“If I really think about it, I guess I can understand why Nana is the way he is,” I said. “He is from another generation, after all. He is an old-timer in every sense,” I said, now laughing. “But to see the fury on my mother’s face-it shocked me. I had never seen such a thing. I had never seen much of anything on her face.” I stirred my tea, watching as the swirls of milk dissolved into the caramel-colored liquid.

“It pained me to see how she was with you,” my aunt said, her expression now sad. “I couldn’t understand how a mother couldn’t love her child.”

I thought back, for a second, to Zoe, my first roommate in Paris, the short-haired American girl who had given birth to a daughter that she had never wanted either. Perhaps it wasn’t so uncommon after all.

“When your mother saw how beautiful you were becoming, she almost turned against you,” my aunt continued. “She wanted you to be like her. She began to see you as a stranger. And when she realized how much your grandfather loved you, and how close you were to him, she put herself in the background of your life, concerning herself with whether the vegetable basket was full and that your school fees were paid on time. But she never knew how to really be a mother to you, did she?” my aunt asked, looking at me with such tenderness that I wanted to cry.

Aunt Gaura’s words were shocking to me, even though she was telling me something I think I always knew. I pushed my chair back as if I needed to stand up and go somewhere, when I really had nowhere else to go.

“Maasi, tell me something,” I asked. “My friend Nilu told me that Nana had the accident on his way to the post office, that he was going to mail something to me. What was it? Do you know?”

Aunt Gaura scooped another spoonful of sugar into her tea. She then lifted up her head and stared straight at me.

“It was a letter from your father.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Spandau Ballet was playing in the elevator as I rode up back to my room. I recognized the song from a fashion show I had done in Rome a month earlier, where the designer had resurrected the trends-and the music-of the 1980s. He had put me in a lime green jacket with big padded shoulders and a peplum waist, and had given me a tiny miniskirt to wear with shiny pantyhose and high-heeled pumps. He had crimped my hair and clasped dangling gold earrings onto my lobes. When I was ready, staring into a mirror backstage and preparing for my turn to head out to the catwalk, the young dresser whispered in my ear that I looked like a “poor Bangladeshi Ivana Trump.” I had laughed, too carefree to really be offended.

As I stood outside my room, searching for my key card, I thought back for a moment to those days when my life was an endless flurry of fittings and parties and limo rides and photographers and hundreds of hours spent in fancy airport lounges where all the food was free.

Even when I was famous, I never felt it. And now, being a lifetime away from all that, it didn’t even feel real anymore. I barely gave a thought to what had happened with Kai and his career, and Felicia and her neuroses, and Stavros and the wife he pretended he wasn’t married to. They all seemed like characters I had read about in a book long ago, part of a life I had never really sought out, and that I was now happy to leave behind.

I was just about to pull down my door handle when I heard the pleasant ring of the elevator, the upward arrow turning red, footsteps coming down the hall toward me, quicker than usual.

“You’re a hard girl to find.”

I looked up.

“Your cook told me you were staying here.” Tariq looked happy and radiant.

“What are you doing here?” I said, surprised but not displeased to see him. “I thought I asked you not to come.”

“You did indeed,” he said, still grinning. “But I was on my way to Pakistan to see my own grandfather, just as I told you. And my office wanted me to take a meeting with some financiers in Bollywood. So here I am. I went by your place hoping to see you, but got your cook instead. So it didn’t go well, then?”

“No. Quite badly, actually. But my mother’s sister, Gaura maasi, is helping me. She’s the only one in my family who understands and who actually doesn’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, if that makes a difference,” he said, the overhead lights bouncing off his shiny black hair, his tiny earrings trembling with the slightest of movements.

“You’ve been very kind to me,” I said. “I don’t deserve it. Right now, I can only think of my nana, of getting him to see me, to know that I dropped everything and came back for him. I’m supposed to go back later this evening, when he will hopefully be awake.”

“Sounds good,” Tariq said. “I’ve finished my meeting and don’t have to leave until the day after tomorrow. So please, let me come with you.”

This time, he was awake. This time, there was nobody to tell me I couldn’t go in, that I couldn’t touch the hand of the man who had loved me more than anybody else ever had. Aunt Gaura silenced my mother again and waited outside the bedroom door, making awkward conversation with Tariq, who clutched on to a bottle of mineral water.

There was no anger in my nana’s voice, and in a way I wished there had been, because that would have told me that at least he had some energy left, that all his senses hadn’t been diminished and deadened by his accident.

“Beti, you’ve come,” he said, his voice low and guttural yet consoling.

“I’m so sorry, Nana.” I was sobbing now, relieved that at least I was able to see him before he got any worse, and even more relieved that he didn’t hate me like he said he did.

“I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I had to leave. I should never have. Please, I beg you, forgive me,” I said. I placed my head on his chest, like I used to do when I was a little girl. This time, like he did then, he put both his hands on my head and stroked it. When I sat up again, tears coursing down my cheeks, he turned his head slightly to look at me, his eyes a little wider.

“I did not understand what you were doing,” he said. “You have brought disgrace to the Shah name. After you left, I could never again walk through the neighborhood without feeling ashamed. But,” he said, pausing to lick his lips. “I am not angry anymore. I am too weak to hold on to grudges. So if you have come here for my forgiveness, then your trip is not wasted. You have it.”

It was what I thought I wanted to hear. But now that he had said it, I was still unsettled. He wasn’t angry anymore, but that look on his face was still there, the one shadowed with disappointment and despair. He looked at me like I was the child who had burned down the family house by mistake, unable to be blamed but a source of endless regret anyway.

My grandfather might have still been alive. But I knew that I had already lost him.

I said nothing to Tariq on the way back to the hotel. He had wanted to know what had happened, what had been said. But my head was a mess, my brain clouded with misery and confusion.

“Through the door I saw him put his hand on your head,” said Tariq finally, as we were approaching the hotel. “That must have made you very happy, that he is not cursing you anymore.”

“Not being cursed is one thing,” I replied. “But having blessings, that is something else.” I bit my lip. “I’ll never have those blessings again.”

The sun was a brilliant burnt orange, getting ready to settle down for the night. The outside of the hotel was relatively quiet, just a few taxis like ours pulling up at the taxi rank, small pockets of people standing around, making plans. The drinks-and-dinner crowd would be arriving soon.