A Girl Like That(69)



The days and nights, however, ate away at the poet’s flesh. When he came face-to-face with the One True God after death, he looked upon his face. “Why?” the poet asked.

And God replied: “Because a bird only learns to fly when its wings are broken.”

Those who believed in reincarnation said that the poet was later reborn as a great Persian poet whose name was lost to history.

“They borrowed that nameless poet’s ideas, you know,” Pappa had said, eyes widening in the way they always did when one of his stories got out of control. “Rumi, Hafiz, those great Sufis.”

On a normal day, I would simply have laughed and called him out for making up the whole thing. That morning, though, I had accused him of treating me like a kid. “How can being diagnosed with cancer set you free?” I had demanded. “Will you stop lying to me, Pappa?”

But now, as I remembered the story, I felt his presence again. Felt him slide into the room, past the machines, around the counter, and stand next to me, whispering his favorite Rumi quote in my ear.

Hamza caught hold of me by the shoulders. “I hired you because I saw potential.” His voice was softer now. “Potential, ya walad. You work so hard! Leave the girl. Stop this nonsense. A few more years and you can become supervisor, even manager if you want. I promise. Three more years and I can promote you. I beg you, my boy, don’t do this. Don’t ruin your future.”

I stared at my boss, a man who had trusted me enough to give me a job in this country, perhaps the only man who had, in his own way, tried to fill some of the void Pappa had left behind.

“I—I’m sorry, Hamza. I can’t do what you ask of me.” It was as much as I could understand, the closest I could come to describing the band that had tightened around my heart at the thought of leaving her alone, at the mercy of her family, those wolves at her school.

Beads of sweat stood out on Hamza’s pale skin. “Don’t be a fool, boy! You are not thinking clearly.”

Maybe I wasn’t. But Pappa had always told me that love didn’t think. It was, I understood, the choice between the cage of a safe, unbroken life and one of freedom. If I quit, I could be forced to leave the Kingdom within a week—unless Hamza agreed to transfer my iqama to a new employer and issue a No Objection Certificate. With the savings in my bank account and the certificate, I would be able to scrape by for a couple more months and find another job. But chances of that appeared slim now.

Maybe I was a fool like Hamza said. But at least I would be a fool by choice. I took off my apron and placed it in Hamza’s hands. The last thing I heard him yelling through the rush of blood in my ears was my name.





LOVE





Zarin

“Your mother would kill you if she knew you were here with me,” I told Porus quietly.

“Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment,” he replied.

It had been over a week since his mother had called, since Masi’s episode in the clinic’s parking lot. After those first few texts, Porus hadn’t tried to contact me again, and I had been pretty sure he wouldn’t.

The trouble with low expectations is that when they’re exceeded, your heart begins to tango, and mine acted no differently when Porus showed up at our apartment this afternoon in his work uniform, a bandage on his nose, a bruise on his chin.

“What happened? Have I suddenly grown so handsome that you can’t take your eyes off me?”

My fingers reached up to touch the bruise but curled inches short of their goal. “Who did this to you? Was it—?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

I wanted to yell at him. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t go around flirting with me, acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t. As if sensing my anger or maybe anticipating it, he reached out and squeezed my hand reassuringly. Please don’t be mad, he seemed to be saying.

Masa, on the other hand, acted like the whole of last week and the week before had not happened. Upon seeing Porus again it was like a switch went off in him and he changed from a sullen, haggard man who blamed me for his problems into the one Porus was used to seeing in the days before Rizvi.

“Hello, Porus, my boy,” he boomed, and I wondered if he even knew how fake he sounded. When Porus asked him for permission to take me out for a spin in his car, Masa nodded so hard I thought his head would loosen at the joints that held it to his neck and fall off.

“It will be good for her, getting out of the house,” Masa told Porus. “With exams, she’s so busy studying these days. Bring her back in time for dinner, will you, Porus?”

Neither Porus nor I looked at each other during this speech, but I knew he was probably wondering why Masa was even bothering to lie. Everyone knows, I wanted to tell my uncle. Everyone knows what a mess of a family we are.

When I slipped into the passenger seat, I expected Porus to ask me about Masa’s strange behavior. He didn’t. He simply dug into his bag and produced two sandwiches—greasy chicken shawarmas with pickled cucumbers, soggy fries, and garlic sauce. “Hungry?” he asked me.

I nodded. It wasn’t like Masa was starving me over the past week, but with everything that had been going on, my appetite had taken a nosedive. Now though, nestled once more into the slightly worn seat of Porus’s car, my mouth watered at the smell of the garlicky chicken. I tore off the wrapper and took a huge bite.

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