A Girl Like That(37)
Having Zarin in my life broke the monotony of working at the deli and lightened the crushing grief that had come with my father’s death, a feeling that could go away for days on end and then suddenly return the moment I saw a man with salt-and-pepper hair or smelled the pages of an old book.
My mother, who had spoken to Khorshed Aunty a few times after I introduced them, didn’t approve of my friendship with Zarin.
“Khorshed has told me a few things about this girl,” Mamma told me. “About her misbehavior at school and at home. She doesn’t think twice about the things she does. She doesn’t care about the people around her; she’s so rude, even to her own masi and masa.”
“They are not always kind to her,” I argued, remembering the bruises I had seen on her arm. “It’s not … things are not always what they seem.”
My mother looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were sad. “Porus, you are so much like your father. Always giving people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes it is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Please listen to what I’m saying. Think long and hard before you get too involved with this girl.”
Yet, when it came to Zarin, anything that resembled thought always went out the window. There was something about her that instinctively drew me, that I could not explain to myself, let alone to my mother.
The nights I couldn’t sleep, I took to sneaking out and driving around aimlessly—something that was easier to do in Jeddah than it was in Mumbai, where many of the roads were narrow and poorly lit. In Jeddah, streetlights burned like fireflies, following me everywhere from the dazzling glamor of Palestine Street to quiet residential lanes. I could pretend I was with Pappa, showing him the city the way Zarin had showed it to me, pointing out landmarks that flashed by between palm trees, joking about how lucky I was that the gas here was cheaper than drinking water.
Once, on a whim, I even drove to Aziziyah and parked across the street near Zarin’s small, four-story apartment building, a few feet behind the municipal garbage bin. A gibbous moon hung in the sky and for several moments I sat in silence, mesmerized, until a pair of cats leaped out of the garbage bin, their screeches piercing the air.
I jerked upright, heart pounding. Lights glared down at me, reflecting in the hood of my car. They made me realize suddenly how bright everything was—how easy it would be for anyone to look outside and catch me lurking. If Zarin saw me now, she would probably call me a stalker. Or maybe even a roadside Romeo, the way the boys at the deli did whenever they caught me staring at her. I was about to drive off again when a shadow appeared at the ground-floor window of Zarin’s apartment, followed by the brush of a pale hand against the grille. “I get nightmares,” Zarin had told me. “Sometimes I think it’s better if I don’t sleep.”
I wondered if it was her now, if she would turn around and catch me watching her. But she never did. Seconds later, the hand disappeared and the shadow went back to bed.
A GIRL LIKE ANY OTHER
Zarin
There were different kinds of love, Porus said. The kind that struck you instantaneously—“Lust at first sight!” I interrupted—and the kind that grew with time—“Desperation!”—which was what he hoped would happen between him and me.
“It doesn’t work that way, Zarin,” he said irritably. “Falling in love does not mean you’re desperate.”
“Of course it does!” I countered. “There’s no other way I would fall in love with you.”
Pain flashed in his eyes, as quick as liquid, and then was gone with a blink. My own smart mouth didn’t surprise me. It was the regret that came with using it on Porus that did. I was never known for censoring myself when talking to anyone, especially not the boys I went out with. But saying something intentionally (mostly unintentionally) cruel to Porus always made me feel guilty. Any other boy would have left by now.
To my surprise, apart from the few rare occasions when he revealed his pain, Porus generally laughed at me. Tohfani, he called me in Gujarati. Tempestuous.
It was an apt description. If I was like a tempest, then Porus was like a rock, solid and unflappable. And, as bad as this sounded, each time he laughed at my cruelty, I couldn’t help but test his limits, see how much he could take before snapping back.
“Do you ever get angry?” I asked him one day at the deli, though my tone was more curious than taunting. “I mean, don’t you want to bash in someone’s head at times?”
“Yours, you mean?” His lips curved up into a small smile—the kind he sometimes flashed at giddy female customers. I was annoyed to feel my heart skip a beat.
“You don’t want to see me angry, Zarin,” he said. “I have a really bad temper.”
“Yeah, right,” I said with a snort, even though I sometimes wondered if he was telling the truth, if his biceps were really as rock hard as they had felt when my fingers had accidentally brushed against them that one time in his car.
I could have, perhaps, ignored my irritation over Porus’s Gandhian temperament or unexpected charisma. But somehow he’d also penetrated the barriers Masa and Masi had set up for me as a girl. “Such a decent boy!” Masa called him, and this annoyed me the most. Masi also approved of Porus, though I knew this had less to do with decency and more to do with the fact that Porus was Parsi—a pure Parsi born of two Parsi parents—which automatically made him 99 percent better than any other guy who liked her half-Hindu niece.