“Then use different words,” she said.
“But we spent all this time writing these ones.”
Bisma rolled her eyes.
I went on. “In that sense, it is a primitive spirit that humanity ought to seek to transcend, and not embrace. Even Churchill’s contemporaries understood him to be a man who belonged in the past. Roosevelt called him a—”
“Stop.” Bisma gestured for me to come closer.
Gingerly stepping over all kinds of stuff I didn’t want to think about, I made my way over to her bench.
“Talk to me, Danyal.”
“About what?”
“The presentation. You have to rehearse, but it can’t sound rehearsed. You have to engage your audience. The preparation is for you. It isn’t for them.”
I threw my arms up in the air. “That makes no sense.”
“It will. Look, your notes, they’re like a marinade.”
I gave her a skeptical look. “Really?”
“Yes. When you marinade chicken, it’s prep, right? The customer doesn’t ever see that happen. The customer doesn’t even see the marinade. They just taste all that work you did in the dish you give them. A dish that looks nothing like it did when you were making it. Does that make sense?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“Good,” she said. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
After what felt like a thousand practice sessions, Bisma decided it was time for a focus group. I met Sohrab at Zar’s place and performed for them. It felt as weird as I’d told Bisma it would. She’d insisted, however, that it was important to get outside opinions and told me that it’d help get me used to the idea of having an audience.
Zar and Sohrab were a far cry from the four hundred or so people who’d watch the actual presentation in an auditorium, but I trusted that Bisma knew what she was talking about.
“… and that’s all I’ve got,” I told my friends, folding up my notes. When neither one of them said anything, I followed up with, “Guys?”
Intezar was the first to actually react. He grinned. “That was great, yaar.”
“Really?” I asked, looking to Sohrab for confirmation.
My somber friend nodded. “Absolutely. You’re onto something important here. Western leaders have often been insulated from their own brutality, and Churchill is no different. Telling the truth about what they did, and continue to do, is vital. Otherwise, it’s like Khataba, the village I told you about. You remember?”
Soldiers using knives to dig bullets out of bodies and lying about it? It was hard to forget. “I remember.”
“We’re fed stories that go unchallenged and they shape our view of the world. I mean, Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he’s practically sanctified by his biographers. FDR set up internment camps—”
“Is he doing his own presentation now?” Zar asked. “Because I only signed up for one.”
Sohrab gave him an annoyed look. “I was just providing commentary.”
“Thanks,” I cut in before they could start arguing. “Both of you. Looks like I’ll be fine. Right? Yeah. Definitely. It isn’t a big deal.”
Reassuring me that I’d do well, Sohrab took off, leaving me alone with Zar. “What did you think, really?”
He shrugged. “You know what Pirji said, right? He said you’d choke.”
Right. Zar’s holy man in Pakistan had predicted that I’d crash and burn in Renaissance Man, just like he’d predicted Zar would strike out with Natari. “You think it’s going to be bad?”
“Nah. I think Pirji is about to lose a customer. You’ll bring your fire, brownther. You’ll burn the house down.”
A week later, it was the night before Renaissance Man. I wasn’t nervous. I was just going to get up in front of hundreds of people and take a dump on the legacy of one of the greatest figures in modern history. Not a big deal.
At least spending the evening with Bisma had made time go by fast. Now that the library was closing, and we were going home, a long night awaited me.
“I got you something,” Bisma said. She dropped her backpack down and knelt beside it. When she got up again, she was holding a bright yellow school tie with diagonal black stripes. As I took it, I noticed that there was a crest of some kind on it.
“What is this? Like a ferret?”
“It’s a badger.”
“Right. And its name is Hufflepuff?”
She grinned. “Don’t worry about it. You should wear it tomorrow. It’ll suit you.”
It wouldn’t really. I only had my blue suit, and while the yellow was fine, the black stripes could look a little out of place. Maybe if I wore black oxfords, it would work. I’d make it work. There was no way I wasn’t going to wear a gift Bisma had gotten me.
“Thank you,” I said. “And not just for this. For everything. It’s like…”
I didn’t know how to tell her what I wanted to tell her without sounding massively cheesy. It was like she’d made me taller or something. Like she’d seen where I could fit into the world and helped me get to that place.
Thankfully, once again, Bisma came to my rescue. “You’re welcome,” she said. “It was fun.”
“Yeah. Definitely. So… uh, you’ll be there for me tomorrow, right?”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“You’re going to be late, beta.”
I scowled at my reflection in the mirror. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get the tie Bisma had given me on right. Sometimes it was too long, other times it was too short or just crooked. I’d been at it for a while.
My mother, who’d been lingering outside the door for some time, finally marched in and demanded I hand it over. “This wouldn’t be a problem if you learned from your father instead of watching those stupid videos online.”
That was possibly true, but I didn’t want to admit it. So I just watched in silence as she rather expertly pulled a knot together for me. I couldn’t imagine putting a tie on another person. I couldn’t even put one on myself just then.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“The people you know best will surprise you sometimes. Like you will surprise your father tonight, I think.”
I stared at her. She couldn’t possibly know that my presentation about Churchill was going to be less than flattering. I hadn’t told her.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Danyal,” she said mildly, smiling as she adjusted my collar. “I’ve known you longer than you’ve been alive. How many secrets do you think you can keep from me?”
“When did you figure it out?”
Aisha Jilani laughed. “When your father told you to praise Churchill despite what you’d learned, I knew you wouldn’t. You really do have a bad habit of being disobedient when you think you’re right.”
I grinned. “I guess it’s a good thing I don’t think I’m right very often.”
She gave my ear a playful tug and stepped back, looking me over, then nodded. “Also,” she said, “you left your notes lying around in the living room.”
“Oh. Yeah. That sounds like something I’d do. So, do you think Dad will be mad at me?”
“Maybe. It depends on how the night goes.”
“No pressure, then.”
“Jaan,” she said, “poets say that there was a time under British rule when our people used to leave their homes feeling like they had their funeral shrouds wrapped around their heads. That was their metaphor for how they felt every day when they stood against the Empire. They felt like they were going to get killed and buried.”
“What’s your point?”
“That all you’ve had to do is put on a suit. So yes, there’s no pressure. Whatever happens, you’ll be fine.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Break a leg. Chalo. Let’s go.”
“How is fracturing a bone a good idea right now?”
“It’s just an expression. It means I hope you do well.
Don’t worry about it, okay? And please don’t go around trying to hurt yourself on purpose.…”
It was completely nuts backstage. Some contestants had teachers and family members huddled around them, while others stood in corners alone, trying to shove one last bit of information into their overflowing brains, or practicing the delivery of their lines.
I looked around for Tippett, just to see if he had any last-minute advice, but couldn’t find him. Natari drifted over when she saw me.
“Hey,” I greeted her. “Weren’t we all supposed to vote on what order we’re going to go in?”
Natari made a face. “We already did.”
“Nice of you guys to wait for me.”
“Sorry. It wouldn’t have made a difference even if you’d been there. Alan’s idea won by a lot. We’re going by GPA, highest first.”
I grimaced. It was like they were trying to make me feel bad. Now I was going to have to go last, which meant that I’d have to sit through everyone else’s presentations and worry about all the things that could go wrong in mine.
“These guys really hate that I’m a part of this, huh?”
“For what it’s worth,” Natari said, “I voted to pick the order at random.”
I smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it. Besides, I owed you one.”
“What are you talking about?”
Natari grinned. “Intezar asked me out.”
I stared at her. “Really? And you said…”
“Yes, obviously. He seems super sweet.”
“He is. I’m glad. That’s awesome.”
“He told me you encouraged him, so yeah, I owed you one. By the way, he also said to show you this.”
She held out her phone to show me a recent text from Zar. It was just a series of emojis. Prayer hands. Fingers crossed. Brown guy with turban, who I assumed was supposed to be Pirji. Stop sign. Fire. One hundred.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It’s a little hard to tell with Zar,” I joked, “but I think he’s saying it’s time to stop hoping and praying. It’s time to go all in and be fire.”
“Seems like good advice.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I know you’ll do great. Break a leg. That’s an expression, by the way. I don’t actually want you to get hurt.”
Natari laughed. “Of course. Everyone knows that.”
“Right,” I said. “Totally. Everyone.”
After Natari wandered away, I once again had no one to talk to, so I texted Bisma. You here yet?
I’m here, she wrote back instantly.
Any last words? I asked.
Bored with it all.
I shook my head and sent her an eye roll emoji. Those had been Churchill’s last words. I put the phone away for a while, and just sat there, reminding myself that none of this was a big deal. I’d be fine. Nothing was going to go wrong.
When my phone buzzed, it was Bisma again.
Do you need me to be with you?
I started to tell her that yes, yes, definitely I did, but one of the teachers clapped their hands loudly and someone else shouted, “Places!”
“Guys,” Alan Rhodes called. He was standing by the curtain, peering out at the crowd. “You have to see this.”
The auditorium was packed. A sea of expectant faces was looking at the light-drenched stage, waiting for us. There were people standing in the back. I couldn’t spot Bisma or my parents. I should’ve asked them where they were sitting.
There were three judges on the panel, and they were peering at score sheets, looking impatient to begin. I recognized Principal Weinberg, of course, but not the two men who were with her. I stepped away from the curtain, throat suddenly dry, heart pounding.
Natari touched my arm lightly. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Just another Saturday night.”
It began to get quiet as people started hurrying away to find their seats. Soon just the eight of us were left backstage, and no one seemed to feel like speaking. We stared at our hands or our feet, at the ceiling or the ground. We’d all be doing more than our share of talking soon.
I closed my eyes and tried to pray through the opening announcements, but I couldn’t focus. By the time Alan’s name was called and his presentation began, my chest was tight. I felt like my heart was stumbling over itself.
What was I doing here? This was just a bad joke gone wrong. I didn’t belong with these brilliant, talented people. What had Tippett been thinking? This was going to be a disaster. My classmates would be telling their kids stories about how badly I’d bombed.
“My God,” I whispered, only now realizing how completely I was going to be humiliated.
“You’re sure you’re fine?” Natari asked, leaning over to look closely at my face.
“What? Yeah. There’s just no air in here, right? I feel like there’s no air in here.”
“Deep breaths,” she suggested.
I concentrated on my breathing and tried to pay attention as Alan Rhodes wrapped up his speech and a polite round of applause broke out as he walked off the stage. He’d been talking about some kind of math theorem or something. I’d understood exactly none of it.
“Thank you for that enlightening presentation, Mr. Rhodes. Another round of applause, ladies and gentlemen? Very good. Next, representing Ms. Nix’s class in the field of geography, please welcome Natari Smith.”
Natari gave my shoulder a squeeze, got to her feet, then confidently marched onto the stage.
She was incredible. I mean, I didn’t manage to follow everything, partly because my stomach felt like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was squeezing it, but it was obvious that Natari was articulate, passionate, and persuasive. Geography was just her jumping-off point, as Tippett had predicted. Her real topic was climate change, and she was so interested in it that she made the audience interested in it too.
When she was done, there was loud clapping and hooting—the hooting almost exclusively from Zar, I was guessing—that didn’t stop until after the next presenter was announced.
So, from what I’ve heard, as much as the end of the world will suck and stuff, the beginning of the afterlife is going to suck more. We’re all going to get stuck in this place called Barzakh—purgatory—where we’ll have to sweat while awaiting judgment. This will go on, apparently, until people start to feel that it’d be better to be in Hell than to be trapped where they were. They’ll beg for the reckoning to begin.
This never made sense to me, until that night as I waited backstage, dreading my turn to speak, and at the same time, desperately wishing that whatever was going to happen happened quickly, so that life could go on.
It felt like I waited for hours.
Eventually, I was all alone. I was next.
I paced the length of the room and tried not to look at myself in the mirror. My hair was messed up because I hadn’t been able to stop myself from running my hands through it over and over again. I was sweating, and I felt so hot that I’d had to mess with my mom’s perfect knot and undo the top button of my collar. I mean, I was sure I still looked pretty good, because… well, you know, it was me, but I wasn’t exactly going to project confidence out there.
“And our final presenter of the night…”
Oh shit. Okay. It was happening. It was fine. I clutched my notes to my chest. I just had to walk out there and not stumble on my own feet. That wasn’t hard. I walked all the time. I’d been doing it for years. Practically since I was born, really, so—
“… representing Mr. Tippett and speaking for history, Danyal Jilani.”
The crowd started clapping and I started to put one foot in front of the other. There were some cheers. Intezar called out, “That’s my boy,” and a few people laughed. I made it to the lectern. I did not fall.
It was boiling under the lights. I couldn’t see much, but everyone could see me. My stomach clenched. I needed to throw up.
There were a few bottles of
water on the lectern. I wanted to reach for one because I felt really thirsty, but my hands were shaking so badly that I was afraid I’d spill water all over my notes and then I’d be even more screwed than I was now.
I was familiar with panic. I panicked during pretty much every test I took. I knew that my fingers and toes would get cold, just as they were starting to now. I’d experienced the rising dread of coming failure so many times that I’d thought I could deal with it. I was wrong. The wave of fear rising inside me was different than anything I’d ever experienced before. It drowned out all my thoughts.
How long had I been standing here, anyway? Too long.
“Come on, Jilani,” someone shouted from the crowd.
A few other voices joined in.
“Say something.”
Then a familiar voice, loud and clear, rang out. I squinted and saw my father standing up. “You can do it!” he shouted. “Have some confidence.”
Then my phone buzzed in my pocket.
And it buzzed again.
And again. And again.
Almost without thinking about it, I reached into my pocket and pulled it out.
Confused murmuring broke out in the crowd.
I’d gotten a bunch of texts. All of them were from Bisma.
I’m here with you.
Nothing that happens tonight will change the fact that I’m proud of you.
Or the fact that I’m in love with you.
I love you. I love you.
I love you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Mr. Jilani?” Principal Weinberg asked, her voice as sharp as vinegar.
I looked up from Bisma’s messages. My heart, which had moments ago been plummeting, was now soaring, making me feel a little dazed as I looked down at the irritated judges.
She loved me. She loved me.
Nothing else mattered. The crowd. The contest. None of it.
It was just something I had to live through so that I could be with Bisma again.
“Mr. Jilani, what could possibly be so important that you’re looking at your phone right now?”
“It’s a girl,” I said.
More Than Just a Pretty Face Page 22
