As much as I hated getting up early, I’d agreed to come out for a run after dawn, because Bisma had mentioned that it was something she did. It seemed like a chance to show her I was good at something.
That was before I’d realized that she ran pretty much every single day. I mean, I was in good shape. I worked out at a run-down little gym every once in a while, and did cardio and everything, but Bisma was a machine.
“You okay?” she asked. “I thought you said you ran.”
“I do,” I gasped, breathing hard, bent over with my hands on my knees. “Just not, you know… wow. You’re a beast.”
“I run whenever I’m angry,” Bisma said with a grin.
“You must be angry all the time.”
She laughed. “Come on. There’s a bench over there. Let’s sit down.”
“I’m fine,” I panted, still sucking oxygen.
She raised her eyebrows.
“I will be fine,” I corrected.
“I’m not going to judge you if you sit down, you know.”
“You won’t?”
“Of course not. I’ve judged you already.”
I made a face at her and headed for the wooden bench she’d pointed out. It was a nice morning. Bisma sat down next to me. I noticed that she was also out of breath and sweating. Maybe she’d been pushing herself more than usual too.
I’d been to Coyote Hills Park before, but never on the Red Hill Trail. Bisma had chosen it, and it was more challenging than I’d expected, especially when you were running flat out. It was a beautiful spot, though, green, with some pretty cool-looking rocks breaking up everything, and a bay that filled the horizon. It looked like we’d just missed seeing the sunrise from the hill.
“I’ll miss you,” Bisma said, out of nowhere.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“No. You are, though, right? Your contest is getting closer and soon… well, you won’t have a reason to come to the library anymore.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then I’ll have a reason.”
She refused to meet my gaze, but I could tell from her smile that I’d said the right thing. Then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone.
I nudged her shoulder with mine. “Where’d you go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just then, you were thinking something.” That made you lose your smile, I didn’t add, because… I don’t know, it didn’t feel right.
“It’s just…” She stared out over the water; at what, I couldn’t figure out. “I feel like we know each other sometimes, and then I remember that you’ve been too nice to ask me about what happened with the… tape.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head.
“Then we don’t have to talk about it.”
Bisma sighed. “The world isn’t that simple, Danyal.”
“It can be. Mine is.”
“Must be nice.”
“It is.” I’d meant it as a joke, but when she didn’t react, I tried to explain. “You know how people think the moon is beautiful? Well… it’s not perfect, is it? There’s like spots on it and stuff—”
“Craters.”
“Be less of a nerd for like two minutes.”
Bisma held up her hands. “Sorry.”
“I’m just saying that those craters are part of the moon’s past. The moon has a history, and I don’t know it. No one knows it, really… but we can still love the moon. It’s still wonderful. It still lights up the dark. You know what I mean? So… we don’t ever need to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. You are who you are and that’s more than good enough for me.”
Her eyes shone in the growing light of the new sun. “I think I’d kiss you now if I could.”
“Oh… wow. Dude. Being Muslim sucks so hard sometimes.”
She laughed and got to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”
“I think maybe, young man, you could be working faster, haan?”
I looked up from the sandwich I was making and frowned at the rando uncle who’d come along to criticize me. “Sorry?”
“It is just,” the old man said, waving a hand over the perfectly aligned, beautifully arranged sandwiches on my table, “that if you didn’t spend so much time making everything pretty, you’d be more productive.”
I frowned at him. For a long time.
The uncle seemed to get uncomfortable. He fidgeted a little and tugged at his beard. “After all, what does it matter what food looks like? It is going to end up in the same place, haan?”
Allah, give me patience.
All of the Fremont mosques had gotten together and, with an unusual amount of coordination, put together a joint event. It was Saturday morning, and my family was in the courtyard of the Lowry mosque, making food for the homeless. Sohrab, who’d texted me like five times to make sure we’d be there, had said I was assigned to a group putting together sandwiches.
Of course, I wasn’t just slapping the ingredients onto white bread and stuffing everything into Ziploc bags. I had standards to maintain.
When I kept staring at him, the uncle nodded emphatically, as if I’d agreed to do exactly what he asked, and wandered away. I sighed. There was no chance that was the last time that was going to happen.
I wondered if I’d get in trouble if I suggested all the uncles get beard nets. Brodeur would flip out if she saw this much uncovered facial hair around food. I decided it was worth pointing out, even if I ended up getting a lecture about how beards were awesome or whatever. You don’t make compromises on food hygiene. It’s sacred.
I asked around to see who was in charge today, expecting to be sent to one of the imams. Instead, I was told to talk to Sohrab Sabsvari.
I found him with Intezar, whose arms were full of loaves of bread.
“What are you doing here?”
Zar tried to shrug as best he could. “Sohrab asked me to help and I thought… it just sounded cool, yaar.”
“It is,” I agreed.
There was a weird silence. I don’t think any of us knew what to say.
Then Zar cleared his throat. “I should get this bread where it’s supposed to go. So… yeah.” He nodded to Sohrab. “You did a good thing, brownther. This is really great.”
As Zar fled the awkwardness that was just begging for a heart-to-heart—those really weren’t his style—I asked Sohrab, “You did this? I heard you organized everything.”
He laughed in that way he had when he was trying to be modest. “No, not really. I just came up with the idea. Actually, I didn’t. You did.”
“Sounds like something I’d remember.”
Sohrab chuckled. “You said we should be human before we’re anything else.” I hadn’t actually. If I remembered it right, he’d come up with that on his own. “I figured this was what being human looked like. Your obsession with food became my inspiration.”
“You do look better. More human and less zombie.” I clapped him on the back. “So how come you didn’t tell me you had all this going on? I would’ve helped.”
“I figured you were busy with the Renaissance Man. Besides, I had Zar.”
I grinned and my words came out hopeful and bright. “You guys good now?”
Sohrab held his hand out before him and shook it in a “meh” gesture. “It isn’t like before, you know… but maybe that’s okay.”
“That isn’t the answer I wanted.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re different people now, and… don’t look so disappointed, Danyal. At least Zar and I are making an effort. Besides, we’ll always have you to make sure we hang out, right?”
“Always.”
“Then we’ll be fine. Come on, let’s get to work.”
“Really, Intezar? A new PlayStation. That would be your super dua?”
After the food drive at the mosque, I grabbed Zar and Sohrab and drove us all to Falafel Corner, a halal
burger place. If they were getting along again, even a little bit, it was worth celebrating.
Besides, it had been a while since I’d been to a burger joint, especially one with an open kitchen. There’s something cozy and comforting about the sizzle of a fresh patty hitting a grill and the rising smell of charred beef. It sang to the American in me, I guess.
It was exactly the kind of place you came to celebrate healing friendships.
“Whatever, yaar,” Zar said. “What else would I ask God for?”
“Forgiveness?” Sohrab suggested.
“For what?” Intezar demanded indignantly, but then he wilted a little under Sohrab’s even, unblinking gaze. Seriously, Sohrab can go without blinking for a very long time. It’s freaky. “Fine, so my super dua could be for forgiveness,” Zar admitted, “but that’s boring. It’s not a fun game if everyone gives boring answers.”
“What about world peace? Or an end to poverty?” Sohrab suggested.
Zar groaned and stuffed his face with a massive bite out of his triple-patty, double-beef, bacon, extra-cheese burger so that he could get out of the conversation.
Sohrab shook his head and turned to me. “What about you?”
“I know what Danyal wants,” Zar tried to say with a full mouth. At least, that’s what I think he tried to say. Obviously, he was talking about Kaval.
Zar was wrong, though.
A dua is just a prayer. Something you ask God for. Sohrab had heard that when you went to Mecca and saw the Kaaba for the first time, whatever dua you made was guaranteed to come true. He’d dubbed this the super dua.
I wanted to say that my super dua would be to get an infinite number of super duas. Everyone knows to wish for more wishes.
The thing was… I knew that if I went to Mecca and my eyes fell on the famous black mosque at the center of all I’d ever been told was holy, there was one thing my heart would ask for before anything else.
I’d wish for Bisma Akram to be happy.
She was awesome and she deserved joy. It bothered me that the society we lived in, and the families we were part of, would never really let her move on from her past, despite the fact that she just wanted to live her life.
The whole thing with the sex tape haunted her, not because she was unable to let it go, but because the people around her couldn’t let it go. That was bullshit.
Her own family, her own community and people, were the restraints on her smiles, the checks on her laughter.
And for some reason, the fact that the light in her world had been dimmed hurt me. I couldn’t explain why, but I was increasingly sure that I’d never be happy if Bisma wasn’t happy.
So if Allah promised to give me one thing, I’d ask Him to give her a beautiful life.
I didn’t want to tell my friends that, though.
And, just in case Allah was taking an interest in the conversation, I didn’t want to lie about it either. That’d be a bad look.
“Close your mouth when you chew your food, man,” I said, mostly to change the subject.
When Zar opened his mouth to answer, however, he started to gasp and choke on the giant bite he’d taken. A waiter rushed over, worried, and a few customers muttered to themselves with concern.
Sohrab and I looked on unmoved.
“He’s fine,” I told everyone.
“This happens about once a week,” Sohrab put in.
Zar had, by this time, recovered enough to croak, “I hate you guys. I could’ve died.”
“If you were meant to die just then,” Sohrab said, “nothing we could’ve done would have mattered. You’d be dead. How long we live, how well we live, all that is written by God. There is no changing destiny.”
“If that’s true,” I asked, “then what are prayers for?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
You’re out of time.
The cardiologist is here.
Need your answer.
Kaval’s texts felt like they came out of the blue, but to be fair, she’d mentioned that her heart doctor was coming to see her again. I just hadn’t known it was happening this soon.
The messages came just as I was walking into Remarquable for a shift. I stopped by the door, trying to figure out what, if anything, I should say. Brodeur, who was walking by, made the choice for me. She plucked the phone from my hand, turned it off, and handed it back.
“Station,” she ordered.
“Yes, Chef,” I said with a sigh. Fine. Whatever. I went to the back, put my phone in a locker, and changed. Then I washed my hands with bright pink soap that smelled like nothing except chemicals and went to work. Brodeur had decided to serve a dessert based around an orange cake, and for that she needed me to zest and cut oranges.
As for Kaval, I had to come up with a good reply.
If I told her no, then I’d always be the one who walked away from “us.”
If I told her yes, then…
The truth was I didn’t want to say yes. And not just because of the life she’d demanded of me.
It was because of Bisma.
I didn’t know when I’d started to feel this way, and I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew that it would hurt more to lose Bisma’s company than it would hurt to lose… whatever it was that Kaval and I had.
That didn’t mean I liked liked Bisma, of course. Not in the way that I liked Kaval.
Did it?
Sure, I flirted with her sometimes, but that was because… well, it was my default setting when I was around girls. Right? I mean, every Bollywood and Hollywood movie I’d ever seen had taught me that I was supposed to be bowled over when I liked a girl, that it was supposed to hit me like a bus and shatter me like Sub Zero’s frozen hammer. It wasn’t like that with Bisma.
I wasn’t overwhelmed by her. I was just… overtaken.
Unless there was more than one way that love was supposed to feel, and no one talked about the other kind, the kind that didn’t set fire to the sky or shake the earth but just existed, like the shade from a redwood tree on a hot day.
I gave a little cry of pain as I pulled my finger instinctively away from the cutting board I was using. The oranges I’d been slicing… well, they were blood oranges now.
“Qu’est-ce que tu fais?” Brodeur screamed from across the room. One of the other line cooks handed me a clean towel, and I pressed it against my finger, which was really starting to hurt. I wanted to smile to thank her, but my face was stuck in a grimace.
Brodeur’s glare was sharper than the blade I’d cut myself with as she gestured for me to go to the back office, where schedules were made and menus decided. She followed me, cursing all the way there, cursing as she pulled a first aid case off the wall, and then cursing as she examined my bleeding finger.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to sound as pathetic as I felt. It wasn’t the first time someone had hurt themselves in the kitchen, of course, but it was the first time I had done it. Worse, I’d done it because I’d failed to focus because of that text from Kaval, which felt really stupid. She was probably chatting up her cardiologist right then.
“Why shouldn’t she? I’m not going to give her what she wants,” I said out loud.
“Pardon?”
My ears started to burn. “Sorry. I… was thinking about a girl.”
Brodeur’s face softened just a little. “The girl who visited you here?”
“Bisma? I mean, not really. It’s someone else.”
She chuckled. “Vraiment?”
She seemed to expect an answer, but I had no idea what she’d said. When I didn’t reply, she harrumphed and went about cleaning the cut with gauze and iodine. “It is, I think, not so bad.”
I tried to flex my finger. It stung, but it was definitely bearable. “I’ll be fine.”
She perched herself on the edge of the desk, folded her arms across her chest, and looked down at me. “A kitchen is a place for concentration, yes?”
I nodded.
“Do not forget in the future. Food has to be
the most important thing in your life when you are creating it. The world should be as nothing to you.”
“Yes, Chef.”
She took a deep breath. “And pick one jam for your little brioche. It’ll make for a simpler life, I assure you.”
“It isn’t like that. I’m not with anyone. Bisma and I—”
“You do not like the girl? She was, I thought, most charming.”
“She’s great,” I said. “But this other girl—”
“Someone to whom you cannot give what she wants, hmm? I know nothing of it, of course, so I must say nothing. Very well. Go home.”
“I’m fine. I can go back to my station.”
She jabbed a finger against my forehead. “This is not working, so you are no use to anyone here. You’re done for the night. Walk. Think, if you can manage it.”
I sighed. “Yes, Chef.”
As I got up to leave, I heard Brodeur sigh. “Wait,” she said. She pulled off her toque and tossed it on the desk, then ran a hand over her blond hair. “I am not, I fear, very wise. There are two things I know, and perhaps they can be of benefit.”
Before I could ask her what she was talking about, Chef Brodeur raised one finger in the air with an extravagant flourish. “First, you will never regret cooking for a beautiful woman, yes? That one, I think, is self-explanatory.” She picked up her hat and clutched it tightly in her hands. “I used to make simple things for the girl I loved. Just an omelet, maybe, or a fig tapenade.”
I smiled, trying to imagine the dictatorial chef in love. “Really?”
“Second,” she went on, raising the index finger on her other hand in exactly the same style with which she had raised the first, “you will never regret asking that girl to dance. In fifty-four years, only those things I’ve found to be true, and they are the only things I’ve regretted not doing more.”
Walking in San Francisco always surprises me. It’s easy to forget sometimes, because it can feel so big, how small the city is. After Chef Brodeur told me to go home, I walked under the red lanterns of Chinatown, past the delicious and awful smells of the Tenderloin, and headed toward Union Square, the most expensive part of a very expensive town. The streets were lined with stores so pricey that I never even bothered looking at their displays.
More Than Just a Pretty Face Page 19
