Kavita Daswani - Salaam Paris

“That’s OK,” I had said to Mathias when he told me. “I believe that there is enough for everyone.” He had looked relieved. Karla was taking on every freelance project thrown her way, convinced that she couldn’t afford to turn down assignments. Teresa had offered to find me extra work, most likely at night in one of the restaurants she worked in as a waitress.

It was at that point, when Teresa wanted me to wear an apron with her and serve aperitifs all night, that Juliette chimed in with her own solution.

“Modeling,” she had said. “You did it once, and it didn’t kill you. I think you should try it again. If you make enough money doing that, we can all quit our jobs,” she said, laughing. “Believe me, most girls become models because they have a burning desire to do so, or are terribly vain by nature. For you, it is just for the money. And it is much more fun than picking up somebody’s dirty dishes, yes?”

Encouraged by the other girls, I was standing in front of Dimitri’s building, wondering if I had made some awful mistake.

I pulled open the door and walked up the stairs, careful to hike up my scarf so it wouldn’t trail on the dirty floor. I climbed two flights before I saw a small sign outside a door on my right: MAROUNIS GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT. Underneath was written NEW YORK. PARIS. BEIJING. A man’s voice came through the door, a stream of shouted words broken with a laugh. I knocked quietly, uncertainly. I heard a pause, and then a grim “Entrez!” I jiggled the door-knob until it finally turned, opened the door, and found myself in Marounis Global Entertainment, a room no larger than my apartment, with one balding man (Dimitri) on the phone at a solitary desk. He was dressed in a faded blue T-shirt, a cigarette dangling from two fingers. Behind him, suspended from a hanger, was the suit he had worn the week before when I had first met him. It was, I realized, his “scouting suit,” the one that made him look like a real businessman with a real business.

As soon as he saw me, a look of astonished recognition came over his face. He whispered something hurriedly to the person on the other end of the phone and hung up.

“I think I have made a mistake,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to come here. Sorry if I’ve disturbed you.”

I turned around and reached for the door, but Dimitri yelled out to me.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I remember you-the girl from the hotel. I’m so glad you have come. You should have phoned. I could have met you somewhere else.”

He caught me looking around the room, and he suddenly appeared ashamed. “Please, sit,” he said, sweeping an empty pizza box off a chair and onto the floor. “You’ve come all this way. Please.”

I took a seat and looked up at him expectantly.

“I get this reaction often,” he said. “The name of my company sounds very impressive. Then people come here and see it is one person in an office. I have just started this business,” he explained.

“And do you really have offices in New York and Beijing?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “I have a cousin in each city, and they do the same thing there. OK, they have their offices in their bedrooms,” he said with a laugh. “But look,” he said, leaping out from behind his desk and reaching for a thick photo album that sat on a shelf above his head. He leafed through its pages, stopping at one and turning the book around to show me: It was a faraway shot of a dimly lit stage, atop which were a string of thin girls in brightly colored evening gowns.

“This was a fashion show in China, and we found all the models in Europe,” he said. “They wanted foreign girls, and we could provide them. And see, here,” he said, opening the book to another page, containing a large black-and-white photo of a beautiful girl lying in a field. “That’s Nadia. I spotted her, like I did with you. She was on the Metro. A student, so very pretty. Now she is doing some shows in Milan. Small ones, but she’s happy, and we are earning a little commission also.”

He shut the book, satisfied that he had vindicated himself. “I never asked you your name,” he said, offering me a cigarette.

“Tanaya. It’s Urdu. I’m Muslim,” I replied, feeling the need to immediately identify myself.

“Bravo!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “I don’t know of a single other Muslim model working in Paris, or in fact in all of Europe. You know, Muslims are hot right now.” He grinned.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean in movies, and music, and books-everything to do with Islam seems very popular, like people everywhere are craving an understanding of such a mysterious religion. I think when people find out that you are Muslim, they will love it. It will be in all the news. And that will make your job as a new fashion model so much easier.” He nodded sagely, as if his work was done.

He opened a drawer and pulled out two pieces of paper, stapled together at one corner.

“This is a standard contract,” he said. “It’s exactly what all the top agencies in Paris use. Only, because we are not so established, our commission is less. You pay me only ten percent of any modeling job you have, starting from the time you sign. Believe me, it is a good deal. Other agencies charge more than double that.”

I looked over the contract, which was bilingual, and realized I didn’t even understand the English part of it. It was something that my grandfather would have been able to help me with, or Shazia. But seeing as neither one of them was around, I settled on the next best option and told Dimitri that I would take the contract home.

The girls weren’t that much help. While Karla said that the terms of the contract were standard and that I would be protected, Juliette sniffed at the mention of a modeling agent she had never heard of before, and Teresa thought that I should leap at the opportunity.

“If you give me a few days, I’m sure I can find you a contact at one of the bigger and better modeling agencies in Paris,” Juliette advised. “I work in fashion,” she said of her receptionist job. “I know those people.”

She may have been right, but I felt a queer loyalty to the bald little Greek man who had followed me down the street one day and offered me the chance of a lifetime.

“This man is willing to take a chance on me,” I said to Juliette. “Maybe his office is small and nobody knows him, but he seemed kind. I think I will go ahead and do it.”

From the day that I signed and returned the contract to an ecstatic Dimitri, who proudly labeled me “number five” in his small coterie of models, I waited for something to happen. I wasn’t quite sure what, exactly: Dimitri had been vague about what to expect next, saying only that he would call me if there was a casting I would be suitable for. He had, in the meantime, arranged to have some photos taken of me. Juliette had said that these things normally happen in a studio, where I would be surrounded by hair and makeup artists, bright lights, and a team of people headed up by a fast-talking photographer. I was instead asked to stand in a corner at Dimitri’s office while a young Slovakian man who spoke no English clicked away with exactly the same Konica camera that my grandfather had had for twenty years. I brushed my own hair, applied some lipstick, and Dimitri told me to pout into the camera, goldfish-style.

“Headshot only,” he said, to no one in particular. “You cannot be photographed from the neck down until you have something more stylish on. Your ensembles are beguiling, but nobody will understand them.”