“Look,” someone said, and she did.
She caught sight of her own reflection first. From the angle it looked as though she were looking onto the surface of very still water. Red cloth instead of the sky. Little specks of light filtered through the fabric. Then she met Tariq’s eyes, his upside-down reflection. It was Tariq, clearly and definitely, but it did not look like him. He winked at her and grinned and she smiled. The mirror was taken away, the red net removed and the room lit golden again. It was time for the photographs—one with each family until it was finally her family’s turn—and then it would all be over.
* * *
“HAPPY?” HUDA SAID to him in Urdu. She let go of him. The guest book had been placed back but the tablecloth was uneven; Amar tugged at it to try and straighten it. Huda made a typical Urdu joke about how quick Amar was to feel concerned about the appearance of the wedding. He shot her a dark look.
“Come outside and speak with me,” she said gently.
“I don’t want to speak with you.”
“Then who do you want to speak with?”
He paused to think about it. He was unsteady on his feet.
“Hadia.”
“Never me, nay?” she said.
He looked at her. He felt bad. It seemed as though an explanation was being asked of him but he had none to offer. He was depleted. He had made Mumma cry. He hadn’t seen her for years, missed her all the time, and then on the one day he did see her, he had made her cry. He had kicked the stupid guest book stand. Some kid had even yelled it out loud. He was ready to go home, and that thought came with its own ache: where, exactly, was home? Huda led him gently by the arm to the parking lot, as if he were a child that had thrown a tantrum and was now being escorted out. But this was not a tantrum. He was justified in his anger. They had meddled in his life.
“You don’t have to babysit me for them,” he mumbled.
“What happened just now?”
“Whatever happened, happened long before that.”
“Ah, our poet Amar,” she said in Urdu, and hit his arm lovingly.
They took a seat on the sidewalk facing the parking lot. Once he would have been irritated by her teasing. Now he was grateful for the sign of intimacy.
“Couldn’t you wait until after the wedding to fight, if you’ve already waited so long?” She was speaking very softly.
Past the parking lot, across the street, store signs blinked neon colors. A gas station, a liquor store, a store that bought and sold gold. He wanted to go back inside and find Amira, talk to her one last time.
He wanted to leave this place and never come back.
He wanted to begin this night again, wanted it to never end.
“When did you become so smart?” he asked Huda.
“I’ve always been.”
He smiled.
“Just me that trailed behind, then?”
She touched his arm and left her hand there.
“Let’s go back inside?” she said after a pause.
“Not yet.”
He placed his hands in his pockets. He still had some cash, at touch it felt like forty. He pulled out his cigarettes.
“Do you mind?” he asked her. To his surprise, she shook her head.
“You deserve one, after what happened in there,” she said, gesturing behind them to the hotel.
He laughed and lit his cigarette and said through the corner of his mouth, “You’ve loosened up. And you’re the one who’s earned it, the way you handled us.”
“Haven’t loosened up that much.”
He laughed again. She was also smiling. He watched the smoke leave him and rise into the dark sky. He was careful to turn his face away from her to blow. He and Huda seemed almost like friends. Almost like they could be.
“Mumma wants to take a family photo. All of us, at the end of the wedding, just before the ruksati,” she said.
“The part when everyone cries?”
“Yes.”
“Will you cry?”
“She is my sister.”
He tapped the cigarette and crushed the ash with his shoe.
“Our sister,” she said.
She was being very kind to him. He felt worse for expressing his anger.
“What’s happening now?”
“The mirror part.”
“Which one of you liked that?”
“Hadia.”
“And when will it be your turn?” He looked at her.
“Probably not for a while.”
“Will you call me back for it?”
She looked down at her wrists. She had worn silver bangles that matched the stitching on her outfit. He dropped the cigarette butt and watched it burn and then dim.
“Why don’t you stay. Then I won’t have to call you.”
He buried his face in his hands. He was not crying. He had fucked up phenomenally. He had yelled at Mumma in front of everyone. He knew that he should never have gone out to talk to Amira, but even knowing how he felt now he couldn’t much regret it.
“Amar, can I ask you a question?”
He nodded.
“Is it better for you in your life now? Hadia and I wonder.”
“Not better. Easier, maybe.”
They watched guests with young children leave the hall and head to their cars.
“Are you ready to come back?”
“Not yet.”
“But you will come?”
He looked at her. He nodded. She stood up. Straightened the pleats of her sari. When she moved light reflected off of each of the gems sewn into her suit.
“The picture. Don’t forget. Our family will be the last to be photographed. Then the ruksati.”
“The hard part.”
“Yes, the hard part.”
Huda began to walk away. He called her name and she turned back.
“It was good speaking to you.” He cupped his hands around his mouth.
“As good as Hadia?” She smiled.
“Pretty close.”
He winked, but in the dark he was not sure if she saw it. Then he was alone. The stars twinkled and the neon light across the street glowed. If he had known there was a liquor store he would not have gone back to the hotel bar. The last time he went, after Amira walked away, the bartender had kindly hinted that Amar could have only one more drink before he would be cut off. It was a hotel, he explained, they had stricter rules, it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t care. He paid. He held up the clear glass and looked at it like it would be his last—the golden and generous pour. He calmed just at the sight of it, at its weight when not yet sipped. Then his throat burned as if the drink could grow flames that spread to lick his insides.
“I have to tell you something,” Amira had said, when they both knew they had to get up soon.
He knew what it was going to be. He felt dizzy looking at her as she swept her hair to one side. He had loved her when she was a girl hiding behind her mother’s legs. When they played hide-and-seek, and he spotted her feet poking from beneath the branches, and he continued searching on purpose, not knowing why his heart thumped when he made the decision to keep looking. When she won the Quran competition at eleven, and how, when he heard her voice on the speaker reciting, he looked up and listened for once. And he had loved her when he was seventeen watching the birds on the telephone wire take flight, and she stood and stepped toward him at last, and only after that had he named it love.
She was engaged. Promised to a man she would marry once she completed grad school. He was not surprised. The paths their lives would take had been set in motion long before this blow was delivered to him.
“I wanted you to hear it from me,” she said. “I wanted the chance to see how you were doing once more if I could, and tell you myself.”
“Arranged?” he asked.
“Initially,” she said.
It stung. So she loved him.
If there were other loves awaiting Amar, he knew they would be little loves, not: my whole life has led up to this moment with you. Every memory with you is electric. If you are there, it is you on the fence post with legs swinging, or you sipping from the striped straw, everyone else is out of focus or not there at all.
“Are you happy?” he asked.