A Girl Like That(58)

“I am not meaning it that way.”

“‘I am not meaning it that way,’” she mimicked, exaggerating my Gujarati accent, her every word a bite.

We both grew silent after that, not speaking for several minutes. The clock in the living room struck six. I sipped my barely touched tea. Cold.

“I need to get going now. I have work.” I spoke in Gujarati this time, not trusting myself to speak in English.

“Fine. Go, then.”

When I glanced back one last time, she was breaking biscuits into pieces, smaller and smaller, crushing so hard that the crumb finally turned to powder and slid through her fingers like sand.





SHAME





Mishal

The story came out in bits and pieces, first over the phone, during a conversation between Abdullah and some guy named Bilal.

“Really.” Abdullah sounded fascinated. “He told me he did her. Not once, but thrice. Nice and tight, she was, he said.”

“Nah. We got drunk last night and the truth came out. He couldn’t even get it up. Then his bad luck turned real bad. That girl’s Romeo came along and started screaming and beat the crap out of him.”

“What? What Romeo?”

“That deli boy. You know, the one with the junkyard of a car?”

“So that’s how Farhan got his nose broken.” Abdullah laughed as if it was the funniest thing in the world. “He told me he fell in the shower.”

“Yeah. A shame really, for Farhan miyan. A thousand riyals down the drain.”

At school, other rumors were afloat, most of them bearing the headline “Zarin Wadia’s Historical Breakup with Farhan Rizvi.”

“Did those cigarettes fry her brain cells?” Chandni Chillarwalla shook her head. “Farhan Rizvi. God, if he so much as looked at me, I would die of happiness. To have him and then dump him?”

“Good from far, far from good,” Alisha Babu retorted. “I thought it was brilliant. I mean, what’s the big deal about Rizvi anyway? Sure he’s athletic and everything, but there are better-looking guys out there. And his eyes are so creepy, almost yellow like a cat’s!”

The dumping rumors didn’t really sit well with me, especially since Zarin did nothing to confirm or refute them. After that dramatic confrontation with Rizvi outside the auditorium, she had grown silent. For days, she sat in her corner seat in the back row of the classroom, saying nothing, looking pale. It was only when someone asked her a question that her old arrogance returned—the “Mind your own business” response that made everyone believe that yes, it was quite likely that Zarin Wadia was the only girl in Qala Academy capable of hooking and then breaking the heart of the school heartthrob.

“You should have seen it,” Layla said, repeating the story of the confrontation to those who did not know. “He was waiting outside the exam hall for Asma after our mocks. When Zarin came out, he tried talking to her. Said, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ She got this disgusted look on her face. Like he was a statue some bird had pooped on in the garden. Then she suddenly dug into her bag and pulled out a pair of knitting needles. I thought she was going to poke his eyes out or something, she looked so furious!”

“Do you think they did it?”

Which was really the question most hotly debated among the girls in our batch. The segment who called Zarin a delinquent thought it was quite likely she was no longer a virgin. Another segment, led by Alisha, who had turned into a Zarin Wadia fan girl ever since Zarin had won the Best Speaker award at the debate, called their arguments illogical and antifeminist. “You do realize,” she told me, “that if Zarin was a boy, no one would be questioning her purity or lack of it. How does one determine virginity anyway? Hymens can break in other ways too.”

“Now that sounds gross!”

“This is a sign of qayamat. We are going to burn in hell.”

“Stop being silly,” Alisha said. “I’m sure the Lord has better things to do than condemn a group of girls discussing their own bodies to hellfire.”

“But think about it,” someone else argued. “We are young now and most of us have committed sins that may be small, but as the days go on, our sins pile up, don’t they? When you face God on judgment day, what are you going to tell Him? How will you account for your misdeeds?”

I glanced at Zarin’s empty desk. Marked absent from school for the second time that week for unexplained reasons.

“What do you think?” Layla asked me. “About her and head boy Rizvi?”

“You mean if they did it? Who knows?” I shrugged. “With her reputation, anything is possible.”

I didn’t tell them that BlueNiqab’s Tumblr inbox was inundated with asks and fan mail, different details, sent in by different people:

did u kno abt da warehouse on madinah rd? I bet dats where he tuk her.

A source told me they were doing drugs, Blue! Rizvi was at a house party the night before … at a Saudi prince’s house. Things got pretty wild, if you get my drift.

A lot of it was nonsense, of course. I was pretty sure Rizvi didn’t know anyone in the Saudi royal family, even though his dad did have a good job at the Interior Ministry. Someone (probably a guy) sent in a terribly photoshopped image of Zarin’s and Rizvi’s faces pasted onto the naked bodies of a man and woman having sex. After examining the disgusting image closely, I deleted it and blocked the sender. I might not have liked Zarin or Rizvi, but even I had my limits.