A Girl Like That(45)
It reminded me of the puddle in Mumbai two years before, that puddle of blood drying in the sun, turning black where the blood congealed. The mugger lying in it, his body broken and then curled like a question mark. I had been the one to deliver the punch that had burst his nose. It was the one time when I turned from ordinary sixteen-year-old Porus Dumasia to one of many in a full-on Mumbai mob.
I had not known the mugger. Yet the man had been both no one to me and someone. A complete stranger. A representation of the man who’d accosted my parents on their way back home from the hospital the month before. Who’d demanded Pappa’s wallet from him and then sliced into him with a knife before he ripped my mother’s gold chain from her throat and kicked her in the ribs. “Chor!” someone had yelled from the crowd. “Chor!” I’d shouted with the rest of them.
Thief. Thief. Beat. Beat.
The rhythm gained momentum with every kick, every punch. A constable hovered at the sidelines, stick in hand, unsure about intervening at the risk of getting pummeled by our bare, bloody hands. Behind him, a traffic policeman continued working from his position, his shirt bright white in the sun, his whistle gleaming, cheeks puffed as he blew sharp toots and moved his hands, waving cars and mopeds along; for him it was just another day in Mumbai. They said it took two hours after the mob dispersed to move the body away, and that was because it was impeding the six o’clock office rush from walking along the road to return home.
Now, two years later, I took a deep breath. “Maybe you’re right,” I told Zarin. “What Farhad felt for Shirin was rare. It does take a lot to get that kind of passion from a guy. It happens once in a lifetime maybe, such love. But…” I hesitated here, wondering if she would even believe me. “… even an ordinary guy can feel that way, Zarin. He may not dig through a mountain for you, but he will do other things. Little things like remembering your birthday, bringing you gifts for no reason, making sure you get the bigger half of a sandwich. It’s the little things that turn into big things, anyway. That can change someone absolutely ordinary into someone who you can one day love back.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Later, I didn’t remember which one of us moved first. All I remembered was the feel of her lips settling on mine like a butterfly, my own pressing back in response. Her fingers brushed the hollow at the base of my throat and I wondered if she could feel how rapid my pulse was. I’d kissed a couple of girls in Mumbai, before Pappa’s cancer diagnosis, but I didn’t remember feeling like this.
Unwilling to break the kiss, I shifted my mouth to breathe through my nostrils. Our teeth clicked gently. Zarin cradled my jaw with her hands, readjusting our misaligned mouths so quickly that in hindsight I was pretty sure it had been instinctive. I pulled her lower lip into my mouth and sucked carefully.
Maybe that’s what scared her. Or maybe she heard something in the distance. The next thing I knew, she was pulling away from me, breathing hard.
“That was a mistake,” she said quietly. “It can’t happen again.”
“Zarin, please, don’t do this.”
But instead of laughing at me or rolling her eyes, she gave me a sad smile. “That boy you were telling me about before. What if I can’t?”
“Can’t what?”
“Love him back.”
The kiss and her subsequent rejection had frazzled me so much that it took me a moment to remember what she was referring to.
I said nothing in response. The sun dipped into the ocean, staining the sky red. It would be time to take her home soon. Inside my throat was something that felt like a giant ball. I wondered if it was my heart.
Farhan
The girl’s scent was the first thing that hit me—a mix of flowers and sandalwood that cut through the milky smells of the dead skinned goats hanging from hooks in the corner of the Lahm b’Ajin deli shop on Aziziyah, over the heads of the uniformed men working at the counters—a smell that was fresh and gardenlike and female. It brushed past me along with the girl, her abaya sleeve accidentally slapping against my arm. She was wearing one of those abayas that had sequins and corded wire designs on the sleeves and the bottom, the kind that scraped my skin as she passed by, leaving behind a thin white scratch.
She stormed into the store, ignoring the surprised looks she attracted from the people around her, ignoring everyone except for the tall boy who stood behind the glass display case in his white deli uniform and cap, and flashed him a small middle finger stained yellow with nicotine. If the perfume and her walk hadn’t caught my attention already, that definitely would have.
“This is for being a busybody and following me to Durrat Al-Arus.” She rolled her finger back into a fist. “Have you heard of the MYOB concept, Porus? It means Mind Your Own Business.”
“Good afternoon to you too,” the deli boy said, his voice as cold as the blocks of feta in the display case.
I recognized him now. It was the new Indian they’d hired a few weeks before, the one with the fuzzy eyebrows and the funny name, the one who had thrown Bilal out of the store on the owner’s orders.
“And I will not mind my own business,” the boy was telling her. “Not when you go around acting like a—”
“Like a what? A man-izer? A slut?” Her laughter possessed the qualities of a newly cut glass pane: clean, crystalline, and sharp around the edges. “He was a guy, Porus. A guy I smoked with. We didn’t do anything!”