Chapter 6
“Are we theeeere yet?” Resna whines.
“Almost…”
I keep my hand on her knee to stop her from kicking Arif’s seat as we peer out the window of the Uber our mother splurged on to bring us to Harun’s. The houses grow more and more grand the farther we wind up the hill, nothing like our derelict multifamily home. Only a twelve-minute drive but entire worlds apart.
Amma goggles between the scenery and the glowing screen of her phone. “This article says the mayor lives in this neighborhood!”
The reverence in her voice prompts me to wipe my sweaty palms on the skirt of my shalwar kameez. The fancy embroidery leaves my skin itchy, and my scalp prickles under the heavy urna draped over my hair. I keep waiting for the car to stop somewhere—I keep praying for our destination to be some semblance of normal—but it continues to inch up the hill, until finally, it passes a sign that reads HILLCREST in gold.
The houses beyond it are like something out of The Great Gatsby . The Uber driver slows in front of one that could pass for a miniature castle, stone tiles plastered over pale pink and white stucco under a trio of pointed dome roofs. It sits on an emerald-green expanse of lawn, attached to a three-car garage and a long driveway with a basketball hoop at the end.
“This it?” asks the driver.
Even he seems skeptical that we would be invited to a place like this.
Amma practically hauls me out of the car but gives me a blessed few minutes to compose myself before she rings the doorbell outside the iron gate. Although an obstinate voice in my head insists I don’t care what Harun or his family think of me, my heart feels too big for my rib cage—or maybe my push-up bra—as it does its damnedest to hurtle out of it.
I know I’m good enough, and also that he might not be, but the thought of being a disappointment to my family is a specter I can’t ever exorcise.
Pushpita Khala’s familiar accent cuts through the static and my nerves. “Ji?”
“Assalamualaikum, Afa,” Amma greets her.
“Oh, Zaynab, waalaikumsalam! Come in, come in!”
She buzzes us through. Amma leads Arif and Resna by hand in front of me, letting me tread up the cobblestone path to the front porch alone. The door swings open before we reach it, revealing a dimpling Pushpita Emon, who launches herself at Amma as if she hasn’t seen her in years rather than for a mere few days.
Amma is equally enthusiastic, kissing both of her cheeks. “Ah, your home is so elegant!”
Pushpita Khala smiles. Her dark eyes, the same spilled-ink black as Harun’s, settle on me as I trek into the house after the rest of my family. She utters a dreamy sigh. “Oh, mashallah, you look so beautiful, my dear! Is this another of your mother’s dazzling creations?”
“Thank you, Khala. It is.” I blush, eyes on the Persian rug below my feet.
I doubt she hears me over her own shout. “Mansif, Harun, our guests have arrived!”
Harun’s father steps into the long foyer from an adjoining room, and more niceties are exchanged. They’re so animated, I don’t realize that my date has slipped in to join us until he murmurs, “Hey,” right next to me.
His sudden, looming thereness startles me in the middle of removing my strappy sandals. My arms pinwheel as I struggle to regain my balance, still wearing one wobbling heel, the other dangling from my fingertips.
Before I can crash backward into the doorway, Harun catches me by the wrist and yanks me upright. I trip head over heels—damsel-like—into his chest. It feels so firm under my palms that my face blazes feverishly hot. Astaghfirullah, between this and what happened at the tea shop with Nayim, I’ve become a ditzy rom-com heroine, haven’t I?
Harun all but picks me up by the biceps and places me a foot away from his person as if I’m a boogery child, refusing to look at me any longer. “You good?”
I squeak something that passes for a yes while silently begging the earth to open wide and swallow me whole. Surely rich-people houses come with that feature equipped?
Our parents chortle at the scene. With a crafty gleam in her eyes, Pushpita Khala says, “Doesn’t Zahra look like a princess tonight, betta?”
Harun’s voice grows garbled with frustration. “Ma, c’mon.”
I take the opportunity to scan him from head to toe while we’re conducted into the mammoth living room, replete with a mounted TV, enough couches to seat five times as many guests, and an actual tea cart out of Downton Abbey . All that’s missing is a butler.
Unlike his father, Harun has ditched his jacket for a pinstripe button-up that clings to his broad shoulders and narrow waist. His sleeves are rolled up to expose his forearms, covered in dark hair. He keeps his hands in the pockets of his black chinos, feet clad in navy-blue socks that match the shirt. Thick black frames complete the outfit, but they only make him look like the male models they always cast to play haughty—and hot —geniuses on CW shows.
Ugh! Why couldn’t he be a dweeby Deshi guy?
Sadly, his fashion sense doesn’t translate to his conversation skills. Just like our first date, he doesn’t issue a single word of his own accord as his mother passes glasses of freshly squeezed lemon sharbat to my siblings and tea to the rest of us.
He sips from his cup, scrolling through his phone and pretending I’m invisible, while the adults make small talk about some mogul on the Bangladeshi news who hails from one of the only surviving princely estates in Bangladesh—“You know, his children must appreciate traditional values”—and Arif does his best to entertain a squirmy Resna.
At last, it’s Harun’s father who helps us along by suggesting, “Harun, while your mother prepares dinner, why don’t you give Zahra a tour of the house?”
He nods and stands up, raising an expectant eyebrow at me when I don’t immediately move to do the same. I gulp. Something about Harun’s piercing gaze makes me feel very small when I’m with him, and I’m not sure I like it.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
As he guides me from room to room, I try to keep my jaw from toppling to the polished wooden floor, mostly because I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. A mahogany table long enough to feed a dozen people sits under a crystal chandelier, gleaming china arranged behind glass in a complementary showcase my mother would sell her soul to own.
“This is the dining room,” he says, as if I’m too poor to have ever seen one.
“It’s nice.”
“Thanks.”
The conversation drags on like this, rinse and repeat. He takes me through a gigantic kitchen with a marble island and countertops, several pristine bathrooms, his father’s study, a guest bedroom, and a game room packed with an Xbox, a PlayStation, and a Nintendo. There’s even a pool table, poker cards and chips scattered across the green surface.
“You must always have friends over,” I say.
“Sometimes.”
And that’s that.
Although I’m certain Arif would combust from the pure excitement of being around so many gaming consoles, it’s when I enter the library that I freeze mid-step, a wonder-struck gasp spilling from my lips. Towering wooden shelves cover every inch of the room, filled with more books than I’ve seen in my life. The fancy kind, with gold foil titles across leather spines. The kind you’d expect to flip open and find “First Edition” on the copyright page.
Harun turns to observe me, but while my pride shrivels at the idea of him sensing my envy, I can’t help gazing longingly at the shelves.
I’ve always considered libraries my haven; they’re not only where I learned to read, but where I learned to love reading—where little Zahra, at the tender age of ten, decided her lifelong dream was to see her own name on the cover of a book, in a place just like this.
My date regards me for an instant, while I squirm like Belle beneath the Beast’s mercurial contemplation. When he speaks, his voice is soft, even sheepish. “These are my father’s books. No one comes in here. The decorator ordered them when we moved in.”
I read between the lines: the library is no more than a status symbol.
“That’s so sad,” I whisper, before I can stop myself. “No offense! I just meant… I love to read. But of course that doesn’t mean you need to or anything.”
He shrugs and motions for me to follow him upstairs, but I catch the slightest frown on his face. It vanishes by the time we reach the top of the steps.
“My parents’ room,” he explains, waving at a shut door. Next, he points at another door farther down the hall, this one half-cracked. “And that’s mine.”
“Can I see it?”
His forehead wrinkles at my eagerness, for once completely unfeigned. “I guess.”
Before he turns away, I notice that his ears are scarlet beneath the black locks that curl around them. With his hands shoved inside his pockets, he skulks toward his room, then stops to hold the door open for me.
His bedroom is huge—as expected—but that’s where all my predictions end. Unlike the game room, there isn’t much to hint at hobbies or leisure. It’s spartan and neat: a desk along one white wall holds a lamp, a closed laptop, a small calendar, and graphing paper.
There are trophies, model planes, trains, and colorful anime robots next to framed photographs set on top of a bookcase, lined with STEM textbooks and the occasional comic book or manga in shiny plastic. I wander closer to the photos, stooping to examine every picture.
Family vacations at tropical destinations. Harun presented with trophies, medals, or certificates. His parents and teachers on either side of him, proud expressions on their faces, his own indifferent despite being one of the few students of color present. Always indifferent, even when standing next to kids in the same school uniform who have their arms slung around his shoulders, presented in sharp contrast beside a grinning boy who looks a lot like him.
Maybe he’s actually a cyborg who wasn’t programmed to smile?
One frame lies facedown, shoved haphazardly behind the others. Before I can flip it over, another photo sucker punches the air from my lungs. Harun poses with a gold medal in nothing but a pair of black swimming briefs, his long legs, flat abdomen, and bulging biceps toned, water glistening in his curls, sliding down the sculpted copper planes of his six-pack and angular hips.
Whoa.
“Y-you swim?”
He cocks his head. “My mom didn’t put that on my biodata?”
“Oh, um, yeah, she did. I—forgot. That’s cool.” My voice pitches high enough to crack glass as I pivot away from the frame, bolstering my back against the bookcase and chanting my mental mantra of astaghfirullah again, even though it’s his fault for leaving it out like that.
A biodata is essentially a marriage résumé used to arrange matches. His mother sent one for me to peruse after the dinner at Gitanjali. It listed everything from his age, height, and blood type to all the clubs he’s participated in over the years. In addition to robotics, he was apparently on the swim team. But seeing him, er , in action is another thing entirely.
“Are you okay?” Harun asks, more suspicious than concerned.
Trying not to let on how much his stoicism aggravates me, I reply, “Yep. All good. I just… Is there a bathroom I can use? Out in the hall?”
He inclines his chin at another door I’d assumed was a closet. “Through there.”
I nod and click the lock behind me.
With the knob pressed into my spine, I survey the tile-covered room. It’s nothing like the one in our apartment. There’s not even a plastic bodna to clean up with next to the toilet, but the silver hose of a bidet instead. I notice four toothbrushes on the sink, each in its own glass cup. Who the hell needs so many toothbrushes? The glass-enclosed shower, meanwhile, is bigger than the one my entire family bickers over every morning.
Not that I want to think about him in the shower.
“I can’t do this,” I grouse to the Zahra in the mirror, releasing the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Without even meaning to, I recall the new boy and how he actually appeared interested in getting to know me—how pleasant and funny he was despite being all alone in New Jersey, of all places. Compared to Nayim, Harun is so privileged, but seems utterly miserable.
Could I ever be with a guy who acts like talking to me is as painful as getting his nails torn out? Who looks at me as if I’m a homework assignment he’s forced to complete?
Sorry, Nanu. I tried my best.
After turning the spout on and off to sell my act, I dry my hands and throw open the door. Part of me wants to hunker down in his bathroom until the end of days, but the faster I get out, the faster dinner will be over, the faster we’ll leave, and the faster I can confess to my mother that I foresee no universe in which Harun and I are happy with each other.
I stumble forward, and to his credit, genuine concern furrows his brow. “Are you sure you’re all right? You wanna lie down or something?”
It’s the most he’s said to me in, well, ever . It would be sweet if I didn’t suspect he has a potentially fatal case of gingivitis.
“Are you okay?”
He blinks at my rapid change of subject. “What?”
Cheeks aglow, with the pungent taste of foot in my mouth, I say, “Uh, it’s just, I noticed you have a lot of toothbrushes. Like, a lot, a lot.”
He shrugs. “One’s mine, one’s a spare, one’s to clean my models, and one’s for Rab.”
“Rab?” My gaze flits unwittingly toward a terrarium in the corner. Taped on the glass is a laminated label that reads Rabeardranath Tagore . You’ve got to be kidding me. “Your lizard?”
A frown purses his full lips at my indignation. “He’s a bearded dragon, actually.”
My eyes rise heavenward. The longest conversation I’ve had with the guy my mother hopes I’ll marry is about the semantics of reptilian nomenclature. A guy who doesn’t read but has the audacity to name said reptile after one of the greatest Bengali poets of all time.
What sins did I commit to deserve this?
“He’s actually not so bad,” Harun says.
My head snaps in his direction. “Who?”
“Rab,” he replies. “Sometimes people are scared of him. My last—” He cuts himself off, but I can almost hear him swallow the word “girlfriend.” Oh, is Mr. Perfect Son maybe not-so-perfect, after all? “Uh, my mother still steers clear of his tank like she thinks he might jump out and go all Jurassic World on her. But once you get to know him, he’s cute.”
I can’t keep the dubiousness off my face. To my surprise, Harun chuckles. It’s a deep, husky sound that sends a tingle up my spine and makes my whole body heat up.
“Seriously,” he says. “Come here.”
My feet are rooted in place, my eyes huge. He hesitates at my recalcitrance but holds a hand out to me. I glance between it and his uncomfortable expression, then set my hand inside it. It’s much bigger than mine and warmer than I would have imagined. His fingers close around my wrist. My pulse thumps in the clammy flat of my palm, but he doesn’t let on if he notices.
Instead he carefully lowers my hand into the terrarium. It quivers in his grasp, but I don’t snatch it away, even when the lizard—scratch that, the bearded dragon —darts a tongue out at us. My eyelids do, however, screw shut. Before I know it, my fingertips graze across Rab’s spikes. They’re not sharp at all, but rubbery, the scales beneath smooth.
Harun pauses our joined fingers above the rigid plastic of Rab’s tail. He remains close enough to me that I can sense the temperature radiating off his body and smell the minty toothpaste on his breath as he whispers, “I 3D-printed that for him after he got tail rot.”
Definitely no gingivitis.
I open my eyes at last, if only to sneak a peek at him through my peripheral vision. He’s smiling, but not at me. At the not-lizard, of course . But when he smiles, he gets a single, pokeable dimple in his right cheek. Not that I’m thinking about touching it.
“I guess it’s not so bad….”
Before I can decide whether I mean him or his not-lizard, Pushpita Khala calls up to us from downstairs, “Hurry up, you lovebirds, or dinner will get cold.”
As if her voice has broken some spell, Harun yanks himself away from me and rakes a frazzled hand through his hair. We circle each other warily.
“Look, Zahra, before we go down… You seem like a nice girl, but you know this is never going to happen, right?” He gestures between us. “We’re eighteen. Aren’t we supposed to be focused on normal stuff like, you know, college?” His voice dips lower. “Besides, even if I get married someday, I wouldn’t want to be arranged with someone interested in me for my family’s money. I don’t care that you’re a princess or whatever.”
I try to control the expression on my face so that the stinging rejection doesn’t show.
Obviously, I don’t want him, either, and I get where he’s coming from. Obviously, I agree with every single point he’s making and would have let him down gently by the end of the night myself. Obviously, while marriages of convenience are swoony in romance novels, I’ve never wanted to marry a guy I barely know—or become Zahra Emon of the House Khan, First of Her Name, Stepmother of Bearded Dragons—just because he’s rich.
But I also wasn’t expecting him to be so… blunt.
“Oh, trust me, dude,” I scoff. “It’s allll goood .”
A relieved smile dawns across his face, as if he couldn’t imagine anything more repulsive than having me for a wife, and for the second time, that maddening solitary dimple winks at me. “I knew you were too cool to go for this. We on the same page, then?”
He extends his hand again. I frown at it, then give it a brisk shake.
“Same page. After tonight, I hope I never see you again.”
For the first time, Harun laughs. A real laugh. “I hope I never see you again either.”
Determined to present a united front, we return to the living room. Arif and Resna are gone, most likely banished to Harun’s game room, but our parents sit together, chuckling and chatting like one big happy family. They turn to us simultaneously upon realizing we’ve come back, and I stiffen at their matching self-congratulatory expressions, suddenly feeling like we’re a pair of defenseless deer that have wandered into a tiger ambush. While tigers aren’t known to hunt in groups, when they do , you’re pretty much screwed. Deader than dead.
With innuendo in her voice, Harun’s mother says, “You two were certainly gone a while, eh?”
“It’s wonderful to see you getting along,” Amma adds.
Before we can convince them otherwise, Harun’s father pounces. “We’ve discussed this long and hard and… we believe you two are a perfect match. Inshallah, we’ll be moving forward with this courtship with the hope that it someday leads to marriage.”
The pit in my stomach fractures into a yawning black hole. I can feel Harun’s gaze at the nape of my neck and venture to meet it. Just yesterday, I would have called it blank, even bored, like I did during our first date. But now I see the tic in his jaw, the taut press of his lips, the trench between his thick, dark brows. I read the unspoken message in his obsidian eyes as clearly as the lines of my favorite Tagore poem.
Tell them!
I open my mouth to comply, but the rosy-cheeked joy on my mother’s face chokes the words in my throat. I haven’t seen her so happy in… well, more than two years. When I turn my pleading stare back to Harun, he meets it just as helplessly. Although my impression the night we met was that he didn’t care as much as I do about parental expectations, it’s clear he doesn’t want to dash his family’s hopes either.
My eyes narrow. You tell them. Unless you’re a chicken?
Me? his scream back. You’re the chicken!
The silence stretches on until Amma chimes in, “We couldn’t be more delighted,” beaming from ear to ear and rising to hug me. I hug back, watching Harun over her shoulder.
Being a Good Bengali Kid really bites sometimes.