But we also visited her friends who lived in a basement apartment that had been transformed into something that reminded me of pictures in an old storybook of Aladdin’s Cave, and others who took us out for Chinese food in a restaurant that was an hour’s Metro ride from our home, but worth it for the fragrance of the rice and the crispiness of the steamed vegetables. On a sunny afternoon, we went to the Île St-Louis and ate the creamiest ice cream I had ever tasted in my life, its flavor lingering on my tongue long after I’d finished the last spoonful. French words came tumbling out of her mouth at every turn, and I made it a point to learn what I could from her, loving to imitate her irritated “mais non!” and enthusiastic “bah oui!” and the string of “alors” that referred to nothing in particular.
“You’ll get there,” she said smiling. “It’s actually an easy language to learn, once you get the hang of it.”
“You say that as if I’ll be here forever,” I said as we stood one evening on the Pont Neuf, watching the lights of the city flicker in the distance. “I came here to do something, and I’ve not done it yet.” The guilt resurfaced. The slip of paper still lay in the pocket of my coat.
“It’s never easy going against the grain.” Shazia’s voice was suddenly quiet, the darkness of the river seeming to mirror her momentary mood. “I did it, and I’m still paying the price.”
Shazia’s father, Reza, a Pakistani immigrant who had opened a small tourist store on the farthest reaches of the rue de Rivoli twenty years ago, had left Lahore to seek out a better life for his wife and their infant daughter, and had ended up first in England, working at an Indian restaurant in Birmingham. When he one day overheard a table of diners talking about a trip they had just made to Paris, and all the wonderful shops they had seen there, something in his heart stirred, and he instantly believed that that was where he could make a good living.
Shazia was five years old when her parents took the ferry from Dover to Calais and headed straight to the French capital. Her father had purchased a secondhand Linguaphone system to learn some basics of the language, but with his heavy Lahore accent-slightly tinged by the broad Birmingham brogue he had acquired-it was not surprising that nobody could understand him.
But still, he was fortunate to find a small space on the heavily traveled tourist street, and put down most of his life savings for the first and last months’ rent and a security deposit. With what little he had left, he rented a studio apartment in the Latin Quarter, all three of them living in one room. Shazia told me that her mother cried every day for a month after coming to this country, baffled by the language and the habits and the incessant smoking of these people. But Shazia took to it instantly, picking up the language as if it were her own. After a decade of working hard and saving everything, Reza was able to buy a larger place, with a bedroom for their only daughter who was fast becoming a woman.
Reza died three years ago. He had been stabbed in the back by a burglar who had forced his way into the store at closing time, then made off with four hundred francs from the register and a pile of J’ADORE PARIS sweatshirts. Reza’s blood was splattered over the rest of his stock, dripping from the small shot glasses embellished with motifs of the Arc de Triomphe and the porcelain platters featuring Moulin Rouge dancers.
“Gypsies,” the police had said, as Aunt Mina lay crumpled in a heap on the floor, Shazia holding on to her but feeling desperately faint herself. “They used to be just petty thieves. But now, they find knives.”
Shazia, who had been working as a legal secretary in an American law practice at the time, for a short while thought about quitting her job and taking over her father’s small shop, to honor the man he had become and the decent business he had built on his own.
But a week after his murder, she stood alone in the store and stared at the now cleaned-up merchandise and the empty cash register, and knew she would be miserable, consigned forever to her father’s death.
“The place is cursed,” Aunt Mina had said. “I have already lost him here. I will not sleep another night in my life if you start working here too.”
So Shazia went back to work at her shiny office near the Place de la Concorde while her mother stayed home and wept and prayed for Allah to come and take her away too.
There was insurance money, and Shazia was earning well, so they lived comfortably. But Mina had never known anything but marriage, and now the only reason she had come to this country was gone. It was her dream, she kept saying, to return to Lahore to live out her days. Once her daughter was married off, that was what she would do.
“And then I got the transfer,” Shazia said, telling me the story that first night. “ California. Los Angeles. Sunshine three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. Oh my God, how could I not go?”
Aunt Mina fell into a heap again when her daughter told her she was moving out and leaving home, and neither threats nor begging did anything to convince Shazia otherwise. On the day she was leaving, her mother rammed a taveez-a talisman to ward off bad luck-into her daughter’s bag, kissed her on the forehead, and pleaded with her to return soon. Shazia sent money every month, along with letters and photographs describing her new Los Angeles life, all of which made Mina yearn for Lahore even more.
“We are the same, you and I,” Shazia said to me as we stared over the bridge into the Seine. “We are the only children in our families, only daughters, both fatherless, both with mothers too consumed in their own grief to really look at us.” Shazia wiped away a tear, the first time I had seen her show any emotion.
“We are like sisters,” she said, linking her arm in mine. “And I will do everything I can to help a sister.”
Chapter Four
My first ten days in Paris passed as if in a dream-watery, surreal, almost too quickly to savor.
On day eleven, a mere seventy-two hours before I was scheduled to return to Mahim, the future I had been avoiding showed up on my doorstep.
In the middle of the afternoon, when Aunt Mina was napping and Shazia was chatting lazily on the phone with one of her old school friends, the doorbell rang. I peered through the peep-hole, and knew instantly who it was.
“Tanaya?” he asked, as I opened the door.
I nodded silently.
“You are even lovelier than I expected,” he said, smiling. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Tariq.”
He was about to extend his hand, but stopped upon realizing that it was perhaps too Western a gesture for me to embrace. I quickly covered my head and stepped aside so he could come in. We stood in the narrow doorway, me too uncomfortable to suggest he approach any farther, him picking up on that.
“I never heard from you,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that you were OK, that nothing had happened to you. I didn’t have a phone number, only an address. Through my grandfather. You know how old-fashioned these people are.” He smiled and shrugged, his features broad and handsome. In each ear dangled a tiny gold loop, the only things about him reminiscent of a glorious Mughal heritage and accoutrements that looked strangely complementary to his dark suit and tie.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m fine,” I said, nervously fingering one end of my dupatta. I hadn’t thought through what I was going to tell my family when I returned home. My grandfather had finally called a few days before, but I was out, as usual, with Shazia. Aunt Mina had answered the phone, but told me later that she informed my grandfather that she had “no idea” about any alliance between Tariq and me.