More Than Just a Pretty Face

by Syed M. Masood

  I, on the other hand, stared at Suri, surprised. “What?”

  “She’s a total…” Suri trailed off, glanced at Bisma, then finished, “kuttiya.”

  I wasn’t sure how saying “bitch” in Urdu was any more polite than saying it in English. “She gave me notes on Churchill. That was nice of her.”

  Suraiya rolled her eyes. “She’s just trying to get what she wants. It’s totally obvious that’s all she’s about.”

  “What does she want?”

  “I mean… well, you. Which we totally get ’cause you’re super cute, right, Apa?” We both looked at Bisma, but she didn’t say anything. She seemed intensely focused on her sandwich. Suri turned back to me. “Guys are usually the ones trying to use girls for their looks. But I guess it’s different for you ’cause you’re a pretty face.”

  “Hey.” I pointed an indignant pickle at her. “I’m more than a—”

  “It’s like she’s only interested in your body, dude. Wake up and smell the poop.”

  “Gross,” Bisma muttered.

  “Come on, Apa, you agree, right?” This time Suri didn’t wait for a response before going on in her usual rambling way. “This girl is totally not interested in who he is because she doesn’t want him to write what he wants for that project of his and she doesn’t want him to be a chef. All she cares about is making him into something she wants. It’s like plastic surgery for his personality. You marry that girl and she’ll have you working in like an office,” Suri said, as if it were the worst thing in the world, “just to make money to take home.”

  I looked at Bisma when her little sister paused to gasp for breath to see if she agreed with what Suraiya was saying. She gave me no clue as to what she was thinking. “She never mentioned money,” I said, quick to pounce on a fact that I could use in defense of Kaval.

  “Oh?” Suraiya asked, before continuing in what was meant to be an impression of Kaval, I guess, but it just sounded like Minnie Mouse had inhaled a bunch of argon—no. Helium? Hydrogen? Whatever. “You have to be practical and have viable goals in life and I’ll just hang on to this assologist as a backup in case you don’t go to college and never make something respectable of yourself.”

  “She never mentioned money.” I repeated it to Bisma this time, because Suri obviously wasn’t listening. And it was the truth. Kaval hadn’t. Had she? I mean… she’d kind of implied it, I guess, when she’d said chefs couldn’t support families.

  I continued looking in Bisma’s direction so long that she figured out I was waiting for her to say something.

  “I’ve never really had occasion to admire anyone practical,” she finally told me.

  I frowned. What did that mean?

  “Why do you need advice about this girl, Danyal?”

  “Yeah, Danyal,” Suraiya said. “It’s obvious what you should do.”

  “Is it?” I asked. “I mean… what she’s saying isn’t wrong. If you and I, Bisma, had… you know, if we were doing the whole arranged marriage thing, you would’ve been okay with my wanting to be a chef?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

  “Even if that meant we would struggle?”

  Bisma shook her head as she picked up a pickle. “Why would we struggle? I’d work.”

  “What?”

  “I’d work. I mean… obviously.” Bisma sat back, looked at me, and laughed. “Wow. That didn’t even occur to you, did it?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I didn’t think… I mean, yeah.”

  “You do know what year it is, right?” Suri asked.

  “Maybe you should mention this revolutionary concept to your prospect,” Bisma said.

  “No. He shouldn’t. He should never see her again. Why would he want to marry someone so… calculating?”

  “He wouldn’t be asking for advice if he didn’t like her.” Bisma wiped her hands on a napkin. “You guys ready to go?”

  “Go?” I asked. “You’re barely halfway through your sandwich.”

  “I’m full,” Bisma said. “This thing is huge. Suri and I could’ve split one.”

  “You’re a disappointment,” Suri told her sister, still munching away. “I’m not done.”

  Neither was I, so we stuck around and talked about nothing much, until the conversation circled back to Renaissance Man.

  “I’m really not sure what I’m going to do at this point,” I admitted. “I know what Kaval wants me to do. I know what my teacher wants and what my dad wants.… There’s a lot to think about, and I haven’t even decided what direction to go in. I’ll probably screw this up pretty badly and that’s going to suck.”

  “I could help you,” Bisma said.

  Suri whipped her head around to look at her sister. “Really?”

  “Really?” I echoed.

  “Sure. Like you said, what are friends for?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was picture day for the contestants of Renaissance Man, and my tie wasn’t sitting right. I’d gone with a half-Windsor knot, which seemed like a good middle road between the casualness of a four-in-hand and the fuddiness of a full Windsor. The problem was that while I knew a lot about the knots in theory, having watched a gazillion YouTube videos on how to tie, this was the first time I’d worn one in real life. It looked a little lopsided and kept drifting to the left.

  Don’t get me wrong. I looked awesome in my deep blue suit, but even though I got a ton of compliments from all the other kids at school, I couldn’t stop fussing with the tie.

  It was Sohrab, ultimately, who noticed. He gestured for me to give it to him. “My father makes me tie his every day. Has since I was ten.”

  “Why?”

  “For days like this, I suppose.”

  I watched as Sohrab looped the silky snake around his own neck and began twisting it. It looked like he was doing exactly what I’d done. The task gave him the perfect excuse not to look at me as he said, “I am sorry about the other day, when you were talking to Kaval. I should not have… I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “It’s cool,” I told him. I’m really good at letting things go. People screw up. I get it. I screw up all the time and I forgive myself pretty much right away. Seems only fair to do the same for other people. “Just admit that you were wrong about me not being funny, and we’ll call it even.”

  “You know how I feel about lying,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I meant what I said at the party at our house. No one likes you because you’re funny. They laugh when you tell your little ‘jokes’ because you want them to, and they want to do what you want—”

  “Because I’m gorgeous.”

  He shook his head. “Because you’re true.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  Sohrab didn’t answer. He was done with the knot, so he forced the tie over his own head and handed it to me. I put it on and tightened it. The knot was perfect.

  “You look good,” he told me.

  As if I didn’t know.

  “Have you seen Zar?” Sohrab asked.

  “Have you thought about when you want to stop asking me that and just talk to him yourself?”

  He looked away and smiled a bit. “A little.”

  “You know how sensitive he is about the fact that he dates—”

  “He’s sensitive about it because he knows it is wrong. Deep in his soul, he knows he is dooming himself to eternal torment.”

  “Um… yeah. I don’t think that’s it.”

  Sohrab folded his arms across his chest. “Sometimes it surprises me how little you seem to know about Islam having been a Muslim all your life.”

  “Sometimes it surprises me how little you know about Intezar, you know, having been his friend all your life.”

  That seemed to take the fire out of him. “That was clever,” he said.

  “I know, right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a camera to dazzle.”

  As I walked away from him, I couldn’t help but wonder if I sho
uld have said something more to my old friend but decided that I’d been right to keep my mouth shut. Just like Intezar was touchy about anyone challenging his decision not to practice Islam, Sohrab would be touchy about his decision to embrace it. My friends were, strangely enough, more alike than either one of them would admit.

  By the time I walked into Mr. Elridge’s class, where the photographer was setting up, everyone else was already there. Six faces, sour as umeboshi plums, glowered at me. Natari alone smiled and came over. She was wearing a full-length red dress that highlighted her dark hair. “The man of the hour,” she said. “We were just talking about you.”

  “You were?” I glanced at the others while trying to look like I wasn’t looking at them at all.

  “We all think it is ridiculously unfair that our pictures will go up next to yours. Maybe try to not look great, so we’ll look okay?”

  “I would, if that weren’t impossible.”

  Natari chuckled.

  “You look nice, though,” I told her. Then, without thinking about it, added, “Which I’m sure I’ll hear from Zar.”

  Her cheeks went a little pink, but she looked pleased. Then she started to say something, but the photographer spoke up. He told us we’d do individual portraits, which he thought parents might be interested in buying, and we’d do a few group shots.

  “So,” the photographer said, clapping his hands, “who wants to go first?”

  “Jilani should go first,” Alan Rhodes said, “in honor of the fact that he’ll finish last.”

  That drew some chuckles.

  “Come on, Jilani,” Rhodes went on. “Show us how it’s done.”

  I didn’t want to think about what Bisma and Suri had said about Kaval. One of the problems with trying not to think about something, of course, is that it always fails. You can’t help but think about the thing you’re trying not to think about. I mean, people say that the human mind is incredibly complex and all, but it has this very serious and basic design flaw which no one talks about.

  It’d be like a web browser that only takes you to websites you don’t want to go to. What’s even the point?

  Anyway, one thing Bisma had said did make sense. There was no reason for me to get a degree or a respectable job, as my father would put it. Kaval could do that. There’s no reason for two people in a couple to be respectable. That’d just be boring.

  I don’t know much about relationships—not that Kaval and I were in a relationship or anything—but I’ve always heard that communication is key. That sounded like something that was true.

  Of course, my parents had been married for like twenty-three years or something, and they never seem to really talk at all, but maybe they were the exception that proved the rule.

  Anyway, I decided to discuss all this with Kaval, and I found her at lunch in the cafeteria. She was, unfortunately, sitting with a bunch of her friends, Cindy, Maria, Galina, and a few others. I sighed. There’s something about a group of girls together that I find a little scary. I’m super smooth and suave one-on-one, of course, but something about a battalion makes me a little nervous.

  Still, as one of the books I’d read about Churchill said, I girded my lions—what the heck does that actually mean? What’s a gird? And why do people do it to lions? Why do people even have lions?—and made my way over to their table.

  “Hey, Danyal,” Cindy said, twiddling her fingers at me. “I like your shoes.”

  I glanced down at my caramel-colored dress shoes. “Thanks. Hey, Kaval—”

  “Yes?” she asked, pretty frostily, which caused all the other girls to start snickering.

  “Can I talk to you for a second? Alone.”

  That drew a series of suggestive oohs from the table.

  Mercifully, Kaval nodded and followed me to the hall outside.

  “What?” she demanded, turning to face me as soon as there was no one in earshot.

  I frowned. Her eyes were narrowed, her arms were crossed, and her lips were pressed together in a tight line. “Wait, you’re pissed at me?”

  “Yeah, genius. I’m pissed at you.”

  “Why?”

  Kaval threw her arms up in the air. “I gave you an opening, and you didn’t take it. After you’ve been drooling over me for years, by the way. You wanted time to think. Seriously? That is so insulting. I can’t believe you didn’t realize I was mad.”

  “Um… sorry?”

  She tossed her hair back over her shoulder with a forceful jerk of her head. “Fine. Whatever. What do you want? I assume you’ve finally decided to agree to what I was saying.”

  “Actually,” I said. “I was thinking—”

  “You shouldn’t do that, Danyal. You’ll sprain something.”

  “Okay. Look, Kaval, I do really like you, but…” I paused. I didn’t want to be the first one to mention money. She hadn’t technically done it. It felt… I don’t know.… Maybe Bisma and Suri had been wrong. Maybe Kaval didn’t care about being wealthy and I’d just misunderstood her. If so, I’d definitely offend her by bringing it up. “I wasn’t clear on what you meant.”

  She crossed her arms. “I literally told you what to do. How could I possibly be any clearer? Use my notes. Do well in Renaissance Man. Impress my parents. Go to college. Get a degree. Then we can be together. What part of that, exactly, is confusing you?”

  “I understand what you want me to do.” I held up my hands to show that I wasn’t trying to be difficult. “I just don’t understand why. I mean, when you said that chefs can’t support their families…”

  “I meant that you won’t make any money flipping burgers for the rest of your life.”

  “Oh. Well… so, I was thinking that there might be another solution to the whole… financial aspect of our… agreement.” I shook my head. “Is this weird? This is weird, isn’t it? That we’re talking about money and stuff, at our age, instead of being in—”

  “I’m being practical,” Kaval said. “Nothing wrong with that. What’s your idea?”

  “You could work,” I told her.

  “What?”

  “You could work. I mean, you know, I could still do what I want to do, and you could work if you think that I wouldn’t make enough—”

  “Danyal, did you miss the part about how my parents have got a doctor lined up?”

  “Uh… no.”

  “And even if I pass on him, I’ll get other offers. I mean…” She waved her hands vaguely at herself, pointing out that she was obviously too desirable to stay on the market for long. “If I go with any of them, I wouldn’t ever have to work. How is your offer better?”

  “Well… I mean, there’s me.”

  “Tempting,” Kaval said, “but that’s not the life I want. I mean, if I wanted to get a job for like fun or something, sure, but I don’t want to have to work. Not when I have the option not to. I want a traditional marriage. I want someone to take care of me.”

  “I thought this was a good compromise.”

  “It’s not. Look”—she reached over and touched my arm—“I’m sorry, okay? I know this sounds… uncool or whatever, but I’ve thought a lot about it, and I’m telling you, my way is the only way this works. Just trust me. Don’t worry about anything but doing well in Renaissance Man. Say how great Churchill was—”

  “He wasn’t. Not all the time.”

  She sighed and let her hand slide away from me.

  “I want to talk about the Bengal Famine, Kaval. I want to write about it. It’s important.”

  “It’s not,” she snapped. “Okay? It’ll change nothing. Those people will stay dead. Even if you totally thrash him, everyone will still laugh at Churchill’s jokes and keep thinking of him as a hero. All you’ll manage is to piss off Tippett, you’ll fail history, and we’ll still be exactly where we are.”

  “What if I did a really good job, though?” I asked. “What if I wrote such a great paper on the famine that I impressed everyone? Tippett, my dad, your parents. It would work, right? Everyone woul
d get what they wanted.”

  “You really think you could pull that off? Even if it were possible, Danyal, you wouldn’t be able to do it without help. And I’m not going to help you if you won’t listen to me.”

  I looked away from her.

  “This is a chance for you to change who you are, okay? It’s a chance to change how everyone looks at you. Don’t waste it.”

  I told Zar what Kaval had said, and I could tell that he wanted to say I told you so. It was written all over his face. After all, he’d warned me that Kaval was out of my league with his weird egg theory. Instead of rubbing my face in it, however, he just handed me a video game controller and started up a first-person shooter.

  I didn’t usually agree to play shooters with Zar. It scared the shit out of me because he randomly liked to freak other players out by bursting into bouts of loud, nonsensical Arabic in a threatening tone. Sometimes he’d scream out stuff like “Die, infidel dogs!” as he attacked the opposition.

  I was pretty certain that the government was going to come for him—and maybe me for being around him—one day. But the more urgently I pleaded with him to stop, the more he laughed, and the more he did it.

  Today, however, we played pretty much in silence until he asked, “Did it hurt?”

  “What?”

  “When Kaval said those things to you at school.”

  I shrugged. Then, when Zar didn’t seem to want to move on, I nodded.

  “Do you think she knew it would hurt you? Do you think she cared?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I think you should forget her, Danyal. She’s a bitch.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Yaar, come on. Don’t tell me you’re going to defend—”

  “What did she do wrong? I’ve been thinking about it, and yeah, okay, it super sucked in the moment for me, but… I mean, she’s allowed to want things, right? She knows what kind of life she wants, and she’s demanding it. There’s nothing wrong with that. She should be happy.”

  “You’re a better person than I am,” he muttered.

  “This is true,” I said.