A Girl Like That

by Tanaz Bhathena

  I rolled down the car window now and inhaled the salty breeze. The best part about going to the Corniche was the Jeddah Fountain, which could be seen from mostly anywhere, as long as you stuck to the coast. The fountain was closed that morning for maintenance, which on any other day (and with any other boy) would have made the date a flop, shawarma notwithstanding. But I was with Porus. And somehow, despite the awkward silence that had crept up between us during the drive to the beach, I almost felt okay again.

  “Do…” I hesitated. My hands shook. “Do you have a Marlboro, by chance?”

  Porus sighed, but instead of scolding me the way he normally would have, he simply dug around in his bag and pulled out the pack and lighter he kept in there for me. I had known Porus long enough by now to know how he felt about my smoking, could feel it in the hesitant brush of his fingers against my palm. But he said nothing to me that day, and for that I was grateful.

  Porus opened his own window a crack. I sucked at the filter and tried to blow smoke rings like Alice in Wonderland’s hookah-happy caterpillar, but the smoke dissipated without forming any particular shape. My second attempt was little better, though this time the smoke blew out in a straight line, a mocking imitation of the Jeddah Fountain itself.

  I still remembered the first time Masa had pointed the fountain out to me: the base shaped like an incense burner; the water shooting out with such force that it looked like white smoke against the sky. He later told me a tale about little white horses galloping far into the sea, their manes the only things visible over the water. “Where are they?” I asked, looking for the horses, and he’d pointed out their manes—the streaming white froth that we now called sea foam. I never tired of hearing the story back then, and he never tired of repeating it to me.

  I reflected on the silent treatment my uncle gave me now, except for that one day when he’d ordered me to start going back to school, his eyes colder than I’d ever seen them, nearly as cold as Masi’s had been the day I first entered their apartment in Mumbai.

  A monarch butterfly landed on the windshield of Porus’s car, its wings fiery orange and black in the sunlight. Seeing it increased the hollow feeling in my chest. It is strange, I thought, how we always recognize our best memories in hindsight.

  I stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Do you want to get out of the car?” I asked, and Porus nodded.

  Families were already gathering in groups on various parts of the beach, unrolling picnic mats and laying out containers of food. This particular patch of beach, I remembered now, was a good place for large groups to gather, and also for men to fish in silence. My shoulders relaxed when I realized that there were no teenagers in either of the groups—only adults and small children. I would not run into anyone from school over here.

  Tan, hip-high pillars formed a railing in front of us, marking the perimeter of the coastline, with several feet of sand beyond—a guard of sorts between the cars in the parking lot and the sea. They weren’t tall enough to really discourage people from climbing over, though, so that’s what I did, my abaya hiked up over my hips, and then jumped, landing softly in the wet sand. A second later, I felt Porus touch down beside me. To my surprise, his feet were bare, grains of sand coating them like brown sugar. The soft, white rubber-soled shoes he wore at the deli hung loosely from one hand.

  “That sand may not be exactly clean, you know,” I pointed out. Food wrappers, cigarette butts, broken glass shards—you never knew what was lying in there. “I was here a few years ago and accidentally stepped on a dead jellyfish.” It was the one thing I’d always remembered about this place and that field trip: the sensation of my bare foot against a slippery, squishy blob. I suppressed a shudder and then scowled when Porus started laughing at me.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “Some of them sting, you know!”

  “Don’t care.” He wiggled his toes in the sand and stretched out his arms. “It comes with the territory. A little bit like being with you, actually.”

  My face reddened. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

  Porus grinned in reply. It was so reminiscent of the way he used to be before the Rizvi stuff happened that I felt the ends of my mouth turn up.

  “How was your day?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Surprisingly normal.” I began walking closer to the sea, making sure to pick a path that looked clean—or at least garbage-, glass-, and jellyfish-free. Porus followed.

  “A few of the others still had to do speeches in English, so I slept through most of that lesson. Our Physics teacher failed half the class in the mock exams—as expected. What else…? Oh yeah, our Math teacher called us brainless fools and said we would end up giving him a coronary. The rest of the classes were boring as usual.”

  I had sensed some of the girls watching me from time to time—especially Mishal and Layla—but apart from that, nothing else. No one had tried to bother me that day, or mentioned the rumors in my presence. Maybe it was due to the pressure of final exams, but it seemed that for now they’d gone back to their old default of ignoring my existence. Not that I was complaining.

  The sea was quiet that afternoon. Small waves rolled toward the shore, bubbled frothily over sand pockmarked with footprints and left it smooth once more. When I was younger, I was much too nervous about walking into the sea alone, clinging to Masa’s hand for dear life, feeling certain that the water would wrap itself around my ankles and pull me in if I wasn’t careful. Now, however, I stepped in, farther and farther, even though I had never learned to swim, my feet steadier than they had ever been before, feeling the water slide into my sneakers, seep through the shining black polyester of my abaya, up to my knees.

  “What are you doing?” Porus’s voice was high, nervous.

  I looked back at him and frowned. Did he think I was going to…? I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized that drowning was something I might have considered, might have maybe given serious thought to, a few days ago. I shook my head.

  “I like being in the water,” I said. “Is there a problem?”

  Porus bit his lip. “I … I almost drowned in the sea when I was seven.”

  “Oh.”

  I instantly felt like a heel.

  I debated whether or not I ought to offer him my hand and encourage him to come in, but then decided against it. Porus had done enough for me as it was. I stared at his bandaged nose and his bruised chin. My heart twisted. I knew I would never be able to forgive myself if something else happened to Porus because of me.

  I forced my legs back up the slippery bank, the bottom half of my abaya weighed down slightly by the water. But it didn’t matter. My clothes would dry soon enough in this heat. So would my sneakers, when I finally removed them in Porus’s car.

  Porus held out his hand to help me climb back onto drier ground. But when I tried to pull away, he tightened his grip.

  “I will marry you, you know.” His deep brown eyes were serious. “I don’t care about what happened.”

  I tugged hard until my hand was free, ignoring the sudden warmth pooling in my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around myself, not knowing why my heart was beating so hard. “Porus. I am not marrying you.”

  He was silent. The sea rushed forward, bringing with it white foam and debris.

  “Why do you love me, Porus? Why are you so desperate to marry me?” I asked when the silence began to grate on my nerves.

  There was a long pause before Porus answered again. “When Pappa died, I thought a part of me had been ripped out. I functioned, I joked, I survived, but I didn’t really live. Being with you distracted me at first. I mean, you are a pain, you know.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. It was true. I was a pain.

  “But,” Porus continued, “in some strange way, being with you reminded me of him again, of the things we did together, the stories he’d told me–the good times, you know. The day I first saw you here, I thought of him and that story he told me about Shi
rin, Khusrow, and Farhad. It was the first time I had thought of him without grief pressing down on my ribs. When I told you those stories from my book, it was like he was sitting right next to me. When I’m with you, I can almost hear him giving me advice again—like, ‘Say this to her!’ or, ‘No, you fool, not that!’ Like right now, I can feel him shaking his head at me for making you cry.”

  I tried to laugh, but all that came out of me was this strange, strangled sound.

  He exhaled quietly. “Zarin, you aren’t a bad person. Sometimes life does not go the way we want it to and we can’t really change that. But it doesn’t matter as long as we have someone to love us. Love is more important than anything else in this world. And you deserve love as much as anyone else.”

  I felt his fingers brush my hand again, his pinkie gently linking with mine. This time, I did not pull away.

  * * *

  It was Masi who shot the missile. Masi who stepped into my room, minutes after my alarm went off on Monday, and stood before the door, glaring at Masa, who hesitantly stepped in as well.

  I threw my covers to one side. “What is it? What do you want?”

  “We are thinking of getting you married, Zarin, dikra.” Her smile could have given nightmares to a diabetic. “Do you remember Ratamai’s son, Kersi?”

  Masa looked down at his hands; they were shaking.

  “I am not eighteen, Masi! Besides, Kersi is his mamma’s boy, with no spine whatsoever. He probably still asks his mamma for permission before going to the bathroom.”

  Masi’s eyes were hard. “We are your guardians and what we say is final.”

  I stood up and faced my uncle, who was now shifting his eyes between the both of us, the way he had been shifting, tiptoeing around the house ever since Masi threw a fit at the doctor’s office. “Aren’t you going to say something about this?” I asked. “Or are you going to keep wearing the bangles she put on you when you got married?”

  The clap of a hand, flat against my cheek. The kind that would leave a bruise. But for now I felt nothing except the cool metal of Masa’s ring, the tingling warmth it left behind. Slapping. A new first from my uncle.

  There was silence.

  Masa and I stared at each other. His ears and neck were red.

  “Your aunt is right,” he said, lowering his arm. “You are not improving one bit. You are going out of control.”

  Masi’s breath came out in a soft, satisfied hush. She wound her hand around Masa’s arm. “Come, Rusi,” she said in a brisk voice. “We will deal with this later. My dental appointment is at 8:15.”

  * * *

  I called Porus without thinking.

  “They want to marry me off,” I blurted out the minute he picked up. “I was planning to skip school anyway and I have a plan, we can run away and—”

  “Calm down. I’m coming.”

  * * *

  Traffic on the Al-Harameen Expressway was always heavy: vehicles raced on its lanes at speeds of over 120 kilometers per hour.

  Porus refused to run away with me.

  “Run away to where?” he asked. “And what will you do without a diploma or degree? Do you want to work in a deli like me?”

  I didn’t, of course, even though I didn’t tell him that. “I could learn,” I said, before I could think too much about it. “How hard could it be?”

  Porus turned the wheel and the car sped up to join the highway traffic. “Yeah. You could learn to slaughter baby lambs and goats. Really, Zarin, who are you trying to fool? Besides that, I’m no longer working at the deli.”

  “What?” The news came as a shock. “Why?”

  “I quit a couple of days ago. Doesn’t matter why. And don’t worry. Old Hamza phoned me last night. He said he would transfer my iqama for me if I wanted to continue working in Jeddah. He even offered to issue a No Objection Certificate! I have enough money to stay here for a couple of months and find another job. In the worst-case scenario—if I have to leave for a while—I can come back on a new employer’s visa without waiting two whole years, thanks to the NOC.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I lied.

  I stared out at the traffic, which was now starting to slow down. When I told Porus to join the road leading to the expressway this morning instead of taking me to school, I had wanted to get as far away from Aziziyah and my aunt and uncle as humanly possible. Now I felt sick from being cooped up in this car and from realizing how much of Porus’s life I’d already messed up. Even though Porus would not admit it, I knew deep down that his decision to quit had had something to do with me.

  I rolled down the window to get some fresh air. The smell of exhaust fumes and fresh tarmac filled my nostrils. Coughing, I rolled the window back up. Masa had mentioned something the week before about construction taking place over here; orange arrows marked the detours around the construction site. A flatbed trailer in front of us was carrying stacks of iron rods, probably to one of Jeddah’s industrial cities. The rods stuck out beyond the trailer bed, and from time to time Porus would mutter, “One thousand one, one thousand two” under his breath to keep a safe distance between the Nissan and the trailer. The sun glared down at us, making my head pound more than usual. There were no clouds.

  “You will be okay, you know,” he said. “I will talk to them later if you want. They cannot be thinking of marrying you off. You’re much too young.”

  I said nothing. I stared out the window, watched cars and palm trees blur by.

  “Zarin, will you talk to me, please?”

  “Talk about what?” I snapped. “About you making a proposal and then backing out when I accept it? Or should we debate the fact that you’re a liar like the rest of them? Why don’t you take the next exit and drive me home?”

  Porus sighed. “That was not acceptance, Zarin. That was you looking for an escape route from whomever your aunt and uncle want you to marry. And I will keep missing every exit until you start talking to me about what’s going on in your head.”

  I closed my eyes. “Isn’t it … isn’t it possible to fall in love with someone with time? You know how they say—marry someone who loves you instead of marrying the one you love?”

  His jaw tightened. “What are you saying now? That you think you can learn to love me? With time?”

  If I had wanted to be snappy, I could have pointed out that it wouldn’t be too much of a chore physically, at least. We had chemistry. He was a good—no, the best—kisser I’d come across. I could admit this much to myself now, after everything that had happened. But I knew I owed him more than that.

  Love. I rolled the word in my head, felt it twist in my stomach. I had loved Fali, of course. That much was clear. As clear as the sun in the sky, the bright yellow of his eyes. Porus had been right about that: I was a sucker for tiny animals; butchering them would be out of the question. And my mother? I guess I loved my mother. Or the memories of her anyway. The memories that still existed outside the nightmares.

  “I don’t know if I’m capable of loving anyone,” I said honestly. “I like you, Porus. I like you a lot. But love … I’ve never done it before. I don’t even know if I have it in me.” I was scooped out.

  Porus’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I really want to marry you, you know. In fact, you made me a very tempting offer. But I can’t take you up on it. I want you to fall in love with me first.”

  “Ha.” I rolled my eyes, but my lips curved into a smile. “You’re going to have to wait a long, long time. Maybe until I’m very old and walking with a cane. Maybe for eternity.”

  “Eternity.” He laughed and my foolish heart skipped a beat. “I like the sound of that.”

  There was a pause before he spoke again. “Look, why don’t you come live with me for a few days? We can talk to your aunt and uncle together.”

  “Porus.” I turned to stare at him. “I can’t. Your mother won’t—”

  “I’ll handle my mother,” he said firmly.

  “But I don’t want to be a burden.”


  “Now you’re being melodramatic.”

  “I’m not!” (Okay, I was.)

  Porus smirked at me. Then his face grew serious again. “Jokes aside, it’s okay to rely on other people, Zarin. You don’t always have to fight alone.”

  Had another boy said the same thing, I might have dismissed this. But with Porus I knew it wasn’t pretty words and empty promises. He always meant what he said. He’d proven it to me, time and again. I studied his face for a moment longer: eyes squinting against the sun’s glare, the curved bridge of his nose, his soft lips parted in a curse for the driver ahead of him, the stubble peppering his strong chin.

  I thought about what he had suggested. Not only was the idea of staying with Porus for a few days somewhat soothing, it also allowed me to imagine things that I wouldn’t have dared to days earlier. Porus wasn’t as hot-tempered as I was. Masa and Masi liked him. With his support, maybe Masa would listen to me about what had happened with Rizvi. And about everything else that was happening at school as well. Maybe they both would.

  “Zarin?” Porus asked quietly.

  “Okay,” I told him, feeling a little relieved even as I spoke. “Yeah, okay, I’ll stay with you. But no funny business. You’re sleeping on the couch.”

  I ignored the warmth that flooded my cheeks when he smiled at me.

  Then, suddenly: “What the— Why is he stopping?”

  The trailer had jerked to a stop. Hazard lights blinked like a pair of yellow eyes. Porus braked—“One thousand one, one thousand two”—and came to a stop; the Nissan’s hood was a good foot away from the jutting rods.

  “Phew,” Porus said, and turned to grin at me for a split second. In that moment, the driver of the car behind us lost control and slammed the Nissan’s rear end, sending us flying toward the flatbed. Iron rods broke the windshield. I screamed. There was deep pain. And then there was nothing.