by Ami Rao
‘I won’t break anything Mum, don’t worry!’ Ameena yelled after her happily, as she waved goodbye.
But a wolf can come in sheep’s clothing and destruction, sometimes, has nothing at all to do with breaking things. The trouble, you see, lay within.
From the moment she entered those heavy wooden double doors and stepped into the grand foyer with its staircase spiralling into the sky, Ameena saw walls covered with gigantic canvases of every beast and body that could be imagined. Art – everywhere, on every wall, in every room – canvases bursting with colour and movement and life, galloping horses and flowing waterfalls and lush forests and migrating animals and lovers and dancers and children eating grapes, naked people and beautiful people and beautiful naked people and stately men and blushing women and – in the dining room, directly in front of where she was seated as she graciously ate her lunch – a girl with a pearl earring.
Ameena was spellbound.
The paintings in Ameena’s own modest split-level flat consisted of one framed Quranic verse and one enlarged yellowing photograph of her father’s family home in Lahore, large and sprawling and as foreign to Ameena as the extended family who posed in front of it, formal and rigid in two rows, an arrangement that Ameena was convinced was the result of a mistake the photographer had made in communicating his instructions, for the seating arrangement was all backwards – the men sitting on chairs forming the front row; the women standing behind them, forming the back.
She had gone back home that afternoon, straight to her room, taken out her watercolours and brushes and started painting, as if possessed by something otherworldly. She continued like this for days, hiding the finished pieces under her bed and starting new ones, stopping only to go to school and at mealtimes when her father was home, making sure she washed off any telltale traces of paint from her fingers and her clothes, until finally, more than a week later when she was satisfied, she pulled out the lot from under her bed and examined them with a critical eye.
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, she went downstairs and, standing on a wooden chair that she carried around with her as she moved from one wall to the next, Ameena mounted her artwork with Blu-tack. After she had put the last one up, she surveyed her handiwork with pride, for the house seemed transfigured, its walls breathing new life.
When Ameena woke the next morning, she woke to a chaos never witnessed before in the Hamid household. She could hear them from her bedroom, the raised voices and the wailing – was it wailing? Was that her mother wailing? She crept halfway down the stairs and peeped over the narrow wooden bannister to see her father, mother and brother clustered together, arguing loudly among themselves, half in English and half in Urdu.
‘It’s haram, Abba,’ her brother was saying, his face dark, like storm clouds.
Her mother, clearly the emitter of the terrible noise that had woken Ameena, appeared to be crying. ‘That girl, I told that girl, whatever she must do, she must do quietly in her room. I knew it. I just knew it. From the beginning I knew that she would bring us trouble. Come on Kareem, start taking them down—’
‘But, Zoya…’ her father interrupted, stroking his beard, his face revealing a mixture of admiration and a kind of trepidation, ‘can’t you see, these paintings are marvellous!’
‘Yusuf!’ her mother screamed. ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘Mad, no. No, I’ve not gone mad. But you are both mad if you cannot see the talent in the child.’
‘Abba, it’s shirk. Shirk and haram.’
‘Kareem, be quiet – did I ask your opinion?’
‘No, Abba, but—’
‘“No Abba but” what? Since when have you become such a good Muslim? Shut your mouth.’
‘Yusuf, don’t talk to my son like that. He is the only one here who upholds the values and morals of this house. That girl, did you see that painting there, near the bathroom? It’s a woman with her bum showing. Her bum. Shame, shame on her. Shame on all of us. Oh, what did I do to deserve such a fate!’
Then they saw her, quiet as a mouse, crouched on the staircase.
There was a hushed silence, an awkwardness, almost a kind of shock as if they hadn’t prepared themselves for the possibility that the creator of this current catastrophe might actually choose to make an appearance.
Her mother spoke first. ‘Ameena!’ she cried, holding her palm to her forehead dramatically. ‘What have you done?’
Wordlessly, Ameena ran back up to her room and changed into her uniform, not coming out until it was a full ten minutes later than she would normally leave for school, thereby ensuring that in a family that valued both attendance and punctuality, there wouldn’t be an opportunity for any further discussion around the paintings, which thankfully for everyone involved there wasn’t.
When she returned from school that afternoon, she saw that all her art had been stacked outside, in a neat pile next to the recycling bin; inside the house, the Blu-tack still lay stuck to the walls in ugly blue blobs making four corners of a square, with nothing in the middle. Realising that no one else seemed to be about at the moment, Ameena went back outside and sifted through her soon-to-be-discarded artwork, picking out a single piece and carrying it unnoticed back into the house and up to her room.
After that day, Ameena never painted life.
She went full circle, her art reverting to the style of the doodle she had started with when she first discovered what power she had over a pencil. She began creating beautiful, intense abstracts, inspired by a cultural history she knew she was supposed to be a part of but didn’t fully understand, only enough to know what made her parents happy and what made them ashamed. On these paintings, for the first time since she had started drawing, she signed her name – not her full name, just ‘Ameena’. Then she hid them under the bed.
No one in her family ever spoke of art again.
Years later, when she moved to New York City, the single painting she had saved that day so many years ago was one of two items of sentimental value that she decided to carry with her. It was a vivid, eerily lifelike depiction of a wide-eyed child watching her mother playing the harp – bright blue eyes and pale blonde hair, the resemblance between mother and child striking – two creatures from a fantasy world, artist unknown.
1.5
David and Ameena, although they didn’t know this about each other at the time, both believed to some extent in Paulo Coelho’s idea of destiny, as in: if you look at the world around you with respect and attention, you will see the signs.
And therefore, when David looked at the world around him and noticed, with respect and attention both, Ameena getting off at the same stop as him, he took this as a sign. As did Ameena because a few seconds later, when David scrambled up the stairs that led from the subway station to the street, brushing past people with a series of hasty but not impolite ‘excuse-me’s’, she considered it neither odd, nor too forward, only as if it was meant to be – a kind of serendipity.
There was something about his face and the way he was dressed that she liked. She had never before, as far as she could remember, paid any particular attention to the way a man dressed, but the way this one dressed, somehow, she liked. He had on jeans, a navy sweater and a maroon scarf, blue socks and brown shoes; the edges of his scarf, she noticed, were slightly frayed, his shoes slightly scuffed. She liked this about him, these minor flaws – it made him endearing, in an endearing kind of way. And his face, she liked his face – it was not handsome, but it wasn’t unhandsome either… there was an openness about it, strong jaw, strong nose, the hint of a dimple on his left cheek, his brown messy mop of hair, the way it fell in a curl over his forehead above his eyes, and the eyes themselves, the glimmer of something in his green-brown eyes, a kindness or a humour or a curiosity or something else she couldn’t quite place. All this she liked, because all this, she thought, lent a spark to his ordinariness, a kind of unexpected
impudence hidden amidst the decency.
‘Hey,’ he said, slightly breathlessly, when he had finally caught up to her, his body turned sideways, at a right angle to hers as they climbed the last few stairs in lockstep, ‘hey, I was… we were… in the train together, all the way from uptown.’
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘And then I noticed we were both getting off at the same stop. Weird, huh?’
‘Very,’ she agreed, and they both stood on the street, in front of the muffin shop at the corner, where two roads met in that precise numerical way they did only in Manhattan, the breeze blowing down the avenue, or maybe it was the street, the reds and yellows of the cars thinning at that time of night, the muffin shop closed, but with its lights still on and the chairs stacked on top of the tables.
‘You live around here?’ he asked and there was a shyness in his eyes that she picked up on and found rather sweet.
‘Yeah, just a few blocks,’ she pointed, ‘that way.’
‘Oh,’ he said, looking in the direction she was pointing. Then he nodded, hesitated a moment as if weighing in his own head if he should say whatever he was going to say next, and then he said it: ‘You know… I saw you get off as I was getting off and I kind of took it as a sign. Sorry, I know that sounds kinda cheesy…’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Really?’
She shrugged. ‘I believe in signs too.’
He looked surprised. ‘You do?’
And then he said, ‘I’m David, by the way.’
And she said, ‘I’m Ameena.’
And he repeats it slowly, feeling the formation of the letters, the way he needs to move his mouth to say it: ‘A-mee-na.’
They stand there for a moment, under the streetlight, richer in the knowledge of each other’s names.
And then he says, ‘Wasn’t that incredible, what happened in there?’
She nods, and her eyes, he notices, are radiant. ‘It was extraordinary. That’ll stay with me a long time.’
‘I know, right? It’s like… that encompassed everything I love about New York,’ he says.
‘Me also.’
‘Well, then we have something big in common.’
‘Indeed.’
‘So, are you English?’
‘What makes you think I’m English?’
‘Your accent? It’s kind of a dead giveaway… wait, are you not English? Hang on! Are you pulling my leg?’
She starts to laugh. ‘I’m pulling your leg.’
‘Phew!’ he says. ‘Man, I was about to turn on my back and vanish into that subway hole!’
‘No, don’t vanish into the subway hole, I’m quite enjoying pulling your leg,’ she says, her mouth teasing into a smile that seems, to David, almost flirtatious.
His eyes widen in sudden surprise and then, as if emboldened by the boldness of the smile, he says, ‘Look, I don’t do this kind of thing – honestly, I haven’t done anything this crazy in a while, but do you want to have dinner tomorrow? Around here somewhere? Valentino’s? Do you know Valen—’
‘I love Valentino’s,’ she says simply and sees that he is surprised, a second time, by her, and she realises that she enjoys it, his surprise of her.
‘Wow! Really? Well, great… I mean, thank you. 7.30pm?’
‘7.30pm. I’m only agreeing to dinner,’ she says, narrowing her eyes, but for only as long as she needs to.
‘Of course,’ he says immediately.
And then, ‘I’m not going to stop thinking of you between now and 7.30 tomorrow night. That’s nearly twenty hours, which is a very long time you know…’ he adds with uncharacteristic forwardness.
‘Bye David.’ She laughs, shaking her head.
Chutzpah, she thinks to herself, as she watches him walk away ruffling his hair with his hand. That’s the word she had been looking for. He has chutzpah.
1.6
A few months after graduating from the University of Manchester – taking two buses each way to get there and back because her mother believed it was ‘stupid’ to live anywhere else when one’s own home was so close – with a First Class honours degree in Journalism, Ameena announced without any prior warning or discussion to the effect that she was moving out of Manchester to live on her own.
Ordinarily, this would have been accepted with a kind of bittersweet feeling typical of most parents’ reactions when it comes to accepting decisions that are part and parcel of their children’s coming of age. Ameena’s parents, like most immigrants who leave their homes, by force or else by will, in order to seek a better life elsewhere, considered themselves broad-minded and liberal-ish and valued independence as a quality to be imbued. And so, they found themselves somewhat accepting of this proposition – until, that is, Ameena announced that she was moving out of Manchester to live on her own – not in Manchester, or even in London, which to Ameena’s parents seemed in itself like a foreign country, but in an actual foreign country, which happened to be the foreign-est country of all to them, as foreign-ness went.
Once the specific location of her desired destination was revealed, and the shocked whispers of the word ‘America’ were repeated over and often, there ensued much crying and screaming and hard words, none of which managed to convince either party to change its mind. This was followed by a period of bitter resignation combined with a kind of hope for the four months until Ameena was due to leave, in the same vein that relatives of a dying person feel while waiting for the person to die, and yet hoping there has been some mistake; that even after all that, something miraculous will happen and the person will not die but stay on.
As for Ameena, she spent most of her time in her room daydreaming about her new life, the particulars of which she revealed to no one but her closest school friend, who had not followed her on to university but had, to her great delight, been ‘scouted’ by a modelling agency, and now modelled for small, low-budget specialist hair and skin product companies. To this friend, Denise Richards, a half-Jamaican, half-Indian girl with enviably blemish-free skin and perfectly straight hair achieved with the assistance of the very products she modelled, Ameena divulged the details of this new life, namely that she had applied for and duly obtained a writing-related job for an up-and-coming fashion magazine located on the second floor of a building on 37th Street and Broadway. Along with the job, she had also obtained, by means of a series of classified ads, a room-mate to share a converted one-bedroom flat on a high floor in a building in Murray Hill – where exactly that was, she didn’t know, just somewhere in Manhattan, that much she knew.
1.7
Valentino’s was a small, family-run neighbourhood Italian restaurant with red and white checked tablecloths and black and white photographs on the walls, renowned greatly for its ‘Big Mama’s Meatballs’, which happened to be, rather ironically, an off-menu item made famous entirely by word of mouth. Now it was, among foodies and other people with a keen interest in the affair, a matter of some debate as to whether ‘Big Mama’ was real, or a strategic figment of someone’s imagination, for to run a profitable restaurant business in New York City, one needed both strategy and imagination. Following on from that then, a kind of decision tree ensued – meaning, if she was real, then was she dead or was she still ‘alive-and-cooking’, because despite repeated requests to meet ‘Big Mama’, so that one could see in the flesh this genius, this artist behind so divine a creation as those melt-in-the-mouth meatballs, no one to anyone’s knowledge had ever set eyes on her.
As for the meatballs themselves, despite their soaring popularity – for they were a gastronomic delight of the variety that one spoke about with a kind of dreamy nostalgia many days and weeks later – they were never put on the menu. And so, the mystery deepened, the reputation spread, and Valentino’s thrived, for people always have a fascination for what they cannot know.
David, taki
ng an astute risk in that Ameena, being that she lived in the neighbourhood, would have heard of, if not tasted, this legendary Big Mama’s legendary meatballs, and given that when it came to these particular meatballs, the old adage held true – for to taste them was to love them – had suggested Valentino’s for their dinner date. And sure enough, she had replied by saying she loved Valentino’s. Which was even more than he had hoped she would say. And so, when he left his apartment building at 7.15pm that evening, he left with a swing in his step.
It took him five minutes of walking at a fairly brisk pace to arrive at the restaurant and he whistled as he did so, a tune he had made up in his head right then, and he was happy he arrived early, simply because he had not wanted to arrive late. He checked in at the front and then sat down at the table, waiting with a mixture of anticipation and nervousness for her to arrive, and when at 7.30pm sharp, she did arrive, he felt, in that brief moment that lay suspended between when he noticed her, and she noticed him, when her dark eyes searched the space with a mixture of her own anticipation and nervousness, that she was even more beautiful than he had remembered.
Then the moment was over, and she saw him, and she smiled, and he smiled back.
What struck him first, before anything else, and with a kind of force that surprised him in its oomph, was her hair, which had been tied back into a ponytail the previous night, but now fell in thick, black waves all the way down to the small of her back, dense and complex and luxurious; in David’s mind, a swirling river of mystery and a kind of hidden drama.
Then, as she walked towards the table, he noticed other things as well: he noticed her eyes, how dark they were, and her height, how small she was, and her figure; it was hard not to notice her figure for she was wearing a blue dress that gathered at the waist and ended below her knees, a simple elegant affair that showed what it needed to show, and no more.
