Salaam Paris

by Kavita Daswani

  Every time a plane crashed somewhere in the world-even if it was a charter jet in the interiors of Russia, something I rationally knew my nana would have nothing to do with and was nowhere near-I couldn’t sleep until he returned safely to our home, his peaked cap nestled on his bedside table. Each time I put on the television and the news came on, I was anxious until the sari-clad newsreader, her bindi as big and bright as the moon in the center of her forehead, moved on to sports, knowing then that there had been no plane crashes in the world that day.

  And even after Nana had retired and he was always there, in the next room, the pages of his newspaper rustling in the mid-afternoon breeze, I don’t think I ever stopped worrying about him. Every time his temperature went up a few degrees, or he complained of a headache, or perhaps was afflicted by a bout of indigestion after a particularly rich meal, my thoughts would always run to the extreme: It was cancer, a brain tumor, he was about to have a stroke.

  It only occurred to me much later, that the dread with which I held my nana when I thought I was about to lose him was the same dread with which I encased him when he was well and sound and happy. I feared him; I feared for him. There was, I realized, nothing about our relationship that wasn’t based on fear.

  “You have to know how much he loves you,” Aunt Gaura said. We had returned to my hotel, and were seated at the coffeeshop, cups of masala chai in front of us. “You have to know that no matter what you did, there wasn’t a day when he didn’t think of you. At the same time as he was cursing you, he prayed for you.” She sighed and readjusted her headscarf. “I will never understand that man. I will go to my grave, and he to his, without ever truly knowing him.”

  She paused for a moment and glanced around the coffeeshop, her eyes falling on the smartly dressed people at adjacent tables. Even in her simple light orange cotton salwar kameez she was a stunning woman, heads turning toward us when we walked in, us looking more like sisters than aunt and niece.

  “You have done well,” she said, putting her hand on mine. “When I was your age, I was married with a child on the way. I would never have been able to afford even a cup of tea here, much less to stay here on my own. You have broken every rule of our family. But somehow I cannot judge you. I cannot be like the others. I fed you from my own breast when you were just days old, and I cannot kill you off in my mind like the rest have done.”

  I started to cry softly, deeply moved by my aunt. She reached over and put her hand on my head, atop the Shah streak, and smiled at me softly.

  “If I really think about it, I guess I can understand why Nana is the way he is,” I said. “He is from another generation, after all. He is an old-timer in every sense,” I said, now laughing. “But to see the fury on my mother’s face-it shocked me. I had never seen such a thing. I had never seen much of anything on her face.” I stirred my tea, watching as the swirls of milk dissolved into the caramel-colored liquid.

  “It pained me to see how she was with you,” my aunt said, her expression now sad. “I couldn’t understand how a mother couldn’t love her child.”

  I thought back, for a second, to Zoe, my first roommate in Paris, the short-haired American girl who had given birth to a daughter that she had never wanted either. Perhaps it wasn’t so uncommon after all.

  “When your mother saw how beautiful you were becoming, she almost turned against you,” my aunt continued. “She wanted you to be like her. She began to see you as a stranger. And when she realized how much your grandfather loved you, and how close you were to him, she put herself in the background of your life, concerning herself with whether the vegetable basket was full and that your school fees were paid on time. But she never knew how to really be a mother to you, did she?” my aunt asked, looking at me with such tenderness that I wanted to cry.

  Aunt Gaura’s words were shocking to me, even though she was telling me something I think I always knew. I pushed my chair back as if I needed to stand up and go somewhere, when I really had nowhere else to go.

  “Maasi, tell me something,” I asked. “My friend Nilu told me that Nana had the accident on his way to the post office, that he was going to mail something to me. What was it? Do you know?”

  Aunt Gaura scooped another spoonful of sugar into her tea. She then lifted up her head and stared straight at me.

  “It was a letter from your father.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Spandau Ballet was playing in the elevator as I rode up back to my room. I recognized the song from a fashion show I had done in Rome a month earlier, where the designer had resurrected the trends-and the music-of the 1980s. He had put me in a lime green jacket with big padded shoulders and a peplum waist, and had given me a tiny miniskirt to wear with shiny pantyhose and high-heeled pumps. He had crimped my hair and clasped dangling gold earrings onto my lobes. When I was ready, staring into a mirror backstage and preparing for my turn to head out to the catwalk, the young dresser whispered in my ear that I looked like a “poor Bangladeshi Ivana Trump.” I had laughed, too carefree to really be offended.

  As I stood outside my room, searching for my key card, I thought back for a moment to those days when my life was an endless flurry of fittings and parties and limo rides and photographers and hundreds of hours spent in fancy airport lounges where all the food was free.

  Even when I was famous, I never felt it. And now, being a lifetime away from all that, it didn’t even feel real anymore. I barely gave a thought to what had happened with Kai and his career, and Felicia and her neuroses, and Stavros and the wife he pretended he wasn’t married to. They all seemed like characters I had read about in a book long ago, part of a life I had never really sought out, and that I was now happy to leave behind.

  I was just about to pull down my door handle when I heard the pleasant ring of the elevator, the upward arrow turning red, footsteps coming down the hall toward me, quicker than usual.

  “You’re a hard girl to find.”

  I looked up.

  “Your cook told me you were staying here.” Tariq looked happy and radiant.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, surprised but not displeased to see him. “I thought I asked you not to come.”

  “You did indeed,” he said, still grinning. “But I was on my way to Pakistan to see my own grandfather, just as I told you. And my office wanted me to take a meeting with some financiers in Bollywood. So here I am. I went by your place hoping to see you, but got your cook instead. So it didn’t go well, then?”

  “No. Quite badly, actually. But my mother’s sister, Gaura maasi, is helping me. She’s the only one in my family who understands and who actually doesn’t hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, if that makes a difference,” he said, the overhead lights bouncing off his shiny black hair, his tiny earrings trembling with the slightest of movements.

  “You’ve been very kind to me,” I said. “I don’t deserve it. Right now, I can only think of my nana, of getting him to see me, to know that I dropped everything and came back for him. I’m supposed to go back later this evening, when he will hopefully be awake.”

  “Sounds good,” Tariq said. “I’ve finished my meeting and don’t have to leave until the day after tomorrow. So please, let me come with you.”

  This time, he was awake. This time, there was nobody to tell me I couldn’t go in, that I couldn’t touch the hand of the man who had loved me more than anybody else ever had. Aunt Gaura silenced my mother again and waited outside the bedroom door, making awkward conversation with Tariq, who clutched on to a bottle of mineral water.

  There was no anger in my nana’s voice, and in a way I wished there had been, because that would have told me that at least he had some energy left, that all his senses hadn’t been diminished and deadened by his accident.

  “Beti, you’ve come,” he said, his voice low and guttural yet consoling.

  “I’m so sorry, Nana.” I was sobbing now, relieved that at least I was able to see him before he got any worse, and even m
ore relieved that he didn’t hate me like he said he did.

  “I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I had to leave. I should never have. Please, I beg you, forgive me,” I said. I placed my head on his chest, like I used to do when I was a little girl. This time, like he did then, he put both his hands on my head and stroked it. When I sat up again, tears coursing down my cheeks, he turned his head slightly to look at me, his eyes a little wider.

  “I did not understand what you were doing,” he said. “You have brought disgrace to the Shah name. After you left, I could never again walk through the neighborhood without feeling ashamed. But,” he said, pausing to lick his lips. “I am not angry anymore. I am too weak to hold on to grudges. So if you have come here for my forgiveness, then your trip is not wasted. You have it.”

  It was what I thought I wanted to hear. But now that he had said it, I was still unsettled. He wasn’t angry anymore, but that look on his face was still there, the one shadowed with disappointment and despair. He looked at me like I was the child who had burned down the family house by mistake, unable to be blamed but a source of endless regret anyway.

  My grandfather might have still been alive. But I knew that I had already lost him.

  I said nothing to Tariq on the way back to the hotel. He had wanted to know what had happened, what had been said. But my head was a mess, my brain clouded with misery and confusion.

  “Through the door I saw him put his hand on your head,” said Tariq finally, as we were approaching the hotel. “That must have made you very happy, that he is not cursing you anymore.”

  “Not being cursed is one thing,” I replied. “But having blessings, that is something else.” I bit my lip. “I’ll never have those blessings again.”

  The sun was a brilliant burnt orange, getting ready to settle down for the night. The outside of the hotel was relatively quiet, just a few taxis like ours pulling up at the taxi rank, small pockets of people standing around, making plans. The drinks-and-dinner crowd would be arriving soon.

  We made our way around the building to the poolside, which was now empty except for a staff member replenishing towels in the cabana in anticipation of the next morning. We sat down on the edge of a deck chair, facing each other. I was twirling the corner of my dupatta around my index finger, pulling the fabric tighter and tighter until my fingertip turned red, then releasing it again and feeling the grooves that had been furrowed into the skin.

  Tariq reached out and put his hands on top of mine to stop my nervous movements.

  “I’m not quite sure I know what you’re all wound up about,” he said. “Things have gone well. Better than expected. You’re back in your family’s good graces. Well, maybe not your mother. She still seems pretty angry. But with time, even she will come around. You are her flesh and blood, after all.”

  I nodded, touched by Tariq’s desire to help me feel better. He stood up and turned around, easing himself down next to me. A soft ocean breeze came up off the beach and whispered gently around us. His skin was fragrant, his hands warm. He felt strong and steady, and all I wanted to do was to rest my head on his shoulder.

  If I had listened to my grandfather, Tariq and I would be wed already.

  If I had listened to Nana, I would be living with this wonderful and kind man in Paris, the wife of an esteemed lawyer, making plans to bear children of our own, my silver hair on the pillow next to his.

  I should have listened.

  He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me toward him. The cabana boy was gone now. We heard the keys of a piano tinkling in the lobby as people settled down to drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

  “It’s weird how things turn out,” he said softly, leaning his head against mine. “From the first time I saw you, standing in your aunt’s house in Paris, I knew there was something special about you. I thought of you a lot after that.” He held my hands in his. “I just want to be with you all the time,” he said. “That’s why I keep popping up in your life, finding reasons to see you.” He laughed sheepishly. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I want a future with you.”

  I let his fingers caress mine, nuzzled my face in his neck. His lips first fell gently on my cheek, colliding with a single tear that had trickled down. I turned my face toward his and let his mouth find mine. His eyelashes fluttered against mine, we were that close. I flashed back to the three other men I had kissed in my life-a boorish British photographer who had forced himself on me, a married man in St. Tropez who had made me feel secure, and a gay rock star who forced his lips to touch mine only for the cameras.

  This, now, with Tariq, felt completely right.

  There were some things, I decided, I should have listened to my nana about.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Shazia had text-messaged me.

  YR FMLY IS TXIC, she wrote. U DNT ND THM NYMORE.

  After everything she had been through, I was surprised she didn’t understand. She called me later, telling me that if I didn’t “get my butt back to New York,” my career would be over and I would be “nothing more than a contender for The Surreal Life.”

  “Shazia,” I said quietly. “I really love you, but I think you watch too much television.”

  Tariq was leaving for Karachi in the morning, but would be stopping by in Mumbai again before flying back to Paris. We made plans to meet in a couple of days, to decide what to do next.

  I was elated. Despite everything that had gone on with my family, I was starting to feel stirrings of joy again. I had never been in love before, had never even been remotely interested in a man. Having grown up with a mother who had had nothing but anguish because she had tried to conjoin her life with that of a man, I was surprised that I was even thinking this way. I was not quite twenty-one-still, in my mind, too young to be married. But Tariq, I knew, would not be like my father.

  My father.

  Aunt Gaura came by the hotel the morning after Tariq and I kissed, bringing with her the envelope that Nana had been holding on his way to mail to me the day he almost died. The small brown envelope had a tire tread mark on one corner, blood stains on another, and was now creased and wrinkled.

  After my aunt left, I opened it up tentatively, aware that I had never before even touched something that my father had touched.

  Inside was a thick black cotton thread, from which dangled a silver crescent moon and a small five-pronged star next to it, the symbols of Islam. There was also a letter, written on three sheaves of yellow-lined paper, the handwriting neat and precise, and looking remarkably like my own, as if that was the one thing I had inherited from my father.

  My dear Tanaya,

  You must be wondering why, after twenty years, I am now and only now finally writing to you. Please know immediately that the fact that I have not written previously is no indication of how much I have thought of you. For if it were, I would have written every day.

  I have seen from the newspapers that you are living far away, in a foreign land, alone, doing something that has contravened our culture and your upbringing. While it would be easy for me to judge such actions, I have stopped myself from doing so, as I have not been present these past two decades to understand what has motivated you to take such a drastic step for your life, what has compelled you to leave home and expose yourself to the world the way you have.

  Knowing your grandfather as I did, I am certain that his disappointment in you must be so profound that he is not even speaking to you anymore. Therefore, I wonder if this letter will ever reach you, as he and I are no longer in touch either. It would be an act of Allah indeed if we three split souls can, through this one letter, come together for the briefest of moments. That is my prayer.

  But in the assumption that this note, and the accompanying taveez, finds its way to you, there are a few things I need you to know.

  You might have been led to believe that I was a ruthless and heartless man, abandoning your mother so soon afte
r our marriage, at the start of your blossoming in her belly. In the first place, and contrary to what she may have told you, I did not even know that she was with child until after you were born. And by then, I was too ashamed to step forward and think of claiming you.

  But of equal importance is my need for you to know the truth about my marriage to your mother. I did not leave her. She left me.

  I know this might shock you. It shocked me. After all, despite my disappointment when your mother lifted up her veil on our wedding day, when she was not-as I was led to believe-the bearer of the kind of beauty that the Shah family is known for, I had made a vow in Allah’s presence to honor my union with her, and I was committed to doing so. I will not lie; our marriage was not a happy one. I felt duped by your family. Your grandfather needed to marry your mother off, and chose to hide the truth about her until it was too late.

  But still, I stayed with it. I was not the most even-tempered or good-natured of husbands, I will confess. But I told her that we would do our best. In the end, you must understand, it was not I that hated your mother. It was she who hated herself. I tried to make her feel comfortable, if not loved. I tried to make her feel that despite everything, she still had a place in the world.

  But nothing worked. And one day, after morning prayers, she packed her bags and left.

  I have been motivated to write to you now because my brother died recently of cancer. He was only two years older than I, and in seemingly good health until the cancer attacked his liver. He was gone within three months. I realized then that death can come upon us at any time, and I did not want to leave this earth without you knowing the truth, that I could have been a father to you had I been given the chance, and that maybe if I was, you would not have felt the need to leave your life and seek out another just as your mother did.

  You may do with this information what you will. My address is above should you like to write to me, and please know that I would be very happy to hear from you. I never remarried, have had no other children. Your name, I will say in closing, is lovely and appropriate, redolent of more than beauty. Your grandfather raised you indeed as a child of his.