On cue, life reminds me once again that magical thinking doesn’t work. Sometimes shit is just shit. Period.
Stepping in that merde yesterday? It’s not going to bring me “a-penis” after all. Sure, I inexplicably ran into a French guy who may possibly be able to help salvage my academic self-worth. Did I mention that’s he’s hot? Or that he is an actual descendant of Alexandre Dumas? Or that for one fleeting and lovely art-filled afternoon, I was tempted to believe in magic? Fate, even?
For a few brief hours, the Métro shutdown didn’t seem like such a pain. I spent the dreamy walk home posting scenic Paris shots on Instagram: boats on the Seine, a lone red love lock attached to a bridge, even a Robert Doisneau–style pic of a couple kissing with a black-and-white filter. I’ve been posting almost nonstop since I landed, detailing every step of this trip—except for my chance encounter with the cute Frenchman—hoping to inspire Zaid to appear out of thin air.
And now he has. With Rekha in his lap.
I squirm on the sofa, glaring at Rekha’s feed. Even on my phone’s screen she is larger than life: heart-shaped face, golden-brown skin, impossibly long lashes, and eyes that smolder for the lens. A classic Rekha selfie—stunning. Only this time her arm is hooked around Zaid’s neck. It’s classic Zaid, too—mischievous grin, long coffee-brown bangs partially obscuring his beautiful dark eyes that are clearly fixated on her. And he’s wearing his Chicago Brown Line ‘L’ T-shirt.
I gave him that shirt.
It was a memento of our first date. We took the Brown Line ‘L’ to the Music Box, where they were screening movies set in Chicago, and saw While You Were Sleeping—a classic, corny holiday rom-com that somehow takes all the clichés of mistaken identity and misunderstandings and makes them charming. Turns out that the Brown Line plays a role in the movie, too. Hours later when we shared our first kiss under the rumble of the Southport stop on that “L,” I almost fooled myself into believing that maybe, just maybe, life did have magic in it.
For the one-month anniversary of that kiss, I bought Zaid a Brown Line T-shirt. Soon after, he gave me a tee emblazoned with a dorky, desperate While You Were Sleeping quote: i got ice capades. It was so silly and so us, romantic in a completely unromantic way. Unassuming. Comfortable.
That’s why the gifts were special. Sentimental, even. Until right now.
Maybe I need to adopt Zaid’s nonchalance and focus on something more rewarding. Say, the French guy who literally almost fell into my lap. It’s infuriating that Zaid was even a stray thought yesterday. That pang of guilt I felt? Tragic. Why does my brain (my heart?) do this to me? The actual facts are right in front of my face, but still, my reason always seems to lose out to my stupid feelings.
Zaid literally introduced me as a “friend” on prom night to a new neighbor—a gorgeous college sophomore with bright hazel eyes. Half the block was on the sidewalk, an informal party since so many kids on my street were going to prom. The parent paparazzi were out in full force, snapping a million photos—group shots, couples, obligatory family formals, and a bunch of me and Julie and other kids goofing around then pinning boutonnieres on our dates. Zaid had to run back to his car because he forgot my wrist corsage. Of course he did. Julie had had to remind him to get me flowers in the first place. Another obvious sign I chose to ignore. When he finally headed back, he walked over with the new neighbor, so engrossed in conversation with her that he seemed startled when I appeared.
I want to say it was like the scene in a rom-com when the girl finally realizes that the guy she thought was the one is only just the one before:
Zaid
Oh . . . Khayyam! This
(points to lithe, gorgeous girl)
is the new neighbor.
New neighbor
(waves)
Hey!
(Awkward pause, feet shuffling.)
Zaid
And this is my . . . friend, Khayyam.
Khayyam
(gulps, pulls knife out of heart)
Is that for me?
(Points to orchid wrist corsage in
plastic box.)
Zaid
(chuckles nervously)
Yeah. Yes. Here you go!
(Hands Khayyam the box.)
Camera pans from box to Khayyam’s enraged face. She throws the box on the ground and walks away. Zaid calls her name, but she doesn’t turn back, and he falls out of focus. Camera zooms in on Khayyam as she walks off into the sunset, a smile spreading across her face.
END SCENE.
But that’s not how it played out.
I took the box, slipped the corsage over my wrist, and went to prom with Zaid, where we danced and laughed and I pretended I didn’t feel the point of that dagger in my heart. Julie gave him the stink-eye all night long; I’m surprised she didn’t sucker punch him on my behalf.
In hindsight, it all should’ve been obvious. Zaid and I never had a firm status agreement. We never called ourselves a couple out loud. At least, he didn’t. It always felt like there would be more—there were intimations of things to come, like whispered plans to backpack across Europe while we held hands at the Point or suggestions of me visiting him at college while we snuggled in the hollow of Henry Moore’s Nuclear Energy. I wanted to believe it all because we fit perfectly in the chiseled space of that sculpture, arms and legs intertwined. Because when we first kissed under the ‘L’ tracks, it felt like we’d invented the idea of kissing. Because sometimes we’d sit on my back porch doing physics homework and Zaid would ask if I was Bohr’d and then smile at me, and I knew I could listen to his corny dad jokes forever.
A catastrophic inability to grasp obvious facts. Remember? I was reading between the lines when there was nothing to see but blank space.
Now Zaid’s off to Reed College in a few weeks, where he’s going to be majoring in environmental studies and smoking pot, and I’m . . . here. Afraid to text him. Scared to admit what Rekha’s Instagram screams at me, that the one person I thought was closer to me than anyone in the world seems to have forgotten I exist.
To add salt to the wound, Alexandre is apparently ghosting me, too.
When we exchanged numbers yesterday, he said he wanted to meet up again today. I swear we had a moment. Moments. Sparkly eyed glimpses of what could be. Still, I’m stuck in the moments with Zaid that have been. Maybe it’s my fatal flaw: I’m always in the Past or the Future and never in the Now.
“That’s three long sighs in a row,” my mom says, peeking around her newspaper from our little balcony, the afternoon light streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I wasn’t even aware that I’d sighed out loud.
Mom is staring at me expectantly over her bright red cat-eye reading glasses, her graying brown hair unfurling from her loose bun. When I don’t say anything, she puts down the paper and rises from her seat, stepping through the patio doors into the room. Every August when we’re in Paris—annual time away from her job as Professor of Medieval Islamic Civilizations at the University of Chicago—she reads an actual newspaper. Not a digital edition but real ink and paper. She says human beings are becoming too detached from the simple pleasure of tangible things in our world. It’s why she adores dusty old books. It’s the musk of history that gets her. Smell is linked to memory, she always says, and technology has no smell because it’s never been alive.
Still, I dunno if I totally buy that, because Rekha and Zaid looked very alive on Instagram. I could almost smell the hormones pulsing off my screen.
Mom sits beside me on the couch, placing her reading glasses on the coffee table. I know what’s coming next. The concerned mom look: mouth turned down at the corners, eyes focused and worried. I’m blessed with my mother’s dark eyes, the color of brown glass. When I look at her, it’s like a mirror into my slightly wrinklier future. I wonder if she sees me that way, too—as a looking glass to her past, a version of her younger self.
“It’s nothing, Mom. Waiting for something that’s not going to appear.”
“That’s rather existential of you.”
“Well, we are in Paris.”
My mom grins and pats my hand. “Still haven’t heard from Zaid?”
Ouch. I feel that question like a static shock to my chest. It’s a simple question without an easy answer. No, he hasn’t texted, but it doesn’t mean he hasn’t sent me a message.
If Zaid were some random guy, say, one I met while scraping crap off my shoe, I might be wary about sharing details, but Zaid isn’t any guy. We know his family from school and the mosque. Like me, Zaid is Muslim and has one Indian parent. Unlike me, he’s absolutely mastered tameez, the art of appropriate desi behavior, especially around parents. He started a tutoring program at our mosque for the younger kids, and his Urdu kicks ass. On paper, Zaid is the perfect desi catch. In my current Instagram-shaped reality, he’s a lot less so.
As it stands, a lot of people probably side-eye my “good” Muslim desi girl qualifications because they find them . . . lacking. My French is fluent. My Urdu, not so much. I have my dad’s language and my mom’s religion. I’m a bunch of disparate parts that aren’t enough to make a whole. But I’m trying to stop caring about what everyone else thinks about me. I am enough.
Even when I waffle and question my own devotion, even if I miss Friday prayers, being Muslim is part of my identity, as much as French or American or Chicagoan. It’s in my bones and my blood. And no one can take that away from me.
Yeah, Mom knows about Zaid. But that doesn’t mean I want to share every single detail. I still keep some things tucked away in secret.
“Maybe it’s a technical glitch, beta,” Mom suggests, gesturing toward my phone.
“Un pépin technique? Where?” My dad chooses the perfect moment for his entrance. He walks out of the bedroom and gently places his hand on my mom’s shoulder. She looks up at him, and he smiles without showing teeth. He’s lived in America a long time, but not long enough that a toothy smile comes naturally.
I watch them lovingly gaze at each other. In many ways they’re opposites—my dad has pale blue eyes, and his fair skin burns every single summer, while my mom’s deep brown skin defies the sun. I’m somewhere in between. When I was a kid, I wished I wasn’t so in the middle. I wanted to look exactly like my mom because when she and I went out alone, someone would inevitably ask if she was my nanny. It made me mad, but she would wave it off, seemingly unbothered. “I know who I am,” she once explained. “I don’t have to prove it to anyone.” She’s always been enough for herself, too.
My mom takes my dad’s hand in hers. “Khayyam was hoping to hear from Zaid, but—”
I bolt from the couch and grab my purse from the table. Sure, my mom knows about me and Zaid. Papa does, too. But I’m not ready for their academic unpacking of my relationship. I’m not the subject of an undergrad seminar. Before they can protest, I grab my bag and am halfway to the door.
“I’m out of here. You guys can talk about me behind my back like regular parents. I’m going to get a goûter and then head to Place des Vosges.” One good thing about being stuck in Paris for the summer is the comfort of an afternoon pastry. Or three.
They laugh a little. My mom blows me a kiss. My dad tells me to text them when I get to Place des Vosges as he settles in next to my mom on the sofa. My parents exchange another loving glance. I swear, you’d think it’s their third date. I wonder what it takes to sustain that kind of adoration for over twenty years. Or even twenty weeks . . .
I push open the centuries-old wooden doors to our apartment and step into the dark hall. Maybe I should keep more secrets from my parents—less chance of getting trapped in an awkward conversation about my nonexistent love life. I sigh and sidestep the claustrophobia-inducing elevator—it’s the size of a double-wide coffin. We’re on the fifth floor, but I take the stairs up and down every time. Halfway down the wide, winding staircase, my phone buzzes.
Alexandre: Bonjour. I have spoken with the mayor of Paris, who has agreed to clear your path of merde—both real and figurative—for the rest of your stay. 
Me: . . .
Me: . . .
Me: Who is this?
If Alexandre is the diversion the universe has presented, I might as well have fun.
Alexandre: Is that American humor?
Me: Ha! Touché.
Alexandre: I lay down my épée. Shall we meet?
Me: Place des Vosges? Thirty minutes?
Alexandre: Perfect. I will bring a surprise.
Me: A surprise?!
Alexandre: I will make it an American surprise so it comes with many exclamation marks!!!
Me: I see I’m not the first American to get a surprise from you?
Alexandre: You’re by far the most beautiful.
This guy seriously knows how to turn on the charm. Sadly, some of that charm is lost on me. I don’t feel completely enamored; I feel a little resigned. Because cute as it is, it’s not the text I was hoping for. My memory of Zaid is the anchor weighing me down. Zaid, whose easy smile and warm embrace felt like home no matter where we were. He was my home, but now he’s packed his bags and moved on. Why can’t I do the same?
Maybe the real question is, why are my own feelings a mystery to me?