“That’s ridiculous. Who could have complained?” But even as she posed her question, Mallory knew the answer, and she turned to look hatefully at us across the street.

Papa gave her a big smile and a wave.

It was exactly what the two workmen were waiting for. The moment Mallory shifted her focus to us across the street, the two burly men grabbed her wrists and adroitly peeled her off the tree. I remember the scream, like an enraged monkey, heard all the way down the street, and the dramatic way Mallory fell to her knees. Her cries, however, they were not to be heard, drowned as they were by the rip-cord roar of the buzz saw.

Several curious villagers had by now gathered in the street, and we were all riveted to the spot by the violent sound of the working saws. Limbs clunked to the ground. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. There was a hushed, shocked silence as the small crowd took in the results. Mallory, still on her knees, her face cupped in her hands, was finally unable to stand the silence any longer and she raised her head.

A third of the gracious willow’s limbs, brutally amputated, sat twisted and oozing sap over the pavement. Her once-elegant tree—a tree that stood for all she had accomplished in life—was now a grotesque, stubby parody of its former self.

“It is very unfortunate,” said the town bureaucrat, clearly shocked by his own accomplishments. “But it had to be done. Code 234bh—”

Mallory gave the official such a look of loathing that he stopped in midsentence and scurried back to the safety of the van, gesturing at the men to quickly clean up.

Monsieur Leblanc came rushing down the front path. “Oh, dear, what a tragedy,” he said, wringing his hands. “Terrible. But please, Gertrude, get up. Please. I’ll pour you a brandy. For the shock.”

Madame Mallory was not listening to him. She got off her knees and stared across the street at Papa, at our family gathered on the stone steps. Papa looked back at her, coldly now, and they stood locked like that for several moments before Papa told us all to go back inside. There was work to be done, he said.

Mallory took back her arm from Monsieur Leblanc’s fussing grasp, brushed herself off. And then she marched across the street after us, banging on our door. Auntie opened the door slightly, to see who it was, and was instantly slammed backward as Le Saule Pleureur’s chef pushed through and strode across the dining room floor.

“Abbas,” Auntie shrieked. “Abbas. She here.”

Papa and I were back in the kitchen and we did not hear the warning. I was standing over the gas ring, whipping up shahikorma for lunch. Papa sat at the kitchen counter reading the Times of India, dated copies sent to him by a newsdealer in London. I turned the flames up full, to sear the lamb in the kadai, when Mallory slammed her way through the kitchen doors.

“There you are. You bastard!”

Papa looked up from his paper, but otherwise stayed seated and calm.

“You are on private property,” he said.

“Who do you think you are?”

“Abbas Haji,” he said quietly, and the threat in his voice made the hairs on my neck shimmer.

“I will drive you out,” she hissed. “You will lose.”

Papa stood now, his great bulk towering above the woman. “I have met people like you before,” he said in a sudden rush of heat, “and I know what you are. You are uncivilized. Yaar. Underneath your cultural airs, just a barbarian.”

Madame Mallory had never before been called “uncivilized.” Quite the contrary, she was, in most circles, considered the very essence of refined French culture. So to be called a barbarian, and by this Indian, to boot, was just too much for her and she smashed Papa on the chest with her fist.

“How dare you? HOW—DARE—YOU?”

Although Papa was big, Madame Mallory’s passion was great, and the impact of her clenched fist on his bosom made him take a step back in surprise. He tried to take hold of her wrists, but she flurried them through the air like a boxer working a bag.

And now Auntie, disheveled, slammed through the door.

“Aiieee,” she screamed. “Aiieee. Mayur. Mayur, come quick.”

“You animal,” Papa fumed. “Look at you. You’re nothing but a savage. Only the weak are . . . Madame, will you stop!”

But Mallory’s fists and curses kept on flying unabated.

“You are scum,” she screamed back. “Filth. You have—”

Papa was forced to take another step back, and now he was panting from his attempts to grab her arms. “Get out of my house,” he bellowed.

“Non,” Mallory yelled back. “You get out. Get out of my country, you . . . you dirty foreigner.”

And with that, Madame Mallory gave Papa a mighty shove.

It was the push that changed my life, for when Papa staggered back two steps, he hit me with his great bulk, and I in turn slammed full force into the stove. There was a scream and flurrying arms, and only days later did I realize that the yellow I witnessed was the sight of my tunic going up in flames.

Chapter Ten

I remember the wail of the ambulance siren, the swaying of the drip overhead, and my father’s worried face looming over me. The next few days were lost in a haze—an unreliable, drug-addled ride through this world and that. It was an odd mix of sensations: the metallic dry mouth and cracked lips of the anesthesia coupled with the aural assault of my grandmother and auntie and sisters carrying on at my bedside. Then another squeaky stretcher ride to the operating room for yet another skin graft.

But soon a kind of hospital monotony took over. The pain eased somewhat and the trays of samosas from the Haji camp outside my door were much appreciated. And there, always, my father in the corner of my room, a looming, tight-lipped mountain of man, little Zainab on his lap as he kept his black eyes on me.

Then, one day, it was just the two of us in the room. He was sitting flush against the bed, and we were playing backgammon on my tray, sipping tea like we did ages ago on the Napean Sea Road, in a life that now seemed so far away.

“Who’s doing the cooking?”

“Don’t worry about dat. Everyone’s helping. All covered.”

“I had an idea for a new dish—”

Papa shook his massive head.

“What?”

“We are going back to London.”

I threw down my diceand looked out the window. The hospital was in a valley one mountain range over from Lumière, but I had a backside view of the Jura Alps that I could also see from my attic room at Maison Mumbai.

It was winter. The pine forests were dusted with snow, and icicles dangled like daggers from the eaves overlooking the hospital window. It all looked so beautiful, pristine and pure, and tears, inexplicably, rolled down my face.

“What? What you crying for? We are better off going back to London. They won’t make any room for us here. I was foolish to think they would. Look at you. Look what my pighead has done to you—”

But Papa’s outburst was cut short by a knock on the door. I wiped my eyes while Papa yelled “Hold on” at whoever was knocking. He came over and kissed the undamaged skin of my forehead. “You are my brave boy,” he whispered. “You are a Haji.”

When Papa opened the door, his massive build filled the frame, but I could still see over his arm. Monsieur Leblanc and Madame Mallory stood before him. Le Saule Pleureur’s chef was wearing a chocolate brown wool suit, a bouquet of roses sticking out of the cane basket hanging from her arm. Behind her, Auntie and Uncle Mayur and Zainab sat in the hospital corridor, silently staring. Their silence was deadly, and it seemed to drown out the general cacophony of the working hospital.

“How can you come here?” an incredulous Papa finally asked.

“We came to see how he is.”

“Don’t bother,” he said, his lips curled with disgust. “You have won. We are leaving Lumière. Now go. Don’t insult us with your presence.”