My Last Love Story (16 page)

The house was dark, except for a wobbly sliver of light escaping through the drapes of the den. As I went deeper into the living room, I heard Zayaan’s throaty murmur. He worked best at night. Plus, his colleagues and friends lived in a different time zone. It was ten in the morning across the pond. Perhaps, he was talking to his mother.

I should make use of my wakefulness, too, and email Dr. Asha. But the thought of explaining my conflicting thoughts in an email daunted me. It’d be better to call and speak to her like Sarvar had suggested. I’d have to wait till morning though—when it was her night—to avoid catching her in a session with a patient.

I poured myself a glass of water, and with a defiance bordering on masochism, I poked my head into the den.

Zayaan had a pair of fancy headphones on with a mic curving across his mouth. He paced as he spoke. His surprise upon seeing me was so minor that I wondered if he’d expected me. Of course, he hadn’t.

He lifted his chin and mouthed,
What’s up? Nirvaan?

I flapped my hand in a carry-on gesture, letting him know it was nothing serious or important. “Can’t sleep,” I whispered.

He held up both his hands, flashed his fingers twice, indicating he’d be done in ten minutes, without breaking the flow in conversation.

I nodded, looking about the space while I tried to dissuade my eyes from staring at him. They wouldn’t listen and kept swinging back like boomerangs. He wore striped pajama bottoms and nothing else, so my eyes had a lot of swoonworthy maleness to cover.

The windows were open a few inches, enough to give vent to a cool breeze that had the drapes over the door and windows rippling. Yet I felt hot in my sleep shorts and flannel robe. I should’ve let Nirvaan take my edge off, as he’d offered. And I would have to start masturbating again. I hadn’t since we moved to Carmel, so it was no wonder I felt snappish.

For some insane reason, I was embarrassed to take care of my needs with Zayaan in the house, as if he’d sense what I’d done. I couldn’t get over the ridiculous juxtaposition of living in a ménage with two of the hottest guys on the planet, ones who could ring my bell with only a look, with no bells ringing anywhere.

The den was small, and with me standing in a corner, pondering the criteria of a cosmic joke, Zayaan had a lot less room to pace. I walked to the desk and set the glass of water down, and since the office chair was free, I took it.

I peeked at the papers strewed over the desk. There were papers stacked all over the den, in fact. I sifted through some, passing a cursory glance over headings, highlighted words, passages he’d marked with different colored pens and Post-its. He’d said his thesis had to do with the psychology of the Islamic culture. I shot a glance at him, wondering exactly what his work was about. I hadn’t bothered to ask.

He was talking in Farsi, I decided. I always got confused between Arabic and Farsi accents because, to an untrained ear like mine, both languages sounded the same—foreign. But there were differences, if you knew where to look. Also, once you heard both for a decent stretch of time, you’d realize that Farsi sentences tended to lilt softly as opposed to lilting harshly like in Arabic. And one spoke it fast and not lazily.

Zayaan frowned in the middle of his next downward march and stopped short in the middle of the room. He laced his hands behind his head, raised his head to the ceiling, and closed his eyes, arching his spine. I smiled, instantly recognizing the man-thinking-hard pose. Perversely and without permission, my eyes swept down the line of finely trimmed hair from his navel to his abdomen where they darted across the twin blades of his hips jutting out of the elastic of his pajamas. Goodness gracious, but he was an exquisite specimen of humanity.

Zayaan had an innate sensuality that he wasn’t unaware of but tried to downplay. Nirvaan was handsome and knew it, and he worked hard at being sexy—with superb results, I’d admit. In Zayaan, it was effortless. While both of them grabbed attention and appreciation wherever they went, it was on Zayaan most eyes would linger even though he came off as aloof and unapproachable because he was shy, if you could believe it. In contrast, Nirvaan took admiration as his due. He’d wink at his admirer, say something flirty or nice, and put the person at ease in two seconds flat.

Okay, enough comparing and contrasting. This wasn’t a competition for Prime Man, and I wasn’t the judge.

I turned back to the desk and picked up the first folder I could reach. A quote from Rumi jumped out at me in Zayaan’s flawless handwriting.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

The seductive scrawl flowed from margin to end, words evenly spaced with dips of mystery and curves I couldn’t take my eyes off of. Just like the man. He’d always had beautiful handwriting, due to learning to write in the calligraphic Nasta’liq script used in Urdu.

I turned the page. There was an index of sorts and tabs sticking out from all directions—History, Arabic Mythology, Tales from Pre-Islamic Arabia, the Old Testament, the Crusades, the Moghuls. A whole list of Persian and Arabic literati with their specialties were noted on a spreadsheet, dated for original and translated works.

Zayaan had always been organized in the extreme about his work, maybe even his life.

On the next page, under Psychology, there were several subheadings—Locus of Control, Submission, Indoctrination, Consanguineous Marriages,
Mein Kampf
(
My Struggle
), and
My Jihad
.

I snapped the folder shut. My heart banged against my rib cage. Not only certain men, even specific words could strike terror in my soul.

What did Hitler’s manifesto have to do with
jihad
?
And where was Zayaan going with this?

He wasn’t talking so much as listening now. He nodded, said something, and nodded again. He chuckled into the mic, the sound low and husky. Intimate. Secretive. It excluded me from the conversation, from his other life. And I didn’t like it.

He stopped at the desk to type in his laptop the name, email, and phone number for a doctor. Not a medical doctor, I surmised quickly. As he stood above me, his natural scent caught my nose, warm and musky, layered under the crisp soap and ocean spray. It was…nice and so different from how he used to smell. I was grateful for that small mercy.

Finally, Zayaan said good-bye. He removed the headpiece and threw it on the desk.

“Fuck, I’m tired,” he groaned as he stretched his back and neck. His eyes roved over my face. “What’s wrong?”

Were you talking to Marjaneh?
I wanted to blurt out. “What’s this?” I pointed to the folder, which now officially gave me the creeps.

“Notes, articles, outlines…” He chuckled again. It was not a low, husky, I’ve-just-rolled-out-of-bed chuckle. “My life currently.” He rested half a hip against the desk and opened the folder I’d just closed.

I kept my eyes on his. “Hmm, interesting choice of words because I think all of this”—I paused and pointed at the folder—“might just cost you your life. Oh my God, Zai, are you going to publish that? Like, for people to read?
My Jihad?
” I squeaked.

“It just means
my struggle
, and I’m struggling with it, believe me.” He looked half-amused, half-irritated by my reaction. “
Mein Kampf
is one of the few books translated into Arabic in the last many decades and is widely read as
My Jihad
in and around the Middle East. It’s just data, Simi.” He shrugged.

I curled my lips downward. “Where are you going with this, Zai? What psychology? What possible reason, other than utter depravity, could there be for these people to behave as they do? You’re not like them. You’ve never been like any of these men you’re writing about.”
You are not like your brother.

“The only difference between
these
men and me is that I recognize the fact that I have free will.” He huffed through his nose. “No, you’re right. I’m not like them. Neither are the vast majority of Muslims. But, for some reason, the world has chosen only to see and hear
those
men and render the rest of us invisible.”

My eyes widened in surprise. He was…right.

“I’m not saying there isn’t something insidiously wrong with modern Muslim culture. But Islam wasn’t like this. It used to be tolerant.” He patted a book,
Islam: A History
. “Islam might be a product of the Dark Ages, but there’s evidence of cultural assimilation and reform, and not all of it is bloody. If people are reminded of those times, made aware of their options and that they can choose to exercise them, things will change. They have to change.”

“Options? Such as?” I was charmed, despite the topic of discussion, by how little Zayaan had changed.

He’d always been impassioned about his beliefs and showing me the positive side of such things.

“How much time do you have?” he countered with a jaw-breaking yawn.

“Oh, sorry. You’re tired.” I got up at once, but he forestalled me with a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m not tired. Sit, Sims.”

He exerted pressure until I sat. Even through the cloth, I felt heat where he touched me, and I flinched. I couldn’t stop my reaction. He snatched his hand back and muttered an apology. I scooted back in the chair and tucked my legs beneath me. I didn’t dwell on the sensation of Zayaan’s hand on my shoulder. I didn’t wonder what he was sorry for and why I’d recoiled.

“So, tell me, Zai. In that field between wrong- and right-doing, how do you propose to start a revolution?”

Of course, he didn’t want to start any sort of revolution, Zayaan clarified, first and foremost. He only wanted to earn his doctorate, write some papers, and boost his platform in academic circles. Maybe he’d write a couple of books in the next few years. He had the outline ready for a non-fiction piece he’d loosely titled
The Muslim and the
Infidel
. He planned to continue attending and lecturing at world cross-cultural conferences on behalf of the Share Khan Foundation. He also wanted to teach Islamic Philosophy at a prestigious university and other places and impress on young minds that the locus of responsibility for their actions lay solely on them. If he were a finalist in the Miss Universe Pageant, he’d end this lofty list by hoping for world peace.

But he did not want to start a revolution.

I didn’t know whether to be impressed by his ambitions or alarmed. I decided to be impressed, as I’d given up my right to be alarmed.

We stayed up all night. He entertained me with stories and panegyric epics from times long past. I was introduced to Omar, the champion of Damascus, and his Christian damsel; to Shayk Nur al-Din and Miriam, the girdle girl; to a prior who’d become an imam and an imam who had wished to be baptized. My favorite one was about a Turkish princess who’d ridden off into the sunset with a Knights Templar. I loved the romanticism of history.

“
When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you’re not here, I can’t go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias and the difference between them
,” I paraphrased the lines Zayaan had whispered to me a thousand times.

“How could a poet who’d lived more than seven hundred years ago know our hearts so well?” I’d asked Zai a long time ago.

We’d never come up with an answer.

Rumi’s words transported us back in time. We became entranced with each other, as we’d been countless times before. I lost my will over my senses, and I couldn’t shake my eyes off him. Neither could he with me. His face was shadowed with thick, bristly hair, and it made his lips look white as they pressed together. He swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple moved. I looked at it for a brief second. It was enough to break the spell.

A fire started in my cheeks and rippled down to my soles.

Nirvaan, Marjaneh, and all the things that haunted me took their sentry positions around my heart once more.

I had no wish to start a revolution either.

For the next two nights, I resorted to sleep aids, deterring any more nocturnal chats. But while my nights were deep and dreamless, my days turned into pure chaos.

We began practicing the dance numbers for the party scheduled for the end of the month. Nirvaan and I would dance on “Nagada,” a bass-heavy song from the movie,
Ram Leela
. The guys had several dances to memorize—solos, duos, and group ones. So did I. The guest participants were spread all over the world. All of this was being choreographed and symphonized by dance guru, Hari “Disco” Patel, via video chat.