Yours, Eventually

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Seven

Asma hit her phone to check the time. 4:15.

“I’m running late,” Asma said to Fatima. “Farooq will be here any minute!”

Asma’s shift at the hospital ended at three, but by the time she explained her patient’s chart to the chief resident and made it to her car, it was three thirty. She raced to her apartment and jumped in the shower, patting herself on the back for having the foresight to iron her sari early that morning before she went into work.

She’d been back at the hospital for several months; the only reminder that she’d ever left was the new class of residents whose uncertainty reminded Asma so much of her own journey. Dr. Saucedo had managed to secure Asma a moonlighting position upon her return and for weeks they had strategized how to restructure the ER’s budget to secure the funds for an additional position. Their scheming had paid off. Asma was now a bona fide ER doctor. And working right alongside her old friend Jackson, who had applied for the open ER position when Asma left for Sacramento.

“I’m Dr. S’s sloppy seconds,” he’d said with a smile. “She’s so relieved you’re back.”

Asma pleated her sari and tucked it into her matching petticoat as Fatima peered at her through FaceTime.

“Am I doing this right?” she asked.

“Straighten it out a little and then fasten the pleats with a pin.”

The rest of Lubna’s bridal party had planned to meet at the hotel in downtown San Jose at noon for hair and makeup, and to have their matching bridesmaid saris professionally wrapped. Asma had assured everyone that she could do it herself—then spent her lunch breaks for the past week watching YouTube tutorials and enlisting Fatima’s help over FaceTime.

Fatima had served Salman with divorce papers the month before. Despite the pleas of their families to try to reconcile, they had mutually agreed to part ways. Salman went back to life as a boring corporate lawyer—now on thin ice with his firm because of his poor judgment in hooking up with a summer associate. Fatima had packed up her things and moved to New York, ready for a fresh start and maybe a chance of once again making it into Columbia’s School of Architecture. “As a wise woman once told me, it’s never too late,” she’d said to Asma at the airport, both of them in tears.

Asma’s phone buzzed, a text appearing over Fatima’s face: I’m here.

Asma threw the sari’s pallu over her shoulder and posed for Fatima, who gave her one final thumbs-up. She glanced at her makeup bag on the corner of her dresser, then shook her head. No time. She’d get Maryam to do her makeup at the hotel.

Asma brushed her hair with one hand while typing on her cell phone with the other: Be down in a sec.

Asma and Farooq’s moment at the Qureishis’ had been the start of a beautiful new phase in their relationship. They had ditched the rest of the group that afternoon, driven to Santa Cruz, and spoken for hours—starting with an apology from Asma.

“I was scared, I know that now. I felt like I would lose something either way. My family or you. And after everything with my mom…” Asma trailed off, realizing that she finally had the opportunity to tell Farooq the truth. “I didn’t realize that losing you would be the biggest regret of my life.”

Farooq’s response to Asma’s apology was a reminder of why she had fallen in love with him in the first place.

“When my company was bought, all I could think about was you. I was still so angry and wanted to show you that I made it. But the more time I spent around you, the more difficult it was for me to be angry. You had done it. You had become this amazing doctor. I was so proud of you. I thought…maybe my heartbreak was worth that, in the end. You, being able to do so much good.”

Mr. Ibrahim was unable to hide his surprise when Farooq paid him a visit to ask for Asma’s hand in marriage. It was Rehana who reminded him that Asma and Farooq had been engaged many years earlier, and that they had opposed the match. Asma had to bite her tongue as Mr. Ibrahim insisted that he would have remembered a man as handsome as Farooq from a family as distinguished as the Waheeds. Even so, Mr. Ibrahim—quick to assure Asma that he was a humble man, not above admitting that he may have been wrong—had given them his most sincere of blessings.

Another couple hadn’t been so lucky. When word reached Mrs. Gulnaz Dadabhoy about Omar’s father’s financial schemes, she had been appalled. She had refused to agree to Omar and Shagufta’s engagement until Omar had repaid some of his father’s debt. First on his list: his father’s onetime friend and client, Mr. Muhammad Ibrahim. The sum was so substantial that Mr. Ibrahim was able to pay off his debts and could afford to move back into the family’s McMansion at the end of the Abdullahs’ lease if he wanted, although he was quite content in Sacramento surrounded by his distinguished relatives.

But that was not the end of Omar Khan’s troubles. The insider gossip from the aunties—as well as Asma’s direct line to the family through Iman—was that neither Mrs. Dadabhoy nor Zubayr was pleased with Omar. Word was that his soon-to-be in-laws planned to severely limit his access to the family money. The prenup, according to Iman, had been described as “medieval” by Omar’s lawyers, but Omar had no choice but to sign it.

Asma almost felt sorry for him. Not only did he have to contend with the Dadabhoys’ disapproval, but he was also now permanently in her father’s and Iman’s social orbit. His comeuppance seemed to have dissolved their anger toward him, his new place at the bottom rung of the family hierarchy bringing them nothing but glee. Asma witnessed this new social order during Iman’s engagement party, where Omar was banished to the periphery of the festivities, given the cold shoulder by most. He redeemed himself only marginally when he attempted to apologize to Asma for stringing her along. “You’re amazing, Asma,” he had said with a level of familiarity totally inappropriate for someone who was engaged to another. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for you.”

Asma grabbed her purse—a clutch—from her nightstand and raced out of her bedroom. She smiled as she passed through her apartment, her walls adorned with pictures and mementos that captured the loves of her life—her photo booth picture with Farooq, the Halloween morning picture of her and her mom, and the beautiful red silk sari her mother had worn to the grand opening of her parents’ showroom, carefully framed in a shadow box. And there was her dining room table, fully assembled—still IKEA, but put together with Farooq’s help and now covered with boxes of his stuff. Her sisters had rolled their eyes when they heard that Farooq would move into Asma’s apartment after their wedding. But Asma wasn’t about to break her lease for a second time.

Asma was almost at the front door when she noticed that she had forgotten to pin her pallu, which kept slipping off her shoulder. She rummaged through her console table drawer for an extra safety pin and stuck it clumsily in her shoulder, poking herself in the process. She made a mental note to ask Iman to fix it at the hotel. It would be good to see her sister. Asma had left her family in Sacramento confident for the first time ever that they would be just fine without her—although she did persuade them to hire a gardener for her mother’s poor, neglected garden. They wouldn’t have time to tend to it anyway. Iman was booked solid for as far as her calendar would go, with most of her events related to all their family’s upcoming weddings—Lubna and Saba Qureishi’s, in addition to Asma’s and her own.

With a last look around her apartment, Asma swung open the front door and startled at the sight of Farooq on her front stoop. He was wearing a dark gray suit with a purple tie and pocket square that matched Asma’s sari. He seemed amused.

“I look crazy, right?” she said, patting her hair. “I probably should’ve given myself a bit more time to get ready.”

“I was wondering what you were doing in there.”

“Sorry, I was rushing. My shift ended late and then I had to wrap this thing,” she said, gesturing toward her sari pleats, which had come unraveled. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

Farooq smiled, then pulled a bouquet of purple peonies out from behind his back.

“I waited eight years—what’s another fifteen minutes?”

Asma laughed as Farooq entered her apartment, scooped her into his arms, and closed the door behind them.

They were home, together. At last.