‘It’s fate,’ Moni said. ‘You were meant for each other.’
Salma was conscious that she had been candid with Moni, but still there was something she was keeping back. A minor detail she had pushed to the back of her mind. ‘I thought he would drop me when I told him that I lied to my parents. He just laughed about it and said I was sneaky. To me it sounded like an endearment: “Sneaky”. When a language is new to you, the words can sound different than their meanings. They ring other chimes. I couldn’t get over the fact that everywhere we went, he had to pay more for things because he was a foreigner. I had never known that. How would I have known? So, I started buying the tickets and speaking to the waiters. He wouldn’t say a word. He’d let me haggle and bring the price down as I was used to doing. It made me feel important. With Amir it had been the complete opposite. He always had to take the lead, pay the bill and decide what we did. When his allowance from his dad ran out at the end of the month, I had to pretend that I was unwell and that I didn’t want to go out, so as not to embarrass him. Amir was like that. If I opened a juice bottle he couldn’t open or got a better grade than him in a test, he would sulk for hours. Suddenly, with David, I was free of all that. What I wanted mattered. What I wanted I got. He even stood up to my parents and took my side. That’s when things went forward, and we started arranging the wedding and trousseau and all these details.’
She paused, trying to remember something in the background to this narrative. Something she was ashamed of, the degree of shame small enough that she could bury it. A little thing. It nagged her now, but she went on. ‘When we first moved to Scotland, the tables turned. I suddenly didn’t know anything. I couldn’t even understand what people around me were saying. All the skills I had – haggling to bring the price down, crossing a busy street, finding an ingenious way to solve a problem – were useless. The prices were fixed, there were traffic lights and there was usually only one way to solve a problem. David would go to work and I would sit at home. I became dependent on him and I didn’t like it. I finished my training and started to work. And here I am.’
‘Successful, mashallah,’ said Moni. ‘We all look up to you.’
Salma smiled. She accepted the compliment. Hers was a story of accomplishments and it pleased others to hear it. She must put Amir out of her mind. There was no point in continuing to text him. What use would it do? And yes, it could be possibly harmful. But she would like to see him. For old times’ sake. To apologise. She owed him an apology. She had treated him shabbily. Her parents had treated him shabbily. He was scarred by what she did. It took him ages to get over it. He had never lied or dragged his heels voluntarily. It was true that, at the time, his mother was having a mastectomy and his father was indeed taking his cousin to court to sell their ancestral piece of land. It was true because of the evidence she had seen. That was it! The large envelope addressed to her. Inside it were some official papers. This was the detail she had not mentioned. The bit in the story she was ashamed about.
A large envelope had been delivered to her flat on the day she came back from her wedding-dress fitting. She had walked in still dreamy from seeing her bridal self in the dressmaker’s mirror, the waves of white taffeta, the tulle sleeves and the floor-length silken veil. She had picked up the envelope and seen her name in Amir’s handwriting. She scowled, irritated. What does he want? She was ablaze with the preparations, almost feverish as every one of her wishes for the wedding was granted. What right did he have to intrude? In the envelope was a copy of the medical record of Amir’s mother and a copy of the court case his father was pursuing. Bastard, she had thought, trying to bully me back to him, wanting to ruin my happiness, they’re all probably forged. She had glared at the claims of weakness, before tearing them up. But the documents had
