Salaam Paris

by Kavita Daswani

  “Apologies for the lateness,” said the fashion executive, who introduced himself as Thierry as Claire scuttled away. “Charmed to meet you. May I order you another drink?”

  Forty-five minutes later, Thierry and Dimitri had ironed out details that were incomprehensible to me as I sat on my hands and chewed on my bottom lip. For my benefit, they spoke mostly in English, occasionally lapsing into French, talking about endorsements and residuals and commissions and cover shoots. I needn’t really even have been there, although every so often Thierry would look my way, his cool blue eyes setting off his silvery hair. He had a perfect white smile, a few deep crevices in his forehead, and the longest fingers I had ever seen on a man. Apart from making sure he was pronouncing my name correctly, and asking me what it meant, he barely spoke to me. He squinted at my streak a few times, and then looked away again.

  By the end of the evening, Dimitri and Thierry shook hands and promised that the paperwork would be signed in the morning. I, however, still had no idea what Dimitri had promised me to until a few days later, when Juliette brought home a copy of Women’s Wear Daily and showed me a feature about Viva, its sale to Groupe Montaigne, and how it was poised to undergo a major revamp, including hiring a new spokesmodel for its next collection.

  Three days later, a shiny black car came by the café to pick me up and to take me to a photography studio off rue Cambon. When I walked in, still in the salwar kameez I had worn to work that day, everybody stopped talking. A tall and extremely thin British man named Robert welcomed me, telling me he would be taking the pictures.

  “Do you know what I’m doing?” I asked, realizing how stupid the question sounded.

  “New international ad campaign for Viva,” he said, stepping back and looking at me, as if through a camera lens. “You’re their girl. Super exciting. Brand-new collection. The clothes are hot, finally,” he added.

  A blond woman with a friendly face guided me to a lit-up mirror in one corner, a tall chair set in front of it. From a large black suitcase she fished out dozens of eyeshadows and lip glosses, laying them out in front of me and asking me if I had any preferences. In the mirror, I saw Dimitri entering the studio and making his way toward me.

  “Dimitri, I am grateful for what you have done, but I must make one thing clear,” I blurted out before he even had the chance to say hello.

  “You need to tell me what I am doing before I start doing it. I arrived here, and felt like a fool. I know that my career is in your hands, but I need to know what you are up to with me. I am sure I will agree to it, but you must tell me.”

  He nodded sheepishly.

  “I didn’t want you to concern yourself with these boring details. Just trust me. I am capable,” he said.

  “I am sure of that,” I said as the blond woman applied foundation to my face with a wedge-shaped sponge. “But this is my life too. Let’s be partners in it.”

  Compared to the exercise in humiliation I had undergone the previous week during my first real modeling job, this particular event was almost enjoyable. Everyone in the studio was uniquely focused on me, weighing in on whether my hair should be flatter or fuller, whether to go with the pink lipstick or the burgundy. Lights were moved around, music turned on so I could, Robert said, “get into the mood,” and food was brought to me on pale green ceramic platters. When the time came for me to be photographed, I was told to stand on a large X-mark taped onto the floor, a sheath of thick white paper behind me. Robert told me where to look, where to put my hands, how much or little to smile, and I followed his instructions without thinking. He told me he could see that I was new to this but that I would pick it up in no time, and I felt reassured by that. He would only look frustrated when I lapsed into the habit-one that I thought all models had-of pouting like some coy Bollywood heroine about to be romanced for the first time.

  “Stop that,” he said when I did it for the fifth time. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like an idiot.”

  Even though Robert told me that he would have to take hundreds of pictures to find the perfect few that the company would use, I was still amazed at how long it took and how many outfits I was asked to change into. At one point, five people in the room were debating the merits of a particular belt, or would spend twenty minutes rearranging a cuff on my shirt. I couldn’t imagine that the people who read the magazines these pictures would be used in would notice if a crease or a fold wasn’t exactly where it should be. I did more poses than at one of my yoga classes back home-hands on hips, hands on butt, hands in air, legs crossed and then set apart, hair in ponytail one minute or spilling onto my shoulders the next. Even I, as accustomed as I was to the sight of me, didn’t realize I had this many faces.

  Five hours later, Robert announced that we were done. As his assistants packed everything away, he said he wanted to show me some Polaroids which, he explained, were always taken at the start of each session to make sure the lighting was right.

  “In the end, I think this is the one they’ll go with,” he said. He lifted up a small square, showing me a photo of a girl I couldn’t recognize. She was wearing skinny low-cut jeans that were held up by a thick belt covered in stones, and a sunshine yellow halter top. Her hair was combed completely straight and parted in the center. Large hoop earrings dangled from her ears, a thick ring studding her middle finger. She stood there, legs about a foot apart, her right thumb hooked through one of her belt loops. She looked like me, but older, sleeker, smarter-like in one of Nilu’s magazines. She had, in her eyes, not even a hint of the fear of Allah preparing to destroy her. Her face betrayed none of the sadness of being made an orphan, and showed no sign of the loss of an entire life before this, an entire culture. As I stared at the sunny strength of the girl in the photo, I started to cry, knowing that I so much wanted to be her, but never could.

  Robert, who had momentarily left my side to go check something with his assistant, turned around when he heard me sob.

  “Gosh, they’re not that bad, are they?” he asked, a look of genuine anxiety crossing his face.

  “Oh no!” I said. “It’s not that. They’re very good. That’s why I’m crying.”

  He looked at me, puzzled, and shook his head. I felt his hand rest on my lower back, and he turned to kiss me on the cheek, ignoring the tears that seemed to have collected by my earlobe. I felt his eyelashes flutter against my face, and it caused a tingle to run up and down my body. I drew in a sharp intake of breath, shocked at the newness of the sensation, and quickly moved away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took me a while to realize where the sound was coming from. For a few minutes I had been hearing an intermittent knocking from somewhere in the apartment. I listened some more, then heard my name being called. Softly at first and then a little louder.

  “Tanaya! I’m here! Downstairs!” the voice said. I ran toward the window, peered into the street a couple of floors below, and saw Robert standing there, grinning up at me. Under one arm was a large flat, black case.

  “I’ve been tossing pebbles at your window. Your buzzer thing down here doesn’t appear to be working,” he yelled up. “Just wanted to show you the final pictures from our shoot. I think you’ll be pleased. Can I come up for a minute?”

  I pressed the button to let him in and quickly dashed to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth; I had been eating tuna for lunch, straight out of the can, and our tiny living room and I both reeked of it. I grabbed a bottle of perfume from Teresa’s closet and spritzed it into the air, waving away the bold, overflowery scent and causing the room to smell of jasmine and fish.

  Robert was knocking on my door by the time I was done.

  “Hello,” he said. “Hope I’ve not come at a bad time. I was in the neighborhood, so thought I’d drop in, take a chance you were at home.”

  “Please, come in. May I bring you something to drink?”

  “Coffee would be great if you have some. Sorry to just barge in like this, but I was so excited about these s
hots that I couldn’t wait to show them to you. It’s not something I usually do. But for you,” he said, looking right at me, “I made an exception.”

  I excused myself for a minute to go into the kitchen and brew up a fresh pot of coffee, suddenly horrendously self-conscious-at the way I smelled, the way the apartment looked, at being alone with a man whom, I was now sure, was here for more than he let on. There was no reason I would know how to handle it.

  Nervously I reentered the living room and sat on a chair across from Robert. He patted to the space on the couch next to him.

  “It’s OK. I can see from here,” I said. He got up, walked around the table with his black case, and crouched next to me.

  “No need to be nervous,” he said quietly, putting his hand on my back again. “I’m not going to bite you, darling.” He opened his case and pulled out some large colorful photos: a carefree smile hovering on my lips, my hair tossed over one shoulder, my arms folded in front of me. I looked like I had been doing this for years.

  “We had to do some retouching, just to even things out,” he said, turning to look at me. “I mean, it’s not like you’re anything less than completely stunning.” His eyes lingered on my mouth now. I stood up, telling him I needed to check on the coffee. He stood up too. Then he wrapped one strong arm around my waist and pulled me toward him.

  “So tell me,” he said in a grunting whisper. “That silver patch of yours up there, does it match the one down there?” His eyes lowered, and his hand started to move down my body. I grabbed it, holding it tight in my grasp. Then his mouth landed on mine, his tongue forcing my lips open. He smelled of cigarettes; his skin was coarse and rough. I felt a wave of nausea come over me, fear gripping my belly. I instantly had a flash of my mother and father on the night I was conceived, a miserable man pressing down on top of a desperate woman. I thought of those articles in Teen Cosmo, about how to attract the boy of your dreams and which lip glosses were most kissable, and I wondered why girls chased after something that was so obviously repulsive. As another surge of sickness overcame me, I pushed Robert away, ran back into the kitchen, and threw up in the sink.

  “Please leave,” I said, my voice starting to tremble.

  “You’ve got nerve,” he said. He bent over and picked up his portfolio. “I thought you’d be a bit friendlier, given everything I could do for you.”

  I came out of the kitchen and looked at him.

  “Well, my girl, I’m like this with the people at French Vogue,” he said, crossing two of his fingers in front of my face. “I could have landed you something pretty major there, something any other upstart model like you would do anything for. But you’ve just blown it, haven’t you?”

  He slammed the door behind him, and I started to cry.

  “No matter how it might appear, that kind of behavior is not normal.” Mathias looked over at me sympathetically as I took a break during my shift the next day. He had calmed down significantly since I first told him what had happened with Robert; his first reaction had been a desire to race over to what he described as “that British punk’s studio,” and, from the sounds of it, hit him.

  “You know, people think that fashion is all about sex,” he said, deep in thought. “I suppose in many ways it is. But then they think that all models are cheap, willing to give themselves over to anyone because, after all, they are willing to take off their clothes for a living. It’s not fair, but it’s the way this business is perceived. Perhaps the cad has never met a virgin model before.”

  I thought of Nana, who would grumble and groan each time he spotted a copy of Stardust-the glossy magazine charting the lives and loves of Bollywood’s finest-in our house.

  “Decent girls don’t dress like this,” he would spit out, pointing to the cover photo of a comely Aishwarya Rai in a belly-baring choli, her bountiful cleavage peeking through its sequin-encrusted surface.

  I looked down at the snug jeans and T-shirt that Karla had insisted I wear that day and wondered what Nana would think if he saw me now.

  The Viva ad campaign launched some weeks later. Dimitri showed me a couple of magazines and newspapers in which large ads were placed, a shiny, smiling me in full-color glory. My roommates, who had wasted no time in telling their other friends and colleagues that they lived with me, wanted to take me out to dinner to celebrate, to pop open a bottle of champagne and insist I take a sip-just one-to help me feel the thrill of this. For one evening they pleaded with me to forget that I was Muslim, and to succumb to the forbidden lure of alcohol. Instead, I kept my hand around a glass of club soda, sipping away quietly while they ordered another bottle of the bubbly liquor.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They had seen the photos, and Nana, so I was told, almost had a stroke. Aunt Mina, I had been informed by Shazia, had been sitting in the waiting room at the cancer specialist’s clinic, had randomly picked up a magazine, and had to look five times at the picture before she realized it was me. The Viva girl was now in a light blue lace camisole and matching underwear, her head hanging upside down off a couch, hair sweeping a gold colored carpet, a round, ripe cherry in her red-painted mouth. Shazia said that her ailing mother had turned the magazine around countless times in a bid to rule out any possibility that it was me. But there I was, cleavage and all, my legs crossed at the ankle above me.

  Owing to a newfound and curious affinity with my grandfather, Aunt Mina had ripped out the page and mailed it to him. After all, they both now shared the pain of having disobedient and disgraceful daughters. Such was their closeness, that my grandfather had even returned to the phone booth around the corner from our house to call Aunt Mina, to cry down the line about the shame of rearing a girl who had become, as he had put it, a “common prostitute.” My mother had apparently snatched the magazine page from her father’s trembling hand, ripping it into a thousand pieces, convincing herself that in so doing she was killing me off.

  Why Shazia felt compelled to call me and tell me this I could not understand. It was like she wanted me to know that my family’s disgust with me was now so profound and so complete, that I could surely never redeem myself with them, that any vague hope I might have had of reconciling with them in the future was now utterly trashed. It was like she wanted to ensure my isolation.

  That night, smarting with shame, I lay in bed, willing myself to sleep and imagining Nana lying in his. He would do as he always did when bothered about something-stare at the dust-covered ceiling fan that whirred softly overhead, his hands folded behind his head, his glasses resting on the bedside table. He was probably praying that nobody else would ever see that photograph. I could imagine my mother in her own misery in the room next door, the room she once shared with me, mystified at how such a well-brought-up girl could have turned out so badly.

  My last day at Café Crème came exactly three months and four days from when I had started there. After my first shoot with Viva, Mathias had reckoned that it would be just a matter of time before I would feel motivated to move on.

  “There is no need for you to be sitting behind that desk and counting money when you are making so much of it on your own,” he had said.

  My contract with Viva was for a significant enough sum that I could have even moved out and rented my own place, probably somewhere hopelessly chic in the 16earrondisement. But I was interested in no such thing. Karla, Teresa, and Juliette were still my only friends, and the only people with whom I spent time when I wasn’t being photographed, strutting down a catwalk, or being filmed for a television ad. When Dimitri had arranged for me to be interviewed by Madame Figaro, one of the best-read publications in France, the reporter had used a headline that translated, roughly, as THE LONELY MUSLIM MODEL. She had asked me questions about my culture and faith, about how many times a day I prayed or whether I went to the mosque or if anyone in my extended family had ever considered being detonated. She asked me if I would eventually be one of numerous wives, consigned to living life in a burka behind the high white walls of a Saud
i palace. I explained to her that I was Indian, and not Arab, that I ate no pork and consumed no alcohol but that being here, in Paris, I had figured out in which direction Mecca was and still prayed to it.

  Then she asked me about my family, and how they felt about my newfound success, to which I mouthed a soft “OK. Fine.”

  “Actually, no, wait,” I said to the interpreter. “That’s not true.”

  I then told them about the scene in Sabrina that had pulled me toward this magical place, and the note with Tariq’s phone number on it, and a cousin named Shazia who had been determined that I stay on here and to “follow my destiny.” I told them about the grandfather I thought had loved me more than anything else in the world, and who now considered me dead, and a mother who didn’t have the courage to fight for me. These were things I had told nobody, not even the girls I lived with, and while a part of me felt I was betraying the code of silence that is often imposed on girls like me, I didn’t care anymore.

  Shortly afterward, I stared at the printed article, a photograph of me atop a hotel roof, taken from the side, gazing over the buildings that crouched beneath. I looked as wistful and sad as I felt, the words conveying my melancholy. I carefully clipped the feature out, folded it neatly, and slid it into a large brown envelope. At the post office, I paid extra for special handling and delivery, a guarantee that it would arrive at its destination and that I’d be able to track it if it didn’t. I sent it off and waited for the phone to ring.

  Two weeks later, the envelope was returned to me, unopened. On the front, I recognized my grandfather’s handwriting and the thin, dark-blue fountain-tip pen he always used, the ink spelling out the words: PLEASE RETURN. SENDER UNKNOWN.