Chapter 21
When I was a kid, I would rise with the sun for Eid, sneak into my parents’ bedroom, and crawl under their blanket while they slept, oblivious to the fact that they’d only just returned to bed after morning prayers.
I couldn’t help it.
The whole house smelled different during Eid, of fresh dhonia fatha, dried thez fatha, and other herbs; the spiced beef minced or braised for somosas, biryani, and haleem; the eggs that were boiled alongside roasting chicken for kurmas and chickpeas for chotpoti.
In the days preceding it, Amma and Nanu would let us kids crimp the edges of naikol fitas once they filled the pastry with coconut or cut shapes into the turmeric-yellow dough for lobonor fitas. When they weren’t looking, my brother and I would grab fistfuls of the salty dough to eat raw, until they chased us away, giggling, with wooden spoons.
It was like swallowing sunshine.
Although we were too excited to sleep the night before, the whole world would wake for Eid. Visitors and video calls would pervade our apartment with cheery cries of “Eid Mubarak.” Baba and Amma’s cousins in Bangladesh would WhatsApp them pictures of the cattle they’d purchased for Eid al-Adha.
We’d dress up and visit others, eat till our bellies burst, and go to the masjid for jamaat, returning home after midnight carried in our parents’ arms, with treats and money that cooing adults had pressed into our fists after pinching our cheeks red.
These are some of my loveliest memories.
But as you get older, holidays lose their wonderment.
Amma’s done her best to rally us in the years since Baba’s death, for Resna’s sake, and the Tahirs always welcome me with open arms to celebrate with them. But if it weren’t for my sister’s innocent anticipation and the increase in the chores expected of me around then, I’m not sure I’d remember Eid al-Adha anymore.
At least for the Ruzar Eid, Eid al-Fitr, breaking the monthlong fast feels noteworthy, but the Kurbanir Eid is yet another day in America, even in a place like Paterson.
That’s why it feels so strange to be standing in front of Amma’s bedroom mirror now, the ruffled skirt of my multicolored lehenga swishing over my ankles like the train of a peacock’s feathers. Rather than spend the night cooking, my mother and grandmother pieced this outfit together for me by repurposing scraps of the bride-zolad’s fabric so I could steal the show at the Emons’, but enthusiasm and hunger don’t flutter in my belly today, only drunken butterflies I attribute to the beaded bodice being too tight.
Amma comes up behind me and puts her chin on my shoulder, lighting up at my reflection. “Do you like it?”
I almost shake her off, but her sallow cheeks give me pause. Although I’m angry at what she’s forcing me to do, it’s become a weary sort of anger, a flame doused in a bottle, and it won’t serve me well to unleash the smoke yet.
Remember the plan, I remind myself, nodding as I say aloud, “Everything you make is lovely, but Harun and I have been trying this dating thing for weeks now and…”
My already crimson bottom lip flushes darker when I trap it between my teeth. Her gaze travels to it at once, like I expected it to. Her sigh reverberates down my back. “And? I hoped you two were getting along. If this is because of that other boy—”
There it is.
“This has nothing to do with Nayim!” I pivot in her arms, eyes big and solemn. “I know you like that the Emons have money, and that they want a princess-in-law, but Harun hates me.”
Amma scoffs, “How can that be so? You’re a beautiful, resourceful, and kind girl from a respectable family. Ar bala khoi faitho?”
I suppress a groan. A more naive Zahra might be flattered that Amma doubts Harun could find anyone better, but I see through the ploy. Thankfully, I’ve already rehearsed these lines, so they tumble out without preamble: “American kids don’t care about stuff like that, Harun least of all. You remember that he grew up around white people, right?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asks. “He seems mindful of tradition. Wasn’t he the one who requested a chaperone in the first place?”
I throw my hands into the air. “Because he wanted to get away from you. All of you. His cousin Sammi was too busy powdering her nose to watch us properly and ended up ditching us to hang out with her own friends.”
For a second, the idea of insulting Sammi’s good name gives me pause. Bad-mouthing Harun is awful enough, though both of us have agreed to do whatever’s necessary to end this matchmaking masquerade, but Sammi genuinely believed she was doing a favor for her cousin, helping him heal his broken heart.
Then the bangles on my mother’s wrist clink when she covers her mouth, and I know I’m too close to stop now. I drop my voice a decibel, peering up at her through my kajol-caked lashes pleadingly. “I’ve tried so hard to make this work for you, Amma. Like I always do.” She flinches at my words. They’re a low blow—a reminder of the money I lent her—but a short guilt trip won’t hurt her after the many she’s taken me on. “Can’t I please stop?”
I watch her struggle to process everything I’ve confessed. Her rouged lips pinch into a thin line as she peers blankly at a small grape juice stain on the carpet.
She looks more exhausted than usual, despite her makeup and the shari she’s chosen for the occasion. Another blade of guilt lodges in my chest at the awareness that I’m the reason when I’ve always worked so hard to ease her burden.
Before she can respond, Arif and a skipping Resna pop up beside Nanu, attired in their own Eid outfits. They each clutch Tupperware containers of the dishes Amma prepared for the Emons—because we can’t possibly go empty-handed no matter what else is on our plate.
Amma’s bleary eyes lift to us and she sighs. “We can’t cancel at the last minute when the Emons have been preparing for this. Let’s get through the day and we’ll figure out how to move forward later. Accha?”
I nod, having expected that.
Soon we’re in the Uber to the Emons’, but though I should be buoyed by this first victory in the coming war, I can’t help stealing glances at Amma, noting the lines around her eyes and mouth, the sad stories that they tell.
The urge to confess right then and there rushes up my throat, but I bite the inside of my cheek until a familiar house materializes at the top of the hill.
Harun opens the door.
I trudge up the stone path to his porch last, and for an ephemeral eternity, the two of us simply stare at each other, his frame in the doorway shielding both of our faces from the audience of our curious families.
He sucks in a sharp breath as he takes me in but doesn’t speak while beckoning me inside. I flash a secret smile, then let it fall away.
He looks good, as always, but it’s the first time I’ve seen him in traditional attire. His black fanjabi is simple, silver jacquard floral patterns threading the collar without any other adornment, tailored to be taut across his shoulders while loose and flowy over his legs.
Elegant and efficient, just like him.
Brown girl TikTok would have a field day at the sight. Hell, one day he’s going to make some other girl very lucky , but today’s not that day and I’m not that girl.
If only we can prove that to our parents.
Like clockwork, Pushpita Khala gives me the customary three consecutive Eid hugs, then spins toward her son. “Betta, isn’t Zahra such a shundori? This dress—”
“—is way too colorful,” he deadpans. “Did a rainbow throw up on you? It might give me a migraine if I stare at it for too long.”
Her jaw drops. My family gapes too. Harun, for his part, pinches the bridge of his nose for full effect. I hide a grin behind the hands I bring to my mouth in an effort to play at affront, lowering them only to sputter, “W-well, yours is so dull! You couldn’t add a colorful scarf or something so you didn’t look like Edgar Allan Poe?”
The furrow of his brows clearly asks, Edgar Allan Poe, Khan? Seriously?
Aloud, he sneers, “I think you’re wearing enough color for all of us.”
We glare at each other.
Internally, I commend Harun for being such a great actor, musing whether he can give me any tips, until Mansif Khalu takes him by the elbow. “Now, now, you both look like you could use a nice meal. That always makes your mother feel better when she’s in a mood, na keetha?”
“Dhuro go, you’re embarrassing me!” chides his wife, but there’s no heat in it.
Everyone is watching Harun and me, expressing varying levels of alarm, so the two of us cross our arms in synchronized outrage and declare, “Fine!”
“You will love how the Paterson restaurant is coming along, Zaynab,” Pushpita Khala continues, trying valiantly to steer the subject to something less cantankerous. “You should come with us to the grand opening at the end of the summer. Inshallah, we may even have other reasons to celebrate by then.”
“I would love that!” Amma replies, her earlier reassurances to me forgotten.
Of course.
Gnashing my teeth, I take my sweet time removing my heels to give myself a few extra seconds alone. That hot coal of anger has rekindled in my chest, pulsing like a fever through my veins, but if I stop to let it run its course, it will consume me—turn everything I’ve worked so hard for, everything Harun and I have done, into ash.
Instead I run through the plan again and again like a mantra, not even noticing that I’m huddled in a crouch next to my shoes, until Harun’s light touch and quiet, “Hey,” snap me out of my trance.
I look up at him.
His dark eyes are luminous in the golden light of the room, as steady on my face as his hand is on my shoulder. The solid presence of him anchors the tempest in my heart enough that I accept his help to stand, clinging to his hand for a moment too long.
“You still want this, don’t you, Zar?” he asks, in that same gentle way.
I swallow the lump in my throat and jerk a nod. “More than anything.”
Even if I didn’t need this to work out so I could finally have a shot at being with Nayim, this has never been about me alone. I pressured Harun into my attempt to turn the tables on my mother, forced him time and again into situations where he wasn’t comfortable, troubled him with my confidence. But rather than resent me for it, he’s chosen to stay by my side.
Dalia was right. Somehow, without my ever realizing it, this boy has become one of my closest friends. I owe it to him as much as myself or Nayim to end things tonight. It’s fitting that our third official date will be the last.
“Right,” Harun whispers, a sound so soft, it’s no more than an exhale. My eyes dart to his lips when he quirks a tiny, half-dimpled smile. “Then put your game face on, general. You can’t get cold feet on me now.”
A brilliant grin overtakes me as I give in to the temptation to poke the dimple at long last. His skin heats up at my touch. “Don’t you chicken out either, robot boy.”
He bats my finger away, huffing a laugh, but the expression smooths into his usual mask of disgruntled apathy the instant we enter the dining room to find everyone gawking in our direction, waiting for us. Harun stomps past me without so much as a second glance, taking one of the two empty seats between his mother’s and mine.
Not for the first time, I marvel at how easy this facade is for him, and how different it is from the Harun I now see beneath it.
What might have been, if the two of us simply… met somewhere, before all this? If he decided to go to Chai Ho for his coffee before a morning run by pure coincidence, or if someday, we bumped into each other on the Columbia University campus?
Would we still become friends?
In all likelihood, Harun and I would be nothing but strangers exchanging brief pleasantries, two planets spinning in opposite orbits around the same sun, never converging long enough to realize how similar we were at our cores.
I scowl at his back and try to imitate his heavy footsteps. If the Emons want a princess-in-law so badly, I’ll show them exactly what kind I am.
As I march past Arif, my brother whispers, “Oh, good, I worried you strangled each other.”
“The night is still young,” I snipe back, throwing myself into my seat so dramatically that my skirt balloons around my legs and makes the table tremble.
“Zahra,” Amma grits out through a smile, a warning for my ears only.
Ignoring her, I take stock of my surroundings. The Emons’ dining room resembles something out of the home-and-garden magazines I sometimes flip through while standing in line at the supermarket. Bone china plates trimmed in painted gold flowers, cloth napkins in rings shinier than the ones I wear on my fingers, freshly prepared dishes covered by gilded lids on matching trays, a tiered tower of somosas and other fitas comprising the centerpiece. More settings than there are people.
Amma’s Tupperware containers seem woefully tacky in comparison.
“Who else is coming tonight?” I demand.
My rudeness renders Pushpita Khala momentarily speechless, while the young man sitting across from Harun next to Mansif Khalu clears his throat. I turn, half-surprised, to find Hanif Bhai, looking as severe and reproachful as ever.
“Oh, hi,” I continue, before tacking on, as if an afterthought, “Assalamualaikum.”
“Walaikum as-salaam,” he responds tersely, clearly so irked by my behavior that he can only muster up the will to be somewhat formal, not go all-out.
It’s too bad. I like Harun’s cousins and have felt no small amount of envy at how close they all are, since most of my extended family lives far away. In Bengali, there’s not even a word for cousins. They’re simply an extension of your siblings, and though I don’t have many of my own nearby, it’s been nice to feel included with Harun’s recently.
Making them hate me is a casualty of this war that I can’t avoid, though.
Pushpita Khala regains her composure enough to chirp, “I invited Hanif and Sharmin to thank them for their help these past few weeks. Her husband can’t leave the hospital tonight, but Sharmin is bringing her brother, too. Shaad couldn’t wait to meet you! Did Harun tell you the two of them have been inseparable since they were in Pampers? Why, his mother and I would coordinate their clothes—”
“Ma, stop,” Harun cuts in, a note of genuine fluster creeping into his voice. “Zahra doesn’t care about stuff like that.”
In any other situation, I’d kill to hear every painstaking, blackmail-worthy detail about Harun twinning with his cousin, but I clear my throat and say, “I am getting hungry.”
“Oh, of course.” The way his mother deflates almost makes me tack on a compliment about how good everything smells out of guilt, but Pushpita Khala perks back up. “The others are on the way. I’d hoped we could all catch up on the patio before they arrived, but…”
But Harun and me acting like spoiled brats ruined all her plans.
Good.
At least that means our plans are going off without a hitch.