Salaam, Paris Read Online Free PDF Page A

and all that.”
    I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I certainly liked the sound of it.
    The following evening, Shazia and I took a taxi—the first time I had been in one since arriving in Paris—and went to the Buddha Bar, which she told me was one of the most fashionable places in all of Paris. We entered into a space that was as dark as it was loud, handed our coats to a girl sitting in a small cubicle, and almost collided with a waitress in a red-and-gold silk dress carrying a tray of multicolored drinks. Shazia grabbed my wrist and took me down a flight of stairs. I stopped in the middle of the restaurant and stared up at an enormous golden Buddha that dominated the room.
    “You can close your mouth now,” Shazia said, smiling. “You’re wowed. We get it.” She pulled me over to a long table at the back that was filled with her friends. She hugged and kissed all of them and introduced me as her cousin from Mumbai. They all nodded enthusiastically, some of them recounting a trip to Rajasthan or Calcutta or how their boss/roommate’s boyfriend/neighbor is from India, as if that would help me feel more welcome. I sat next to Shazia and a girl she used to work with, unable to pay any attention to their conversation. I couldn’t take my eyes off the Buddha; the girls in their short, sharp dresses and high shoes; or the men in their smart shirts tucked into jeans. Everyone had a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, dancing in their own world to music that boomed through the speakers. My eyes began to smart with all the smoke, and nobody else said a word to me the whole night, but there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
    I realized then that Paris with a friend—or better, a far-removed cousin who had become a friend—was a lot less lonely than it had been. Shazia had lived here most of her life, so knew the city as intimately as anyone would. Every day, Aunt Mina would ask me when I was leaving, if I had “finished my matter,” but Shazia would take me by the hand and, ensuring that her mother was tended to for the next couple of hours, would tell her to “stop bugging” me and would take me out.
    In the few days after Shazia arrived, once she had recovered from the jet lag, she showed me the Paris that only insiders know. She had said we would do all the tourist things, like window-shop around Saint-Germain, go boating down the Seine, take coffee and croissants at Les Deux Magots, and ride the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
    But we also visited her friends who lived in a basement apartment that had been transformed into something that reminded me of pictures in an old storybook of Aladdin’s Cave, and others who took us out for Chinese food in a restaurant that was an hour’s Metro ride from our home, but worth it for the fragrance of the rice and the crispiness of the steamed vegetables. On a sunny afternoon, we went to the Île St-Louis and ate the creamiest ice cream I had ever tasted in my life, its flavor lingering on my tongue long after I’d finished the last spoonful. French words came tumbling out of her mouth at every turn, and I made it a point to learn what I could from her, loving to imitate her irritated “mais non!” and enthusiastic “bah oui!” and the string of “alors” that referred to nothing in particular.
    “You’ll get there,” she said smiling. “It’s actually an easy language to learn, once you get the hang of it.”
    “You say that as if I’ll be here forever,” I said as we stood one evening on the Pont Neuf, watching the lights of the city flicker in the distance. “I came here to do something, and I’ve not done it yet.” The guilt resurfaced. The slip of paper still lay in the pocket of my coat.
    “It’s never easy going against the grain.” Shazia’s voice was suddenly quiet, the darkness of the river seeming to mirror her momentary mood. “I did it, and I’m still paying the price.”
    Shazia’s father, Reza, a