12. Farzana walks through the iron gates of the fortune teller’s house as if she owns the place. I scutter to keep pace as she strides up the staircase that hugs the outer wall of the bungalow. On the upper floor, a freshly painted aluminium door stands incongruously within a splintered doorframe. A sign next to it says “Farishta”—Urdu for “Angel”—and below it, in English, “Fortune Tellerr, Responsibil Your Future Hapiness In Safe Hand.” Farzana knocks, then tries the handle: the door is unlocked. She marches in and I follow, the hem of my kurta scrunched in my fists. We’re in a spacious hall with thick drapes drawn across the windows, a point of light needling in through a hole in a corner. As my eyes adjust to the dark, the vague outlines around the room solidify into objects. Two upholstered armchairs are pushed up against a wall with a glass-topped wicker table between them. A vase shaped like a headless heron and inlaid with silver paisley stands on a table in the center, holding tall stalks of synthetic flowers. On the wall are six framed diagrams of open-palmed hands, labeled along the side with notations accompanied by tiny circles, possibly planets. A bookcase stands next to the pictures, its shelves lined with titles like Planetary Rotations in Karmic Physiology and Effects of Stellar Patterns on Birth and Death. I drag a finger along one of the spines, leaving a clean line through a film of dust.
In all the naked glory of two white buttocks held aloft in the air, it is Aslam. His slick body is prostrated before a woman in a robe tied loosely around her waist, orbs of planetary proportion gracing her chest. I gape at the tableau as it freezes mid-motion, the woman’s hand raised open-palmed as if about to come down on the delinquent derriere of Farzana’s younger brother.
13. I suppose it’s time to talk about the incident on the third floor.
“Bah, this is all so weird, though,” Farzana said one day, turning on her back and resting her feet on the windowsill above. Her skirt shifted over her thighs, her skin gleaming in the lacy cast of tree and sun.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean, it’s weird. All of this. We keep reading this stuff, but what’s the point? We don’t actually know anything—anything real. I’m never going to have a boyfriend. All that my parents want is for me to get married. And what am I going to do then? I don’t even know what it’s like to kiss someone!”
“You know what?” I said. “We could try it. On each other, I mean.”
“What?” Farzana sat up. She looked out of the window, lowered her voice. “Bela, you’re so weird! What a weird, crazy idea!”
“I know! Can you imagine our mothers’ faces if they found us doing something like that?”
On cue, Farzana’s gray eyes assumed her mother’s characteristic stupor. My laughter turned from nervous giggles to downright porcine grunts, which set Farzana off. She threw her convulsing body across mine, then abruptly stopped laughing. I panicked, thinking immediately about the barren landscape of my chest: what if she said something about it?
Farzana spoke softly. “Although—what the hell, you know?” She looked at me sideways, eyelids lowered. “Maybe we should try it. Only for the experience, of course. And if we don’t tell anyone....”