A Girl Like That(31)
When it came to storytelling, my mother said that I had Pappa’s skills, the same capacity to fabricate truths for survival when needed.
It wasn’t a compliment, but it was how I managed to bring her to Jeddah a year after Pappa died. (“Yes, sir. Labor visa, sir. Arabic? Of course I know Arabic. Bad accent? Sorry, sir. What to do? I’m Indian, no? But don’t worry, I will learn fast-fast.”) It was also how I later got a job at the Lahm b’Ajin deli and cheese shop in Aziziyah. (“Of course I’ve seen that machine before! And I’m a quick learner.”)
It wasn’t difficult lying about my age. Twenty-one, I told the labor agents, even though I was eighteen. I was taller than most boys my age, and big-boned like my father. After scraping a thousand rupees together, I managed to get a new birth certificate from the chawl near our old Mumbai apartment building where, for the right price, you could buy everything from fake report cards to real Beretta handguns.
Porus Dumasia. S/o Neville and Arnavaz Dumasia. Born June 21, 1993, at the Parsi General Hospital. June 21 was the longest day of the year, Pappa had told me. It was also the first day of summer, a good day for new beginnings, I’d thought when I asked the forger to write it down.
There were times, however, when stories came alive. When someone who you thought you’d never see again stepped back into your world and knocked the wind out of you—the way Zarin Wadia did to me in the deli in Jeddah a few weeks after I began to work there, her face so familiar that I accidentally tripped over my own feet, my rear slamming hard against the freshly mopped tiles.
For a moment, I sat on the floor, staring at her startled face. The short black hair that curled in waves around her head. The sharp, angled brows over her brown eyes. The tiny birthmark, perfectly placed, right above her soft pink lips.
It was the birthmark that tipped me off, and that look in her eyes—part wildcat, part startled doe. It was the same look she gave me when I first clambered up the sagging wooden stairs of Building Number 4 in Cama colony and stood next to her, waiting, curious about the cute girl with the funny haircut.
Twelve years had passed since then and the haircut was still the same. The girl, however, had morphed, might have stepped out of my favorite story in Pappa’s old copy of Classic Persian Myths, her heart-shaped face and delicate curves reminding me of the fair, dark-haired Armenian princess Shirin.
“Porus!” my boss yelled. “What happened to you, boy?”
“S-sorry, sir.” Heat rushed to my ears and I scrambled to my feet. “I … fell down.”
By the time I got up, however, she was gone. I shook my head, wondering if my work combined with the Saudi heat was simply making me hallucinate.
But a week later, I saw her at the store again, this time accompanied by her aunt and uncle, who I recognized from my years at the colony. To my surprise, Rustom Wadia, who might only have patted my head in passing when Pappa was still alive, came up to the counter and started talking to me in Gujarati. “So you’re the Parsi old Hamza was telling me about!” He glanced at the new name tag on my apron. “Dumasia, Dumasia … You wouldn’t happen to know Neville Dumasia, would you? From Cama colony?”
“He was my father,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me, Mr. Wadia, but we used to stay in the building across from yours. My mother, Arnavaz, used to give Gujarati tuitions over there.”
“Call me Rusi Uncle, my boy. Or just Rusi, if you feel like it. I’m not so old yet.”
For the first time in months I felt my mouth curve into a genuine smile. “Okay, Rusi Uncle.”
“What a small world we live in! Yes, yes, of course I remember you. In fact, I should have seen it earlier; you look so much like your father, young man. Khorshed? Khorshed, come here. Arrey, where has that woman gone to?” he said, waving over his wife, who was standing next to Zarin by the meat-chopping counter in the middle of the store.
“It’s a wonder,” Rusi Uncle said after he’d made the introductions—or, rather, reintroductions. “Khorshed and I hardly know any Parsis here in Jeddah, you know. So when Hamza told me that he’d hired you to work here, we decided that we had to meet you.”
As we continued talking, I found myself glancing at Zarin from time to time, hoping for a hint of recognition, a sign acknowledging our accidental meeting the week before. Earlier, when her uncle had introduced her to me, she’d simply given me a stiff nod, ignoring the hand I held out to shake hers. She probably didn’t even remember who I was. And why would she? Even back then, despite the teasing, I’d known several boys in the colony who had crushes on her. It was partly why they teased her so much. I was one among many.
Now she was staring at the floor, sliding a well-worn sneaker across the speckled tiles. Had it been another girl, I would have taken the hint and given up. But a part of me—a stubborn part that Mamma accused me of inheriting from my father—still remembered the old Zarin. The one who would peek out her window and then slip back into hiding when she caught a glimpse of me. Zarin of the cautious smiles and shy waves. Someone I considered a friend even though we hadn’t talked.
Or maybe it was the way her curls looked in the light, black and shiny; the way she exhaled and glanced up at the ceiling, her lips parted in a sigh. Clearly there was something about this girl that short-circuited the rational parts of my brain, that addled me enough to say what I said next.