into the world at large, knowing the women couldn’t follow, and thus transforming defeat into a sort of automatic victory.
In America he had employed this strategy only once, walking out on an argument with a girlfriend his sophomore year, thinking that would put an end to it. Instead she had followed him three blocks across campus in her determination to have the last word, and their running battle on the sidewalk past hundreds of students mortified Najeeb enough to recalibrate everything he’d ever learned about how to deal with women. But, of course, there was a pleasurable upside to his reeducation, and he had returned home keenly attuned to the cues, signals and sweet possibilities of flirtation.
So, when the shy smiles and small talk commenced beneath the low ceiling of that dreary basement office in Peshawar, Najeeb knew right away what Daliya was up to, even before she did. And by the time her uncle and cousins returned through the buzzing door, when he deftly shifted the conversation back to invoices and diskettes, Najeeb was already composing a follow-up note in his head and contriving a means of slipping it to her along with one of his business cards, printed with his cell phone number and e-mail address. She responded in kind, all of this transpiring without a hint of suspicion among the grumbling cousins, drowsy from their heavy meal.
But the cell phone was the true hero early in their saga, a tool of subversion that had broken the iron grip of elders all across Pakistan. Daliya set hers to buzz, not ring, and found she could even speak to Najeeb from her aunt’s house, provided she first slipped into a closet or bathroom. So this was how they began, chatting back and forth in a demure but very Western telephonic seduction, each as hungry as the other to finally share hopes and grievances with someone who understood.
For two weeks all they did was talk. Then Daliya boldly proposed using her girlfriend Rukhsana as an intermediary to help arrange a meeting. In defiance of every local custom they met in a local park, posing as brother and sister.
Up to then, Daliya’s experience with Pashtun men had been limited to the few she’d met at the university, stern and brooding boys who were quick to anger even if loathe to express it. They were boys who kept to themselves in smoldering little knots of disapproval and exclusion. They’d had their own dormitory, their own student association, their own table in the dining hall, and the frictions between them and the Punjabis, the Sindhis and the rest had been palpable.
Clearly, this one named Najeeb was different, stretched by his travels, more open to possibility. And even in their stilted first meetings he displayed a gentle wit and a lovely if subdued laugh, although at times she thought she detected a certain coolness in his eyes, an implicit warning that he might withdraw at any moment if necessary, to someplace so deeply chill and remote that he might never return.
By their third meeting they’d conquered most of their inhibitions, agreeing that further trysts were worth further trouble. After the fourth, with a growing sense that if they were going to break the rules they might as well break them all, they decided to meet at the one place promising true privacy. So, arriving after dark and feeling more scandalized with every quick, quiet step up the stairway, Daliya visited Najeeb’s apartment, virtually holding her breath until she reached his door.
It would be difficult to overemphasize the seriousness of the risk Daliya took by carrying out this tryst. While most Westerners might wonder at all the fuss over a mere date, just about anyone from Peshawar would have considered her visit, to put it bluntly, a whore’s errand, an assignation for the damned.
They both knew this, yet both also had agreed without even putting it into words that henceforth they would be operating by their own rules, and that in doing so they would walk their brave new path
In America he had employed this strategy only once, walking out on an argument with a girlfriend his sophomore year, thinking that would put an end to it. Instead she had followed him three blocks across campus in her determination to have the last word, and their running battle on the sidewalk past hundreds of students mortified Najeeb enough to recalibrate everything he’d ever learned about how to deal with women. But, of course, there was a pleasurable upside to his reeducation, and he had returned home keenly attuned to the cues, signals and sweet possibilities of flirtation.
So, when the shy smiles and small talk commenced beneath the low ceiling of that dreary basement office in Peshawar, Najeeb knew right away what Daliya was up to, even before she did. And by the time her uncle and cousins returned through the buzzing door, when he deftly shifted the conversation back to invoices and diskettes, Najeeb was already composing a follow-up note in his head and contriving a means of slipping it to her along with one of his business cards, printed with his cell phone number and e-mail address. She responded in kind, all of this transpiring without a hint of suspicion among the grumbling cousins, drowsy from their heavy meal.
But the cell phone was the true hero early in their saga, a tool of subversion that had broken the iron grip of elders all across Pakistan. Daliya set hers to buzz, not ring, and found she could even speak to Najeeb from her aunt’s house, provided she first slipped into a closet or bathroom. So this was how they began, chatting back and forth in a demure but very Western telephonic seduction, each as hungry as the other to finally share hopes and grievances with someone who understood.
For two weeks all they did was talk. Then Daliya boldly proposed using her girlfriend Rukhsana as an intermediary to help arrange a meeting. In defiance of every local custom they met in a local park, posing as brother and sister.
Up to then, Daliya’s experience with Pashtun men had been limited to the few she’d met at the university, stern and brooding boys who were quick to anger even if loathe to express it. They were boys who kept to themselves in smoldering little knots of disapproval and exclusion. They’d had their own dormitory, their own student association, their own table in the dining hall, and the frictions between them and the Punjabis, the Sindhis and the rest had been palpable.
Clearly, this one named Najeeb was different, stretched by his travels, more open to possibility. And even in their stilted first meetings he displayed a gentle wit and a lovely if subdued laugh, although at times she thought she detected a certain coolness in his eyes, an implicit warning that he might withdraw at any moment if necessary, to someplace so deeply chill and remote that he might never return.
By their third meeting they’d conquered most of their inhibitions, agreeing that further trysts were worth further trouble. After the fourth, with a growing sense that if they were going to break the rules they might as well break them all, they decided to meet at the one place promising true privacy. So, arriving after dark and feeling more scandalized with every quick, quiet step up the stairway, Daliya visited Najeeb’s apartment, virtually holding her breath until she reached his door.
It would be difficult to overemphasize the seriousness of the risk Daliya took by carrying out this tryst. While most Westerners might wonder at all the fuss over a mere date, just about anyone from Peshawar would have considered her visit, to put it bluntly, a whore’s errand, an assignation for the damned.
They both knew this, yet both also had agreed without even putting it into words that henceforth they would be operating by their own rules, and that in doing so they would walk their brave new path
Similar Books
