Asif came home that evening to find Zenobia in bed. She hadn’t made dinner, and the children had not eaten. When he woke her up, she said only one thing: “Get me out of here. Get me out of this cursed building, as soon as possible.”
Pushpa’s servant rang their doorbell at 9:00 p.m. Asif came back into the bedroom, looking puzzled as he held out a cloth sack. “I may be wrong,” he said, “but it doesn’t feel like they’ve returned all your jewelry? It feels so light.”
His wife looked at him with dull eyes. “What does it matter?” she said. “And how are we going to prove anything anyway? We are luckier than most. At least she sent some stuff back.”
Asif nodded. But at that moment, he resolved to move the family as soon as he found someone to buy their apartment.
He spent the next six months looking for a buyer. The first, a wealthy Muslim merchant who wanted to move into a “cosmopolitan” locality, was summarily dismissed by the building’s co-op board. “Forget it, yaar,” Dilip, the head of the building association, told Asif. “We are now an all-Hindu building. Let this man go live with his own kind.”
Three other buyers were rejected by the board before Dilip made his intentions clear. It turned out that his brother was looking to relocate to Mumbai. He of course wished to live near his family. Would Asif reduce his asking price and sell to his brother? It would be a win-win-win for all of them.
“How is it a win for me?” Asif asked.
Dilip smiled. “Arre, yaar, you want to sell eventually, right? How you will do that if I don’t approve the sale? You see? Win-win-win.”
Asif went home, called his broker, and told him he had changed his mind. He wasn’t selling just yet. Because he had come to a decision. There was no point in simply moving to a different neighborhood. He no longer wished to live in this godforsaken country.
Sushil had given them a new identity. Asif had been forced to shed the name bestowed upon him by his father and instead take a name chosen for him by an illiterate street thug. Everything about them was new. What was that term Christians in America used? Born again. They had been born again.
They would start afresh in a new country, among new people. He would move heaven and earth to get an appointment at a university in America.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They sat in silence in Mohan’s living room, Smita sobbing quietly, Mohan riveted in place. Finally, after the longest time, Smita spoke. “I’m sorry. You see, I couldn’t . . .”
“Don’t,” Mohan said, his voice hoarse. He crossed the room, sat next to her, and took her hand in his. Everything that the gesture telegraphed—sympathy, solidarity, caring—made Smita come undone, and she began to cry harder.
“One impulsive phone call,” Smita said. “With one phone call to Chiku, I upended all our lives. It was my fault, you see? Everything that followed was my fault.”
“Smita, no, no, no,” Mohan said. “How can you believe this? You were a child.”
Smita barely heard him. “We had never thought of ourselves as anything but Indian,” she said. “We were not a religious family, and Mumbai was the only home we knew . . .”
“Yes, of course.”
“But, Mohan. This incident changed more than just our lives. It changed how we saw ourselves. We were suddenly made to feel like strangers in the only home we’d ever known. In some ways, we felt more welcomed in Ohio than we did in my old neighborhood, after Sushil entered our lives.”
Mohan put his arm around Smita’s shoulders in a comforting gesture. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Smita opened her mouth to say more when her phone rang. It was Anjali calling. On a Sunday morning.
Reluctantly, she pulled away from Mohan and reached for her phone. She took a moment to compose herself before she answered, aware that Mohan was watching her.
“Hi, Anjali,” Smita said, brushing the tears from her eyes. “How are you?”
“Fine. I have news. We have a firm date. It’s on Wednesday. Okay?”
A few days before, Smita would have been dismayed by the delay. Now, she didn’t mind so much.
“Of course we won’t know the exact time until that morning,” Anjali said. “It’s at least a five-hour drive from Mumbai. So maybe you should stay at the motel the night before.”
“Actually, I’m in Surat. So it won’t take as long—”
“Surat? What’s in Surat?”
“I—I’m just visiting a friend.”
“Oh, I see. Well, it will be a shorter drive. I don’t know how many hours of notice we’ll get.”
“That’s what I was worried about.”
“Okay. Good. Give my salaams to Shannon when you talk with her.”
“I will.” Smita hesitated. “Anjali?”
“Yes?”
“What—what happens after the verdict?”
“What do you mean? Hopefully, they’ll be locked up for years.”
“Yes, I know. But I mean, what happens to Meena?”
There was a lengthy silence, and Smita’s heart sank. “I don’t know,” Anjali said at last. “I guess she’ll continue living with her mother-in-law.”
Smita was silent.
Anjali sighed. “Look, I know you want a different answer. But I’m a straight shooter. Okay? This isn’t America, unfortunately. This is India.”
“But you will . . . Will you stay in touch with her?”
There was another strained silence. When Anjali spoke, she sounded distracted. “Can we talk in person on Wednesday? I have so much paperwork to do today.”
Smita felt immediately chastised. “Yeah, of course.”
“Sorry, not to be rude, but . . .”
“No. I understand. I do.”
Smita hung up and looked down at her chewed-up fingernails. When the hell had she started chewing her nails? India was a fucking wrecking ball, affecting her nervous system, her psyche.
“I could hear what she was saying,” Mohan said. “She sounds like a cold fish.”
She smiled at his attempt at sympathy. “I don’t think she is. Can you imagine how hard it must be, doing the kind of work she does day in and day out?”
“I can’t. But honestly, I also cannot imagine doing the work you do.”
“I love my job,” she said. “It’s a privilege, telling people’s stories.”
Mohan swiveled on the couch so that he faced her. “But what about you? Who do you have to tell your story to? Who takes care of you?”
Mummy used to express a similar sentiment. She’d visit Smita in her austere apartment in New York, take in the black-and-white photographs on the gray walls, the sparsely furnished living room—and a look of worry would cross her face. “Let’s go buy some real furniture, beta,” she would say. “A nice, bright couch, maybe? All you have is this cold, hard furniture.” It took Smita a few years to figure out that Mummy wasn’t really critiquing her taste in decorating. She was concerned about her daughter’s solitary, nomadic existence. The minimalist apartment was simply a metaphor for a minimalist life, one shorn of any long-term obligations or relationships.
“I look after myself,” she said. She was aiming for nonchalance, but the words fell flat.
“You don’t have to be brave with me, Smita,” Mohan said. “What you’ve endured is shocking. That man destroyed your whole life, yaar.”
Smita shook her head. “No, Mohan. He didn’t destroy my life. I didn’t let him. Because if I had, he would’ve won.”
“You’re right,” he said immediately. “You’re absolutely right.”
“You know,” Mohan said after a while, “until I met you, until I met Meena, I really believed India was the greatest country in the world. I mean, I knew there were problems, of course. But after hearing your story? I . . . I just . . . I feel like I’ve been asleep my whole life. The fact that nobody came to your rescue? I just can’t believe it.”
“I remember this one woman who lived in the neighborhood,” Smita said. “I went to school with her daughter, but we weren’t friends. One time she ran into me and Mummy, about a year later. And she apologized to us for what had happened. She was only a distant acquaintance, but she had tears in her eyes. ‘It’s not right what happened to you,’ she said. ‘I am so ashamed. We should have spoken up.’ It meant so much to us, Mohan, the fact that she acknowledged it. Mummy remembered her kindness for years.”