The Marvelous Mirza Girls by Sheba Karim

Author:Sheba Karim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Air Quality Index: 101. Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups.

WHEN NOREEN RETURNED, RUBY was on a video call, and there was no sign of Hari.

“Hold on, Ma, Noreen’s home,” Ruby said. She tilted the phone down and gestured for Noreen to hide the prosecco bottle. Noreen moved it from the dining room table to a dining chair, taking the overzealous but reassuring step of covering it with a cloth napkin.

Even after so many years of FaceTiming, Azra rarely fit her entire face inside the screen. Right now they could see her forehead, and the glittery teardrops of the family room chandelier.

“Assalaam alaikum, Naani,” Noreen said.

“Kya ka rahe ho?” Azra asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” Ruby said. “Sunday morning chilling.”

“Everything good?”

“Great. You?”

“I am not great.” Azra shifted the frame, the chandelier replaced by sniffling nose, red eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Noreen said.

“I went to Five Guys,” Azra said.

“You went to Five Guys?” Ruby said.

“I like their fries. Anyhow, I ran into Rani there.”

Noreen and Ruby exchanged a glance. No story that opened with Rani ended well.

Rani Auntie was an old friend of Azra’s, and her daughter Hina had been born one week after Sonia Khala. Both Hina and Sonia were super-nerds who aspired to Harvard Medical School, and Rani Auntie and Azra had always been competitive about their daughters. Once, Rani Auntie had hosted a joint birthday party for the two girls, and Azra was annoyed for days because she thought Hina had the nicer cake. The girls’ lives had followed a similar trajectory: Ivy League educations, not Harvard Medical School but Columbia and Johns Hopkins, followed by prestigious medical fellowships, marriages to Pakistani American doctors (Sonia first, Hina a few years later) and two children each (Hina quickly, Sonia after years of miscarriages and failed IVFs), except that Hina settled down a few miles from her mother and Sonia moved coasts, which meant Rani Auntie had effectively won. Once, observing a conversation between Rani Auntie and Azra as they shared photos of their grandchildren would have been an excellent exercise in the art of subtext. But now, Rani Auntie viewed Azra with pity, which Azra couldn’t abide, and it was all too painful to watch.

“And then Rani asked me,” Azra continued, “how is Ruby? I haven’t seen her in so long. I was too ashamed to tell her you were in India. But Rani’s very tez, she kept asking questions about you, and finally I had to admit my only living daughter has abandoned me.”

“I haven’t abandoned you, Ma.”

“We’ll be back before you know it, Naani,” Noreen said.

“It’s not fair.” Azra was crying again. “Why can she have Hina but I can’t have my Sonia? Ya Allah, I miss her so much.”

“I know, Ma,” Ruby said. “We miss her, too. Every moment of every day.”

As Noreen added her own words of comfort, Azra squinted and frowned, like she was trying to see past them. “Woh kya hai?”

“What?” Ruby said.

“Peeche. Is that an idol?”

They looked over their shoulders. The beatific elephant god Ganesh looked back.

“Why is there a buth in your flat?” Azra said.

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