Can You See Me Now?

by Trisha Sakhlecha

  I looked like a caricature of Noor, little more than a cheap imitation. My face, slim after weeks of track practice, looked drawn instead of chiselled. My hair hung limp around my face and my skin looked ashen under the glare of the overhead lighting, the dark circles under my eyes pronounced after months of sleepless nights.

  I rolled up the sleeves of the T-shirt so they finished just above my elbows and pulled my hair away from my face into the kind of messy bun that Noor favoured. I sucked my cheeks in and looked at myself in the mirror. Better.

  I sprayed some of her perfume on my neck and behind my ears, breathing in that intoxicating smell. I was years away from being able to identify notes, but even back then, I knew it was the way the delicate floral notes conflicted with the darker woody ones that made the scent so seductive, innocence flirting with danger.

  I twirled in front of the mirror. Something was still missing.

  Her hijab was sitting on the shelf, neatly folded into a small rectangle, the deep scarlet jarring against the all-white bathroom.

  Like a single drop of blood on a white skirt.

  Just the thought gave me goosebumps.

  I couldn’t, could I?

  I picked it up, letting the silky fabric slither through my fingers.

  It wouldn’t hurt to try it on.

  It wasn’t like I was stealing anything.

  I placed the scarf carefully on my head, twisting the fabric around my face the way I’d seen Noor do hundreds of times.

  I tucked my hair into it.

  I rearranged the folds of fabric.

  When I was done, I let my eyes meet the reflection in the mirror.

  I pouted. I tilted my head and smiled. I traced the outline of my lips with my finger.

  I could have sworn I was looking straight at Noor.

  A week after school started, the headmistress summoned me to her office. She told me that I had been selected for the sponsored spot on the Oxbridge trip.

  ‘The cost of the trip, the programme fees and all incidentals will be covered by the scholarship,’ she said, handing me my deposit back.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a scholarship,’ I said, confused. I had pored over the school’s financial aid guide for days. I had spent hours begging the accounts office to let me spread the cost of the trip across the year. There was definitely no scholarship like the one Banerjee had just described.

  ‘Well, there is now,’ she said, somewhat gruffly, before showing me the door.

  I walked out, thick wad of cash in hand, silently thanking my not-so-anonymous benefactor.

  Perhaps I could have the kind of life I’d always dreamed about.

  ALIA

  I can hear them through the door, the jokes and chatter leaking through the conference room into the corridor where I’m waiting for my cue.

  I hear Omar’s voice behind me and I step to one side, flattening myself against the wall. It takes me a few seconds to recognize the couple he’s escorting. Divya’s parents. I force my lips into a small smile as they pass through and the guard steers them into the conference room.

  I wait till the door has closed safely behind them before turning to face Omar.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ I whisper.

  ‘They wanted to be here,’ Omar says. His words are delivered nonchalantly but he refuses to meet my eye.

  He nudges me along the corridor towards the conference room where more than a dozen journalists are waiting for me to make a statement.

  ‘I will not make a spectacle of that family. This is not a political move.’

  Omar looks straight at me then, a hint of pity in his eyes. There is an edge to his voice when he speaks, and his words, spoken in his usual matter-of-fact tone, cut right through me.

  ‘It’s election year,’ he says, holding the door to the conference room open and ushering me inside as flashbulbs go off in my face. ‘Everything you do is a political move.’

  Saeed is on the phone to me even before I’ve stepped off the podium.

  ‘Drop this.’

  I’d expected masked hostility. His candour catches me off guard.

  ‘Saeed ji,’ I say, adding on the perfunctory ji to his name, a sign of the respect I absolutely do not have. ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘How dare you go after my son?’

  ‘You have a daughter, don’t you, Saeed ji?’ I say, keeping my voice low.

  He doesn’t acknowledge my question, just like I had known he wouldn’t. Because something like this would never happen to someone like his daughter.

  ‘My son did not rape anyone.’

  ‘I didn’t say he did,’ I say. ‘All I’ve said is that the boys should be questioned. This is about due process.’

  ‘Listen to what I’m suggesting.’

  I wait.

  ‘No matter how hard you push, my son and his friends will not go to jail. We both know that. Drop this and I will make sure the girl’s family is looked after and that your position is secure.’

  ‘My position is already secure,’ I say, but my words sound hollow and he picks up on it.

  He scoffs. ‘I know you relied on Javed a lot, but I did not realize you were this obtuse,’ he says. There is a stillness to his voice, a calm that riles me more than outright anger would have, and yet it’s this version of him that I feel most comfortable with. I slip out of the conference room and back into the corridor.

  ‘You’ve lost the Muslim vote,’ he continues, ‘and without our support . . .’

  He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Uttar Pradesh has a large Muslim electorate and the Indian Muslim Congress controls nearly ninety per cent of those votes. Without the alliance, I wouldn’t just be risking my future; I would be risking the party’s chances of winning a majority in the general election.

  And yet, this isn’t just about winning an election. It’s about getting a young woman justice.

  ‘Have you ever made a mistake, Alia?’

  Noor’s face floats in front of my eyes. I don’t say anything.

  ‘Because I’m going to find every mistake you’ve ever made and I am going to use it. We all have skeletons in our closet. Keep this up and I’m going to drag yours out for all the world to see.’ His voice grows louder, more confident. ‘At worst, my son made a big mistake. There are ways to make amends without destroying his life. I’m sure you can understand that.’

  I maintain my silence.

  ‘And if you can’t, just remember that I will do whatever I have to to protect my child.’

  SABAH

  Pushing open the front door, I’m transported in an instant to my childhood. Running home after my Maths tuition, or ballet lesson, the smell of my father’s cooking and the lilting sound of my mother’s favourite Fleetwood Mac album greeting me even before I’d stepped through the door. I feel my mother’s kiss on my forehead as she opens the door to let me in, an unopened bottle of chilled white wine in hand. I hear my father call out to me from the kitchen, his back to me as he stirs a sauce, apron on, shirtsleeves rolled up. I see myself toss my bag on the floor, chattering non-stop, filling my parents in on my day while setting the table.

  It was a happy home.

  The wind sucks the door shut, rattling me out of my thoughts.

  I drop my bags in the hall and wander through the house, opening doors and peeking into rooms at random, refamiliarizing myself with the spaces I had once inhabited with ease. My mother left most of the furniture and art behind, but without the clutter of everyday life, the house feels haunted.

  I trail a finger over the kitchen counter, one of the many habits I’ve inherited from my mother. It’s spotless. The cleaner that Savita Aunty sent over in preparation for my arrival has done a fantastic job. Even though the house has been empty for nearly a decade, there’s not a speck of dust in sight and thanks to the bergamot diffusers in every room, a pleasant smell fills the air. An elaborate care package sits on the dining table. I reach for the note nestled in between a bunch of bananas and
a box of Assam tea.

  Wifi’s all set up and I’ve stocked the fridge with some essentials. Pop over for a cup of tea once you’re all settled in. Welcome home, darling. Savita

  I drop the note on the table and send Ma a quick text to let her know I’ve arrived. I picture her looking at it a few hours later as she starts her day, strong black coffee in hand, sunlight streaming through the French windows in her San Francisco apartment.

  My parents shipped me off to a boarding school in London two weeks after the funeral. Even though the true extent of my involvement never became public knowledge, the scandal, and the gossip it generated, made living here impossible. My father’s business as a financial consultant to Delhi’s elite took a direct hit and he left for Mumbai soon after. My mother, on the other hand, tried to assimilate back into her old life for five years before deciding she was done. I woke up one morning to an email from her saying she had decided to relocate to her company’s head offices in San Francisco. Exactly 8,380 miles from my father. They never divorced, never split the assets, but their lives had split the day they realized I wasn’t quite as innocent as they thought I was. The move itself didn’t come as a surprise but the associated guilt did.

  Another thing I had broken.

  The therapist they’d forced me to see afterwards would say my own romantic life, or lack thereof, had to do with my guilt about the failure of my parents’ marriage but as with all her other theories, she would be wrong.

  I pick up my bags and head up the stairs, pausing for the briefest of moments before pushing the door to my old bedroom open.

  My stomach seizes. Like the rest of the house, my room has hardly changed at all. My favourite cushion still rests on the bed, the bedside table still holds the cuckoo clock I had bought in Switzerland, the desk my parents had built for me still takes up a whole wall. But it is the corkboard above the desk that draws me in. It’s covered with pictures, timetables, motivational quotes, remnants from my old life that show a girl I barely recognize anymore.

  One by one I remove everything from the board, laying things out in neat piles until the board is completely empty. Save for one photograph.

  It’s a picture from the picnic to Lodhi Gardens. Noor, Vineet, Mohit, Alia, Saloni and I are lying on the grass grinning up at the camera like there’s nothing to fear in the world. In the photograph we look innocent, teenagers having fun, yet we all had a part to play in what happened to Noor.

  I pull out the schedule that my production manager, Jenny, had pressed into my hands as I was leaving. Andrew and Rachel had signed off on the pitch almost immediately after our meeting and within a matter of days, a budget had been allocated and timelines agreed. I’ve been given four weeks to complete the preliminary interviews and prepare the pitch deck for the networks. I’d have been thrilled at the outcome if I wasn’t terrified of the job I had to do, investigating the people who had once been my closest friends.

  I take the piece of paper I’ve been obsessing over for weeks now and pin it up next to the photograph, the looping handwriting on it as familiar as my own.

  Details from that night have been etched in my memory. Some of them facts, but very few, very scattered, so the picture has never completed itself and I know there are parts missing. Crucial parts.

  Noor died of a single gunshot wound to the head.

  Her father found her, and the note she left behind.

  Vineet was the last person to see her alive. When he was questioned, he said Noor probably thought it was easier to commit suicide than to embarrass herself and her family any more than she had already done.

  Noor was buried the next afternoon but long after the imam sang and her body was lowered into the ground, the questions lingered.

  Questions that I have pushed aside for years.

  Until now.

  ALIA

  Fifteen years ago

  It felt like we were on a film set.

  We had been in Oxford for nearly a week and I still couldn’t wrap my head around the sheer beauty of the city. With its gothic spires and ivy-clad buildings, it felt as though the university was drunk on its own splendour, every cloistered arcade and crenellated tower revelling in its own history. And yet, despite the history and tranquillity there was also a sense of anticipation.

  It was as if a part of me knew that something important was going to happen there, with me at its centre.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes as shafts of sunlight cut through the apple trees, bathing the garden in golden light.

  It didn’t take long for me to realize that although our school had been at pains to advertise the Oxbridge programme as educational, in reality it was little more than a fancy prep-school version of summer camp, albeit one that would give us an edge when it came to university admissions season next year. Instead of hiking and swimming, we spent our mornings in oak-panelled classrooms learning about Politics and International Relations and our afternoons on excursions around town. After a morning spent debating the role of religion in politics, we were sprawled out in the Fellows’ garden waiting for our faculty chaperone, Agarwal Sir, to join us so we could go on a walking tour through the old town.

  I let out a small belch, the acrid taste on my tongue reminding me of the lasagne I had practically inhaled in the dining hall earlier that afternoon. I glanced around, mortified, but to my relief, no one had noticed.

  Noor was busy flirting with our student guide for the week, Simon, an Economics student with deep brown eyes and the kind of chiselled jaw that I’d only ever seen in posters. Ankit, who was clearly in love with Noor, was pretending to be in conversation with the awkward boy from the Science stream, while sneaking glances at Noor. And Sabah was busy training her latest minion, a girl whose pigtails would’ve been reason enough for Sabah to write her off in Delhi, but she didn’t have many options here.

  I let my eyes gravitate back towards Noor as I sipped on the orange juice I had snuck out of the buttery. She was leaning in towards Simon, talking quietly, her head almost touching his. I watched him nod along for a moment, before saying something that made Noor throw her head back in laughter. Next to them, the other student guide, a mousy blonde called Michelle, rolled her eyes.

  I caught Sabah looking at me when I finally tore my eyes away from them. I stared back, undeterred, as Sabah pulled her earphones out of her ears and wrapped the cord up neatly around her iPod.

  I could sense another jibe coming. The school had put up the shortlist for the Student Council last week, pitting Noor and Sabah squarely against each other, and it had been a constant stream of snide comments and passive-aggressive insults since then. I’d kept out of it – Sabah was not someone you messed with if you wanted to survive at Wescott – but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t happy about this new animosity between them. For months I had felt excluded. There was so much history there it didn’t leave room for anyone else. Now, I finally had a shot at a real friendship.

  I lay down on the grass and went back to my dog-eared paperback.

  I had barely started reading when I heard Sabah’s voice. ‘Simon, perhaps you could tell us something about the college while we wait? You know, since you’re supposed to be our guide and all.’

  I propped myself up on my elbow to look at the scene unfolding before me. The college porter had bored us with a long talk about the history of the college the day we arrived. Sabah had asked a million questions.

  ‘Um – yeah, of course,’ Simon faltered before launching into the history of the college and explaining the role it had played in the religious disputes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  Noor scowled at Sabah and came over and sat next to me.

  ‘She’s just jealous,’ I said, setting my book down.

  Noor shrugged it off but by then I could read her face well enough to know when she was upset. She rolled her shoulders.

  ‘Did you manage to get hold of your parents?’

  ‘Um, yeah. Yeah, I did,’ I lied.

&n
bsp; I’d told her I was going to call them this morning when I went to the Porters’ Lodge after breakfast. Honestly, though, I didn’t see the point in ringing home every day. I’d called Nani to let her know we had arrived safely on the first night, and as far as I was concerned, that was enough. Noor, on the other hand, spoke to her parents every single day. Each night, one of the student guides would knock on our door and Noor would follow her to the lodge. She was usually gone for the best part of an hour and when she returned she would relay her entire conversation to me in minute detail. I couldn’t decide whether it made me feel angry or jealous.

  ‘How are they?’

  ‘Good. Or as good as they can be, I guess. There’s still a lot of tension in the city so they are stuck in the embassy most of the time. That’s why they haven’t been able to visit either.’ The lie was only small and I almost convinced myself that that was the reason I hadn’t heard from them. But they had been stuck at the embassy in London throughout my childhood as well. There had been no tension in London, no active danger. They just preferred the glamour of hanging out with the ambassador’s family instead of spending time with their own.

  ‘Do you miss them?’

  I shrugged.

  I sat up and brought my knees up to my chest, hugging them tight until I could feel every muscle in my back expand. I was not going to let my parents ruin this trip.

  ‘A couple of the other girls are having a movie night in the common room later. Pretty Woman,’ I said, resting my chin on my knees. There were seven other groups on the same programme but since each school got to tailor its own schedule, we only ever saw them after hours. ‘Fancy it?’

  ‘Fancy it? You are so English!’ Noor grinned, eyes sparkling as her gaze travelled back to Simon.

  Sabah cornered us at breakfast the next morning.

  ‘You need to be careful,’ she said, with not even a hint of friendliness.