Mehendi Tides

by Siobhan Malany

  “Misguided? Manipulative?” the dean asked, raising an eyebrow. “These are strong words, Kate.”

  “Yes. They are.”

  “What makes you a special case?” Dean Rowbottom asked cautiously. “What if others want to change advisors because they don’t feel their experience is…right, shall we say?”

  “Then they should stand up and make a change,” Kate said, this time without hesitation. “I am not asking to be treated special. I am asking for the same fair opportunity as any other student in this department,” she said, stressing the word fair.

  The dean tapped his fingers together before he spoke.

  “You raise some interesting issues,” he explained. “I would like to look into the situation more, but for now, we want you to be successful here. Dr. Crone has agreed to accept you into his lab, and Dr. Elber has convinced me that this will be a positive move for you. I trust it will be successful.”

  “I think it will be,” Dr. Crone interjected in his lecture voice. “We’ll make it work.” He flashed a charismatic smile.

  “I am in full support,” Dr. Elber added.

  “Great,” the dean acknowledged. “Kate, as of Monday, Dr. Crone will officially be assigned as your new advisor. I will speak with Dr. Schwitz and explain the situation. You are free to go.”

  With a simple thank you, Kate promptly left the room, feeling their stares burning into her back as she opened the door.

  “IT’S DONE, NASREEN!” Kate yelled toward Nasreen as the two approached each other on Devon Avenue, an east-west thoroughfare in the Chicago metropolitan area and the heart of little India. There were no oxen on the street or butchered chickens or carcasses hanging from shop windows collecting flies and dust. There was no guava man on the corner or beggars dragging themselves along the crumbling sidewalks. The air did not make you choke, and screeching Suzuki trucks were replaced by bright yellow city cabs.

  Despite these differences and the late autumn air, strolling down Devon Avenue felt every bit the same as walking through the markets in India.

  “What’s done?” Nasreen asked as she hugged Kate and pressed a cold cheek against hers.

  “I had a meeting with the dean. I was so nervous, but it’s done! I switched advisors.”

  “Wow! Congratulations. A fresh start,” she said, smiling.

  Kate breathed deeply.

  “Glad to see you happier,” Nasreen remarked.

  “Where is Krishna?” Kate asked. “I thought she was meeting us here.”

  “I couldn’t get ahold of her. Her father said she was on campus studying. She seems to be absorbed in photojournalism school. I haven’t seen much of her, but that’s a good thing, I suppose.”

  “A very good thing,” Kate agreed.

  “I need a new outfit to wear to Mona’s niece’s wedding next week. I have gained a few pounds,” Nasreen said, slapping her hips with her gloved hands. “Seems having twins in the house has more or less eliminated my workout routine.”

  “You will get back into it,” Kate assured.

  “For now, I need bigger clothes.”

  They started walking along storefronts. The smells of fried samosas, curries, Assam tea, and fresh baked roti floated from the various vendors. Kate felt the warmth from the fryers. Sounds of traditional Hindustani, Bollywood tunes, and modern fusions of classic percussions mixed with jazz blared from shop speakers.

  “My mom is watching the twins. I promised I would be back in a couple hours, so we don’t have much time to shop. Let’s head for the covered bazaar where it’s a little warmer,” Nasreen said.

  Indian-Americans could buy anything on Devon Avenue, from traditional wedding attire to the rarest of spices exported from every corner of India, including imported betel palms and pure neem oil.

  “It’s busy today,” Kate shouted above the street noise.

  She stepped off the curb and back on to avoid running into a group of women and their bundles of shopping bags clustered around them like wings. The air was cold, but the sun was shining and the city wind was surprisingly light for this time of year.

  “It’s always like this,” responded Nasreen.

  Nasreen turned down a central aisle of the market and then made a series of turns through the mazes of stalls.

  “My mother always goes to the same cloth shop. It’s around here somewhere.”

  As they rounded the corner, there was a series of platform stalls with rows of material hanging from ceiling rods.

  “Here it is!” Nasreen exclaimed with triumph.

  Without so much as a greeting to the shop owner, Nasreen immediately pointed to various patterned pieces displayed on the back wall. The salesman had already unrolled two bolts of material by the time Kate plopped onto one of the viewing chairs to rest. Nasreen caught an edge of one of the pieces as it floated down across the platform. The scene was similar to the time in India when they shopped for wedding material. She remembered Laila and Samina pointing to this and that and Nanima quietly observing, her purse and hands folded in her lap.

  “It will be nice to wear something new. I feel like I barely get out of my pajamas most days,” Nasreen remarked as she held up a yellow silk piece to her neckline and faced Kate.

  “How’s this one?” she asked, quickly exchanging the yellow one for a red one. “Or this one?”

  Kate twisted her mouth to one side and shook her head. Nasreen likewise shook her head at the salesman, who promptly tossed the bolts of cloth aside, walked across the platform, and pulled out three more samples.

  “No. None of these,” Nasreen told the man with the thick mustache. “I would like something lighter.”

  The man nodded and stepped across the platform and from the stacks of folded samples wrapped in cellophane, yanked off the wrappers, and unfurled a peach-colored piece and a cream one that shimmered in the overhead fluorescent lights.

  “Mustafa is not going,” Nasreen stated out of the blue.

  As she mentioned this, the cream silk fell across her face hiding her from view. It fell softly off her shoulder and rested on the platform.

  “What?” Kate responded. “You are going alone to the wedding?”

  “He is traveling,” Nasreen sighed heavily.

  “Why?” Kate probed.

  “The new company in California is requiring a lot of his time. Okay, honestly, we are taking a little break.”

  “A break? What does that mean?” Kate asked.

  “He has been staying with a friend for the past few days. I don’t know if it is that he is moving out or if he is just needing space. He says I am pushing him away. Oh, yeah, you were eavesdroping that morning; you know that already.”

  Kate rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway, until we work out a few things, it’s best if he doesn’t come with me.”

  Nasreen lifted the cream silk; the applique in copper, silver, and light-blue thread danced in the light.

  “This is nice,” Nasreen remarked to herself.

  “People will ask if you are alone. What will you say?”

  “I will tell them something…and say I brought you instead.” She smiled cunningly at Kate and tilted her head slyly to one side. “Please, come with me,” she pleaded. “You can wear your red sari. The one you bought in India! It’s the perfect chance to show it off again.”

  Kate looked up at the salesman waiting patiently for Nasreen to make a decision.

  “Get that one. It’s gorgeous,” Kate said, touching the cream piece.

  Nasreen waited.

  “Okay, I will go with you,” Kate agreed.

  Nasreen clapped her hands.

  “I’ll take this one, please,” Nasreen said, handing the material to the shop owner. “Now I need a matching dupatta and a few other things, and then a warm cup of tea. Thanks for coming with me.”

  They meandered past a purse vendor. The leather bags dangled from the ceiling rafters. Kate tapped them as she walked through the shop.

  “This one is very nice,”
she said, twirling the purse around so Nasreen could catch a glimpse. “Oooh, it’s expensive,” Kate added, flipping over the price tag.

  “I don’t need a purse. I have too many as it is,” Nasreen said.

  “And I’m too broke to buy anything,” Kate said.

  Kate walked out of the purse shop and catty-corner across the aisle.

  “Look, the shoes with the curled toes. These were so cheap in India.”

  “They are called jutti shoes,” Nasreen reminded Kate. “But I will wear heels.”

  Kate laughed. “Of course you will.”

  Nasreen continued walking straight to the shop that sold dupattas. She showed the man her new swatch of material. He turned to the stacks of thin, neatly folded dupattas, dragged his finger along the edges of the fold, first one stack then the next, until he found the one. A perfect match!

  Nasreen quickly paid, shoved the dupatta in the same sack as the sari material, and glanced at her watch.

  Kate spotted a stall selling bangles and hopped up on the step. The stall was just large enough for the seller to stand and reach anything around him.

  “Oh, look at these!” she exclaimed and dragged her hand across the rows and rows of gleaming, colorful bracelets arranged like stacks of poker chips.

  “I could never get these past my knuckles,” she laughed. “Nanima and Aunty Samina had to grease my hand to get these things on. They never broke a single bangle.”

  Kate’s eyes darted from one corner to the other, then to the back wall of the stall where hundreds of different styles were displayed on the shelves. She remembered Tariq had bought her a set at the jewelry store the day they hit the man on a bike. The seller moved to one side trying not to block her view and tried eagerly to discover which pair was her favorite.

  Nasreen lifted one of the rolls of bangles, cream and gold with stripes of blue, admired the set before pressing the roll back into its place.

  “You should tell Mustafa,” Kate blurted.

  “Tell him what?”

  “About the rape. About Dr. Khan!”

  A flash of surprise and then anger spread over Nasreen’s face.

  “How can you be silent?” she asked desperately. “Mustafa will understand, Nasreen. He is the most trustworthy person I know. Tell him! He is dying for you to let him in.”

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  “Because it is destroying your marriage! You are losing him.”

  The stall vendor, oblivious to the women’s conversation, displayed a set of red and gold etched bangles from his two index fingers to Kate.

  “Maybe you buried it, Nasreen. But I think it’s still raw and staring you in the face. I’m trying to help you. It’s not just about you anymore!”

  Nasreen looked hard at Kate for a long moment. “You’ve changed. You have become more courageous,” Nasreen stated flippantly.

  “I’m trying.” Kate sequestered a lump rising in her throat. “Nasreen, how will you raise twins alone if he leaves? It’s not your fault! It’s not his fault!”

  Nasreen stared at the gleaming bangles for a long moment.

  “I know it’s not his fault I was raped at sixteen. I have never been able to talk about it with him. And then at some point we stopped talking altogether,” Nasreen remarked. “Mustafa and I, between the craziness of his work and travel and our not being able to bear children of our own, and then going through the process of adopting two babies…we stopped talking. But maybe we never started talking.”

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Nasreen, Kate thought. She wasn’t supposed to be facing a future as a single mother to two orphans from the outskirts of Islamabad. What happened to faith?

  Kate glanced at the storeowner still patiently holding the set of red bangles. They gleamed and sparkled in the light from a large bulb that dangled from a string from the stall’s wooden frame. She chose two and twirled the bracelets in her hand.

  Nasreen handed the cream and gold bangle set to the stall owner.

  “I’ll take these,” she said. “And those.” She pointed to the red and gold bracelets in Kate’s hand. “For you,” Nasreen said to Kate as she pulled out her wallet. “They will match your sari.”

  “Will you start talking to Mustafa?”

  “I’ll try. Congratulations on standing up to the boys’ club and getting what you want,” Nasreen said firmly and started walking away, leaving Kate holding the bangles wrapped in tissue.

  Kate followed Nasreen through the market in silence. As they passed a fabric shop, an expanse of white cloth unfurled before her in slow motion, and she felt as if in a dream. She saw only white and then stars of light scattered from the rhinestones of the designer pieces hanging like curtains overhead.

  The cloth bellowed in front of three women who reached out to catch it as it drifted. From her peripheral view, Kate imagined the three women as Laila, Aunty Samina, and Nanima. The women turned and nodded to Kate. Another white shimmering bolt unleashed outward from the man’s hands. The air escaped from the rippling fabric and blew across her face.

  “I really need a cup of tea,” Nasreen said as she started walking in full gait. “There is this excellent place two blocks on the corner. It’s very popular. The chai tastes just like Rahmsing used to make.” Nasreen smiled back at Kate. “C’mon.”

  “Tea sounds great,” she said, thinking now of Rahmsing’s tea.

  THE TEA SHOP on the corner was as Nasreen predicted, bustling with activity as shoppers stepped in from the cold to sip on golden liquid that reminded them of home. Patrons greeted one another with broad smiles and enthusiastic embraces and dragged chairs from one table to the next before wiggling free of jackets and taking a seat.

  Nasreen and Kate made their way around the chairs, spying for an open table. Suddenly, Kate halted and Nasreen bumped into the back of her with an “ummpf.”

  “Krishna!” Kate exclaimed.

  Krishna looked up abruptly. She was holding the hand of the woman who sat across the table. Startled by Kate’s presence, she snapped her hand from her tablemate’s grasp.

  “Kate! Nasreen!” Krishna leaped up from her seated position, nearly knocking her chair backwards. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a nervous tone.

  “We were shopping on the avenue. I called you,” Nasreen responded, looking at the unfamiliar woman at the table and back at Krishna.

  “Oh, umm, this is my friend Raji,” she said, introducing the woman. “These are my friends Nasreen and Kate,” Krishna said to Raji.

  “It’s great to meet you.” Raji’s voice boomed over the commotion in the teahouse. She smiled an exuberant smile. She had thick shoulder-length black hair that was slightly unkempt.

  Kate instantly recognized Raji as the intriguing woman in the photo that Krishna had printed that day in the basement darkroom.

  “Krishna has mentioned you,” Kate responded.

  Nasreen eyed Kate, confused, but said nothing to the fact that she had no idea who Raji was.

  “Please join us!” Raji offered and began rearranging the half-empty cups of tea to make room for Nasreen and Kate. Krishna reluctantly sat down.

  “I met Raji in a photography shop,” Krishna explained, responding to Nasreen’s quizzical look once she had taken a seat.

  Kate acknowledged with a nod.

  “She developed my black and white film from India.”

  “Oh, yes. The prints were very impressive, I have to say,” Raji beamed.

  “I saw them come to life in Krish’s makeshift darkroom,” Kate said. “I was transported back to India surrounded by her photos.”

  “She has talent!” Raji agreed. “I encouraged her to enroll in photography classes at Columbia. I’m actually a second-year master’s student in the photojournalism program.”

  Kate and Nasreen nodded.

  “Well, I haven’t had the chance to see the photos but I look forward to it,” Nasreen interjected.

  “Nasreen just returned from Pakistan where
she adopted twins,” Krishna told Raji.

  “Oh my gosh, how incredible!” Raji said enthusiastically. “Congratulations!”

  “Welcome to Tamarind House,” the waitress interrupted in a singsong voice. “What can I get you?” Her nose ring glistened in the fluorescent light.

  “Uh, just a chai tea for me,” Kate ordered. “Thanks.”

  “Make that two,” Nasreen added.

  “The waitress scribbled on her notepad words that seemed much longer than the words “chai” and “tea.”

  “So, Krishna tells me that the three of you grew up together and even traveled to India together!” Raji continued to say after the waitress walked away.

  “I’ve known Krish since we were in diapers,” Nasreen responded. “We lived two streets away from each other. We met Kate our freshman year in high school.”

  “Wow! That is so great that you all have remained so close. You are so blessed to have each other.”

  Blessed? The word seemed to overpower the three of them as they sat speechless looking at each other around the table.

  Kate noticed a small box with a red ribbon on the table next to a half-eaten sandwich. “What did you get, Krish?” she asked.

  “Just a vegetarian sandwich,” Krishna said quickly. She let her hair hang across her face as if she were hiding behind it.

  “Not that. That.” Kate pointed again to the gift.

  “Oh. That.” Krishna laughed nervously. “Just something Raji gave me from her mom’s shop, right?”

  Krishna patted her neck and avoided eye contact.

  “My mom owns a boutique in Montreal,” Raji explained. “This is one of my favorite necklaces.”

  Raji reached across the table, pushed Krishna’s hand out of the way, and displayed the charm in her palm, turning it until it caught the light.

  Kate and Nasreen peered closer at the violet heart charm.

  “Lovely,” Nasreen said.

  “I like the color. Very pretty.”