It was evident that she had no interest in hearing from me, so I went into the little bedroom and shut the door. I knew that my mother and Nana, my two closest living relatives, were waiting to hear from me, sitting by the phone in our fluorescent-lit living room. A sense of guilt crept in as I took comfort in the fact that they were unable to contact me unless they left the house and headed to the corner booth, and that the reason for their silence so far had been the expense of such a call-especially so soon after the one initially made to Aunt Mina. I remembered the look on Nana’s face as he had said good-bye to me in Mumbai, the tears he would not allow to fall from his eyes, the kiss he gave me on my forehead as he whispered in my ear: “May Allah be with you and keep you safe.”

I know I should have been ashamed at myself for misleading them like this, promising one outcome only so I could achieve another.

A small radiator hummed quietly as it hugged the wall. In the suddenly warm room I took off my coat, with the piece of paper with Tariq’s number now covered in lint and stuck to a foil candy wrapper. I stared for a moment at a photograph that sat atop a chest of drawers-of Aunt Mina and her daughter, Shazia, for whom I would have to vacate this room the next day. My grandfather had told me a little about Shazia’s allegedly wild lifestyle as a single working girl in Los Angeles, referring to her as “a bad sort” and insisting that I not “get any ideas” from her.

The next day, we were back at Charles de Gaulle. My second visit to this airport in only four days was enough to make me feel like a proud veteran of the city. Shazia’s plane had been delayed, so as Aunt Mina rested on a low leather seat at the back of the cavernous hall, I walked up and down the arrivals area, occasionally stopping to gaze overhead at the huge board that announced the movements of the planes-where they were going, which ones had just touched down. I watched as well-dressed women in trim pantsuits and high-heeled boots pressed lips with their arriving lovers, and I watched young children throwing their arms around their mothers, who were returning alone from God-knows-where. I wanted to go up to each of these people, to ask them who they were, where they had just been, what they had done there. But of course I did no such thing, not just because I had been trained not to speak to strangers unless absolutely necessary, but also because the only word I had learned in four days was “bonjour,” and that wouldn’t take me very far.

I noticed then that people were looking at me, too. A group of curly-haired Algerian men clustered around a pay phone whistled as I walked by, one of them raising his eyebrows as if asking me a secret question. I covered my head again with my dupatta and hurried past. I walked farther down and leaned for a minute against the railing, my back turned toward the throngs of people arriving. In front of me, two elderly women were seated, and they smiled at me when my eyes caught theirs. One turned to the other and said something quickly in French, and I knew they were talking about me.

“They’re saying you’re hot,” said a voice behind me. I turned around. Shazia was shorter than she looked in the photograph in her room, her face plumper.

“Mummy said you would be here. I knew it was you, even from the back,” she said, giving me a hug, still on the other side of the metal railing as a security guard hurried her along. “I was thinking, who else would be covered head-to-toe on a beautiful night like this? Wow,” she said, her eyes resting on the silver streak in my hair. “I’d heard about that, but thought people were making it up. Can I touch?”

I smiled and hugged her again after she had made her way to my side of the railing, the side on which she now belonged. Despite the length of her journey, she smelled like fresh lemons. I liked her immediately.

“Where’s Mummy?” she asked, pulling off her sweater and wrapping its sleeves around her waist.

“Over there, sitting down. She’s not feeling so well,” I said.

“Come,” Shazia said, leading me by the hand. “Let’s go get her and head home.”

The Metro was full, but a man gave up his seat for Aunt Mina while Shazia and I held on to the plastic straps that hung from the ceiling, holding between us a pile of bags and jackets and shawls.

“You never know what the weather will be like here,” Shazia said, motioning to all her stuff. “In Paris, you have to be prepared.

“So have you been enjoying your stay here? Mummy said you came here to see a boy.” For the last part of that sentence, Shazia slid into a Pakistani accent. She wobbled her head from side to side, uttering the words just as her mother might-or mine for that matter-and then giggled at her own insolence.

“Yes, I came to see a boy, but haven’t seen him yet,” I said, wanting to change the subject quickly. “How was your flight? Long way from Los Angeles, yes?”

“Not as long as coming from India,” she said. “You really must have wanted to be here.”

“Yes,” I replied, my eyes now turned downward as I thought guiltily of how I was avoiding phoning home. “It was my dream to come.” Shazia smiled at me and reached up to pull away a few strands of my hair that had become affixed to my lip gloss.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’ve come to look after Mummy for a while, but not 24/7, so we can hang out together, paint the town red and all that.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I certainly liked the sound of it.

The following evening, Shazia and I took a taxi-the first time I had been in one since arriving in Paris-and went to the Buddha Bar, which she told me was one of the most fashionable places in all of Paris. We entered into a space that was as dark as it was loud, handed our coats to a girl sitting in a small cubicle, and almost collided with a waitress in a red-and-gold silk dress carrying a tray of multicolored drinks. Shazia grabbed my wrist and took me down a flight of stairs. I stopped in the middle of the restaurant and stared up at an enormous golden Buddha that dominated the room.

“You can close your mouth now,” Shazia said, smiling. “You’re wowed. We get it.” She pulled me over to a long table at the back that was filled with her friends. She hugged and kissed all of them and introduced me as her cousin from Mumbai. They all nodded enthusiastically, some of them recounting a trip to Rajasthan or Calcutta or how their boss/roommate’s boyfriend/neighbor is from India, as if that would help me feel more welcome. I sat next to Shazia and a girl she used to work with, unable to pay any attention to their conversation. I couldn’t take my eyes off the Buddha; the girls in their short, sharp dresses and high shoes; or the men in their smart shirts tucked into jeans. Everyone had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, dancing in their own world to music that boomed through the speakers. My eyes began to smart with all the smoke, and nobody else said a word to me the whole night, but there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

I realized then that Paris with a friend-or better, a far-removed cousin who had become a friend-was a lot less lonely than it had been. Shazia had lived here most of her life, so knew the city as intimately as anyone would. Every day, Aunt Mina would ask me when I was leaving, if I had “finished my matter,” but Shazia would take me by the hand and, ensuring that her mother was tended to for the next couple of hours, would tell her to “stop bugging” me and would take me out.

In the few days after Shazia arrived, once she had recovered from the jet lag, she showed me the Paris that only insiders know. She had said we would do all the tourist things, like window-shop around Saint-Germain, go boating down the Seine, take coffee and croissants at Les Deux Magots, and ride the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower.