Something unusual. Don’t think about it,” Bisma said. “Just say the first thing that comes to your mind. Stop thinking. Just—”
“I’m a Renaissance Man,” I said. It was all I could come up with on the spot, especially with her pressuring me.
She raised her eyebrows.
I explained the contest and told her how my father had reacted when I’d brought up Churchill. “I’ve done a lot of reading,” I said, hopefully in a convincing manner, “and everyone believes that guy was awesome. Even Mr. Tippett, my history teacher, loves him. Which is incredible, because I don’t think Tippett even loved his own mom.”
Bisma smiled. “Well, you know, Churchill was big on the British continuing to rule India. And the Raj, despite how it’s romanticized now, was terrible. So there’s that.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“Besides,” she went on, “if you starve three million people to death, you deserve to be hated a little.”
“Yeah, that’s tru—wait. What?”
She frowned. “The Bengal Famine?”
“Right,” I said, wondering if this was common knowledge. I’ve never been very good at knowing things, which can get embarrassing. “That.”
Bisma looked at me closely and somehow saw through my act. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
I scratched the back of my head, feeling a little sheepish. “Nope.”
She explained it to me. Turns out that in 1943 or some time super long ago, there was a famine in the province of Bengal, and it killed three million people. During this time, Churchill diverted food away from India to places where it wasn’t even needed, and he’s reported to have said something like, famine or no famine, Indians will “breed like rabbits.”
I shook my head, trying to comprehend it all. The meat and rice on our plates that had already been bad somehow tasted even worse now. I guess that’s why no one talks about starving people at a dinner table. That’s probably also the reason why there are starving people in the world.
This was the guy whose bust Tippett kept in his classroom? In fact, I’m pretty sure that in one of his lectures, Tippett had said that this man’s statue was in the Oval Office.
Why?
“You okay?”
“What? Yeah. No. Totally. I just… didn’t know.”
Bisma nodded. “Anyway, that’s a major reason Churchill is problematic. And it isn’t ancient history. America became independent over two hundred years ago. For desis, the Raj is still in living memory. So, yeah, I get your dad’s reaction.”
That was… a lot. I wasn’t sure what to think about it just then. I’d need time to process it. Besides, it was a pretty dark conversation to have while eating. “This isn’t exactly a fun topic for a date, is it? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. School stuff is boring.”
Bisma blinked. “Um… when I said earlier that this was a date because of the way you were dressed, you know I was joking. Right? Because I don’t date. You said we were going out as friends.”
I held up my arms. “Sorry. I just—”
“I mean, don’t take it personally, Danyal. It’s not you.”
“Trust me.” I grinned. “There is absolutely no danger of me thinking it’s me.”
Bisma laughed. “Fair enough. Honestly, other than the pointless rishta meetings, I like my life the way it is right now, that’s all. And my life, by the way, revolves around school, which is most definitely not boring. I kind of love it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to read whole books for the first time for this Renaissance Man thing. Did you know people do that for fun? What kind of twisted—”
“Hold on. You’re just now reading whole books? Aren’t you a senior?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how’d you get through English? They didn’t make you read Romeo and Juliet or something?”
“Cliff notes.” I offered her a sheepish smile.
“Ew.”
“Hey, I passed.”
“The point of school,” she said, “isn’t to pass. It isn’t to get out so you can get to the real world. The point of school is to learn, about yourself and about other—”
“I get plenty of lectures at home, Bisma.”
It was her turn to blush. “Sorry. I keep having to tell Suri about how important school is. It’s become a habit, I guess.”
I tore into my slightly soggy pita bread, but then decided not to eat it. That whole Bengal Famine thing had ruined my appetite. “Don’t worry about it. It’s cool that you like school. I mean, you know, it’s not cool, exactly, it’s just… fine, I guess.”
“Just fine, I guess,” Bisma repeated. “That’s some compliment. I think I’m going to have to put that on a T-shirt.”
“You should,” I told her. “It would work on multiple levels.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yes… but not all the time. For example, I happen to know that no one learns much of anything worth knowing from school or books. You have to, you know, live and stuff.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” she quoted, “is basically what you’re saying.”
“Right,” I said. “Romeo and Juliet.”
A small smirk touched her lips, and I wondered if I’d gotten it wrong, but then Bisma said, “Exactly. Anyway, ready to go?”
We walked around the city mostly in silence once we left the restaurant. But it wasn’t the kind of silence that made words seem urgent or even necessary. Her hand brushed mine accidentally, and even though it was totally innocent, and we apologized to each other, she slipped her hand into her jacket pocket, as if to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
The moon, a small and distant thing, was starting to become visible as the sun went down. “It’s almost Maghrib time,” Bisma said.
“I’ve always hated hearing that,” I said. “Means the fun is over.”
Bisma chuckled.
There was a common refrain desi Muslim mothers used to get their children home when it got dark: Come inside or the jinn will get you.
“I always thought it was super weird that jinn were just hanging around our backyard, waiting for the sun to go down so they could get me. It isn’t like they can’t stand sunlight, and they can easily just walk into the house uninvited.… Wait a minute. Do you think some old aunty just confused vampires with jinn like back in the day and now all the aunties are repeating what they heard from her?”
She shook her head, still smiling.
“I’m serious.”
“You’re not,” she told me.
“It’s possible.”
“Maybe,” she said. “It’s probably just a way to warn kids that there are dangers in the world, especially where there isn’t any light, and these dangers, these monsters, are less than human.”
“I could just have Intezar ask his pir, I guess.” When she didn’t react, I said, “My best friend thinks that I should call this… they’re like these holy—”
“I know what a pir is,” she said. “I actually went to see one once.”
“Zar thinks I should call his guy so he can pray for me to get good grades. Why’d you go?”
Bisma hesitated. “I wanted to know if there was a way to make someone happy.”
“What did he say?”
We came to a stoplight, and she looked at me, a twist of lemon in her smile. “He said that he could teach me many ways to make someone happy, if I came by again at night.”
“Gross,” I said.
“Yeah. He wasn’t great. Some men get like that when they find out about… what happened. A guy my parents introduced me to told me he couldn
’t marry me, obviously, but he’d… do me favors, if I wanted. Like he said, you can only lose your virginity once.”
Sometimes it felt like God had just gotten bored with making decent people or had run out of ideas for them. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Anyway, the pir did say he could make an amulet that could make someone laugh. Make them laugh for the rest of their life, if necessary, but that there is no object in the world that can increase happiness.”
“Ice cream?” I suggested.
“Very funny. Okay, so maybe except for—” She grinned when I pointed to the parlor across the street. “Sure. Let’s go.”
As we waited for the signal to change, I thought about what the pir had told her, that he could increase the laughter given to someone but not the joy, and I realized that I’d been wrong about the Book of Destiny. Back at the restaurant, I’d been thinking that if the life written for someone were full of laughter, it would be a good one. I hadn’t realized that it was possible for someone to laugh a lot, to seem happy enough, but still be wounded on the inside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Even though my father had tried to make nice over breakfast recently, I guess Mom didn’t think he’d done enough because he decided to try again in front of her. As usual, he did this by spending money.
Ahmed Jilani could never bring himself to say he was sorry. So instead he went around and did nice things for people he wanted to apologize to or, more frequently, who his wife thought he should want to apologize to. He’d take you out for a fancy dinner, see a movie you wanted to watch, or buy you something nice.
The only problem was that he was incapable of buying people gifts they actually wanted.
It wasn’t that he was cheap or had bad taste. It was just that he’d only ever get things for people that he himself wanted. As a result, I was the owner of a cricket bat, helmet, pads, gloves, elbow guard, stumps, bails, a cherry-red cork ball, and like fifteen posters of Imran Khan. Those things had never left my closet, and they never would.
That was why I couldn’t help but make a face when my father walked up to me when I was watching TV in the living room, hands folded behind his back to hide his peace offering, and let out his “I’m sorry but I’ll never say I’m sorry because I was raised old school and my concept of what makes a man a man is hopelessly outdated” grunt. The face earned me a scalding look from my mom, who somehow thought this aspect of Dad’s personality was super adorable.
“It has been brought to my attention,” he said, glancing at my mother out of the corner of his eye, “that I was too rough with you about your career and future. I’m not sure if you remember.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Anyway…” Dad held out the video game box he’d been hiding. “This is for you.”
I think I managed to look excited about the gift. It was the Ashes Cricket game for Xbox One. Of course, none of my friends had an Xbox One, having pledged their loyalty to the PlayStation, and I didn’t have a console at all. But it was the thought that counted, I guess.
“Uh… wow, thanks, Dad. This is… so great.”
“All the British and Australian players are officially licensed,” he said. “It says so on the back. Even the Muslim ones.”
“Right. So, so cool. Thank you.”
“You know,” Dad said, “when we scold you or yell at you, it is for your own good. What of me? What of your mother? We’re going to die soon.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You’ll have to deal with the world alone then, Danyal, and the world is a difficult place. Our job, as parents, is to give you a hard time now, so that when the hard times come for real, and they will come if you keep on with this nonsense of wanting to be a chef—”
My mother coughed loudly from across the room.
“Right. Anyway, you enjoy, okay? Enjoy the loose balls you’re getting in these first innings of your life while you can, because in the second innings, after the pitch gets old, life is all toe-crushing yorkers and googlies.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I told him.
“You will. One day, I very much fear you will.”
He turned to head toward the kitchen, and I should have let him go. He’d obviously been at the edge of another lecture, and I really didn’t want to get any more gifts from him. I couldn’t help myself, though.
“I learned about the Bengal Famine. I heard about what Churchill did, and how all those people died. That’s why you called him a fu—” I stopped, glanced at my mom, and said, “That’s why you called him what you called him when we had breakfast the other day. Right?”
My father heaved a huge sigh and faced me again. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You said to just write about Churchill like my history teacher wants me to, as if he were a hero.”
“You need to pass your class.”
“I know, Dad, but I’ve never heard you use that word before. I thought maybe this mattered to you.”
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I knew his face. It was one of the most familiar things in my world. It had been there, frowning, scowling, glowering, and occasionally smiling since I’d been born.
I could tell, without his telling me so, that this did matter to him. A lot.
“Why don’t you want me to speak about it, then? I could—”
“It would change nothing, Danyal.” Was my father speaking gently to me? It was strange. I found myself wishing he were yelling instead. That I could deal with. He took a deep breath. “Why would I ask you to do something this important? Yes, our people who died because of Churchill deserve a voice. But isn’t it also true that they deserve better than you can give them? Have you even begun preparing for this contest yet?”
“Ahmed,” Aisha Jilani warned softly.
He held up a reassuring hand to her. “It’s okay,” he said.
What was okay, exactly, I didn’t know. Was this my father trying to be nice? I mean, I’d wished that he were nicer my whole life, but now that he was actually doing it… well, it sucked.
“You are not the kind of boy who will make a difference in the world. I have accepted it. The dreams I had for you when you were born and I held you, those are all gone. Now I just want to make sure you can stand on your own two feet before I die, hmm? That cannot be too much to ask. Tell me it isn’t too much to ask for you to just finish bloody high school. Please.”
“Ahmed,” Mom said again, more sharply this time.
He wasn’t done, though. “There’s no reason for you to fail history. And you can’t do the story of the Bengal Famine justice. So have mercy on our souls and tell everyone what they expect to hear about Churchill, pass your class, and matriculate.”
“That’s enough.”
“Yes,” he said, agreeing with his wife. “It will have to be enough.”
“I wish your dad would yell at you more. It improves dinner by a lot.”
I rolled my eyes at Zar. I didn’t feel like joking around, but jokes were what you got with him. Intezar was like a TV you couldn’t change the channel on. It was Comedy Central day in and day out.
Not for the first time, I wished Sohrab wasn’t busy with his mosque stuff. He was really more of my go-to guy when I was upset. Not only did he take things seriously—though he got too serious sometimes—the Sabsvari kitchen automatically made me feel a little better, no matter how bad a mood I was in. The possibility that I’d get to see Kaval was also always a nice bonus.
I’d come over to Intezar’s and totally invited myself to both make and have dinner. His father was in town for a short while, and then he was flying out for another trip, this time to Melbourne. Zar would soon be on his own again.
He could’ve stayed with his mother, of course, during the long periods his father was out of the country, but he avoided that whenever he could. Seema Aunty was way more serious about Islam than Zar, so whenever he did see her, all she did was lecture him about praying more and thinking ab
out girls less. There was a reason he’d chosen not to live with her after his parents had split up.
“He wasn’t yelling,” I said, “for once.”
“I hate it when they don’t yell.”
“Yeah.”
Zar looked at me for a long moment. “You okay, yaar?”
“Sure. It’s just unfair, you know? People who aren’t Muslim get through stuff like this by drinking and having special brownies. We don’t get any of that.”
“There’s Pakola in the fridge.”
I shuddered at his mention of the green, fizzy, super sweet Pakistani soda that he adored. I thought it tasted like diabetes. “I’m all right, thanks.”
“If you were anyone else, I’d say don’t bother cooking ’cause we were going to order in, but…”
I smiled. My friends had gotten used to my showing up at their houses to take over their kitchens when my dad became too much to handle. “Go play FIFA or whatever you were going to do. I got this.”
“All right,” he said, but instead of leaving, he went on. “Hey, listen, this probably isn’t the best time to mention it, but Pirji had a vision—”
“Intezar. Dude, come on—”
“He saw you. He saw that you totally choked in Renaissance Man.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I’m serious. I mean, he even described you, okay? He knew what you looked like from his dream. Explain that.”
“Did you tell him my name?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Does he have Internet?”
Zar shook his head. “Whatever. Believe what you want. Just be prepared, okay? The contest is going to go really badly for you, brownther.”
“Well… I’m glad I came here. You’ve cheered me right up after my dad’s pep talk.”
“Sorry, yaar. It’s just what Pirji said. Besides, it’s not just bad news for you. You know how Pirji was saying all these intense prayers and reciting Quran so I could get with Natari? He says it’s not going to work out.”
More Than Just a Pretty Face Page 9
