Mehendi Tides

by Siobhan Malany

  “His eyes are blue!”

  “Maybe his eyes turned brown now.” Nasreen shrugged. “Anees told me that last summer Tariq went off backpacking in Nepal with some buddies for weeks.”

  “Cool,” Kate said, intrigued.

  “Or not,” Nasreen quipped. “Anees and Rahim tried to cover for him but he was gone so long. Aunty Zehba found out and she was furious. She didn’t know if he was dead or alive. When Tariq came back, Anees said, Aunty Zehba confiscated his motorbike, and he wasn’t allowed anywhere except school for the entire school year!”

  “Well, at least I will remember the one named Tariq,” Kate mused.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Nasreen warned.

  “What ideas? He lives in India,” Kate huffed. “He sounds adventurous.”

  Nasreen shut the album.

  “That is a lot of cousins. I have only two,” Kate sighed.

  “And that is just on my mother’s side! It will be amazing to see them all after six years. I’m sure everyone has changed so much! Max is twenty-one now.”

  Kate opened the photo album again and found the picture of Yasmine and Nasreen as ten-year-olds.

  “If this photo is how they remember you, well, they will be amazed!”

  “What will I pack?”

  “Pack?” Kate questioned. “Buy new stuff. It’s India after all! Better than Chicago’s Devon Avenue!”

  Nasreen’s eyes lit up, thinking of a new wedding wardrobe.

  “Bring me something silk and exotic,” Kate pleaded.

  Nasreen smiled her devious smile.

  “Come with us,” she said enticingly. “You are practically family. You know our customs; you know our lives. Come with us!”

  It was the second time Nasreen asked her to go to India with her, but things had changed. Nasreen was not pregnant.

  “I need you, Kate,” she said. “How will I survive Anees’s engagement party? Ask your dad. Just see what he says. Please!”

  Kate imagined for a moment what that part of the world might be like. Colorful and chaotic? She wondered.

  KATE BROACHED THE topic with her father, Ian, one morning after breakfast as he flipped through the local Rockfield Times.

  “They invited me, the whole family. I know her cousins, Dad. The oldest is getting married and the other one is getting engaged,” she explained.

  She thought for a moment about Anees and how it angered her that he had a relationship with Nasreen and was now engaged to someone else even if his mother chose the girl for him. She needed to go to Asia to support Nasreen!

  “Her cousins go to school in Chicago. Rahim, he is the oldest, and has a new wife waiting in Pakistan. They have only met once. Can you imagine? The wedding ceremonies will last for weeks! Can you believe it?” she said again, overly excited. “It would be amazing. Really amazing, Dad!”

  Kate looked at her father in wonder a few evenings later as she lay reading in her bed. She figured he had forgotten that she had asked to travel to India. But he sat beside her on the purple paisley sheets and placed an envelope on her lap.

  “It would be an opportunity of a lifetime,” Ian said in a serious tone. “It is part of your college fund. I figure it’s an early start to college. If you want to go, you should go. You have my blessing.”

  For Kate, the dream of joining Nasreen halfway across the globe and traveling through two countries she knew nothing about sat in the form of a ticket floating lightly on her lap.

  But she could see the weight of her father’s decision, his desire to keep her close but his decision to let her go. For the second time, he was letting go of the woman in his life. He had let go of his wife five years ago when her eyes, succumbed to cancer, told him it was time. Kate was eleven then, and now at sixteen, she was about to embark on the journey of her life—but away from her father.

  SPRAWLED ACROSS THREE seats in the belly of an airliner, Kate listened to the rumbling of the aircraft adjusting to turbulence as it seared through the clouds, her ear pressed against the seat. She couldn’t get a seat on the same flight as Nasreen and her family and instead flew to India solo two weeks later. Feeling excited and alone, Kate drifted in and out of sleep flying over Kuwait. Foreign voices whispered through the slots between seats in front and behind.

  The plane refueled in Dubai. Kate remembered the exclusive duty-free shops and Arabic men strolling across the tarmac, their bleached robes whipping around their ankles and black burqa-clad wives and numerous children who waddled after their mothers like ducklings following the robed men. The only thing she could see for miles was the sandy horizon.

  Kate landed in Bombay in the early morning. Her mind was fuzzy. Something smelled stale. Oddly, no one seemed to take notice of her as she pushed the cart with her luggage through the vast room full of conveyor belts. The wheel of the cart buzzed as it vibrated along the concrete floor.

  Kate followed a slender figure in a bright orange sari. She was mesmerized by how the skirt of the sari flicked against the woman’s heels as she walked, causing the silver trim to dance under the fluorescent lighting. Suddenly, Kate halted at the line of soldiers forming a barricade in front of the sliding exit doors.

  With long rods, inspectors poked through personal items strewn across the long white tables. Those past the inspection point hastily shoved colorful articles of clothing and gifts from America back into suitcases and pulled at the zippers.

  A man pushed his cart toward the exit. The doors slid open to reveal a sea of dark faces behind the railing. Kate heard the commotion of the city outside, voices yelling. The heat seeped through the doors and blew against her face. The man disappeared in the crowd, and the doors slid shut. The sounds muffled. But then she had heard something, a faint familiar voice.

  A couple moved toward the doors, triggering them open again.

  “K-a-a-a-t-e.”

  She heard the voice clearly this time. She smiled at the expressionless soldier waving her forward, never so thrilled to hear Sameer’s voice calling her.

  She was in India…

  Chapter 4

  Visitor at Eid

  Chicago 1998

  Guess who is coming to our home for Eid! You will never guess,” Nasreen exclaimed.

  “Five hundred of your friends and family?” Kate remarked sarcastically.

  “Well, yes. True. But, seriously.”

  “I give up. Who?”

  “Tariq!”

  The sound of his name sent a prickle through the hairs on Kate’s arms.

  “Did I mention that he was living in New York?”

  “Yes, you did. When we met in the café.”

  “Well, he is coming for the weekend and staying with Sameer. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

  There was a pause.

  “My mother said that Aunty Zehba is insisting he marry one of the girls she has chosen for him. He is turning twenty-nine, after all.”

  Nasreen’s words felt like a kick in her stomach.

  “I just wanted to let you know he was coming so it won’t be a surprise.”

  Kate wasn’t sure how to respond or even how she felt about seeing Tariq. Maybe she would not be attractive to him. Maybe it was nothing, just a teenage lust now faded with time and dispersed like a mystical dream.

  She remembered the day she met Tariq when she awoke from a heat- and jet lag-induced nap, and he was standing over her looking at her with his sky-colored eyes. Tariq was different from anyone she had ever met. He filled her ears with his journey to Nepal and how he had separated from his group but luckily stumbled upon another group of hikers.

  “You can’t stop from discovering the world,” Tariq had said to her. “There was a time I feared for my life, but I had never felt so alive,” he told her. “Look at you, Kate, you have the courage to come to India. I admire that about you.”

  He admired her. She smiled remembering his words in her ears. She felt there was something between them during the daily excursions to the Hyderabad city sights and
countryside. The feeling seemed to grow stronger each day she saw him during the endless dinner parties and wedding ceremonies in Karachi. He had even kissed her one night in the moonlit shadows of the Neem trees.

  But he had never responded to letters she sent to him after she had returned home, and eventually time pushed thoughts of him from her mind, probably for the best. If his mother, Zehba, only found Muslim Pakistani-raised girls suitable marrying material for her sons, then Kate’s Celtic origins and non-affiliation hardly fit the profile. So there was nothing. Nothing to anticipate. Nothing to be nervous about.

  “EID MUBARAK, KATE!” Sara, Nasreen’s close friend, said as she flung the front door to Nasreen and Mustafa’s home wide open. “So great to see you!”

  Her swelling belly rubbed against Kate as the two embraced and kissed respective cheeks.

  “Congratulations,” Kate said, putting on a cheery smile. “Nasreen told me you are expecting.”

  “Thanks. We are very joyful. After two boys, we are hoping for a girl. But as long as the child is healthy, that is all that matters, right?”

  Kate nodded in response.

  Sara looped her arm around Kate’s and led her along the hall toward the commotion of guests. Sara’s arm felt silky, and she had the scent of sweet peach.

  As the pair walked past the photographs of Nasreen’s family and friends that hung in the front hall, pictures taken in various places in Pakistan, Kate was reminded of Tariq, and her heart filled with anxiety. Part of her had to see Tariq after all this time, and the other part of her was still heartbroken.

  “Just place your coat in there.” Sara unlinked her arm from Kate’s and pointed to the small bedroom off the front foyer. “Nasreen is in the kitchen. She will be excited to see you.”

  In the bedroom, long button-down cashmere coats lay neatly on the bed, scarves tucked into the collars, and sequined purses were slung across it. Even in the early weeks of March, the northern winds brought more cold weather. It appeared as if the coat owners had rested among the paisley pink and gray covered pillows and slithered out from under their coats. High-heeled shoes and leathered boots, on the other hand, were precariously flung across the floor. Gift bags with large bows and glittered paper were stacked in the corner.

  Kate cringed. She hadn’t brought anything.

  She removed her faded blue jacket and tossed it into the closet out of sight. The coat landed next to something familiar lying on its side with its hallowed metal rim sinking into the shag cream carpet.

  It was Nanima’s vase!

  Kate pulled the piece upright and sat back on her heels admiring the brass work. The three-foot vase had stood magnificently on a simple block altar at the entrance to the main room of Nanima’s house in Banjara Hills. It was one of the first items Kate laid eyes on in the mornings when she followed the garden path from the back bedroom to the kitchen for a cup of chai.

  On the belly of the vase exploded a full rose, its petals created by tiny etched fragments that Kate recalled made the vase dance in the natural light of the doorway. The curved base was patterned with gold and red inlaid diamonds. Kate traced the fluted top with her fingers then followed the hourglass shape of the vase, letting her fingers fall into the deep-cut etchings.

  Kate left the vase and went to announce herself before Sara came back to find her sitting on the floor in the dark among a heap of shoes.

  The house smelled of entertainment—perfume and candle scents mixed with marsala and curry. Kate heard the zestfulness in Nasreen’s laugh even before entering the kitchen. A circle of guests surrounded her, many whom Kate had never met.

  “Eid Mubarak,” Kate said as she gave Nasreen a quick hug.

  “Kate! You made it.”

  “The vase in the closet…” Kate started to say.

  “Do you recognize it?” Nasreen asked gleefully.

  “Of course. It was Nanima’s.”

  “Mamujan saved it from the house in India and took it back to Karachi with him but said I should have it. I tried to argue with him that he should keep it in Pakistan, but he and Mumanijan insisted. So I packed it in my suitcase and brought it back with me.”

  “Nanima’s soul is in that vase,” Kate mused. “You need to find a special place for it.”

  “Nasreen, got any more of the gulab jamun?” Sameer interrupted as he sauntered into the kitchen. “The men are hungry.”

  Nasreen picked up the tray of Indian sweets from the counter.

  “Take them away. I have already had too many.”

  “Hi Kate,” Sameer said. “Have one.” He presented the tray to her.

  Kate thanked him and took one of the deep-fried balls of dough bathed in cardamom syrup.

  He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Tariq is here, Kate.” He motioned with his head in the direction of the den.

  Kate’s heart quickened. She followed Sameer and the sound of a sporting match to the room where the men were gathered. The gulab jamun was sticky and too sweet, and she wished she could get rid of it. In her nervousness, she shoved the sugar ball into her mouth.

  The den furniture—a loveseat and two oversized armchairs in light green with white stripes, and a glass coffee table—were left over from Mustafa’s bachelor days when he lived in an apartment near the University of Chicago where he obtained a degree in computer programming. Kate knew that Nasreen never particularly liked the furniture style. Thus, she was surprised the pieces managed to survive the upward societal shift to the suburbs.

  The men—husbands of Nasreen’s girlfriends—were consumed by the cricket match on the analog TV screen with gripping emotion. The cricket bat cracked as the player whacked the ball, and the men erupted in cheers.

  “Hi Kate.”

  Kate spun around. A man clasped both her hands, still sticky from the sweet.

  “Tariq!” She nearly choked on the remaining bit of gulab jamun.

  He lightly kissed her on both cheeks.

  His scent was enticing, spicy. She trembled.

  “It has been a long time,” Tariq said in his English-Indian accent.

  Her eyes met his and a flood of memories returned.

  “When Nasreen said you would be here, I was really looking forward to seeing you again.”

  “I’ll let you two catch up,” Sameer said as he slid away to join the men watching the match.

  Kate noticed Tariq’s elegant watch. The light of the room flashed across its accordion band. His shirt was perfectly pressed. No longer a slight-framed teenager, he was broadened by maturity, a twenty-something man of the hour. The thought of her not being attracted to him vanquished the moment his eyes engulfed hers.

  “Yes. It’s been a long time,” Kate said, struggling to form a sentence. “Nasreen says you…you live in New York?” she asked as nonchalantly as she could manage, but her uneven voice deceived her.

  “Yes. I am working on my MBA. I did some traveling through Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Truly amazing!”

  “You went alone?”

  “Yeah. I did. For three months! Cambodia was the most interesting. You have to go sometime. There is beauty, hardship, adventure, poverty, all of it,” he said. “I thought about how you must have felt, a young visitor in India, an observer in a place you didn’t belong. I felt that way.”

  Kate didn’t respond. He thought about her?

  “Anyway, I ran out of money,” he laughed. “I decided it was time to get a degree and a job. I will return to Hyderabad in a year. The city has transformed since you were there.”

  “Like you said it would.”

  “You must come back…to visit.”

  Kate wasn’t sure how to respond. An invitation to coffee at a café in town would have been more appropriate, she thought. A trip to India, or Cambodia for that matter, was a little out of her price range.

  “It’s nice that you are still traveling about, carefree,” she mocked.

  “I always wondered how you have been all this time,” he said, seemin
gly oblivious to her sarcastic tone.

  Kate blinked as though the statement were intruding. She felt a flash of pain and anger flush her cheeks.

  “How I have been?” she questioned. “You are asking now?”

  A look of shock covered his face. He took a step back.

  “Kate!” Mustafa called, finally noticing her at the edge of the room. “Thanks for coming!” he greeted jubilantly.

  Mustafa had gained some weight. He sported a checkered button-down shirt that accented his round midsection. His face was fuller since the last time Kate had seen him before his and Nasreen’s trip to Pakistan. His German-style lenses seemed too small for his face and accentuated his cheeks, making him look boyish and studious.

  “This is an epic game!” Mustafa exclaimed. “England vs. Pakistan, huge rivalries. Winner plays in the final.”

  Kate didn’t understand the game of cricket but nodded cordially.

  “Sorry, was I interrupting something?” Mustafa eyed Tariq. “Kate, have you met Tariq, Nasreen’s cousin?” he asked, extending an arm in introduction.

  “Yes. In India ten years ago.”

  “That’s right!” Mustafa slapped the top of the mahogany bar excitedly. “Wow, it’s been ten years, has it? This guy has become quite handsome after all.” He punched Tariq playfully on the shoulder.

  Tariq shrugged off the jest and winked at his cousin-in-law.

  “So doc, how is the PhD coming?” Mustafa asked, planting his hands on his hips.

  Tariq continued to look at Kate intensely.

  “It’s hard.”

  “If it were easy, we would all be getting our PhD,” Mustafa laughed. “Me, I am just an information technology guy. But our company is opening an office in San Francisco, did Nasreen tell you?”

  Mustafa readjusted his glasses and tugged at the bottom of his shirt. His skin was starting to glisten with perspiration.

  “Yes, congrats.”

  “Thanks. It means I have to travel some, but you gotta be in San Fran. Lots of dot-com companies popping up everywhere over there. It’s dot-com country! Hey, can I get you a drink?” Mustafa clasped his hands together.