Chapter Fifteen
They had seen the photos, and Nana, so I was told, almost had a stroke. Aunt Mina, I had been informed by Shazia, had been sitting in the waiting room at the cancer specialist’s clinic, had randomly picked up a magazine, and had to look five times at the picture before she realized it was me. The Viva girl was now in a light blue lace camisole and matching underwear, her head hanging upside down off a couch, hair sweeping a gold colored carpet, a round, ripe cherry in her red-painted mouth. Shazia said that her ailing mother had turned the magazine around countless times in a bid to rule out any possibility that it was me. But there I was, cleavage and all, my legs crossed at the ankle above me.
Owing to a newfound and curious affinity with my grandfather, Aunt Mina had ripped out the page and mailed it to him. After all, they both now shared the pain of having disobedient and disgraceful daughters. Such was their closeness, that my grandfather had even returned to the phone booth around the corner from our house to call Aunt Mina, to cry down the line about the shame of rearing a girl who had become, as he had put it, a “common prostitute.” My mother had apparently snatched the magazine page from her father’s trembling hand, ripping it into a thousand pieces, convincing herself that in so doing she was killing me off.
Why Shazia felt compelled to call me and tell me this I could not understand. It was like she wanted me to know that my family’s disgust with me was now so profound and so complete, that I could surely never redeem myself with them, that any vague hope I might have had of reconciling with them in the future was now utterly trashed. It was like she wanted to ensure my isolation.
That night, smarting with shame, I lay in bed, willing myself to sleep and imagining Nana lying in his. He would do as he always did when bothered about something-stare at the dust-covered ceiling fan that whirred softly overhead, his hands folded behind his head, his glasses resting on the bedside table. He was probably praying that nobody else would ever see that photograph. I could imagine my mother in her own misery in the room next door, the room she once shared with me, mystified at how such a well-brought-up girl could have turned out so badly.
My last day at Café Crème came exactly three months and four days from when I had started there. After my first shoot with Viva, Mathias had reckoned that it would be just a matter of time before I would feel motivated to move on.
“There is no need for you to be sitting behind that desk and counting money when you are making so much of it on your own,” he had said.
My contract with Viva was for a significant enough sum that I could have even moved out and rented my own place, probably somewhere hopelessly chic in the 16earrondisement. But I was interested in no such thing. Karla, Teresa, and Juliette were still my only friends, and the only people with whom I spent time when I wasn’t being photographed, strutting down a catwalk, or being filmed for a television ad. When Dimitri had arranged for me to be interviewed by Madame Figaro, one of the best-read publications in France, the reporter had used a headline that translated, roughly, as THE LONELY MUSLIM MODEL. She had asked me questions about my culture and faith, about how many times a day I prayed or whether I went to the mosque or if anyone in my extended family had ever considered being detonated. She asked me if I would eventually be one of numerous wives, consigned to living life in a burka behind the high white walls of a Saudi palace. I explained to her that I was Indian, and not Arab, that I ate no pork and consumed no alcohol but that being here, in Paris, I had figured out in which direction Mecca was and still prayed to it.
Then she asked me about my family, and how they felt about my newfound success, to which I mouthed a soft “OK. Fine.”
“Actually, no, wait,” I said to the interpreter. “That’s not true.”
I then told them about the scene in Sabrina that had pulled me toward this magical place, and the note with Tariq’s phone number on it, and a cousin named Shazia who had been determined that I stay on here and to “follow my destiny.” I told them about the grandfather I thought had loved me more than anything else in the world, and who now considered me dead, and a mother who didn’t have the courage to fight for me. These were things I had told nobody, not even the girls I lived with, and while a part of me felt I was betraying the code of silence that is often imposed on girls like me, I didn’t care anymore.
Shortly afterward, I stared at the printed article, a photograph of me atop a hotel roof, taken from the side, gazing over the buildings that crouched beneath. I looked as wistful and sad as I felt, the words conveying my melancholy. I carefully clipped the feature out, folded it neatly, and slid it into a large brown envelope. At the post office, I paid extra for special handling and delivery, a guarantee that it would arrive at its destination and that I’d be able to track it if it didn’t. I sent it off and waited for the phone to ring.
Two weeks later, the envelope was returned to me, unopened. On the front, I recognized my grandfather’s handwriting and the thin, dark-blue fountain-tip pen he always used, the ink spelling out the words: PLEASE RETURN. SENDER UNKNOWN.
Chapter Sixteen
Dimitri said he didn’t want to lose me, that I was his best client, that my future was as bright as the moon and that I would be his nest egg.
But he said that to me as he handed over a plane ticket to New York. His eyes sincere, one palm pressed against his small face, he told me how much he would miss me, but that his cousin Stavros, who ran the New York branch of his operation, would look after me.
“Your future is there, not here. Of that I am sure,” he said. “It’s what the Viva people want. The campaign is global; the brand is booming. New York is the center of the world. When this contract finishes, there will be no end of opportunities, but you must be there to exploit them. Stavros will see to it. Don’t worry about anything; from the time he picks you up at the airport, he will take care of everything. You will be to him like you have been to me, his number-one girl.”
The girls threw me a farewell party, although only Dimitri and Mathias were invited. We sat around the apartment and ate miniature quiches and vegetable terrine on crunchy toast, all courtesy of Café Crème. I drank apple juice while they had champagne, begging me again to have one little sip, just one, to properly bid them farewell. I shook my head, joking that I was in enough trouble with Allah to begin with, and they laughed as I cried.
Stavros was gorgeous. He had salt-and-pepper hair and pale gray eyes, and he was tall and tanned. He gallantly took my baggage cart from me as soon as he saw me, whisking me through the chaos of the terminal at JFK and into a waiting black car. Inside, he lit a cigarette, looked me up and down, and smiled through straight white teeth.
“You are going to have quite a career here,” he said.
I turned to look out the window, trying to take in the roughness and speed of the city.
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I said.
“Because it’s true. Compared to Dimitri, I run a totally professional organization. I even have an office these days. I have some fabulous girls on my books, but nobody quite like you-nobody as exotic, delicate, and strong at the same time.” He reached over and pulled aside my hair, which had fallen like a curtain over one side of my face. I caught the driver’s eye in the mirror, and he averted his gaze, turning up the volume on the radio.