A Girl Like That(76)

My gaze fell on the lamp again. I said nothing.

Time passed and eventually dissolved the little friendship we’d struck up over the memory of a girl none of us had really known. I lost touch with mostly everyone, except Layla, when I left to study psychology in Riyadh (after successively and accidentally pouring cups of scalding-hot tea down the thobs of three “eligible Saudi bachelors” and one across the skirt of Abdullah’s fiancée when she came to see him, pleased to see Abdullah’s pretty white skin turn an angry red).

“How dare you?” Father had said, raising his hand to hit me when he found out about what I’d done to the suitors.

“How dare you?” Mother had said, emerging suddenly from her room and slapping his hand away. “Even a qadi asks a bride if she wishes to marry a man, and you dare force my daughter into a marriage she does not want?”

Father was so shocked to see Mother after so many years that he backed away at once. Mother turned to me. “I heard you that day. At the door. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mishal. I’ve been a bad mother. Haven’t I?”

“Yes. You have,” I told her, before promptly bursting into tears.

This time, however, I wasn’t in my room alone. This time, Mother’s arms wound around me, frailer than before, but there. Surprisingly, miraculously there.

It was strange to see Mother rise from her stupor and begin playing the role of parent again, asking to check my homework like I was seven, even scolding Abdullah once for coming home late. It was strange to tell her of my decision to study psychology and show her the university brochures Layla had given me. I would be alone, I knew. In a different city, perhaps a different country. But at least I would be alone on my own terms.

“It will be fine,” Mother said softly, and for a moment I saw her again—the woman who had played with Abdullah and me, who had scolded me for my misbehavior, whose eyes now held a shimmer of pride. “You will be fine.”

Mother helped me pack the lamp, which I took with me to Riyadh, first, and later to London, on scholarship. While I was away, she divorced Father and moved back to Lucknow. Abdullah’s first fiancée left him and he got married to another girl. Time happened as well. Time smoothed out some of the cracks in our relationship, brought us back on talking, texting, and skyping terms.

“Hey. Do you remember Rizvi? From school?” Abdullah said one morning over Skype.

“Your friend?” I asked, pretending ignorance, even though inwardly I felt myself wince.

“Yeah. Remember how the girls loved him?” Abdullah’s smile was weak under his beard. “Well, his mom e-mailed me last week. He’s dead.”

“What?” My carefully feigned indifference crumbled under the shock of the news. “What do you mean? I mean, how?”

“They found him next to a Dumpster in a back alley in Hyderabad. Drugs. Crack cocaine to be specific.”

Both of us were silent for a minute.

“I saw him, you know,” Abdullah said. “A couple of years ago. He was living at a friend’s place. His dad threw him out of the house after Farhan tried to knife him for not giving him drug money.”

The news shouldn’t have surprised me, but I still felt stunned by it. So the rumors had been true. Those stories about him and Bilal and … I shook my head. What was the point? He was dead now.

“When I met him, he was so high he barely knew who I was.” Abdullah’s voice grew quiet, thoughtful. “But then he looked up. Just once. And he said, ‘Ya Aboody, I messed up, didn’t I? With Nadia. Aliya. Zarin. With all those girls. I see them in my dreams. The drugs, the drugs bring those memories back. But I can’t live without those either. I guess this is my punishment, huh?’”

“Wow,” I said, unable to come up with anything better.

“Yeah.” Abdullah’s frown deepened. “Later, he started begging me for money. I was so repulsed. And yet, I pitied him. So I gave him whatever was in my wallet. It was the last time I saw him.”

I said nothing. Eventually Abdullah changed the subject and we began discussing other things. But Rizvi’s death and his confession stayed on my mind.

So much so that hours later, when I looked up at the night sky, I wondered if she knew. Did dead people know these things?

The lamp, in general, was finicky, as temperamental as its owner had been. There were nights when it stung me if I got too close (the crystal could heat up rather quickly), or times when the bulb refused to light up, no matter how hard I pressed on the switch. Yet the night I found out about Rizvi’s death, it worked without any problems. I fell asleep on my back, my hands cupping the back of my head, my gaze raised to the ceiling, where the crystals showered green and yellow bursts of color against the darkness.





EPILOGUE





Zarin

“Do you remember the first time you ever felt rain on your face?” Porus asked me. “I remember being a boy then. In a boat with Pappa. There was a light drizzle. I asked Pappa the most foolish question then—is there a sea in the sky?”

The air around me buzzed with electric warmth; I could hear the smile in his voice even though I could no longer see him.

“When I was born, it was raining,” I said lightly. “Masi said my mother delivered me at home. Masi said she didn’t know if she was going to put me in a crib or choke me to death.”