Ayesha At Last(32)

“Are you free tonight?” he asked.

There was a long pause. “You have to give her a time!” someone hissed in the background. “Otherwise she’s going to think you’re weird.”

Ayesha laughed out loud.

“Please excuse me,” Khalid said. When he returned, his voice was muffled. “I had to go out in the hallway. My clients keep interrupting me. I wasn’t trying to ask you out, before. That would be inappropriate.”

“I understand,” Ayesha said, matching his solemn voice, though she was smiling. “Now that you have explained your intentions so clearly, why don’t you get to the actual reason for your phone call?”

There was an awkward pause before Khalid said, “The imam would like us to coordinate the social media campaign for the conference. Are you free to meet tonight at eight?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, stalling.

“We can meet earlier, if you wish. I am free at six. Or seven. Or even seven thirty.”

This was getting strange. “Listen, I have to get back to class. We’ll figure something out,” she said, and before Khalid could reply, she ended the call.

Tanisha stood in front of her, hands on hips. “Was that your boyfriend?” she asked.

“No,” Ayesha said.

“You’re not supposed to pick up your phone during class,” Tanisha said. Then she smiled. “Still, it’s pretty badass of you to call your boyfriend when you should be watching Mean Girls.”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Ayesha said.

“Whatevs,” Tanisha shrugged. She sailed past Ayesha and rapped on the door, which immediately sprang open.

Ayesha crept into the class behind her, back to Lindsay Lohan’s high school jungle.

WHEN she returned home that evening, the house was quiet. Her brother, Idris, sat at the dining room table fiddling with a camera.

“Where is everyone?” she said.

Idris jumped up and pointed the camera at her. “Do you have any last requests?”

Ayesha smiled. She hadn’t seen him in such a playful mood in a long time. “A long bath and five million dollars, please,” she said.

Saleha bustled into the room, holding a familiar pink shalwar kameez. She stopped at the sight of her daughter, and the camera. “Idris,” she said sternly. “What are you doing?”

“Capturing every second,” Idris said.

Saleha threw her son a warning glance, then smiled at her daughter. “Look what Hafsa lent you,” she said, holding the suit up.

Ayesha swatted her mother’s hand away. “I hate pink. Where’s Nana?” she asked as she began climbing the stairs.

Idris’s camera was still trained on his sister. “He went for a walk. He refused to have any part in this outmoded mating ritual.”

Ayesha stopped dead. “What did you say?” she asked her brother.

“Beta, you don’t have to wear pink,” Saleha said, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. Her mother never called her by the Urdu endearment. “After our talk, I started to worry. And then when Nilofer called . . .” She trailed off in the face of her daughter’s stony expression. “It will only take thirty minutes. Just meet the rishta, please. Nani already fried the samosas, and Masood and his mother are on the way.”

Idris kept his camera fixed on Ayesha’s face, capturing her swift transition from anger to a flash of vulnerable contemplation.

Hafsa was not the only one who could capture a man’s attention.

Ayesha tried to shake off that shallow thought, but it lingered. She was twenty-seven years old, still young for so many things. Too young to die, too young not to start over. Still young enough to live with her family.

But she was too old for other things. Too old to never have held someone’s hand. Too old to never have been kissed. Way too old to never have fallen in love or at least teetered on the brink of it.

Maybe she would find love, right here in her own living room, while her mom and brother watched from the sidelines and wished her well. Maybe she would meet Masood and electricity would shoot through her fingertips, and her heart would start pounding when their eyes met for the first time. Why not?

Besides, she had told Khalid she was busy tonight.

“Okay,” she said, to her mother’s relief and Idris’s delight. “Just this once.”

WHEN the doorbell rang, Ayesha was ready. Idris had tried to set up his camera on the dining room table—“So I can get a wide-angle shot”—but Nani made him put it away.

“Don’t worry, I have another camera hidden in the room,” Idris whispered to Ayesha. He danced away before she could demand he hand it over.

Saleha walked down the hallway, followed by the rishta, Masood, and his mother, Nilofer. Saleha made the introductions and they all looked awkwardly at each other.

Nilofer Aunty was a fashionable woman dressed in a shalwar kameez cut in the latest style, her dupatta shawl draped casually around her neck like an Hermès scarf. Her hair was pulled back in a neat bun, her makeup expertly applied. She took a seat on their old brown armchair and glanced around the tiny living room with appraising eyes. Her son was a stocky man with extremely broad shoulders, a barrel chest and stubby legs. He was dressed in a green polo shirt and blue jeans with white socks.