Persuading Sheila to give me the time off was almost as hard as persuading my parents to let me go. I didn’t understand why they were so strict about me going abroad. Everyone I knew travelled! Although to be fair, Dina used to lie to her parents and pretend she was going on work trips all the time. She was quite possibly the only teacher who had travelled to thirteen countries in two years for ‘work events’.
It was my chacha and chachi – the twins’ parents – who stepped in and had a word with Ma and Baba. I overheard Chachi saying things like, ‘Restricting kids too much will only lead to resentment and rebellion’. Ha. I was hardly a rebel, but if I had to act the part to get to see the world, I would.
In that time, between visiting Dina and her newborn, running and work, I had done two more items on the list. Number sixteen was ‘Take Mum to a West End musical – Mamma Mia? Grease? Back to the Future? Wicked?’ Underneath, as always, he had written his own little comment on how it went. This time, it was: ‘Wicked was simply wicked!’ It was cute that he wanted to treat his mum to a show and I was more than happy to do the same for mine. Since she had persuaded my dad to let me travel, I was also feeling particularly benevolent towards her.
Ma wanted to see Grease, her all-time favourite non-Bollywood movie. If there was one celeb she loved more than Princess Diana, it was Olivia Newton-John and so we made a night of it with a fancy Indian meal on Shaftesbury Avenue afterwards. Our throats were sore from singing along to all the songs at the top of our off-key voices, but it was worth it. I hadn’t seen Ma let go like that in a long time and I decided to do things with her more often.
On that note, I forced her to enjoy number seventeen with me, which was watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t seen any of the movies. I always pretended to know what people were on about whenever they mentioned hobbits or the Shire. Once, when Arjun had come back from the Peak District, he said something about it feeling like ‘the Shire’ and I had responded, ‘Which shire is Peak District in then? Is it Yorkshire?’ In my world, anything beyond the M25 was the stuff of legends and fairy tales.
Ma quite enjoyed the first movie, although almost jumping out of her skin at some parts. By the time we got to the second though, she was fast asleep and snoring on the couch. When it was time to watch the final film, she politely declined.
‘Maybe next time we can watch the latest Karan Johar instead?’
‘If you had to compile a list of thirty things to do before you turn thirty, what would you put on it?’ I posed the question to the twins once we were safely in the sky and the cabin crew were going around with drinks. The three of us had adjacent seats on the left side of the plane, with me on the aisle and Pinky in the middle.
‘There’s so much I want to do,’ Pinky mused. ‘I want to travel more. I’d love to write something, like a novel or a collection of short stories. Maybe learn a new skill like knitting or sewing.’
‘Sewing would be cool,’ I said. ‘I’d love to be able to make my own clothes. Not that I have an eye for fashion. And I’m clumsy with my hands.’
‘You’d probably poke your own eye out with a needle,’ Pinky agreed. ‘Remember that time you cut your finger with scissors when your mum used to make us do craft sessions in the holidays?’
Pretty laughed at that. ‘Your hands would become a pin cushion. You’d bleed all over the fabric.’
‘All right, all right,’ I interrupted. Maybe not sewing then. ‘What about you, Pretty? What would you do?’ I peered around Pinky to look at Pretty, who was staring out of the window. At what, I didn’t know, as it was nighttime and we were too high up to see anything but darkness out there. I waited for her to say something crazy, like bungee jumping or going to Coachella.
‘I’m hoping I’m married before I turn thirty,’ she admitted quietly, still looking out of the window.
‘Woah, that’s deep,’ I said, downing my apple juice in three gulps. ‘I don’t think I could put a timeline on something like that. It’ll happen when it happens.’
‘If it happens,’ Pinky agreed. ‘It’s not destined for everyone, you know. And who needs a man anyway?’
‘Thanks for giving me hope,’ Pretty muttered. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. What’s so wrong about wanting to get married? You want to get married too! If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be attending all these dekha dekhis!’
‘I don’t mind getting married, but it’s not a goal! It’s a “nice to have”. That’s different,’ Pinky rationalised calmly.
‘How is it different?’
The sisters began to bicker and I tuned them out and put on my headset instead. We had six hours of this flight left and four days together. I didn’t want to ruin it by arguing or getting too deep, so I left them to it and settled down with a film instead.
Our skydive was booked for Sunday, our last day. This was intentional in case we became so traumatised by the experience that we weren’t able to enjoy the rest of the trip. Given that none of us were rich, we were in a hotel apartment that was clean, modern and spacious, but not overly glam or luxurious like most of the city.
On Friday we went to the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi for Jumuah prayers, which was a magical experience. Pretty and I had to wear hijabs and abayas and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Maybe it was because we were in the mosque, or because we were in a Muslim country, but I felt good wearing it and blending in with the other women who wore it. I felt like I was a part of a global family and community. A woman I didn’t know walked past me and gave her Salaam to me, which never happened to me as I wasn’t a visible Muslim most of the time. That moment of solidarity reminded me that I was part of something bigger than myself and my family.
The mosque was huge and looked like something out of 1001 Arabian Nights, with its brilliant white domes and pillars made from marble. After the congregational salah was over, I sat in the women’s prayer hall for some time while my cousins explored and took pictures. It was so peaceful and serene. Pressing my head to the floor in prostration, I prayed for God to grant me peace in this life and the next and guide me towards what was best for me, whatever or whoever it was. I also prayed for the courage to get through the skydive on Sunday without getting hurt or humiliated. I was trying my best to block it from my mind, because whenever I thought about it, I could feel acid churning in my stomach. It wasn’t the jump itself that made me want to go back to London, it was how my body was going to react to the shock of it. What if I threw up in the sky and bits of my vomit landed on everyone else? What if I weed myself and it soaked through my jumpsuit and onto the instructor? Or worse . . . what if my bowels decided to release themselves mid-jump? There was a plethora of things that could go wrong, anatomically, each one leaving me completely disgraced forever.
Ya Allah, I beg you, please have mercy on me and let me find the courage to jump and please get me through it with my dignity intact, I beseeched, my forehead pressed so firmly on the ground that I could feel it getting carpet burn. I promise I’ll be a better Muslim if you do! I’ll help Ma more around the house and I’ll pray more regularly and I’ll do ten extra fasts and I’ll give a hundred pounds to a charity for . . . My mind went blank. There were so many valid and important causes. Palestine. Syria. Sudan. The Congo. Droughts. Floods. Famine. Clean water. Healthcare. Refugees . . .
. . . Orphans, I decided. Looking after orphan children was considered one of the most noble charitable acts. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, was an orphan and looking after orphan children was mentioned a lot in the Holy Qur’an.
We went back to Dubai after visiting the mosque and then spent the evening on a desert safari, which was a lot of fun. After a thrilling (and sometimes scary) bout of dune bashing followed by camel riding and sand boarding, we were taken to a camp where we enjoyed a barbecue dinner, had our henna done and chilled with a pipe of shisha for the twins. Later that night, there was a belly-dancing show. We all clapped along to the music, maybe a bit too enthusiastically because suddenly the vigorous dancer was standing right next to me, flinging her red hair this way and that, bumping my shoulders with her hips and using her body to tell me that I should join her.
No flipping way. My face scarlet, I shook my head vehemently. She took this as a sign that I was interested and proceeded to grab my hand and hoist me to my feet, wiggling her ample bosom in my face and grinning almost maniacally. I began to feel sorry for her at this point. Her job wasn’t easy – trying to coax unwilling participants into dancing with her was probably the least of her problems. She probably had to fend off the ones who were a bit too willing, all the while acting like she was having the time of her life when all she wanted to do was curl up in bed with a good romcom and a tube of Pringles. She probably hated being ogled day in, day out, forced into jiggling her belly while onlookers analysed every inch of her flesh.
The story I had conjured felt so realistically woeful that I decided to give in to make her happy. Plastering a fake, toothy smile on my face, I wiggled my hips back at her and shook my hair out in what I hoped was the same sexy way she did. Her expression changed as I joined in and copied her moves to the rhythmic drumming. It was quite fun, letting go like that. I had never danced in front of anyone before. I was always the girl at the mehndi party who clapped along quietly in the corner, trying not to draw too much unwanted attention to herself. Forget being a wallflower, I was more like wall-paper. Completely unnoticeable.
But no one here knew me, besides the twins, who were hooting and cheering me along. I was on the other side of the world. There were no aunties insulting my complexion. No grannies asking me why no one wanted to marry me. No uncles comparing Malik’s successful career to mine. It was just me and the music, dancing in the middle of the Dubai desert under a diamond-studded sky.
Chapter Twenty-Five
On Sunday morning, the three of us sat waiting in the cool, air-conditioned marble lobby of our apartment block, waiting for the taxi that was going to take us to the Skydive of Doom. Browsing through my camera roll, I looked for the best pictures from the previous couple of days to post to Instagram. We’d had a chilled Saturday, starting off with a morning at an exclusive ladies-only beach, followed by spa treatments and then shopping and shisha. As I scrolled, I could hear familiar music playing from Pretty’s phone and the two of them cackling away.
‘I can’t believe you posted it!’ Pinky chastised her sister while Pretty continued to chuckle.
‘I had to; it was gold!’
‘What are you guys laughing about?’ I asked suspiciously, still trying to place the music. I knew it from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.
‘Check Pretty’s Snapchat,’ Pinky managed between giggles. I obliged and absentmindedly went through the pictures and videos she had been posting, albeit never in real-time like you were supposed to on Snapchat. There was Pretty and I at the beach – only our heads, of course. The best thing about going to a ladies-only beach was being able to wear whatever we wanted without having to worry about modesty. For Pinky this was particularly special, as she was able to feel the sea breeze on her pink hair. I tapped through the rest: sea views, our meal, Pretty seductively blowing a plume of smoke from the shisha pipe. There were pictures from Friday as well: the majestic mosque, a video of the three of us squealing and screaming as the 4x4 flew over burnt orange sand dunes, Pretty getting her henna done.
I tapped again to change to the next video. I heard the music first – the pulsating, expert drumming from the desert camp – and then the blurry video slowly came into focus. And there I was, in all my sweaty-faced, wild-haired glory, dancing with the belly dancer. Calling it ‘dancing’ was being extremely generous. The blood drained from my face as I watched myself wiggle and shake out of time to the music, my forehead creased in concentration, my arms flailing like a drowning octopus, my boobs bouncing along with the rest of me and my hair swinging around my head like a jinn’s. It was like watching a car crash.
That night, I had found myself truly letting go for the first time in my life. I felt powerful, sexy almost. I thought I looked like Shakira.
I looked nothing like Shakira. I didn’t even look like her aunt twice removed. I looked like the ghost of Shakira’s sunburnt doppelgänger, who had died and now haunted the desert.