The Newlyweds (39 page)

“He’s been in trouble his whole life, since he was a teenager,” her father continued. “A girl’s family rejected his proposal, and Salim attacked her with acid.”

Amina’s mother made a skeptical noise, and Ghaniyah’s eyes got very big.

“Was she badly burned?”

Her uncle gave her father a look, as if to say that this wasn’t an appropriate conversation to be having in front of his daughter.

“This was more than thirty years ago,” Amina’s father said quickly. “I’m sure he’s no danger now.”

Ghaniyah didn’t seem reassured. “But he knows where we live?”

“Everyone in Kajalnagar knows us,” Moni snapped. “How could they not? But we’re perfectly safe. You can put it out of your head.”

Amina’s mother nodded darkly. “
You’re
not in any danger.”

Her cousin looked at Amina, clearly horrified. “But why would he want to hurt the three of you, if he’s my uncle’s cousin?”

“Gigi,” her aunt said sharply.

But Amina was determined that they should all hear the truth. “They’ve made up a pretext,” she said. “They say we stole gold jewelry—jewelry my dadu gave my father to sell. Now they’re trying to extort a ridiculous amount of money. They believe we’re rich, simply because we’re going to America.”

“Thank God we’ve never gotten involved with those people,” her aunt said, but she didn’t look at Amina.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” her uncle said. “They’ll be fine.”

“I’ll have my nap, or I’ll be a wreck by this evening,” her aunt said. “You’ll stay for dinner, at least?”

“We’ve bought a hen,” her mother apologized.

“Come, Ammi,” Ghaniyah said. “We’ll lie down together.” She turned to Amina. “We’ll see you again, of course?”

“Of course,” Amina said. She was grateful that the good-byes weren’t belabored, the way they would be in America. If they were lucky and the problems with her father’s visa were easily solved, there might not be time for another visit. It was still possible that they could leave in a week and a half; that she could keep her job; that everything would continue to go as she’d planned.

11
Fariq dropped them at the Kaderabad Bazar, where her mother bought another loaf of sliced sandwich bread for Nasir’s toast. The sky was gray, and the air smelled like rain; people were rushing to complete their errands. While her mother was paying, Amina and her father took his phone to the Flexiload shop for more minutes; she and George had arranged to talk at half past six. They had just turned the corner to Nasir’s lane when a man called her father’s name in the
crowded street. Her father stopped, and her mother grabbed Amina’s arm; but when they turned around it was only Long Nose, his distinctive profile half a head above the rest of the crowd. His gray hair had gone pure white, and he walked toward them with confident, long strides.

“Abdul Mazid.” He put his palms together respectfully toward her mother. “And your Munni, too. How lucky this is.” Long Nose and her father shook hands, and then there was a pause.

“How many years has it been?” Long Nose asked.

Her mother turned to her: “You were how old?”

“Twelve,” Amina said.

“Then sixteen years!” Her parents shook their heads and smiled.

“And how are you?” Long Nose asked.

“Fine, fine,” her father said. “Now that Munni’s visiting from America.”

“Wonderful.” Long Nose looked at her a second longer than necessary, as if he saw something of her mother in her. “I heard you’d married there, but I didn’t know where your parents were living. I would have liked to send a gift.”

“No need, no need,” her mother said. “You’re too kind.”

“And you? Where are you living?”

“In Savar with my sister,” her mother said. “Things are still very hard. And now Munni’s husband has lost his job.”

She looked at her mother in wonder. Why would she tell Long Nose something they’d kept from even their closest relatives? Their arms were linked, and her mother gripped Amina’s hard.

“U.S. financial crisis,” her father said in English. “Thousands of layoffs everywhere.”

Amina waited for one of her parents to mention the visas, but neither did.

“And how are your children?” her mother asked.

“Both married,” Long Nose said. “Six grandchildren—four boys and two girls.”

“You are blessed,” her mother said. She put her hand out, palm up.

“It’s starting,” her father said, although Amina didn’t feel anything. “We’re going to dinner at my nephew’s.”

“Is his place nearby?” Long Nose asked. “I could walk with you.”

“Nonsense!” her mother said. “It’s a ten-minute walk in the wrong direction; you’ll get soaked.” She smiled. “But we’re so glad to have met you.”

Long Nose looked around uncomfortably; they were standing in the middle of the street. “Could I speak to you?” he asked her father.

“Right now?” her father said.

“Just for a moment,” Long Nose said. “Perhaps the ladies would like to start back?”

“Go,” her father said, speaking English again. “I will catch you.” Her parents exchanged significant looks, and then her mother said good-bye to Long Nose. She had pulled her scarf over her head, nearly covering her face.

“Let’s go.”

“But Nasir’s—” Amina began, but her mother was hurrying her in the opposite direction. They turned the corner and then doubled back around, approaching Nasir’s from the other side.

“I didn’t want him to see where we’re staying,” her mother said. “He’s probably asking your father for money. Now George’s job gives us an excuse.”

They let themselves in the gate with the key Nasir had made for them and climbed the stairs. Amina flicked the wall switches without thinking, but the power was out. They moved around in the dim rooms, her mother putting away the bread and then going into the bathroom.

“Do you mean we never paid Long Nose the back rent?” Amina asked cautiously, once her mother was sitting at the table with the potatoes and onions to chop for the curry.

Her mother didn’t look up from her vegetables, as if she were a small girl who needed to concentrate to work with a knife. “Let’s see what your father says.”

She could remember in elaborate detail certain pieces of the furniture they’d given Long Nose: the bed with a headboard stained dark to look like teak, a lamp with a patterned glass shade, and a pair of upholstered chairs, the antimacassars embroidered with spotted deer. She had begged her mother to save those, but one had to be left behind to cover a stain. At the time it had seemed as if they were losing untold
riches—Amina hadn’t been able to understand how seven months of rent could possibly equal all of that—and she would never forget the moment they’d stepped into the one-room flat in Tejgaon, the blistered walls, the cracked linoleum, and the roaches lazily arranged on the walls of the kitchen and bathroom, as if they were the flat’s rightful owners. She had cried, and her mother hadn’t smacked her (as she’d deserved, for that kind of behavior at twelve years old) but had taken her in her arms and pressed her face against her chest, so that she wouldn’t have to see where they would live.

Now, suddenly, she calculated the relative values with adult eyes. That cheap furniture that her parents had brought as newlyweds from the village would have been worth at most two months of rent. Even if Long Nose didn’t demand sixteen years of interest, they owed him perhaps six or seven hundred dollars—a small fortune at that time in Dhaka.

She and her mother both turned when her father opened the door. He didn’t say anything, but his face was troubled, and he went directly to the sink to do ablutions. They’d missed the
duhr
because of the embassy, and it was almost time for
maghrib
.

Her mother sighed. “What are the chances, after all these years? Did he give you some number?”

Her father emerged from the bathroom. “Number? Oh, no—he didn’t mention money.”

“Only the debt,” her mother said.

“Not even the debt.” Her father brushed her mother’s doubts aside with an impatient gesture. “I believe he’s forgiven it.” Then his face darkened. “But Salim was there—that’s what he wanted to tell me.”

Her mother put down her knife, startled. “What? At the market?”

“At Long Nose’s building—the day after Munni arrived. Salim must’ve known we weren’t at Omar’s, and so he went back to the place he found us the last time. Long Nose said he told him he hadn’t seen or spoken with us in years. Of course he never saw Salim the night he locked you in, but something about him made Long Nose wary—that eye unsettles people. And so he didn’t tell Salim anything. But Salim kept haranguing him, asking for our phone number. Finally Long Nose said he’d call the police, but Salim just laughed
at him.” The set of her father’s jaw was fiercely determined—for a moment, a soldier’s face again. “He said he wanted to warn us, but he didn’t have our number.”

“And then Allah brought us together, like that,” her mother said. “A miracle.”

“I think the miracle is that Long Nose was so kind,” Amina said. “Especially after how we’ve treated him.” She was ashamed of herself. Six hundred dollars was three weeks at Starbucks, after taxes; not nothing, but certainly possible. Why had it never occurred to her that she might repay what they owed?

“If Long Nose wants to forgive an old debt, that’s his choice,” her mother said. “You’ll insult him by offering money.”

Amina turned to her father. “We should pay him.”

Her mother looked up from the vegetables and spoke mildly. “What can
he
do?”

She didn’t think her mother had meant it as anything but a statement of fact, but her father stood still as if he’d been hit. The light remaining in the apartment was yellow-green, and the rain had finally begun, a steady thrumming on the roof. Nasir’s few possessions stood out in the gloom: a white refrigerator, a black plastic computer table, a dining table covered with a cloth printed with tiny Dutchmen holding apples—a loan from one of his sisters, Amina was sure, in anticipation of their arrival. The Dutchmen looked like corpses with their glassy, wide-open eyes.

Her father put his bare feet into a pair of black dress shoes sitting beneath the rack at the door.

“I’m going out.”

“I’m sorry,” Amina said. She bent down and touched his feet in the old-fashioned way. “Stay, Abba. I’ll say the prayers with you.”

Her father shook her off. “Get up, Munni.”

“Nasir will be home soon. He’ll have information for us.”

Her father didn’t say anything.

“Sit with me and read the form. I might need your help.”

He looked to determine whether she was being disingenuous.

“Technical vocabulary,” Amina said quickly. “I’m never good at that. I know the individual words, but I don’t always get the sense.”

For a moment he seemed ready to walk out the door, and then he
softened. “Make some tea,” he told her mother roughly. “If there’s no power, at least Nasir should have something to drink when he gets home.”

Her mother disappeared obediently to light the gas cooktop in the kitchen, and Amina and her father sat down to read the blue form. The room was warm and the air dead still. Eventually it became too dark to see even the apples in the Dutchmen’s hands. Amina hunted until she found a flashlight in a basket on top of the refrigerator, and then they continued to work it out, line by line together.

12
Amina had been waiting, and she jumped when she heard Nasir’s key in the lock. It was nine o’clock, almost dinnertime, and Nasir had been downstairs at Shilpa’s, helping his nephews with their homework, since their father worked an evening shift. He went straight to the sink to wash, but as soon as they sat down at the table, he began discussing the visas.

“Your uncle is right,” he told Amina. “It probably has to do with his name more than with the questions.” Nasir ate the way her parents did, maneuvering the rice in neat balls to his mouth with his right hand. The nails on both hands were short and clean.

“But if I’d answered the questions,” her father lamented.

“You still might not have gotten it. I talked to a friend of mine whose nephew goes to business school in the States—in Arizona. His name is Khuzaymah Menon, and his visa was approved right away, but he knows another guy, a Sylheti, who won an H1-B visa in the lottery. He was all set to go, and then they gave him this same blue paper. His name is Abdul Haq, so you see—it took them six months to approve him.”

Her mother gasped. “Six months.”

“You have to use the immigrant visa within six months,” Amina reminded Nasir. “If we have to wait too long, my mother’s visa will have expired—we’ll have to start all over again.”

“I did some research online,” Nasir said. “I can do more tomorrow. It doesn’t always take that long—sometimes it’s only a week or two.”

“Even two weeks,” Amina said, thinking of her job.

“You can stay with me as long as you want.”

“We’ll go to a hotel,” Amina said, more to see what Nasir would say than out of any real conviction.

“They would have security there,” her mother said, but she looked doubtfully at Amina, obviously thinking of the expense of a hotel and George’s job.

But Nasir ignored both of them, and addressed himself to her father. “Did something happen?”

“It was nothing,” her father said. “We ran into our old landlord—the one with the building right around here. He said my cousin Salim had come looking for us there.”

“He was threatening you?” Nasir’s irises were dark brown with a black ring, exactly like her own. What would be happening right now, at this moment, if she had married him? The thought was pleasurably transgressive, and she could entertain it without consequences. She could pretend to be paying attention to her mother’s paranoid fears, her father’s empty assurances, and instead imagine the four of them sitting at this table as two couples, two generations of a family, just to see what it would be like. No one—not George, not her parents, and certainly not Nasir—had to know she was doing it.

“We can’t put you and your sisters at risk,” Amina said, but the sense of danger was less palpable than her curiosity about how much Nasir wanted them to stay and whether any of that was due to her.