Kavita Daswani - Salaam Paris

“Sounds good,” Tariq said. “I’ve finished my meeting and don’t have to leave until the day after tomorrow. So please, let me come with you.”

This time, he was awake. This time, there was nobody to tell me I couldn’t go in, that I couldn’t touch the hand of the man who had loved me more than anybody else ever had. Aunt Gaura silenced my mother again and waited outside the bedroom door, making awkward conversation with Tariq, who clutched on to a bottle of mineral water.

There was no anger in my nana’s voice, and in a way I wished there had been, because that would have told me that at least he had some energy left, that all his senses hadn’t been diminished and deadened by his accident.

“Beti, you’ve come,” he said, his voice low and guttural yet consoling.

“I’m so sorry, Nana.” I was sobbing now, relieved that at least I was able to see him before he got any worse, and even more relieved that he didn’t hate me like he said he did.

“I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I had to leave. I should never have. Please, I beg you, forgive me,” I said. I placed my head on his chest, like I used to do when I was a little girl. This time, like he did then, he put both his hands on my head and stroked it. When I sat up again, tears coursing down my cheeks, he turned his head slightly to look at me, his eyes a little wider.

“I did not understand what you were doing,” he said. “You have brought disgrace to the Shah name. After you left, I could never again walk through the neighborhood without feeling ashamed. But,” he said, pausing to lick his lips. “I am not angry anymore. I am too weak to hold on to grudges. So if you have come here for my forgiveness, then your trip is not wasted. You have it.”

It was what I thought I wanted to hear. But now that he had said it, I was still unsettled. He wasn’t angry anymore, but that look on his face was still there, the one shadowed with disappointment and despair. He looked at me like I was the child who had burned down the family house by mistake, unable to be blamed but a source of endless regret anyway.

My grandfather might have still been alive. But I knew that I had already lost him.

I said nothing to Tariq on the way back to the hotel. He had wanted to know what had happened, what had been said. But my head was a mess, my brain clouded with misery and confusion.

“Through the door I saw him put his hand on your head,” said Tariq finally, as we were approaching the hotel. “That must have made you very happy, that he is not cursing you anymore.”

“Not being cursed is one thing,” I replied. “But having blessings, that is something else.” I bit my lip. “I’ll never have those blessings again.”

The sun was a brilliant burnt orange, getting ready to settle down for the night. The outside of the hotel was relatively quiet, just a few taxis like ours pulling up at the taxi rank, small pockets of people standing around, making plans. The drinks-and-dinner crowd would be arriving soon.

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.

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.