Chapter Eight
MAYA: Hey, call me when you’re free! Feels like we haven’t spoken in forever!
I typed out a message to Dina the following week when I was in the throes of scrubbing all the doors in the house in preparation for the weekend’s ‘dekha dekhi’ meeting, where the potential in-laws would find out that my skin tone was five shades darker than the picture they had seen.
The groom’s family had postponed the meeting, much to my relief, and the date had been set to teatime on Sunday. Ma had gone crazy with the house prep – as if they were going to decide if they liked me or not based on the angle of the sofa.
I was desperate to talk to Dina about everything but she was always too busy to talk: it was her father-in-law’s sixtieth, Sami was ill, she was out with her husband, she had guests round. And in those few weeks, my life had completely changed. I had the LLM and scholarship on the horizon, I had Noah’s list pushing me to do all these new things, I had the dekha dekhi coming up. I had read over half of Ulysses , for God’s sake. That in itself was probably my greatest achievement in life. I had taken up running and was working up to being able to run 5K without stopping. I had signed up for Race for Life.
Over the weekend, I had also already completed numbers four and five on the list. Number four was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey , which was actually pretty amazing. Number five was going to a jazz concert. I knew nothing about jazz, or any music beyond the UK Top 40 if I was being honest. I hadn’t even been to a concert before, so I had no idea what to expect. I would have preferred my first live-music experience to be something recognisable, but the list said otherwise and that was the whole point of the process.
Lucy took the lead in organising the night out. She booked us tickets at The Jazz Cafe in Camden last Saturday, which I imagined to be a cosy basement cafe with mood lighting and leather armchairs. But then I googled it and I found everything from hip hop to R it was about finding myself.
Sitting back down in my seat, I looked up to see that the model had arrived and so had another man, taking up the seat right next to me. He was brown and was also on his own. Our eyes met and I could tell that he was as surprised to see me as I was him. It wasn’t every day you ran into brown boys at art classes.
I looked away and focused on the model instead. He was a tall, blond, white guy and he was wearing a robe. Thinking nothing of it, I listened to Nandini start the class and tell us to pay attention to shadows and light, to try and see beyond what our eyes could see, whatever that meant. She talked about creating feelings and conveying emotions, about depth and symmetry. Then, she walked away and began playing soothing, classical music and the model stood up and let his robe fall to the floor. And he was completely and utterly butt naked.
My jaw dropped and I quickly averted my gaze as I felt heat creep up my cheeks. I discreetly darted my eyes around the room at the other ‘artists’ – they all looked completely at ease as they analysed the naked man before them and began to draw. Everyone except the brown guy. He looked as mortified as I did and once again, our eyes met. He smiled wryly at me but I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t! I didn’t want anyone to think I was there on purpose.
Feeling queasy, I tried to think of what I could say to get out of this situation. It wasn’t that I was a prude or I had an issue with the naked form. I didn’t want to look at a man’s wiggly bits for no reason! It wasn’t exactly attractive, was it? Let’s be real. It was gross.
‘Strange for you to be here,’ the brown guy said, startling me. Yes, it was, but it wasn’t his business, was it?
‘Why? Because I’m a brown woman?’ I snapped, narrowing my eyes.
‘Because you’re a Muslim woman,’ he corrected, nodding at the keffiyeh wrapped around my neck.
‘And I guess you’re a judgemental Muslim man,’ I retorted. ‘How original!’ Ten minutes before, I was desperate for someone to talk to me and now I was regretting it. If I had known that God was going to be answering prayers at that moment, I would have asked for something more meaningful, like Sheila being replaced by a manager who appreciated me.
The redhead began to draw with long, sweeping strokes. Eyeing her technique, I tried to copy her.
‘Now who’s judging?’ Mr Judgy quipped, picking up the conversation as though two minutes hadn’t passed and the matter hadn’t already been concluded.
‘Do you mind? I’m trying to focus here,’ I replied stiffly as I continued to scrawl randomly across the sheet.
‘Doesn’t look like you’re focusing,’ he said, assessing my ‘work’ dubiously. ‘It looks like a toddler’s scribbles.’
‘Speaking of focusing , why don’t you focus on your own work?’ With gritted teeth, I pointedly turned my back away from him and continued to draw without looking at the naked man under the spotlights in front of me.
‘I wonder what compelled a visibly Muslim woman like yourself to attend a class like this,’ he mused as if I had never spoken. ‘And don’t tell me it’s because you’re an artist. You’re obviously not.’
‘How am I visibly Muslim?’ I gaped at the man, flabbergasted by his audacity. Was he for real? ‘This scarf is around my neck, not my head! And even if it were, what’s it to you? Instead of trying to analyse me, a random woman who you will never see again, why don’t you look inside and ask yourself why a Muslim man like yourself felt compelled to attend this class?’
‘I’m supporting my friend,’ he admitted, looking abashed now as he began to draw what looked like a stick man on his paper.
‘Your friend is the model?’ I scoffed, my reflexes causing me to turn away and end up being treated to the model’s naked glory. I quickly looked down, anger bubbling closer to the surface. ‘So it’s fine for your friend to be naked, but not fine for me to be here? How does that make any sense? And anyway, I came here by accident if you must know.’
‘Now that’s what doesn’t make sense. I find it stupefying that you “accidentally” came to a life-drawing class.’
‘Did you just call me stupid?’
‘No! I said “stupefied”.’
‘What? Who talks like that? This isn’t Harry Potter .’
‘What’s Harry Potter got to do with anything?’
‘Stupefy? You know, the spell that .?.?.’ And just like that, I suddenly felt exhausted. Why was I arguing with a complete stranger? I bet Noah would have got the Potter reference. Bloody Noah and his blasted list. The predicament I was currently in was largely to do with him. ‘Oh, forget it.’
Nandini was walking around the room like Mary Berry on Bake Off , commenting on brush strokes and shading and shadows and both Mr Judgy and I stared at our respective disastrous drawings in dismay as she drew closer.
I needed to get out of here before I made a bigger fool of myself, but I didn’t want to come across as rude or incapable. And then I had a brainwave.
Picking up my phone, I put it to my ear and said ‘Hello?’ as though I was answering a call. ‘Oh no, what happened? Is she hurt? Oh gosh, yes, I’ll be there. I’ll meet you at the hospital.’ I put the phone away and started gathering up my belongings.
‘Is everything OK, dear?’ Nandini asked, hurrying over to me.
‘I’m afraid there’s been an emergency,’ I replied, trying to sound panicked as I went over to the coat rack where Nandini had hung up my coat. ‘I have to leave, I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear. What happened?’
What did happen? I hadn’t expected her to actually ask me. ‘My .?.?. g-gran,’ I stammered, as I tried to remember what I had said during my fake phone call. ‘She had a fall.’
My gran, as far as I knew, was absolutely fine and in good health. She was probably at that very moment watching a Bollywood movie on Star Plus. Did they have Star Plus in Desh? I had no idea; I hadn’t been since I was seven years old. Astaghfirullah, forgive me, Allah , I beseeched God in my head. Please don’t let anything happen to Nani!
‘Oh my goodness! I hope she’s all right,’ Nandini exclaimed. ‘Is she here in London?’
Why was she asking me all these questions? It was an emergency! I had to leave! And yes, my grandmother did live in London, not too far from me in fact, but I didn’t want to admit it. She was on holiday in Bangladesh right now, but that was beside the point. I wanted the story to be about someone else, it felt less ominous that way, less like I was jinxing her.
‘No .?.?.’ I replied, wracking my brains. ‘She’s .?.?. back home. As in .?.?.’ My eyes fell to the keffiyeh I had wrapped about my neck, a gift from Dina from when last visited. ‘Palestine.’
‘Oh, poor thing. How is access to medical care over there? Is she in the West Bank?’
I tried to recall where Dina’s family was from, but couldn’t for the life of me remember. My eyes landed on the giant crucifix above the window. ‘Erm, she’s in Bethlehem,’ I guessed solemnly, picking up my bag and flinging it over my shoulder.
‘Terrible what’s happening,’ the redhead chose that moment to pipe up and acknowledge my existence. ‘What’s the situation on the ground like?’
‘Yes, would love to hear your thoughts on that,’ Mr Judgy joined in, his eyebrow raised mockingly at me. ‘I wouldn’t have pegged you as Palestinian.’
I looked in his eyes and I could instantly tell that he knew I was lying about my grandmother – and possibly about Palestine as well and I immediately regretted the lie. To be honest, he had really nice eyes. The same shape and colour as almonds. In fact, he would have been attractive if he wasn’t so annoying.
But forget that. I needed to get the hell out of that room and fast, before I was asked any more questions I didn’t know the answer to. ‘I’m half Palestinian,’ I lied. ‘And erm, the situation is awful,’ I replied vaguely. ‘I’m so sorry but I really have to leave. Bye!’
With that, I legged it out of the room, down the hall and back into the cold night. It was only when I was safely on the Tube that I remembered that during my phone call, I said that I would ‘meet them at the hospital’. How I was planning to go to a hospital in Palestine in one night, God knows. Dina hadn’t been in years because of how dangerous it was.
Shoulders sagging, I took out Noah’s notebook and under his review of item number six – ‘Fantastic night – Ally is bants’ – whatever that meant – I wrote ‘Never again’.