A Sister to Honor (13 page)

“That I marry a good Muslim man. That is all.”

“I'll be your good Muslim man, then!” He picked up the framed family photo that Afia kept on her desk. It had been taken just after Baba had rebuilt the terrace overlooking the mulberry orchard, the summer before Shahid left for the States. No one smiled the way people smiled in photos in America, but they all looked happy. Speaking as if to the picture, Gus went on, “I'll convert. Can I convert? Tell me what I have to do. Do I have to pray five times a day? I'm circumcised. Do I have to sew that bit back on? Because you tell me, baby, and I'll do it.”

“We circumcise. Just like Jews.”

“I'll do something else, then. Swear an oath. A blood oath.”

He looked so earnest, so eager. She couldn't help herself. She laughed. “It would not work. And if it does, you would have to marry me.”

“So I'll marry you.” He set the photo down. “I'll convert, and I'll marry you. Only not in Pakistan. Can't let them behead me.”

“And how do you know, silly boy, that we should be married?”

“I love you. We've been together four months. We're both smart, we're not crazy. If marriage is what it takes—”

“What do we know of marriage? This is something . . . our parents know of. This is why in this country you have everyone divorce. Because no one wise is choosing the partner. It is all romance, all love.”

“You don't think we're wise?”

“We are young. This marriage, choosing . . .” She was the serious one, now. “It is not for us.”

“Then what are we doing? Huh?” He returned to the bed and sat cross-legged. “Why are we together, if you're just going back to marry this Zarba guy you don't give a fuck about?”

“I don't know, Gus.”

“I'll tell you why, then.” He took her hand in his. He pressed her fingers, one by one, as if checking for sprains. “We are beginning, Afia. We are exploring. It's what people do. But you know, we can't just do it by ourselves.”

“This is what we say in my country. It must be the family—”

“Or your friends. Look, Afia, I've been playing this your way. I don't breathe a word to your brother, who is my old roommate and a teammate. I don't go posting pictures on Facebook.”

“It wasn't Facebook.”

“But it should be. It should say, ‘In a relationship with Afia Satar,' right there on my profile. And you see how you are with your friends, and how you are when your friends are away, and little by little you figure out. Whether you should get married, you know, or move on.”

She shook her head. “We cannot do it that way, Gus.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Tell me again.”

“Honor”—she looked away from him, toward the family portrait on the desk—“is not just the greatest thing, for Pashtuns. It is really the only thing. And however you might think it is stupid, Gus, I am”—she bit her lip, to hold back the tears—“my family's honor. Without it, they more rather I am dead. And maybe I more rather, too.”

“Well, I don't more rather. And I don't accept that you're engaged to this guy. So maybe if you don't break up with him I'll just tell Shahid—”

“No!” She grabbed his wrist. “If you tell my brother, then . . . then . . . you do not love me.” She let go. She removed her glasses, which were fogging, and set them on the bedside table. She pulled her dupatta over her hair. “I am maybe to you just exotic, like your pets.”

Strangely, he snorted. He leaned close. She could feel his breath on her face. He touched the mole on her cheekbone. “M'Afia,” he said softly. “You are so
basic
to me.”

His lips came close, very close. She could taste him, almost, the liquor of his saliva. Her lips parted. Then she tasted, instead, her own salt tears. She blinked, snatched back the glasses, pushed at his shoulder. “Go,” she said.

“Afia, you can't mean this. We're here, now. All those rules, they don't exist here.”

“They exist,” she said, bringing a fist to her chest, over her heart, “here.”

She stepped to the door and opened it. He said more things, but she had stopped speaking. Words were like hot matches on the skin of her heart. She hung her head and would not meet his eyes as he brushed past her and made his way out into the cold.

A
ll was settled. All settled. Shahid kept repeating this truth to himself, every time a cold lizard of anger threatened to twist inside him. He'd first felt the lizard, darting one direction then the other, when he got that call to come home to Nasirabad. Maybe only Khalid knew about that photo, he'd thought then, and maybe their father had spent all that money just to bring them back for Maryam's wedding. But that reasoning had never added up.

The marriage offer had arrived while Shahid was in Peshawar, summoned by Uncle Omar. Omar had prepared a feast of roasted chicken and curries and invited a crowd of relatives from that side of the family. Shahid saw his other
anâ
, his mother's mother, whose legs were failing her but whose mind was quick as ever and who loved hearing his stories about America. Attending dutifully to her was Tayyab's daughter, Panra, prettier and plumper than he remembered her. In the morning, Omar took him back to the Peshawar Sports Academy, where Coach Khan looked spindly, and Shahid hit a few balls and reminisced about his training days. Everything felt coated by nostalgia, even pausing at the spot by the banyan tree, just inside the gate, where a suicide bomber had broken past the guards and blown himself up, his severed head rolling down the walk toward the main office. “And I told the boys,” Coach Khan said to Omar, as if he had never told this joke before, “that the fellow'd come to the wrong place. Should've dropped his head off at a football academy.”

Khalid, Shahid told his uncle that evening, would not have found the quip funny. Omar listened quietly while Shahid complained about his stepbrother. In the end Shahid told his uncle of the photograph, of Khalid's veiled threat, no
nanawate
for
tora
.

“And is the photograph,” Omar asked quietly, “objectionable?”

Shahid sighed. “I don't know, Uncle. It's not so easy to say, over there.”

“Not so easy to control your sister, either.”

“I try, Uncle.”

“You should not have this problem on your mind. You have a career to focus on.” Omar had lifted his glass to his lips. He drank two fingers of Scotch every night, unwitnessed by anyone except Shahid. “Let Afia be engaged,” he'd said. “Married as soon as possible. You are a generous brother, Shahid, but you saddle yourself with a liability, here. I will speak with your family,” he added, before Shahid could object.

On the plane returning to America, Afia had been silent, sullen. “You might thank me,” he'd said at last.

“For what?”

“For the fact that you're on this flight. Khalid had a print from the website. What if I'd let him show it to Baba? What do you think would've happened to you?”

She had shrugged. “Maybe I'd be dead. Maybe that would be better.”

He had felt his anger then, cold and wriggling, threatening the relief he felt at their both returning to New England, safe. “Drama queen,” he had accused her, and they had not spoken for the remainder of the flight.

Well, she was getting in line. She knew what she had—a great opportunity for education, for independence. She knew what Shahid had done for her. He was pissed at Khalid, but that was nothing new—all his life he'd wanted and needed Khalid to be his mentor, his guide, and Khalid had done nothing but wish him dead.
Too bad for you, Khalid lala
, he'd thought when Zardad's offer finally came. And now, when Khalid's words came back to haunt him—no
nanawate
for
tora
—he just hit the squash ball harder and drowned them out. He focused on the GMAT, coming up in a couple of months. All was settled. All would be well.

The first Sunday in February, Coach Hayes pulled him into her office after a home match where they steamrolled St. Lawrence. She stood in the doorway for a minute, talking to two girls from the women's team, before she shut the door and sat in her swivel chair, opposite him. Her phone's red light announced messages, but she ignored it. Shahid took the stiff-backed chair. From the yellow bin she kept by the door he picked one of the old-fashioned blue hardballs she made them use, sometimes, just to keep them on their toes. From the other bin, the red one, he picked one of the soft balls and began juggling them, blue and black spinning off his hands. Coach Hayes had the largest office in the athletic building. In four years, Shahid still hadn't gotten over how weird this was. Coach took a swig from her water bottle—the woman drank like ten gallons a day—and opened a folder. “I need your honest opinion, Shahid,” she said.

“Always, Coach.” He kept his eyes on the balls. Blue, black, blue, black.

“What are our chances with the Ivies?”

Now here was a subject Shahid could warm to. He caught the blue ball in his right hand; the black one skittered off. “We took Brown last year,” he said, “and we came close with Columbia. Princeton's out of reach—they've got those two guys from Egypt, I played them in the juniors, and now they've got one of the Khans, from Lahore. But Yale graduated three of its top contenders, so they're beatable. And Harvard . . . well, Harvard is a toss-up, Coach.”

“What do we need to do?”

“To beat them?” Shahid sat back. With the relief of Afia's engagement, he had been playing well, but he hadn't really thought about team strategy. He was flattered, Coach asking him like this. Not like she wasn't sure of herself. That was one of the many things his family could never have comprehended—how well this woman seemed to know her mind, like a man. He'd Googled her athletic history. At her peak, her serve had been her signature. She struck it overhead, like a tennis serve. Her ball traveled fast enough to disorient her opponent, and she somehow recovered quickly enough from the follow-through to pick off the return. It was a high-risk strategy. “To beat them,” he repeated, “we'd need to look at the bottom half of the lineup.”

“That's my thinking. You, Afran, Chander, Jamil—I can't see changing anything there. Tom's out till March, probably, with that ankle.”

“I've been working with Carlos.” Shahid stood. He had to pace, to see how to rearrange the squad. “You've got him at seven, but he's beating Yanik. And you're alternating Gus and Johan at nine, but you know, Gus took that guy today in less than an hour. I could see putting him at eight, and trying someone new at nine.”

“Gus at eight,” Coach Hayes repeated. She was making notes, sipping her water.

“Yeah. His serve has got that soft little spin, you know, it's tricky. And he's got more confidence this year. You might give him a try at eight when we play Trinity, just to see.” Shahid nodded at his vision. “And maybe stack the boys on the top. Switch Chander and Jamil, you're sure to get that fourth match.”

“I don't approve of stacking, Shahid, you know that.”

“With positions three and four, it's not really stacking.” When she raised her eyebrows, he gave in. “All right, but let me work with Jamil on the side. Then we have a chance, Coach. Not a big one, but a chance.”

“Well, that's your assignment. A win over Harvard.” She drew a rectangle around the list she'd made in her notebook. She stood. She looked almost pleased. Then a shadow crossed her face. “How's your sister, Shahid?”

He stiffened. “She is well, Coach.”

“She's . . . adjusting okay? To this idea of being engaged?”

He gave her his widest smile. “It is all settled, Coach. Everyone is very happy.”

“Good.” She cleared her throat. “Because—not to be selfish—we're going to need your focus, these next few weeks.”

“Count on me, Coach.”

If all she wanted was focus, he thought, tossing the blue ball back into the bin, he could oblige her as long as things stayed settled with Afia. Outside her office he checked his phone. No calls. He felt tender toward Afia, as he did every time the subject of her engagement surfaced. He sent her a text:
We play Trinity next Saturday. Take the bus down to Hartford? Dinner on me.

Then he loped into a mostly empty locker room. Gus waved while he talked on his mobile. Chander was still in the shower. Afran stood by the sink blow-drying his hair. For a short, bullet-faced Kurd, Afran was touchingly vain. He bought crisp white T-shirts by the dozen and tended his mop of soft curls like a girl. “Coach on your hide about grades?” he asked when he'd shut off the dryer. He eyed Shahid in the long mirror as Shahid stripped off his practice uniform.

“No, dude. Dreaming about Harvard.”

Afran snorted. “That's like her wet dream.”

“You were raging out there, man,” said Gus. Shutting his phone, he clapped a hand on Shahid's shoulder. He was a bear of a guy, more like a cricket player than squash, but they didn't have cricket in America.

“Yeah, and I'm starving. You want to drive over to Bertucci's tonight?”

“Can't, man. History paper.”

“Afran?”

“You just want to exercise those wheels.”

Shahid shrugged. With Afran's Turkish accent,
wheels
came out like
whiles
. Yes, he wouldn't mind giving his whiles a spin. Shahid didn't have the same feeling about owning a car as the American guys did. The Civic was a pain in the ass and would always be a pain in the ass. He had it only so he could drive to Northampton and check in on Afia. “Gimme five?” he said to Afran.

He showered, the hot water sluicing through veins of fatigue. Even with everything settled, he wasn't sleeping well. In a week or two his family would expect a report—and Khalid, he felt sure, would be plinking computer keys, looking for evidence that Shahid's report was bogus and their sister was still whoring around.

“Your hair's wet, man,” Afran said as they headed into the frosty night.

“Sexy new look,” Shahid countered. The Civic started up fine but shifted rough, and squealed on the sharp turn to the state highway.

“You get a mechanic on this thing?” Afran asked.

“You volunteering?”

“Fuck, no. My dad runs an auto shop. Makes me sick just to slide under an axle.”

“Your father fixes cars? How the hell'd you start in squash?”

“Same as you, man. The little clubs, the little competitions, the kind uncle. Not like our pig-rich American buddies.”

At Bertucci's they slid into a red vinyl booth and ordered Cokes. At least Afran didn't drink, though that might have had to do more with squash than with Islam. Afran was nuts about squash. He didn't have Shahid's talent, so he worked a lot harder. He'd built up an arsenal of spins and ricocheting boasts. He subscribed to
Squash
Magazine
, even though Coach would lend out her copy, and he was forever asking Shahid what he thought about Amr Shabana or the legendary Jahangir Khan, or whether the new Head racquet had a bigger sweet spot.

“When I'm number one, next year,” he said after they'd chosen a hamburger pizza, “I want to start captains' practices at six. Seven's too late. Half the squad's got eight
A.M.
classes.”

“You'll never get the Americans up,” said Shahid.

“So the starters become all Pakis and Turks. What do we care?”

“When Coach's budget gets slashed, you'll care.”

“She's the A.D. She's not going to slash her own squash budget!”

Shahid waved him off. Afran might be more Americanized than he was, but he didn't have a clue about politics and athletics. When Enright held another fund-raiser in New York, Afran would not be on that stage.

“Let me show you some starters I think she should recruit,” Afran said. He pulled out his iPhone and began scrolling through his sites, his fingers opening and compressing like a magician's.

“I don't want to see 'em, Af,” Shahid said. “I'll be gone, remember? I might be working for the competition.”

“What's your sister going to do then?” Afran asked, keeping his eyes on the screen. “Schlep to Boston for matches?”

Normally Shahid would have grinned at Afran's used of
schlep
. The Turkish sponge, he'd called his friend, soaking up slang along with American customs. But at the mention of Afia he felt a tightening in his jaw. “Afia may not stay—” he began.

But Afran interrupted with “Whoa. Someone's been recruited.”

“I don't care about squash right now—”

“Not for the team. To help your captivating sister.”

Afran passed the iPhone over just as the waitress arrived with their pizza. Shahid watched as she exchanged winks and smiles with Afran. The guy's hair definitely did the trick. Light from the votive candle caressed Afran's dark curls and his high, flat cheekbones. Shahid turned to the phone's tiny screen. He tipped the thing into the light, then away from it. He was looking at a Facebook page. In the highlighted photo, Afia was sitting on a guy's shoulders, reaching up into an apple tree heavy with fruit. She was wearing the hijab, but her turtleneck revealed the curve of her breasts. He squinted.