When She Was Queen by M.G. Vassanji

another Urdu event is coming up so soon!”
    “No … well there is, but that’s not why I called. I would like to take you to a concert, of the Toronto Symphony—you do like Western classical?”
    “Yes, up to a point, I’m not really an expert—”
    “Neither am I—”
    “And I can’t stand the modern stuff.”
    Which Karim would sometimes take her to, saying, Listen with the mind sometimes, Yas, these days even the hip-hoppers are humming Beethoven’s Ninth—
    “Neither can I,” Abid told her. “This is an all-Beethoven concert, with the Ninth Symphony, and it is my favourite!”
    She hesitated. Was it right? Was this a date? What did Abid expect of her? There was a moment’s silence while she quickly reflected and he let her.
    Then he said, “I had two tickets given me by a client and I thought you might like to come. It’s discreet, our people don’t usually go to these events—though I believe your late husband did. You know he was highly respected in our Asian communities, though I didn’t quite agree with some of his comments—he struck me as … angry.” He caught himself and said, “Come on, Yasmin, I’m quite harmless, really—”
    She laughed, and she agreed to go.
    And so eventually she agreed to marry him; and the ghost of Karim, if there was one, became a glowering bitter face in the background, occasionally erupting but more often silent.
    What she liked about Abid’s people, his community—which consisted of friends and some near and distant relatives—was their gentility, the grace and respect theyshowed to each other. Of course this was only external form and etiquette; nevertheless, she realized that she had never been accorded such treatment before. In return she lived up to the expectations implicitly demanded of her. She now wore the sari or shalwar kameez, attires which she liked very much, with all their colour and grace, though there was the odd occasion when she sensed a qualm within herself and wished she had the pluck to look different—come out for instance in a khaki skirt and red tank top, or (God forbid) shorts, during summer. At parties she was pulled toward the women, away from the men. She had already learned to defer to the elders of her new community in the formal, elaborate, and quite charming ways expected, which reminded her of the Indian movies of her childhood. She felt a bit hypocritical after such displays. Abid himself was a soft-hearted, genial sort who rarely raised his voice, which was strange for her because she had been used to shows of excitement or anger from a husband. The whole tenor of her life had become orderly and calm, if a little constrained.
    You’ve sunk, said that voice once. Don’t you have an iota of a sense of who you were, who you really are?
    What was I? she retorted.
You
made me!
    She and Karim had met twenty years ago when she was a new assistant librarian in the history department of the University of Toronto and he a quiet professor. Even then he exuded that darkness of soul, though she saw it only as a romantic, somewhat Keatsian trait. They got to talking once about a journal recently discontinued by the library, then about other excellent journals guillotined by university cutbacks, and over the weeks gradually becameintimate. She had no doubts when she accepted to marry him. He was charming and easy to be with, vastly educated, and slightly mysterious. She liked the fact that he was westernized, refreshingly different in his thinking from what she was used to seeing in men from their background. He took her to a whole new world of the opera, music concerts, book readings, and museums, the thrill of living in the city, away from the suburban developments filling up with immigrants. The kids came and put a new twist on their existence. He spurned religious education for them as a regimen cooked up by a bunch of ignorant, uncultured managers to keep their people in line. She more or less agreed, but (as she sometimes