Johannes Hofer was a medical student. Like Imran.
Imran suffered his longings in silence. More than three hundred years before Imran enrolled in medical school, Johannes Hofer coined the term nostalgia. He joined the word nóstos, “return,” with algia, meaning “pain.” Hofer inserted this new word into the title of his dissertation on the malady experienced by Swiss soldiers far from their mountain homes. Imran suppressed the sickness in his heart.
A Ukrainian student who worked as a waitress in the Three Monkeys Café brought our coffee. I always imagined the monkeys on the big posters behind us grinning every time one of us took delight in the rich froth of this café’s coffee. Imran first stirred sugar into Kuhl’s cup and then into his own. Something about the way he did it forced me to see a residue of sickness in his heart, almost invisible, like grains of sugar melting into coffee. Picture the distant fields in isolated villages that didn’t have names. The mother’s tarha, torn and rubbed gritty from the soil beneath the crops. Her silver earrings—all the wealth she had. The gray sunset over the rusty dull metal of the train that carried the wheat and cotton away from the village. The high-pitched, piercing little cackles of his baby sister as her body shook, laced to the donkey’s back so that she wouldn’t slip off.
Nostalgia floated to the surface of his eyes momentarily, and then I saw it melt into the first sip of coffee.
He was very, very charming.
Kuhl said she had decided that he must be descended from the line of Mughal princes who had ruled the Indian subcontinent. He looked exactly like the portraits that had been done of Jahangir, one of the greatest bon vivants among the Mughals of the seventeenth century. I didn’t comment. As far as I was concerned, Imran didn’t look like anyone else, and no one looked like him. Imran was one of a kind.
Kuhl always wore embroidered tunics with high collars and long sleeves, over jeans. She picked out hijabs that corresponded to the colors of her kurtas and the flats she always wore. Imran wore striped shirts and different-colored trousers, along with matching scarves. He was very careful with his appearance, so scrupulous that it seemed to me he must go through agonies before every outing with her, since he clearly wanted to be absolutely certain that every detail was appropriate and harmonious. There was no doubt in my mind that he was working some part-time job on the side, along with his studies, at the very least in order to cover what must be a formidable clothing budget.
“Let’s have something sweet,” Kuhl said brightly. They left the choice to me. I chose apple tart with vanilla ice cream. Kuhl laughed, because apple tart reminded her of Grandma Elvira Duck in the Donald Duck cartoons. Imran looked at the floor, as he did every time Kuhl spoke about something from her childhood. That told me he’d had nothing like it in his own early days.
Imran never watched any cartoons as a child. He didn’t know what a magazine was until, as a secondary school student, he went on a school trip to Lahore. Not long after that, he was awarded the scholarship to come here. It wasn’t Imran who told me this but Kuhl. She told me all about his childhood long before I ever met him. He never talked very much, anyway. Now he carefully cut the apple tart into portions. I couldn’t help noticing how slim and long his fingers were.
The café was empty except for us, which was unusual. The Ukrainian waitress was humming a tune from home as she studied her textbook. When Imran got up to pay the bill, she said a few words to him about her upcoming exams. His response was even briefer. Did he wish to appear uninterested in people, or was it just that he didn’t find it easy to communicate?
Whatever the case, he certainly was captivating.