ZAYNEB SATURDAY, MARCH 9 - UNPREDICTABLE CREATURES

 ODDITY:   UNPREDICTABLE CREATURES

EXHIBIT A: THE THREE EMMAS I met yesterday.

Emma Zhang, Emma Domingo, and Emma Phillips. Black straight hair with short bangs, dark brown curly hair with no bangs, and reddish-brown wavy hair with long bangs.

The three Emmas were different from one another but strangely similar, too. They had clear skin and lengthy limbs. Even the shortest one, Emma Domingo, had long limbs on her petite frame. How?

They were also similar in mannerisms. Getting excited at the same things and then, just like that, without a glance at the others, becoming suddenly subdued in unison.

It was hard to know when the switch would occur, so I’d decided to observe carefully, without once getting excited. (I, myself, have a tendency to get easily excited about everything, so with this type of crowd, I stand out.) I figured if I played it cool the whole time, I could learn what got them abuzz. (And then I could disappear into them, peacefully.)

I learned it was mostly their favorite movies and games, online and in real life.

The Emmas weren’t the only ones like this. Most of the “young people” Auntie Nandy thought I should meet at the party were the same. Like they had an unwritten code organizing them.

Maybe it was an international-school thing.

I was getting into their rhythm, laughing along, sharing along, and shutting-up along, until the girl finding and sharing videos on her phone, Madison, paused a clip and said, “Amazing. I’m so glad I saw this again. I need to bring the whole outfit back to college with me. Connor and I got Coachella tickets, guys, and I’m rocking this, even though it’s fake-shit DIY.”

She passed her phone to Emma Phillips, who hooted on sighting whatever it was and passed it to Emma Domingo, who did a cringe-smile and passed it to Emma Zhang, who said, “WHAT? Oh God, that’s so Coachella but also . . . DON’T, Madison,” before passing it to me.

My anticipatory smile fell.

In the frozen video clip, Madison had on a headdress—a handmade one by the looks of it—with big feathers arranged in layers and a long train of feathers falling over one shoulder onto a see-through black shirt, under which she wore a colorful, beaded tank top. Her cheeks were vividly marked with makeup in an attempt to replicate face paint. I frowned. “Um, are you indigenous?”

I’d heard a slight Australian accent whenever she spoke, but I couldn’t assume she didn’t have an indigenous background. A North American one, I mean.

Emma Domingo shook her head at me and whispered, “She’s not Native American.”

“I made that myself. With expensive feathers my dad brought me back from a business trip. And it took me two entire-ass weeks. Remember, guys, for our fake Coachella party?” Madison took the phone back and smiled. “Connor, how cool would this look when we’re at the real thing, huh?”

She passed the phone to a guy with clothes that screamed I want to be noticed in the worst possible way. They actually looked like brother and sister, this guy and Madison, with similar coloring—skin and hair. Except his hair was a bushy brown, and hers was a thin, stringy brown.

Something about the way he laughed when he saw the outfit enraged me.

I swallowed my anger, remembering this was my first day with these people.

But then . . . maybe I’ll never see them again.

“I mean, are you of native background. Like, is that part of your culture, or . . .” I paused, cautioning myself, Remember—you came here in peace. But the three Emmas were waiting for me to finish speaking, even though Madison ignored me, leaning back into another guy, who immediately draped both his arms across her shoulders. “Were you using someone else’s culture to have fun? Because you know it’s sacred, right?”

If I had been back home, I would have added more to this and been spicier, been louder, but here, surrounded by people I didn’t know, in an attempt not to rock boats, I said it like I was talking to a fragile, elderly person I’d been ordered to show respect to.

Kavi wouldn’t have recognized me. Ayaan would have given me a long, hard look.

All it did here, my lukewarm tackling of Madison, was get me further ignored.

Madison took her phone back from Connor, closed the video, and flicked at her screen. Snuggling into the guy behind her, she held it up and snapped a picture of them both.

I looked at the Emmas. Emma Zhang widened her eyes at me and then called me over to her, and Emma Domingo looped her arm through mine. Then, like nothing had happened, the Emmas and I took pictures together with our backs to the water.

I’d melted into them.

It was the weirdest thing, and a part of my brain had a thought, as I smiled and shifted poses serenely for Emma Phillips’s phone: If this is what peace feels like, I need to take a crash course in learning to like it more.

Because I just wanted to yank Madison’s phone from her, superglue her to a chair, and force her to watch the longest video on cultural appropriation. And a marathon of videos on the more than five hundred tribes living on the land Coachella takes place on. And a video on . . .

•  •  •

Only Adam, the guy from the plane, wasn’t completely in sync with the crowd around him. He was quiet mostly.

I didn’t even know where he was when I feebly tried to take Madison on.

The only time he spoke up a bit was when we were talking about where we’d been in the world, and Connor, who seemed to like the limelight, started a chart on his phone to see which continent had the most visits from all of us.

To record our answers, he barked names out one by one like he was a teacher. And funnily enough, he said Zayneb properly when his eyes landed on me.

Geesh, I don’t even know how I let this simple thing—him saying Zay-nub, my name—immediately earn him a sliver of respect from me. I duly listed the four continents I’d visited, like a good li’l student.

Emma Domingo has been to every single continent except for Antarctica. She’s also visited her father’s “ancestral homeland,” as Connor put it, the most, having been to the Philippines twenty-four times.

Adam is the one who’s been to the least amount of places.

Other than Doha, he’s only been to Canada, where he’s originally from, two school trips to Belgium and France, and then England for college.

“So you’re the only one who hasn’t visited your parents’ country of origin?” Connor asked.

“Well, I have. Because my parents are Canadian,” Adam said.

“I know your mom was. But your dad is originally from China.” Connor lowered his phone.

“My dad’s grandparents are originally from China. Like how my mom’s grandparents are originally from Finland.” Adam shrugged. “And, yeah, I do plan on visiting China and Finland one day. And the rest of the world.”

After that, he hung back, observing, smiling sometimes, and looking at the water and the night sky at other times. Not talking much.

Except when we were leaving and he walked Auntie Nandy and me to the door and suddenly asked me if I wanted to volunteer with him on Sunday at Hanna’s class at DIS. They were going on a field trip to an animal sanctuary outside Doha.

So he, too, was unpredictable. Maybe. Kind of?

I said yes. Even though I’m not into animals, except for whatever animal Squish ended up being.

I said yes, because I wanted to be around him more.

•  •  •

It was almost five in the morning here in Doha, after Fajr prayer on Saturday, but I looked through the pictures on my phone from last night to find him.

I knew there was at least one shot from yesterday that Adam had ended up in inadvertently.

There it was. There he was. In the background behind us, the Emmas and me. He was standing with his back to the fence skirting the water.

An angular face with the trace of a sad smile. Eyes that could faze with their gaze, so carefully did they look at things.

And yes, like I thought, he had those eyes turned to the sky again.

•  •  •

This Is What You Missed, Bulletin II by Kavi Srinivasan, filed as FYI for Zayneb Malik:

Ayaan got an e-mail asking her to come see Kerr Monday morning. Sent on a Friday evening, the e-mail was.

From the principal’s own e-mail address and NOT info@alexanderporter.

Fri. Day.

Oh. No. Do you think it has something to do with you-know-who?

Probably. We can’t figure out what else it could be. Ayaan is quaking.

Quaking happening here, too. You have to let me know what it’s about as soon as you find out.

I don’t know if Ayaan will fill me in. She’s become quiet around me at school. And then does one-word replies to texts.

Gulp. My fault. Crying.

I wrote the words that got you in trouble. Crying more.

Okay, I believe in prayers, so I’m praying that she doesn’t get in trouble for her part in #EatThemAlive. I’m okay with trouble. But Ayaan is our purest star. She must be protected by all, at all costs. Let me falter, let me fall, but let Ayaan rise above us all.

Wow, poetry.

No, it’s a prayer. Just made up now. Hey, did you hear back from SAIC admissions?

No. I’m getting worried. I keep thinking maybe I shouldn’t have included the picture of a skateboarding seahorse in my portfolio. It wasn’t good quality.

If they say no, I say we do a sit-in at the admissions office. Holding your drawings up as protest signs.

Wish you were back here. I went to check out the Purdue campus with Nhu yesterday, and the whole time we filled in what *you’d* be saying if you were with us. ONE BATHROOM FOR THREE LECTURE HALLS? NO WHEELCHAIR RAMP TO THE CLOSEST DOORS?

DO NOT MAKE A COLLEGE DECISION WITHOUT ME, GIRL.

WE won’t. Though we are going to see the rest of the campuses during break.

Without me.

Hey, you have Doha.

I do. And so far, it’s been okay.

I sent her the picture of the three Emmas and me. And Adam.

Looks like fun?

All of them are named Emma.

Even the guy looking up?

No, that’s Adam.

She shared a picture of her and Nhu making faces at each other through the openings of a holey sculpture on the Purdue campus, and it looked like real fun.

•  •  •

The weekend in Doha is Friday and Saturday, so Auntie Nandy said we should go to Souq Waqif today, before she went back to work on Sunday.

Thankfully, she first let me sleep in in complete silence and only turned on her music—very obviously seventies-sounding music—when I emerged from my room at two p.m.

In the dining room, everything was loud and tinny and plucky and distinct and strangely groovy, too.

“Wow, is this what they call disco?” I began gathering a plate of food—food shivering while it awaited me to transport it to the warmth of the microwave. When the words of the song began, I paused on my way to the kitchen. “Wait. Is that Urdu? Or, I mean Hindi? Seventies Bollywood music?”

“I’m going to pretend it is.” Auntie Nandy, sitting at the table with her laptop, smiled. Then she whispered, as though the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had her place bugged, “It’s actually from 1980. But isn’t it great? Nazia Hassan singing ‘Aap Jaisa Koi’? ‘Aap jaisa koi meri zindagi’!”

She got up and began dancing. Raising one hand in the air, she shook it a few times then swung it down across her body dramatically before lifting it up again in a sudden whoosh, all the while shaking her shoulders and hips. Her eyes were closed, but her expression was serious.

Auntie Nandy’s hips and shoulders looked like they belonged to two different people, while her arms didn’t seem to know whether they were taking turns flailing for help from a helicopter hovering over a deserted island or pointing earnestly at something someone lost on the ground.

I couldn’t look away, so I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, holding my plate up to my chest, trying hard to keep my lips at an appreciative-smile level and not let them venture where they wanted to: side-splitting, bust-out-laughing, this-is-perfectly-too-funny-to-be-cringey level.

But then came a point when she twisted-shimmied her way down while one hand did jazz hands and the other tried to pull her pants up, and I had to run to the table and put my plate down to use both my hands to cover the laughter exploding from my mouth.

She saw me and tried to straighten gracefully, giggling at the way she had to yank her pants before she made it even halfway up. “Oh, so you think I don’t know how to dance? Or is it you think you know how to dance?”

“I actually do, Auntie Nandy.” I laughed. “And you actually don’t.”

“This is disco, Zoodles.” She pulled my arms to get me to join her on the carpet. “Listen to the rhythm. It’s different from your music.”

I laughed again and reached for my phone. “My friend Nhu’s mom runs a dance studio. And she even teaches disco. I’m going to FaceTime her to show us some real moves.”

“Perfect. Let’s hit it from the top!” Auntie Nandy pressed a remote, and her sound system started again.

•  •  •

Kavi, I like disco music.

Also, here’s the best song: “Aap Jaisa Koi.”

Aap jaisa koi meri zindagi mein aaye.

Which means: If someone like you entered my life . . .

•  •  •

Souq Waqif was beautiful at night. We ate at Damasca, a Syrian restaurant, and then wandered the bustling market.

The cobblestone streets, polished smooth, were lit by lights attached to the buildings, in alcoves and atop the structures as well. The buildings themselves were traditional Qatari style, low and with wraparound balustrades and second-story balconies overlooking the market below.

There were all sorts of shops selling everything from trinkets like camel key chains to rugs to perfumes and pure-gold jewelry. And clothing shops with tons of scarves stacked in piles near their entrances.

I couldn’t stop myself from buying a few hijabs.

I bought one for tomorrow’s field trip with Hanna’s class.

It was the color of the sky before a storm, a sort of grayish baby blue, but the best part was the print on it. Darker gray silhouettes of tiny birds flying.

When we reached the car in the parking lot across from the souk, I draped the hijab around my head to model it for Auntie Nandy. “Good for a trip to an animal sanctuary?”

“Perfect.” She put our purchases in the trunk. “We leave at seven thirty, so get to bed as soon as we get home, Zoodles.”

“Yes, Mom-sub.”

On the road, she turned off the radio. “I should tell you something about Adam. You’ll be spending time with him tomorrow.”

I looked at her. It was like her voice had become muffled. Or dropped an octave.

The glistening in her eyes told me it was sadness. She blinked a few times, and a tear dropped.

Whoa, that was sudden.

I didn’t say anything and instead focused on the palm trees lining the avenue we were driving down. The night sky was visible between the buildings behind the trees, and I thought about the photo of Adam looking at the same sky yesterday.

Yes. There was something sad in his eyes.

And now maybe I was going to know why.

I glanced at Auntie Nandy again. She was still blinking.

Then she turned the car into a plaza parking lot and reached into the glove compartment for a tissue box.

I pulled my arms in tight and clutched myself while she blew her nose, wondering if I should hug her or something.

Auntie Nandy drew a breath. “Adam’s mother passed away when he was in my class in the fourth grade.”

“Oh God.” I gripped myself tighter. “That’s so sad.”

“It was obviously devastating for him, for the whole family. She was diagnosed with her illness, MS, many years before, in her late twenties, and she coped, even did well, but then, after she had her second child, it progressed rapidly.” She began crying again.

I reached my hand out and rubbed her arm. She wiped her face with a folded tissue and swallowed before turning to me. “I’m telling you because Tuesday is the anniversary of her death, and I see it in him, the remembrance of it.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“She was one of my closest friends. She taught at DIS too. High school art.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m usually not like this. I think it was just seeing Adam again last night after not seeing him for months.” She started the car again. “Anyway, just a heads-up. In case you see him quiet.”

“Hanna must have been really young?”

“One and a half years old. Of course she doesn’t recall Sylvia.” We were waiting to turn onto the road from the parking lot, so she looked at me for a moment. “Adam was nine, and he’d been very close to his mother.”

The rest of the way to the apartment we were quiet, me looking at the sky the whole time, unable to imagine his pain.

Daadi’s death in the fall had been traumatic beyond belief.

But then, Mom?

She and I fought sometimes, but she was also the number one reliable factor in my life, Dad being inaccessible at times due to his busyness as one of the few ophthalmologists in town.

I couldn’t imagine my rock being removed from me.

As I got out of the car, I blinked away my own tears.

•  •  •

After Maghrib and Isha prayers, combined, I lay in bed but couldn’t go to sleep.

Maybe it was jet lag. And how I’d slept in today.

I sat up.

Not jet lag.

It was Adam.

I think I felt something I hadn’t felt since I swore off feeling this way.

It was just a twinge and felt very buried, but it was there.

Like a pull inside whenever I thought of him.

After Yasin, this guy who hung out with Ayaan’s brothers, who I’d met at her house, I hadn’t felt it again. That was a year ago.

I’d liked Yasin, and he had liked me back, and then just like that, after three months, he had stopped liking me. Because he said he didn’t know why everything was an issue with me.

What he meant was he hadn’t liked me asking why he’d written a whole screed on how hijabi girls who wore makeup canceled their hijabs.

After Yasin, I’d decided nobody was going to get me interested in them unless they had something real to stand for. And brains.

That was my number one criterion.

That and a sense of quiet mystery?

I looked at the photo of Adam again.

He was sad.

MARVEL:   RESOLUTIONS

Exhibit A: The Better Me manifesto I wrote in the middle of a Doha night.

Tomorrow I was going to be poised and peaceful.

Maybe quieter, too. Well, quieter in the sense that I was going to listen more than talk. Not jump to conclusions.

Just let things unfold. (More than I’d done yesterday; and yesterday, with Madison, I’d really pulled punches.)

I will have to pretend to love animals, however unpredictable they are. (Even though I am deathly afraid of dogs, because I was chased and bitten on my ankle by a Doberman when I was eight. And scratched by numerous cats belonging to friends. Not to mention the three instances of bird poo finding its way onto my head.)

Animals are unpredictable creatures for sure, not dependable like my Squish, but I will let them be so.

I am going to be a better version of myself, because this isn’t the time for my shenanigans anymore.

Somebody grieving is going to be in my vicinity tomorrow.

I need to rein me in.