Ian pushed my sleeve up my arm and kissed the goose-pimpled skin there. He lifted my sweater to my belly, running his lips over my navel. He undressed me slowly, as though unwrapping a present in expensive paper. He exposed a few inches at a time, his teeth lightly scratching over me, his lips and tongue taking small tastes. Once I was in my underwear, he pulled off his jeans and T-shirt and covered me with his warm body. I rolled us over, took off my bra, and lowered my breasts to his face.
“You forgot a spot.”
“Or two,” he mumbled.
“Do you have any condoms?” I wasn’t prepared; I’d been on the pill with Robert.
“Thank Jeezus I do!”
I wobbled off him when he reached down to the milk crate beside his lumpy futon, ripped open a shiny square, and asked, “Now okay?” I nodded.
He’d managed to unthaw me. I sensed my G spot for the first time, that elusive place about which I’d been reading for years. I squeezed his buttocks, guiding him in a rhythm that matched my rocking. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before or since. And then he groaned, and it was over. I glanced down to make sure the condom was still on for the ride.
“I’m sorry, I wish I could’ve lasted longer. Too much booze, I guess.”
“It’s okay, you did good.” I patted his shoulder. I had come close, closer than I ever had. I still don’t know why; we hadn’t done anything that novel.
“We can keep going.” He put his hand over my vulva, but I stopped him, probably out of habit. Now I wish I hadn’t. I held his hand and told him I was tired. He asked me to stay the night and I did. In the morning, he made me instant coffee and a blueberry-flavoured toaster strudel. We agreed to get together after the holiday; he was leaving for Seattle to visit family the next day.
I went home to Edison for a low-key Christmas. My parents and I exchanged presents, put up a plastic tree, ate biryani, and didn’t speak about the source of my glum mood.
My folks had a large dinner party on December twenty-eighth, all the guests Bohras. While we were setting the table for twelve, Mom glanced at me furtively.
“What?”
“Don’t be angry with me.” She confessed that she’d invited along the nephew of some family friends.
“Oh, come on, Mom! How could you? I just broke up with Robert!” Throughout my twenties, there had been a few sneak-attack setups like this, always with dull and dweeby men from the community. A pharmacist so nervous he couldn’t make eye contact. An MBA who mansplained the need to keep the minimum wage low. A dentist with terrible breath.
“This guy sounds like a good match, though. Listen!” she said, her eyes pleading. “He’s a PhD, an English professor at Rutgers! You like to read! And he’s from Canada! He likes to cook! He is interesting!” She emphasized interesting, knowing my impressions of her previous matches. I crossed my arms over my chest.
I was about to argue that there was someone else I liked, someone I wanted to start dating. I might have listed: a social worker! With student furniture and anarchism! Toaster pastry!
I looked at Mom, saw the concern wrinkling her brow, and sighed. I nodded. After three unsuccessful relationships, maybe it was time to listen to my mother.
The guests arrived, and Murtuza and I were guided to sit across from each other. We made easy conversation, mostly about the books we were reading and the decline of public education. As he was leaving, he asked to meet for dinner two days later, away from the eager and watchful gazes of our families. A few days after that, we saw Brokeback Mountain and held hands while Jake and Heath kissed. He dropped me off in front of my apartment, and we necked a bit in the car. When I got in, there was a message from Ian on my answering machine; he was back from Seattle and wanted to know if I felt like coming over to his place. For a moment, I was tempted, but my lips still tingled from Murtuza’s, so I deleted Ian’s message. I called and got his voicemail the next day, and made excuses about not being ready to date anyone. I’d decided to give the nice Bohra boy a chance.
I let Ian go, and didn’t think about him again until he friend-requested me many years later. To be clear, I don’t want a relationship with Ian. Murtuza is my husband. But I do sometimes wish — in the way we wish for magical things that bear no consequences — for one more night with Ian.
Now, I return to bed, listen to Murtuza’s soft breathing. I touch my labia, then deeper, entering the fantasy I permit myself when alone. It always begins with me passing through a revolving glass door, a whoosh of air-conditioning brushing against my warm body. It’s somewhere near the airport, one of those large four-star chains that feel anonymous, yet respectable. We rendezvous at the bar and the other patrons might mistake us for travellers having a last drink before retiring for the evening. He looks different than when we first met, his hair short, and he’s wearing a V-neck sweater over a shirt and stylish jeans. He thanks me for coming, tells me he’s waiting a long time for this moment. My imagination skips us forward to when he passes me a key card, whispers the room number, his breath tickling the fine hairs in my ear. He leaves first. I follow three minutes later.
In the elevator I am alone with my thoughts. I am aware that I exist on a parallel plane to my real life. My heart races with the anticipation of Ian’s touch, the reunion we’ve been awaiting for a decade. The elevator door opens on the eighteenth floor, and I step out.
There is a familiar pleasant awakening under my fingers.
I edge the plastic card into the lock and step inside. It’s dark and I don’t see him when he comes forward and pushes me against the wall, kissing me forcefully. I drop my purse, my body pinned by his. He pulls up my skirt and I am naked underneath. I wrap my leg around him and then he is inside me.
My body remembers, still, that night with him and within moments my G spot begins to thrum.
I fast forward and we are on the bed, still half-dressed, he on top of me and then behind me, my mind changing our positions in a frenetic search to find something to increase and intensify the sensations.
The faint hope, the one I don’t like to admit having, whispers, Maybe this time, maybe it’s going to happen. Please.
Still, my body won’t co-operate, won’t let go. I slow my movements, willing myself to calm my thoughts, in the hope it will help; I read somewhere that this is a good idea. But the slowing is like the volume dial turning everything down, both my mental noise and my body’s excitement. I persevere, running the script over again from the moment I walked into the suite to the wall to the bed. And still, it doesn’t happen. I rub my hand against my underwear’s waistband, dry my fingers.
My mind quiets, and Murtuza’s Fifty Shades pleather case drifts in. Since arriving in India, I’ve thought about it once or twice, but haven’t mentioned it. Neither has he. Has he lost interest in it, or maybe he feels too shy?
Murtuza rouses, then rolls onto his back, a snuffly snore escaping. What would he think if he could watch the film reel I’ve just played? He knows most of me, but he’ll never know this particular part, the woman whose mind drifts to places it probably shouldn’t.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Murtuza has a two-week break in his teaching schedule and so I’ve planned a trip for the three of us to Goa. It’s our first time to this state but I’ve always been curious; all my white American friends include Goa in their India itineraries and rave about it.
Despite having our own flat in Mumbai, this trip gives me a sense of truly being on our own as a family, the rest of the relatives blocked out. Knowing we are away, they don’t send daily check-in text messages, their electronic buzz of concern and hospitality absent.
We stay at a resort that reminds me of a Costa Rican retreat I once visited. For the first few days, it’s idyllic; we lie on the beach, eat our breakfasts and dinners at the same oceanview restaurant, and wander around town in between. It’s a lazy, true holiday. The only non-spam email I receive is from Meena, the Ahmedabad archivist who Kaaka referred. She’s offered to research Abdoolally for a good rate
and so I send her all the information I have about him, and a list of specific questions about his wives. She suggests I give her a couple of months, which works for when I’d like to go to Dholka — her office is about an hour away from there.
Here we have a one-bedroom suite, with Zee on the living room pullout. It seemed large enough when we booked it, but is cramped by day four, and Murtuza and I bicker about stupid things.
On our fifth night, I check Facebook while he reads. I sense a shift in the room; he’s behind me, helicoptering.
“Facebook hasn’t changed since I left. Look how mundane it all is. Who cares about what Laura ate for lunch?”
“I read lots of interesting articles on my friends’ feeds. And I don’t mind knowing some of the day-to-day stuff. Look, Marla and Brian just got a puppy.” I try to hide my annoyance that he is reading over my shoulder.
“Why do you bother with it so much? It’s all just superficial nonsense.”
“I dunno, everyone’s on it. It’s a way to stay in touch.”
“It’s performance art, not real life, Shari.” He flops onto the couch and shoots me a challenging look.
I could continue the argument, tell him that a part of me is curious about what Fatema is posting these days, but we haven’t talked about khatna since that tense conversation a couple of weeks back. I take a breath and stay quiet. Will he always, reflexively, glance over my shoulder to check what I’m reading? He picks up his novel and disappears behind it, which is a relief; I never know how to finish these quarrels.
When we fought as newlyweds, we’d keep talking, then yelling over one another until we’d both be too angry to resolve the conflict. I’d stomp away, slam doors, and then Murtuza would be angry that I’d abandoned him in the middle of a fight. Over the years, we’ve learned to sidestep, lower our voices, avoid the storm. For the next few days, we instinctively give each other more space and politeness. He lets me sleep in and makes breakfast. I take Zee for a walk so he can read. I swim while he builds sandcastles.
A few days later, we are out late and I have a craving for kulfi from a vendor on Baga Beach road. His five-by-five stall has the best badam-pista I’d ever tasted. At 11:00 p.m., we carry our kulfi sticks down to the beach. The restaurants and bars are closing at this hour, in compliance with a local law that disallows them from remaining open late during election season. Young people stream out of open doors, wobbly and boozy. I grasp Zee’s hand, and Murtuza clasps her other one. A man stumbles past us and vomits against a stuccoed wall. Having reached the crowded beach, we turn back, sensing the unpredictability of the intoxicated throng around us.
“Wow,” I say.
“This is weird, Shari. It’s like people downed bottles just before last call.”
“What’s last call?” Zee asks. Neither of us respond and instead pick up our pace. Zee halts us in front of a puppy, curled in a ball on the pavement. At home, she’s afraid of domestic dogs on leashes, but she coos over these sun-warmed and docile animals.
“Can I give him kulfi?” She still has a stick melting over her fingers.
“Yes,” I say, “but don’t get too close. Just put it in front of him.” She holds the kulfi out and the dog savours it in a few rapid licks.
“Let’s keep going,” Murtuza says, looking at a group of twenty-something men singing their way toward us. “It’s like zombie-land out here.”
In front of us a group of girls walks unsteadily on high heels. A scooter zips past, narrowly missing them. They laugh at the near accident. At the main road, we flag a rickshaw back to our hotel. Later, Murtuza and I will describe this scene to amused friends and family as an innocent kulfi excursion that transformed into a vision of hell. It will be our co-constructed, exaggerated memory, and when we share it, over and over, we’ll prod one another to add details, and finish each other’s sentences.
The Saturday after we return from Goa is my uncle and aunt’s twenty-fifth anniversary party with forty of us crammed into a banquet hall’s party room. Murtuza huddles in a corner, talking to three of my male cousins, the two of us sliding into an informal gender segregation that rarely happens in our New York social circles.
I chat with Sharmeen, who is home for a short break from college. She, like her mother, wears a fancy rida, while her younger sister, Nafeesa, is in a body-hugging kameez and skinny jeans.
“How’s school?” Zainab told me that she’s studying home science, popular among Sharmeen’s friends.
“I’m enjoying it. But I think I want to go to study business courses next year. I’d like to work in the store.”
“That’s terrific, Sharmeen! Your parents might want to pass it along when they’re ready to retire, like your nana and nani did.”
“Plus, I think we could modernize it a little. Nafeesa wants to take fashion design, so perhaps we could sell more types of clothing, not just the tourist things.”
We watch Zee running the perimeter of the room in a game of tag with two younger second cousins. During one of her loops, she slows, sidles into me, her face flushed. I pass her my water bottle and she empties it in three big gulps. Tasnim Maasi comes over and takes the opportunity to catch her for what Zee now calls a Wet Maasi Kiss.
“Well, Zee, soon you will be getting married yourself. Is there anyone here you’d like me to approach on your behalf? We can arrange your marriage today, this very day.” Maasi spreads her arms wide, theatrically.
Zee looks at her quizzically. Then, after a long pause, she squeals, “Don’t be silly, Maasi!”
She wiggles out of Maasi’s grip and runs off with her new buddies.
“Our girls grow up quickly, don’t they? One minute they’re little girls and the next they are teenagers.”
“Creepy,” Fatema mutters under her breath, but loud enough for me to hear. I hadn’t realized that she’d come to sit near us. “Keep an eye on her while you’re here, Shari.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
Just then Naima Mami and Huzefa Mama usher us to the next room, where all the furniture has been cleared away and five thaals, metal discs on short pedestals that fit eight people, are arranged on the floor.
“I’ll explain later,” Fatema murmurs. But I know what she’s inferring, her warning unnerving me. It’s ridiculous that I should guard Zee from Maasi. Still, I scan the room, my heart skipping a beat when at first I don’t locate my daughter.
We find two empty spots beside Fatema at a thaal. I remind Zee how to tuck her feet under herself so she can sit comfortably and not sprawl into the next person’s space.
A small bowl of salt is passed and I instruct her to place a pinch on her tongue.
“Eww. Why?” Zee winces at the taste.
“Who knows? It just a custom,” Fatema answers.
“No, no, there is a reason,” Tasnim Maasi counters, joining the thaal across from us. “It has to do with appreciating that salt is in the earth or somesuch thing.”
“No, it’s from an old belief that salt can cure us from diseases, I think.” I try to recall what I read in Mullahs on the Mainframe.
“Like most of our customs, we don’t really know why we do things anymore. We just continue them, on and on. Like sheep. Baaa,” Fatema directs her animal noises at Zee, who cracks up.
“But this is a nice tradition, this eating together in the thaal, isn’t it? We share one large plate,” I say brightly, contesting my cousin’s naysaying. And I mean it. It’s one of my favourite Bohra rituals. “It’s way more fun than eating at a table.”
“True.” Fatema nods. “And there are very important rules. Like see?” She builds a low wall of two standing samosas between her and Zee’s spaces on the thaal. “This way your gravy won’t spill into my section. We can eat together, but keep our separate territories, no?”
Zee studies Fatema’s mock-serious face. Then, with a laugh, she pokes the samosa wall, causing its collapse. The rest of the ladies at the thaal giggle along with her.
“What are you teaching
this girl? To play with her food?” Maasi chuckles.
“The best lesson a Bohra girl can learn: to question authority.” Fatema takes a bite from one of the fallen samosas.
“Arré, let’s eat, no?” Maasi shakes her head.
I watch these women, women I love, scooping rice with their right hands. We are skilled at making neewallas, bite-sized clumps inside thumbs, pointers, middle, and ring fingers, without dropping a single grain or letting the daal drip into our palms.
As I’ve done since I was a small child, I listen closely to the conversation. I miss the jokes in Guju sputtered out too quickly for me to follow, can’t decode the subtext underlining dynamics too complex for a visitor. I look at Fatema, then across at Tasnim Maasi, and then back again, wondering what is going unspoken between them. Both sit stiffly, avoiding each other’s gaze. Has their tension always been about khatna? Is that when it started?
My legs cramp, and my stomach churns despite the temptations of halwa, green chicken, ice cream, biryani, and kachumber. I hate that there’s an unbridgeable distance between Maasi and Fatema. I suppose I’ve always perceived it, but I’d attributed it to lifestyle and religious differences. Now I know better.
It’s not my issue and I don’t want to get in the middle of it. And yet I know that Maasi, perhaps with good intentions, or not knowing any better, was somehow involved in stealing something precious from Fatema. And the hard set of my cousin’s jaw, her unwillingness to look Maasi in the eye, belies the fact that she hasn’t come to terms with the theft. Is Maasi even aware that she is being silently accused of a crime?
I listen to their silences and wish I could bring them together again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Bombay, 1900
Despite the droughts and plague that had spread across India that year, the new century began with optimism for Abdoolally. He bought a second printing press in Dholka, and started the India Stationery Mart near Crawford Market. He and his family were lucky compared to most. But he’d learned over the years that sometimes luck didn’t last.
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