A Girl Like That(70)
As I ate, Porus drove us to a part of the Corniche that I’d seen once before, on a school field trip when I was younger—a strip of Jeddah coastline that extended for several kilometers in a series of sandy pillars instead of the rock and metal sculptures that dominated the Al-Hamra part of the beach. I wouldn’t have minded the longer drive, probably wouldn’t even have noticed anything, had Porus not taken us there in his sixteen-year-old green clunker—a vehicle that seemed determined to test out every bump and pothole on the road.
The inside of the Nissan always smelled funky—like feta cheese and mutton, to be specific. And every time Porus drove the car over the speed of sixty kilometers per hour, it rattled until I got a migraine. I had already given Porus a few subtle hints about getting a new set of wheels: “What did you think of the secondhand Honda we saw at the used car lot the other day? It looked decent—only four thousand riyals!” When subtlety proved unsuccessful, I’d progressed to the not-so-subtle hints: “Get rid of it, Porus!” But the whole exercise was pointless. “It’s only the high beams and the brake lights that aren’t working, Zarin,” Porus had said, ignoring my complaints about the rattling noises. “I can get the rewiring done for less than four thousand. Give me some time; I’m waiting for my next paycheck.”
I rolled down the car window now and inhaled the salty breeze. The best part about going to the Corniche was the Jeddah Fountain, which could be seen from mostly anywhere, as long as you stuck to the coast. The fountain was closed that morning for maintenance, which on any other day (and with any other boy) would have made the date a flop, shawarma notwithstanding. But I was with Porus. And somehow, despite the awkward silence that had crept up between us during the drive to the beach, I almost felt okay again.
“Do…” I hesitated. My hands shook. “Do you have a Marlboro, by chance?”
Porus sighed, but instead of scolding me the way he normally would have, he simply dug around in his bag and pulled out the pack and lighter he kept in there for me. I had known Porus long enough by now to know how he felt about my smoking, could feel it in the hesitant brush of his fingers against my palm. But he said nothing to me that day, and for that I was grateful.
Porus opened his own window a crack. I sucked at the filter and tried to blow smoke rings like Alice in Wonderland’s hookah-happy caterpillar, but the smoke dissipated without forming any particular shape. My second attempt was little better, though this time the smoke blew out in a straight line, a mocking imitation of the Jeddah Fountain itself.
I still remembered the first time Masa had pointed the fountain out to me: the base shaped like an incense burner; the water shooting out with such force that it looked like white smoke against the sky. He later told me a tale about little white horses galloping far into the sea, their manes the only things visible over the water. “Where are they?” I asked, looking for the horses, and he’d pointed out their manes—the streaming white froth that we now called sea foam. I never tired of hearing the story back then, and he never tired of repeating it to me.
I reflected on the silent treatment my uncle gave me now, except for that one day when he’d ordered me to start going back to school, his eyes colder than I’d ever seen them, nearly as cold as Masi’s had been the day I first entered their apartment in Mumbai.
A monarch butterfly landed on the windshield of Porus’s car, its wings fiery orange and black in the sunlight. Seeing it increased the hollow feeling in my chest. It is strange, I thought, how we always recognize our best memories in hindsight.
I stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray.
“Do you want to get out of the car?” I asked, and Porus nodded.
Families were already gathering in groups on various parts of the beach, unrolling picnic mats and laying out containers of food. This particular patch of beach, I remembered now, was a good place for large groups to gather, and also for men to fish in silence. My shoulders relaxed when I realized that there were no teenagers in either of the groups—only adults and small children. I would not run into anyone from school over here.
Tan, hip-high pillars formed a railing in front of us, marking the perimeter of the coastline, with several feet of sand beyond—a guard of sorts between the cars in the parking lot and the sea. They weren’t tall enough to really discourage people from climbing over, though, so that’s what I did, my abaya hiked up over my hips, and then jumped, landing softly in the wet sand. A second later, I felt Porus touch down beside me. To my surprise, his feet were bare, grains of sand coating them like brown sugar. The soft, white rubber-soled shoes he wore at the deli hung loosely from one hand.
“That sand may not be exactly clean, you know,” I pointed out. Food wrappers, cigarette butts, broken glass shards—you never knew what was lying in there. “I was here a few years ago and accidentally stepped on a dead jellyfish.” It was the one thing I’d always remembered about this place and that field trip: the sensation of my bare foot against a slippery, squishy blob. I suppressed a shudder and then scowled when Porus started laughing at me.
“It’s not funny,” I said. “Some of them sting, you know!”
“Don’t care.” He wiggled his toes in the sand and stretched out his arms. “It comes with the territory. A little bit like being with you, actually.”
My face reddened. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”