Love Across Borders by Naheed Hassan, Sabahat Muhammad Page B

bangles
on her wrists. She could buy a ticket to go back to her parents in
Pakistan. But she shrugged off the thought. She would no longer be
welcome there. She decided instead to set up her own shop. She
pawned her bangles and rented a small poky little shop in an alley
set off from the main road, as far across the city from her
ex- sasuraal as she could possibly manage. There was just
enough space at the back for her to put in a narrow sofa that could
double up as her bed at night, provided the local Council did not
catch on. The day her shop opened, Nafisa sent up a silent prayer
to Allah.
    That was when Romeo walked into her
life.
    Slowly, the shop had built up
a reputation. At first, it was mainly local people who wanted a
cheap dinner. Then Nafisa found that people were coming back for
the food she cooked. Her biryani and haleem were very
popular. Romeo was soon spending most of his evening on the rickety
cycle he had acquired, she did not dare ask him from
where.
    He seldom spoke. But Nafisa could
feel his eyes follow her as she bustled around the tiny shop. And
she knew when the gaze changed from curiosity, the simple need to
focus on another person, to something deeper. She would be
flattered, she told herself, if only he weren’t such a non-descript
little man. But flattered she was, even if she didn’t admit it. It
had been years since a man had looked appreciatively at her. In
fact, Romeo was probably the only man who had looked appreciatively
at her. She had never been good-looking and the years had added
ballast to her figure.
    One night, Nafisa closed the shop
and sat on the sofa in the rear, poring over her accounts. She
found numbers difficult, but once you open a shop, you have to do
the accounts.
    There was the sound of a scuffle
outside, loud hammering on the shutter of her shop. Alarmed, she
got up and opened the window to the side. There were two men. And
Romeo. Wrestling with each other. Till Romeo picked up a piece of
brick and aimed it at one of them. The man gave a yelp of pain and
raised his face. Nafisa drew her breath in sharply. It was Masood,
one of her erstwhile brothers-in-law. Romeo picked up another
brick, but the two men decided they had had enough.
    “ Hindustani ka
bistar garam karti hai, saali haraamzaadi !” Masood flung at her silhouette in the window as he and
his companion fled. “She is flourishing on our money and whoring
with an Indian!”
    Nafisa put up the shutter and let
Romeo in. “How did you get here?” she asked him.
    He pointed to the doorway of
her shop. “I sleep there,” he said. And sure enough, she saw a
well-worn blanket that had been kicked aside in the scuffle. “I’ve
seen them here before. It’s not safe . For
you.”
    “You sleep out in the cold to
protect me?” she asked incredulously, but he had already moved
outside and was pulling down the shutter.
    Nafisa sat on the sofa,
thinking deep into the night. Masood had called her a Hindustani’s
whore. Did he mean Romeo was an Indian? Romeo had never given any
indication of being an Indian. She shuddered. Could he be a Hindu?
The thought made her queasy. He had to be a Hindu. She had never
seen him perform namaaz . But if he was a Hindu…she
shuddered again as all the stories she had heard about Hindus
flooded her mind. She gazed towards the closed shutter. It held no
answers for her.
    Romeo hardly ever spoke. Not
a word. Not when she handed him his money. Not when she handed him
his meals in one of the battered aluminium thals that she kept for her
personal use. She supposed he spoke when he delivered the food. But
she seldom heard his voice.
    Till one day, he came running into
the shop, terror streaking his face, pulverising it into a
grotesque mask. “Please help me,” he begged. “They’re coming for
me.”
    Nafisa turned around from
the kadhai , where she was stirring a dal makhni , to ask, “Who?” But he
had already slipped behind the curtained area to the rear of the
shop. There was a