“I know, right? It’s crazy. Like… who even am I anymore?”
“You’ll figure it out. I believe in you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
“Um… thanks,” I said, because what else was there to say? “You want to head back?”
She looked back over her shoulder to the blaze where her friends were standing. It was almost the only fire still going. It had to be getting close to nine, when the flames would have to be put out. Then she looked forward, to the darkness stretching out in front of us.
“I’d like to keep walking,” she said, “if you’ll walk with me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I will.”
“What are you guys watching?” Kaval asked, walking into the den to find Sohrab, Zar, and me collapsed in our usual spots on the super soft leather sofas in the Sabsvari house. At least, they used to be our usual spots, back when the three of us hung out more and hogged Sohrab’s parents’ epic home theater to watch movie after movie. Now we rarely got together like this, because Intezar got irritated every time Sohrab made us take a prayer break. So I guess they were our unusual spots now.
Kaval had been right. Sohrab did want me and Zar to come over for a movie marathon. It was a good peace offering, and I’d talked Intezar into it.
I tried to catch her eye and give her a friendly smile. Things had been kind of frosty between us lately, but maybe they’d thaw out, now that it was almost spring. She didn’t look in my direction, though.
“The Taken series,” Zar answered with an excited grin. “With Liam Neeson. So much killing.”
Kaval rolled her eyes. “Boys.”
“It’s just pointless violence,” Intezar said, defending his pick.
Sohrab folded his arms across his chest. “Actually, it isn’t pointless. It is an affirmation of the idea that any amount of bloodshed is acceptable in the defense of—”
Zar groaned. “Dude.”
“What?” Sohrab asked.
“Why do you have to ruin everything?”
“Seriously,” Kaval agreed. “You need to chill.” She looked at me then, and I knew she was asking me to chime in and support her.
Sohrab looked at me too, and I shrugged. “You have been kind of intense lately.”
“Well, in case you people haven’t noticed, the world is an intense place these days.”
“Everyone knows,” Zar told him. “You’re not helping by going on about it all the time.”
No one said anything for a long while after that, then Kaval asked, “You guys want some popcorn?”
“That,” Intezar said, “is the kind of talk you want to hear before a movie starts.”
“Danyal, do you want to come help me with it?”
“Uh… sure, yeah. Yes. I can do that.”
“What do you need him for?” Zar demanded.
“He cooks,” Kaval said.
“It’s just popcorn, though.”
I was pretty sure Zar didn’t want to be alone with Sohrab, who was still sulking because no one was interested in his sociopolitical analysis of Taken and its bloody sequels.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
Zar gave a sigh fit for the end of the world but didn’t say anything else as Kaval led me to the kitchen in silence. It was only when she was pulling gourmet deep purple and ruby red kernels out of the pantry that she said, “We didn’t get a chance to finish talking at school. Tippett interrupted.”
“I remember.”
“Why were you meeting him? He hates your Bengal Famine idea, doesn’t he?”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t, actually. In fact, he liked it a lot.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “Well… okay, that’s good. Do you still need help with the paper?”
“No, I got this. Thanks, though.”
Kaval dug around for a pot big enough to serve everyone. She didn’t look at me when she spoke. “You think I’m shallow, don’t you?”
“No—”
“It’s fine. I think you’re shallow too.”
“Uh… okay. Wait, not canola. Unless you don’t have coconut oil, I guess.”
Kaval, who was pulling a large container of oil from the pantry, roughly shoved it back. “I don’t care about the fucking popcorn.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re just like me, Danyal. Why do you even like me? Have you ever thought about that?”
I had, in fact, thought about that quite a bit over the years. “I like that you’re fierce. You do what you want. You don’t take crap from anyone. And… well, I like the way you look.”
“I like the way you look too,” she said, with a little less heat. “See? We’re the same. Shallow. Your judging me for wanting you to have a decent career is bullshit.”
“I’m not judging you, Kaval. Seriously. You should have the life you want.”
“So you’re going to do well in Renaissance Man?”
“I am.”
That earned me a smile. “And you’ll go to Pakistan and go to college?”
I took a deep breath. I’d been crushing on Kaval for so long that I’d kind of gotten in the habit of telling her what she wanted to hear just to make her happy. There was a part of me that still wanted to do that.
But, weirdly, in that moment, Churchill and the British popped into my head. They’d tried to make India what they’d wanted. They’d changed it, claiming that they were improving it, but war and suffering had followed. It wasn’t until India was free that it had started to become something like itself again, and even now, it remained broken, divided into three countries.
I meant what I’d told Zar. Being in a relationship with someone meant compromise. You gave up things you wanted because your partner needed you to. I’d seen my parents do it for each other for years.
What he’d been trying to tell me, and what I saw now, was that there were some things you couldn’t compromise on. The things that were part of you, that made up who you were, had to be appreciated by the people who claimed to love you. Otherwise, they were just trying to make you what they were.
That’s not love. That’s colonialism.
I shook my head.
“You should have the life you want, Kaval, but I should have the life I want too.”
“You can’t have the life you want without me. I’m all you’ve ever wanted.”
With that, she turned on her heel and left the kitchen, so I never got a chance to answer her. That was fine. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve said to her anyway.
As I made popcorn for the guys, I couldn’t help but wonder if there had ever been a time when what Kaval had said had been true. I didn’t think so. Obviously, I’d imagined a future with Kaval, but I’d always had other dreams as well. How had she not seen that before, and how could she not see it now?
I walked back to Sohrab and Zar. They were sitting on opposite ends of the room, looking frustrated with each other. I sighed. Whatever. I was over trying to get them to make nice. I hit play on the movie, and we watched it in silence.
Well, we watched around half of it. About an hour in, Intezar got a text reminding him that he was supposed to drop his father off at the airport for his latest business trip. Predictably, our friend had completely forgotten.
“We can watch the rest of it with Zar another time,” I said, after he’d gone.
“Sure,” Sohrab said, in an “as if that’s going to happen” tone. “Was there something else you wanted to do?”
“We don’t have to do anything. I’m very good at that.”
He smiled and reached for the popcorn bowl again. “I like the garam masala in here. It’s a nice touch.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
He studied me for a moment, then he said, “What did you and Kaval talk about in the kitchen?”
“Nothing.” I hated lying to him, but there was no help for it.
He clearly didn’t believe me, but it wasn’t like he could call me on it.
�
�She did ask me to talk to you.” That was the truth, at least. I didn’t really feel like talking to Sohrab about his getting super religious just now, but it was better than the path this conversation was going down.
“About what?”
“What you’ve been reading.”
Sohrab gave me a confused look. “Really? Al-Ghazali is fascinating—”
“Read anything not so Islamic lately?”
He frowned but nodded. “Sure, I read this book about the end of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and how that war has shaped—”
“Something fun?”
“What do you mean ‘fun’?” He asked it like I was a babbling idiot.
“You remember what fun is, right?”
Sohrab ran both his hands over his face, obviously frustrated. “Look, we don’t have time for fun, Danyal. I don’t know how you guys can’t see that. Zar is off doing whatever he wants with any girl who will go out with him. You’re cooking or whatever. I don’t know how you guys do it. In this world—this messed-up world that is so cruel to people like us, that would crush you and crush me and everything we love if we gave it a chance—how can you let yourself be happy?”
I didn’t have an answer. I’d never thought that I needed permission to live my life. I just did it.
Sohrab got to his feet. There was fire in him again, the one that had been there when he’d gotten into it with the sub in English class. It was the quiet, burning anger that I’d seen at the mosque, when he’d spoken about that village where innocent people had died. “What’s happening in this country? In this world? Do you even know what the Saudis are doing in Yemen? What about what’s happening in Myanmar and Sudan? What’s happening at the borders of our own country? There is hatred in so many hearts. And you guys want to have fun? That’s insane.”
I sank back into the couch, wondering what I could say, wondering what he needed to hear, wondering how long he would go on if I let him, wondering if this fire inside him would eat up everything that made my friend my friend.
Sohrab looked at me, a plea in his eyes, as if begging me to understand. “We’re Muslims and we’re brown, man. This is the darkest time there has ever been to be those things. We’re going to have to live serious lives—”
There it was. I saw it. Suddenly I understood what Sohrab had gotten wrong. Maybe it was because I’d been thinking about history a lot more than I usually did, but I saw the flaw in the story he’d started to believe, and I hoped he would listen when I pointed it out.
“It’s not.”
“It’s not what?”
“It’s not the worst time ever to be who we are.” Sohrab tried to interrupt, but I pressed on. “We went to the same Sunday school, dude. We read the same stuff.”
He gave me a look that could, if you were being kind, be described as skeptical.
“Fine. I didn’t read anything, but I did have to sit through the lectures and I was even awake for some of them. Do you remember people who were thrown out of their homes for their beliefs? Exiled from their cities? Chased across deserts? Hunted and stoned?”
“You’re talking about the Prophet Muhammad,” he said quietly.
“Sure. And his companions. And the other prophets. Moses fled Egypt and wandered the desert, right? And Jesus… and don’t forget regular people. Not just Muslims either, but like… everybody. It’s always been serious times, and through it all people have had fun. They went to work, they told jokes, they listened to music, they made the best food they could. They hung out with their friends, fell in love, got married and had kids and all that. Zar and I and everybody, we’re just living our lives as best we can despite everything, like people always have.”
“And what good has come from any of it?”
“Well… you’re here. And I’m here.”
Sohrab exhaled, shook his head, and sat down. “So, what are you saying? I shouldn’t fight?”
“Not all the time. I mean, sorry, but it’s been kind of exhausting just being around you. I can’t even imagine what it’s like being you.”
Thankfully, he didn’t seem offended. “You’re saying that we have to be human before we’re anything else.”
That sounded good to me. Sohrab had always been good with distilled wisdom. “Yeah. So just relax every once in a while. You’re the best of us, man—”
Sohrab snorted and waved dismissively.
“You are,” I insisted. “You’re going to be… awesome. Important. You’ll make a difference. I know you will, but not if you burn yourself out by stressing over things we can’t control.”
We were quiet for a long time, both of us staring at the screen that had gone dark. Even though there was nothing on it, it still put out a dim glow.
“That’s kind of my thing, you know,” Sohrab finally said.
“What?”
He smiled. “Giving out good advice. That’s my thing you just stole.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“How is the Churchill project going?”
I looked up from my mom’s khichri reluctantly. The mixture of long-grain basmati rice, ghee, and daal was one of life’s simplest pleasures. Talking to my dad was… well, the exact opposite of that.
“Fine,” I said.
“Isn’t it impressive how much time he’s been spending in the library these last few months, haan? He’s there all the time,” my mother said proudly.
That drew another Ahmed Jilani grunt. This was the “I want to believe what is happening, but I don’t really” kind.
“What? Just tell us what else he has to do to make you say something nice about him.”
My father broke the back of a papar—which a lot of people call papadum for some reason—and for a moment it seemed that the crackling noise was going to be his only response. Eventually, however, he said, “Danyal knows very well what he has to do to make me say something nice. Don’t you?”
“Fawn over Churchill,” I said, “and graduate.”
A small, bitter smile from Dad. “Yes. Also, just as important, you must learn a lesson from this experience. To be successful in life means to compromise. You cannot always speak your truth or live your fantasies. You can’t have unrealistic goals like opening a restaurant—”
I was about to interrupt, to ask him how, if life was compromise and dreams were worthless, his father and others like him had stood against the largest empire in the world and won their freedom at the price of their heads.
That had not been realistic. It had not been a compromise. It had not been practical.
Practical people doubted and mocked poets, writers, philosophers, musicians, artists, and revolutionaries, and told them that the shining world they hoped for would never come to be. But who did history remember? Who did it revere?
What was it Bisma had said?
I’ve never really had occasion to admire anyone practical.
Before I could say any of that to my father, however, Mom cut in. Which was fine. Ahmed Jilani would see he was wrong when Renaissance Man came.
“Acha, enough, okay? I just want you to know, Danyal, that we are very happy to see you putting this much work into something. Whatever happens, beta, you are a Renaissance Man in my book.”
When she fell silent, my father cleared his throat pointedly.
“Except,” she went on, “there has been some talk.”
Crap. Talk was never good.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“We have verification,” my father said, “that you have actually been going to the library—”
“Verification?”
“Now, Danyal, don’t raise your voice. Baba, we’re just saying, you know, people have seen you there. It is just that… they haven’t seen you there alone.”
I groaned. “Seriously? Don’t your friends have anything better to do than spy on me?”
“Don’t be silly, beta,” Mom said soothingly. “Our friends don’t go to libraries.”
“But their children do,” my father put in.
“Not that their children are spying on you either,” my mother hurried to add. “You know how it is, jaan. People talk.”
“And we don’t like it when people talk,” Dad told me. “At all.”
“Being talked about is one of the great tragedies in the world, you know. That’s a quote.”
“Right,” I said. “From Othello.”
My parents exchanged a glance.
“Sure,” Mom said. “So, anyway, our sources… not sources, you know, but… we haven’t been able to identify the young lady in question, and we were wondering if you would like to tell us who you’ve been spending so much time with.”
“And don’t worry,” my father said. “From what we’ve heard, you really have been studying. Not engaging in… the wiggle waggle.”
“The wiggle waggle?”
“It’s what kids are calling it nowadays,” Aisha Jilani said with more confidence than any parent should ever feel about slang.
“Must’ve missed that memo.”
“Danyal, it is just that—”
“It’s not a big deal. I asked Bisma Akram to help me with the Renaissance Man project.”
This time my parents exchanged a longer glance. Then they both smiled that disturbing “look what we did for our kid, aren’t we awesome, we know him so well and should make all decisions for him for the rest of his life and maybe our grandchildren’s lives too” smile.
I sighed.
“What a lovely girl she is,” Mom said. “I told you, didn’t I, Ahmed? Lovely girl, that one. Maybe we should call her mother—”
“No,” Dad and I said at the same time.
My mother frowned. “Why not?”
“Let him focus on his schooling. For once in his life, he is seriously studying. After graduation, there will be plenty of time to deal with the rest of this business.”
“Right,” I said. “What Dad said.”
Aisha Jilani sighed. “Fine.” Then she pointed a warning finger at me. “But I think it only fair to warn you that if you screw this up for me, Danyal, you won’t have to answer to your father. You’ll have to deal with me.”
“Which,” Dad said, “is a kind of pain you, my son, have never known.”
More Than Just a Pretty Face Page 18
