Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

by Sheba Karim

  “Two shooting stars.”

  “Wow.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In New Orleans, on a road trip.”

  “Ah,” he yawned. “Now I know why you’re up so late.”

  “I came with Ghaz and Umar.”

  “How are they?”

  “Okay. I mean, things are . . . so complicated I don’t even know where I’d begin.”

  A pause, then “Mariam? Did you call to talk about something specific? It’s pretty late.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Which is also what I called to say.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. What I mean to say is that I called you because I want to apologize.”

  “Okay.”

  “The way I treated you was cruel. I was falling in love with you and I completely freaked out. I guess I was thinking of how my father left us, how love means you’re going to end up hurt one day.”

  “You could have talked to me about it. We could have slowed down.”

  “But I was already in too deep to slow down. And I was worried—no, I knew you’d convince me to stay with you if we talked, because it’s what I really wanted. So, I cut you out of my life, I ghosted, except I haven’t been at peace since. I was unkind to the kindest person I know. Can you forgive me?”

  “Nah, I’ll be angry at you for the rest of my life.”

  I swallowed. “Really?”

  “I’m kidding.”

  “Oh.”

  “That would hurt me as much as you. Honestly, I was upset, and sad, and confused. But you seemed so adamant, after a few tries I thought I should respect your desire for space. And yeah, my heart broke a little. I’d talk to Ellie about what you did, and one day she said to me, ‘Imagine life as journey, and you’re only allowed so many things in your backpack. What are you going to carry with you? Do the things you carry sustain you in some way?’ It made me think. Carrying around resentment was only sustaining more resentment. That’s not who I am—who I want to be. Like you don’t want to be unkind.”

  “Who’s Ellie?” I asked.

  “My girlfriend.”

  The G bomb. Of course. How could I not have guessed? A guy like Doug wouldn’t stay single for long. “You have a girlfriend?”

  “She’s interning at the museum with me. She’s great. You’d like her.”

  Oh, we’d be best friends, me and Ellie of the wise aphorisms.

  “I miss you,” I said. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say that, but I do.”

  “I miss you, too. Well, the pre-April you.”

  “Do you remember when you used to invent silly dances to make me laugh?”

  “How could I forget? I think my favorite remains stampeding elephant caught in revolving door.”

  I laughed, and so did he. It felt nice, to be laughing together over a shared memory.

  “I blew it, right?” I said. “You and me?”

  He hesitated. “Are you asking me if we could get back together?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe?”

  “If you’d asked me before the semester ended, I might have said yes, that maybe we could move past what happened, maybe it could even make us closer, but I’m in a different space now, literally and figuratively. It’s going really well with Ellie.”

  Damn Ellie. But Doug deserved someone who made him feel good. “Well, I’m happy for you,” I said. It wasn’t really a lie, because I was happy for him. In theory.

  “Thanks. And thanks for calling. I was hoping we’d get some closure.”

  Closure. More like having the door slammed in my face.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “Sleep well. Sink into some beautiful dream.”

  “You too.”

  It would have been worse, I consoled myself, if he had been angry or bitter. The good place he was in had helped him forgive me, and, even if I’d ruined us, at least I hadn’t ruined his prospects for happiness. But I hadn’t ruined mine, either. I didn’t believe there was only one person you were meant to be with. I didn’t doubt I’d fall in love again one day. But if Doug wasn’t the only, what if he was the best? What if, for the rest of my life, none of my other loves ever quite measured up?

  When I returned to the room, Ghaz was sleeping with one leg off the bed. As I gently settled her back onto the mattress, I thought, I’m going to be okay. Even if I did inherit a flight response from my father, I also had some of my mother’s steely core. And, I had my mother. But what about Ghaz? How could I make sure she was okay? What did you do when your family was not the solution but part of the problem?

  But we were her family, too, Umar and me. And it was time for us to step up.

  I tiptoed out of the room, returned to the courtyard, and called my mother. It was six a.m. in New Jersey but she was already up, making her morning smoothie.

  “I need your help,” I said, and she listened.

  Back upstairs, I poked Umar’s side till he woke up. In a series of whispers under the covers, I told him of the plan my mother and I had come up with.

  “You have to try to convince her,” I said. “I think she’ll listen if it comes from both of us.”

  “What if she gets upset?” he asked.

  “If she’s upset, she’s upset. She knows we love her and we only want to help. She won’t be upset forever. Come on, Umar. We can’t keep ignoring this. What she’s been through, it can’t be laughed off, or danced away.”

  “Yeah, I know. Okay. You bring it up, I’ll back you up.”

  “Deal.”

  Umar rubbed his eyes. “What time is it? I might as well pray Fajr.”

  Ghaz woke me at noon, her self-proclaimed hangover from hell having no effect on her energy level. “Another beautiful, sweltering day in the city of sin!” she cried. “Let’s go eat!”

  I muttered my assent and she moved on to Umar. As I walked to the bathroom, I saw Umar’s prayer rug was still spread out on the floor, one corner folded over. I hoped he had asked Allah for Ghaz to say yes to my plan.

  “So,” I said as we were walking to the French Quarter. “I called Doug last night.”

  “Shut up!” Ghaz said.

  “And?” Umar said.

  “I apologized. He said he’d already forgiven me. He has a wonderful girlfriend named Ellie. He’s happy.”

  “Stupid Ellie,” Ghaz said.

  “Oh, man,” Umar said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I mean, what did I expect? Stuff like that only happens in the movies.”

  “You mean, you’d call him,” Ghaz said, “and he’d be, like, ‘I haven’t stopped thinking about you either’, and then the next morning there’d be a knock on your hotel room and he’d be standing at the door, with a single red rose and a vegetarian breakfast burrito.”

  Umar sighed. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

  “If it’ll happen to any of us, it’s going to be you,” Ghaz assured him. “Ali seems like the red rose type.”

  “He hasn’t texted me.”

  “Have you texted him?” I asked.

  “I only met him yesterday!”

  “Well, he’s probably thinking the same thing,” Ghaz argued. “Oh—this is it!”

  The hole-in-the-wall Cajun joint Ghaz had chosen had a line outside. I thought about broaching the subject of Ghaz’s future as we waited, but figured these conversations always went better with some food in the belly.

  After we were seated, Ghaz ordered a shrimp po boy and a Bloody Mary.

  “Drinking so early?” Umar said.

  “Uh, it’s the afternoon. And a Bloody Mary’s not a real drink. It’s, like, vitamins with a little vodka. Look, it even comes with celery.”

  “Nothing about New Orleans involves a little vodka,” I corrected her.

  “Mmmmm . . . ,” she said, taking a sip. “I should really learn to make these now that I’m going to live here.”

  Umar raised his eyebrows at me. I nodded to assure him I had a plan. If Ghaz noticed the tension, she didn’t mention it. Onc
e we were halfway through our meal, I said, “So, about you moving here. I—we don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  She narrowed her eyes, picking out celery from between her teeth with her pinky nail. “Why?”

  “You need a support network right now,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Umar chimed in. “You don’t know anyone here.”

  “I never have a problem making friends,” she countered. “Did I not bring the three of us together?”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t move here at all,” I said. “I have a proposal.”

  “This is because I told you about my chachu, isn’t it? I freaked you guys out! See, this is why I keep some things private, because you tell people something and they think you must be all damaged. Listen, it’s cool. Seriously. I’m not, like, secretly cutting myself because my uncle jacked off in front of me when I was young.”

  She smiled, elbowing Umar as if he were in on the joke, as if it were a joke at all, but he shook his head. “At least listen to Mars’s plan,” he told her.

  “What is this, an intervention?” she groaned. “Fine. I’m listening.”

  “I talked to my mom,” I told her. “She said you could come stay with us for the rest of the summer, longer if you needed to. We can go to the NYU financial aid office together, see what the possibilities are. Maybe you could stay at NYU, or maybe you can transfer to a cheaper school. But come to my house, and let’s at least figure out what all your options are.”

  “So, rather than live in this vibrant city with no last call, where I guarantee you I will meet all kinds of people and have insane adventures, you want me to go back to New Jersey and crash with you and your mom and your brother, who refers to me as Hot but Batshit Crazy?”

  “I told you that?” I said, surprised. “He doesn’t really mean it, the batshit part. And it will be good for him to have more strong women around. Listen, we explore your options this summer, you can work, save some money, and if, at the end of the summer, you still think moving to New Orleans is the best plan, then that’s what you should do. I’ll even help you pack, I promise. And believe me, I also have a lot of stuff I need to process when we get home.”

  “Like what?” she said.

  “My dad, Doug, the state of America. But let me finish my proposal. You come stay with me, explore your options. There’s only one condition.”

  “Here we go. Spill it—no wait.” She picked up her drink, tossed the straw aside, brought the plastic rim to her lips, drank every last bloodred drop, set the cup down, and burped. “Now spill it.”

  “My mother wants you to see a therapist. We both do.”

  “Are you serious? Don’t therapists cost money?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I assured her.

  “It’s a good idea, Ghaz,” Umar said.

  “Says the guy who’s still in the closet!” She shook her head. “I need some air.”

  “Wait—where are you going?” I called out, but she didn’t stop.

  “I’ll get the check,” Umar said. “You go after her.”

  But when I stepped outside, she’d disappeared. We were at the edge of the French Quarter, so she’d either headed deeper into the neighborhood, or one block down to the Mississippi River. I guessed she’d headed for water, and ran down Decatur, over the railroad track, up a set of stairs to the boardwalk. I didn’t have to walk far to find her, sitting cross-legged on a green mesh bench facing the water.

  “Hey,” I said, pausing a few feet away. “Okay if I join you?”

  “If I say no will you go away?” she replied.

  “Probably not.”

  She smiled. “Have a seat.”

  I texted Umar our location, and we watched the parade of perspiring tourists, more than a few drinking from giant cups that said Huge Ass Beer. A musician wearing only striped bike shorts and a baseball hat stood at the edge of the boardwalk, playing a mournful tune on his trumpet. The river itself was murky and busy with ships of industry, barges and tugboats and tankers. It wasn’t exactly beautiful, but the breeze was nice.

  I was relieved when Ghaz finally spoke. “Look, it’s not that I don’t know I have lots to process. And I’m not actually opposed to therapy. I even thought about going to student counseling at NYU. But for someone to really understand, I’d have to tell my whole story, you know, from the beginning, all the things my mother has done, the things I did back, all the other crap that I’ve had to deal with. Plus, in spite of everything, most of the time, I really am pretty happy. And the idea of rehashing it all to a therapist, it seems so painful, and exhausting. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do it.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. Someone like your mother would have broken another person, made them angry and resentful, but you, you are so giving. It’s not only that you’re happy—you want others to be happy, too, you try to help people be happy. But I do feel like, the things you’ve gone through, it would be good to talk about it with someone, a professional. I’m not saying therapy would be a walk in the park, but you’re way stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

  “One sec.” Ghaz stood up, walked over to the trumpet player, dropped a dollar into his case.

  “Your mother wouldn’t force me to see my parents?” she asked when she returned.

  “Of course not. You won’t see them unless you want to.”

  “Are you sure your mom is okay with this?”

  “You know my mom. She wouldn’t have agreed to it if she wasn’t.”

  Umar ran toward us, breathless and the sweatiest I’d ever seen him. He collapsed next to Ghaz, dabbing at his forehead with his scarf. “Sorry, went the wrong way. And now my ass is so sweaty my pants are stuck to it. What did I miss?”

  “Ghaz hasn’t said yes to my proposal, but she hasn’t said no either.”

  “I’m considering it,” she clarified. “I know you want the best for me, and I do see your point, but I’m not ready to make a decision right now. Can I think on it and give you an answer tomorrow?”

  It was only fair.

  “Sure,” I said. “At the end of the day, we want you to be happy, and do what’s right for you.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry I got huffy back there. You both mean so much to me. If I didn’t have you losers as friends . . .”

  “Ah, look who’s getting all sentimental,” Umar teased.

  “You should try it sometime,” she teased back.

  “Well, now that Ghaz has agreed to think it over, let’s talk about me,” he announced. “One, I have to hit the hotel because I desperately need a shower. Two, guess who I got a text from?”

  “Ali!” I said.

  Umar blushed. “I mean, nothing crazy, ‘hi, how are you?’”

  “That’s amazing!” Ghaz exclaimed. “Do you want to invite him out tonight?”

  “No, he’s already left town. But I think we’ll keep in touch.”

  I expected Ghaz to make some lewd riff on them touching, but she put her arms around Umar and me, drawing us close, then made a gagging sound. “Oh, Umar, you really do stink.”

  “Told you.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Seeing as this potentially might be our last night here, and seeing how, no matter what, there’s always something to celebrate, will you two promise me something?”

  “What?” Umar and I asked in unison.

  “That tonight, we don’t stop dancing until the sun comes up.”

  And that was exactly what we did.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my agent, Ayesha Pande; the wisdom and enthusiasm of my editor, Rosemary Brosnan; and the talented team at HarperTeen: Jessica Berg, Bess Braswell, Audrey Diestelkamp, Kristen Eckhardt, Erin Fitzsimmons, Olivia Russo, Cat San Juan, and Courtney Stevenson.

  My deepest gratitude to Hamzah Raza for being resourceful as always, and to Afsana Ahmed and Ameer Khan for sharing their personal experience
s and insights with me; it was a privilege to hear their stories.

  A big thank you to:

  Courtney Stevens and Ashley Herring Blake, for their warm Nashville welcome, advice, and generosity.

  Christine Rogers, for helping make Nashville feel like home.

  My sister, Mona Karim, who shared the back seat with me on all those family road trips to Toronto and Niagara Falls, and to my parents for introducing us to the joys of travel near and far. Saba and Arsal Ahmad, for making New Jersey one of my favorite childhood destinations.

  Dipali Taneja, for keeping a sleep-deprived mother well fed as I worked on the proofs of this book.

  Anand, Lillah, and Inaya, my three fellow travelers, Na manzilon ko na hum rahguzar ko dekhte hain / Ajab safar hai ke bas humsafar ko dekhte hain.

  And to you, reader—thank you for including my book in your journey. Whoever, wherever, you are, may your travels begin and end with the fundamental human right called love.

  About the Author

  Photo by Christine Rogers

  SHEBA KARIM is the author of That Thing We Call a Heart and Skunk Girl. Her fiction has appeared in Asia Literary Review, Barn Owl Review, Femina, Shenandoah, Time Out Delhi, and in several anthologies in the United States and India. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU School of Law and currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee. You can visit her online at www.shebakarim.com.

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  Praise for Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

  “A warm, witty, generous book, written with an enlivening dose of what the world needs now (and always): an open heart and mind. It was a joy keeping company with the unforgettable Mariam, unstoppable Ghaz, and pure-of-heart Umar. Mariam Sharma Hits the Road, and what a journey it is: one that plunges the characters into unknown territory, all the while returning them to themselves and each other, again and again . . . and ever closer to finding home, often in unexpected places, along the way. Absorbing, engaging—and, as Mariam’s mother hopes for her, ‘a rollicking good time.’”

  —TANUJA DESAI HIDIER, author of Born Confused and sequel Bombay Blues