We made our way around the building to the poolside, which was now empty except for a staff member replenishing towels in the cabana in anticipation of the next morning. We sat down on the edge of a deck chair, facing each other. I was twirling the corner of my dupatta around my index finger, pulling the fabric tighter and tighter until my fingertip turned red, then releasing it again and feeling the grooves that had been furrowed into the skin.

Tariq reached out and put his hands on top of mine to stop my nervous movements.

“I’m not quite sure I know what you’re all wound up about,” he said. “Things have gone well. Better than expected. You’re back in your family’s good graces. Well, maybe not your mother. She still seems pretty angry. But with time, even she will come around. You are her flesh and blood, after all.”

I nodded, touched by Tariq’s desire to help me feel better. He stood up and turned around, easing himself down next to me. A soft ocean breeze came up off the beach and whispered gently around us. His skin was fragrant, his hands warm. He felt strong and steady, and all I wanted to do was to rest my head on his shoulder.

If I had listened to my grandfather, Tariq and I would be wed already.

If I had listened to Nana, I would be living with this wonderful and kind man in Paris, the wife of an esteemed lawyer, making plans to bear children of our own, my silver hair on the pillow next to his.

I should have listened.

He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me toward him. The cabana boy was gone now. We heard the keys of a piano tinkling in the lobby as people settled down to drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

“It’s weird how things turn out,” he said softly, leaning his head against mine. “From the first time I saw you, standing in your aunt’s house in Paris, I knew there was something special about you. I thought of you a lot after that.” He held my hands in his. “I just want to be with you all the time,” he said. “That’s why I keep popping up in your life, finding reasons to see you.” He laughed sheepishly. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I want a future with you.”

I let his fingers caress mine, nuzzled my face in his neck. His lips first fell gently on my cheek, colliding with a single tear that had trickled down. I turned my face toward his and let his mouth find mine. His eyelashes fluttered against mine, we were that close. I flashed back to the three other men I had kissed in my life-a boorish British photographer who had forced himself on me, a married man in St. Tropez who had made me feel secure, and a gay rock star who forced his lips to touch mine only for the cameras.

This, now, with Tariq, felt completely right.

There were some things, I decided, I should have listened to my nana about.

Chapter Thirty-two

Shazia had text-messaged me.

YR FMLY IS TXIC, she wrote. U DNT ND THM NYMORE.

After everything she had been through, I was surprised she didn’t understand. She called me later, telling me that if I didn’t “get my butt back to New York,” my career would be over and I would be “nothing more than a contender for The Surreal Life.”

“Shazia,” I said quietly. “I really love you, but I think you watch too much television.”

Tariq was leaving for Karachi in the morning, but would be stopping by in Mumbai again before flying back to Paris. We made plans to meet in a couple of days, to decide what to do next.

I was elated. Despite everything that had gone on with my family, I was starting to feel stirrings of joy again. I had never been in love before, had never even been remotely interested in a man. Having grown up with a mother who had had nothing but anguish because she had tried to conjoin her life with that of a man, I was surprised that I was even thinking this way. I was not quite twenty-one-still, in my mind, too young to be married. But Tariq, I knew, would not be like my father.

My father.

Aunt Gaura came by the hotel the morning after Tariq and I kissed, bringing with her the envelope that Nana had been holding on his way to mail to me the day he almost died. The small brown envelope had a tire tread mark on one corner, blood stains on another, and was now creased and wrinkled.

After my aunt left, I opened it up tentatively, aware that I had never before even touched something that my father had touched.

Inside was a thick black cotton thread, from which dangled a silver crescent moon and a small five-pronged star next to it, the symbols of Islam. There was also a letter, written on three sheaves of yellow-lined paper, the handwriting neat and precise, and looking remarkably like my own, as if that was the one thing I had inherited from my father.

My dear Tanaya,

You must be wondering why, after twenty years, I am now and only now finally writing to you. Please know immediately that the fact that I have not written previously is no indication of how much I have thought of you. For if it were, I would have written every day.

I have seen from the newspapers that you are living far away, in a foreign land, alone, doing something that has contravened our culture and your upbringing. While it would be easy for me to judge such actions, I have stopped myself from doing so, as I have not been present these past two decades to understand what has motivated you to take such a drastic step for your life, what has compelled you to leave home and expose yourself to the world the way you have.

Knowing your grandfather as I did, I am certain that his disappointment in you must be so profound that he is not even speaking to you anymore. Therefore, I wonder if this letter will ever reach you, as he and I are no longer in touch either. It would be an act of Allah indeed if we three split souls can, through this one letter, come together for the briefest of moments. That is my prayer.

But in the assumption that this note, and the accompanying taveez, finds its way to you, there are a few things I need you to know.

You might have been led to believe that I was a ruthless and heartless man, abandoning your mother so soon after our marriage, at the start of your blossoming in her belly. In the first place, and contrary to what she may have told you, I did not even know that she was with child until after you were born. And by then, I was too ashamed to step forward and think of claiming you.

But of equal importance is my need for you to know the truth about my marriage to your mother. I did not leave her. She left me.

I know this might shock you. It shocked me. After all, despite my disappointment when your mother lifted up her veil on our wedding day, when she was not-as I was led to believe-the bearer of the kind of beauty that the Shah family is known for, I had made a vow in Allah’s presence to honor my union with her, and I was committed to doing so. I will not lie; our marriage was not a happy one. I felt duped by your family. Your grandfather needed to marry your mother off, and chose to hide the truth about her until it was too late.

But still, I stayed with it. I was not the most even-tempered or good-natured of husbands, I will confess. But I told her that we would do our best. In the end, you must understand, it was not I that hated your mother. It was she who hated herself. I tried to make her feel comfortable, if not loved. I tried to make her feel that despite everything, she still had a place in the world.

But nothing worked. And one day, after morning prayers, she packed her bags and left.

I have been motivated to write to you now because my brother died recently of cancer. He was only two years older than I, and in seemingly good health until the cancer attacked his liver. He was gone within three months. I realized then that death can come upon us at any time, and I did not want to leave this earth without you knowing the truth, that I could have been a father to you had I been given the chance, and that maybe if I was, you would not have felt the need to leave your life and seek out another just as your mother did.