A Girl Like That(23)

“You didn’t tell anyone else about this, did you?” I asked her sharply. Layla may have been my best friend, but she had the tendency to blab.

“Of course I didn’t!” She sounded irritated, which was a good sign. An offended Layla was an honest Layla. If she was lying she would have tried soothing me with gentleness and clever words. “Do you think I’m going to send something like this to bloody BlueNiqab?”

I forced myself to remain impassive.

“He’s your brother, Mishal,” Layla told me. “You need to cut him some slack. Even good guys like Abdullah can make mistakes.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, like he would cut me slack if I went out with some guy and then said it was a mistake.”

Layla’s eyes widened. She turned around to make sure the other girls were still busy talking or eating their lunches. “What are you talking about?” she whispered. “Do you want to go out with a guy?”

“Of course not,” I said impatiently, “but—”

“Seriously, Mishal.” Layla frowned. “I don’t know why you’re talking like this. You know—we both know—that these rules for segregation have been made to protect us.”

“But don’t the rules apply to boys as well?”

“Of course they do.”

“Then why always blame the girl if things go wrong?” I demanded. “Why aren’t boys held responsible?”

Layla sighed. “Mishal, you’ve seen my brother. You know how shy he is around girls. Neither he nor his friends date. My parents have always treated both of us equally in that way. But let’s be realistic. This world does not always operate on theory. I mean, would you go out alone at night in a deserted area, anywhere?”

“No,” I said reluctantly.

“Exactly! Why go looking for trouble where you know it exists? Especially when you’re a girl?”

“But—”

“Girls like Zarin are different,” Layla interrupted. “They don’t care about the rules or the future. See how dangerous that is? First she tempted Abdullah with her wanton ways, and now she’s confusing you with her deviance.”

Images clashed in my head: Abdullah swinging me in the garden next to our house as a child; the naked blondes in his magazine; my brother violently pinning me to the wall; boys hammering on my door, laughing; my brother shouting, driving them away.

I held my head between my hands. “I don’t know, Layla.”

“Please.” Layla placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let her turn you against your own brother.”

*

That evening, I switched on my cell and dialed Zarin’s number several times, my first three calls unsuccessful—hanging up on Zarin’s aunt twice and her uncle once. Then, on the fourth try, Zarin herself picked up the phone.

The sharp “Hello” startled me and almost made me hang up. “Who is this?”

I said nothing and fell once more into the routine of being silent, letting my breaths pass through the phone to let her know there was someone at the other end.

After a moment of silence, she spoke again, her voice softer, more encouraging, almost as if she was expecting me to be a boy who had called, a boy far too nervous to speak. “Hello?” A hesitation. “Abdullah, is this you?”

Witch, I wanted to say. Slut. But my voice choked in my throat. I disconnected the line. In the days that followed, I kept a close eye on her. The times she went out during break, the times she skipped school. The times she talked to my brother over the landline—though those conversations were short and to the point. “Same time, same place,” Abdullah would say. “Bring cigarettes,” she would reply.

“What are you doing?” Layla whispered one day. “Always watching her like some obsessed boy. Are you trying to catch her smoking red-handed this time?”

I shook my head. I did not know what I was looking for, but I knew it would not be to report her for smoking again. I’d overheard enough conversations between Abdullah and his friends now to know that he and Zarin were still dating. “Hot and not a hypocrite,” he’d described her over the phone. “She never freaks out if we joke about sex the way some other girls would.”

Googling Zarin Wadia didn’t bring up much information—at least not on the Zarin Wadia I wanted. She wasn’t on Twitter or Tumblr or Snapchat or Instagram. Her Facebook was barely used. It made sense somehow that she wouldn’t use social media. Like me, Zarin had her own need for secrecy.

I felt my nails dig into the soft flesh of my palm. “I want to know everything about her,” I told Layla.





Farhan

AGE 12

They were going at it like dogs, Abba and the maid. My father, who my mother said I would look like when I got older—tall, dark, and handsome—banging the maid so hard that he banged the headboard against the wall and left a mark in the paint.

It was one of those evenings when neither Ammi nor my sister, Asma, were home. Asma had gone over to a friend’s place. Ammi was at the beauty parlor—“Gone to shave the beard off her chin,” Abba said contemptuously. Abba, who came home early that evening, then shut himself up in his room.

It could’ve almost been scripted. The noises in my parents’ bedroom. Me, crawling off the sofa, where I’d been dozing in front of the TV, padding quiet and barefoot across the carpet, noiselessly opening the bedroom door. Abba, heavy and hairy, his body heaving up and down; the maid, small and smooth, her eyes closed and mouth open, scoring his back with her nails. I watched until they switched positions, putting her on top and my dad on the bottom. His eyes opened and then locked with mine.