dusty old books. It’s the musk of history that gets her. Smell is linked to memory, she always says, and technology has no smell because it’s never been alive.
Still, I dunno if I totally buy that, because Rekha and Zaid looked very alive on Instagram. I could almost smell the hormones pulsing off my screen.
Mom sits beside me on the couch, placing her reading glasses on the coffee table. I know what’s coming next. The concerned mom look: mouth turned down at the corners, eyes focused and worried. I’m blessed with my mother’s dark eyes, the color of brown glass. When I look at her, it’s like a mirror into my slightly wrinklier future. I wonder if she sees me that way, too—as a looking glass to her past, a version of her younger self.
“It’s nothing, Mom. Waiting for something that’s not going to appear.”
“That’s rather existential of you.”
“Well, we are in Paris.”
My mom grins and pats my hand. “Still haven’t heard from Zaid?”
Ouch. I feel that question like a static shock to my chest. It’s a simple question without an easy answer. No, he hasn’t texted, but it doesn’t mean he hasn’t sent me a message.
If Zaid were some random guy, say, one I met while scraping crap off my shoe, I might be wary about sharing details, but Zaid isn’t any guy. We know his family from school and the mosque. Like me, Zaid is Muslim and has one Indian parent. Unlike me, he’s absolutely mastered tameez, the art of appropriate desi behavior, especially around parents. He started a tutoring program at our mosque for the younger kids, and his Urdu kicks ass. On paper, Zaid is the perfect desi catch. In my current Instagram-shaped reality, he’s a lot less so.
As it stands, a lot of people probably side-eye my “good” Muslim desi girl qualifications because they find them . . . lacking. My French is fluent. My Urdu, not so much. I have my dad’s language and my mom’s religion. I’m a bunch of disparate parts that aren’t enough to make a whole. But I’m trying to stop caring about what everyone else thinks about me. I am enough.
Even when I waffle and question my own devotion, even if I miss Friday prayers, being Muslim is part of my identity, as much as French or American or Chicagoan. It’s in my bones and my blood. And no one can take that away from me.
Yeah, Mom knows about Zaid. But that doesn’t mean I want to share every single detail. I still keep some things tucked away in secret.
“Maybe it’s a technical glitch, beta,” Mom suggests, gesturing toward my phone.
“Un pépin technique? Where?” My dad chooses the perfect moment for his entrance. He walks out of the bedroom and gently places his hand on my mom’s shoulder. She looks up at him, and he smiles without showing teeth. He’s lived in America a long time, but not long enough that a toothy smile comes naturally.
I watch them lovingly gaze at each other. In many ways they’re opposites—my dad has pale blue eyes, and his fair skin burns every single summer, while my mom’s deep brown skin defies the sun. I’m somewhere in between. When I was a kid, I wished I wasn’t so in the middle. I wanted to look exactly like my mom because when she and I went out alone, someone would inevitably ask if she was my nanny. It made me mad, but she would wave it off, seemingly unbothered. “I know who I am,” she once explained. “I don’t have to prove it to anyone.” She’s always been enough for herself, too.
My mom takes my dad’s hand in hers. “Khayyam was hoping to hear from Zaid, but—”
I bolt from the couch and grab my purse from the table. Sure, my mom knows about me and Zaid. Papa does, too. But I’m not ready for their academic unpacking of my relationship. I’m not the subject of an undergrad seminar. Before they can protest, I grab my bag and am halfway to the door.
“I’m out of here. You guys can talk about me behind my back like regular parents. I’m going to get a go?ter