When She Was Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

(Maxwell House institutional brand); now the coffee houses selling fresh and fancy brews sit cheek to jowl, and you can bet in the course of time, perhaps in the lull after Christmas, a few of them will be smothered right out of the competition, what with an American chain joining in the fray and upping the ante.
    We’ve come here having inspected a show unit for a condo development coming up in the area, one of those with fancy names like Governor’s Terrace to make you feel you are partaking in the opulence previously reserved for colonial British sahibs. She liked it and thinks she’ll rent an apartment in the area while she waits for possession.
    “You’re selling her house—you’re not obliged to find her a place to stay,” my wife Farida chides.
    “It’s good business,” I respond. “Besides, she’s a woman alone and—”
    “Exactly.”
    “Don’t tell me you’re jealous—”
    She smiles.
    “I am the mukhi,” I continue, “and it’s our duty to help—don’t forget, you’re
mukhiani-maa
—”
    Maa
means “mother,” but in a respectful way, though these days it’s not always likely to be taken as a compliment even by grandmas.
    “We were in school together, I am hardly her mother,” Farida says, though the term does please her, I’m surprised.
    Farida looks no older than Anaar at all.
    “Did you find out why,” she says, raising an eye, “you know—she did what she did at the funeral?”
    “No—I don’t think she knows that I know.”
    “Not a good detective, are we?”

    She had been seeing Amir Uncle for more than a year before she realized she’d been doing exactly that. There would be times when Guli failed to show up at a planned outing and Anaar would be with him by herself—except for her cousin Azim, who always came with her; that was nothing unusual, girls took along a little brother the same way they would a shawl or a sweater. And Azim was so quiet, it was almost as if he were not there.
    When school holidays came around, Guli and Anaar decided they would attend early morning mosque, which began at four every day. Amir Uncle would give them a ride. But after the first two mornings, Guli couldn’t get up, felt too lazy, and so it was Anaar and Amir Uncle, of course with Azim, who went. On the way back Amir Uncle wouldtake the two of them for a drive past the seashore; one day he said to Anaar, “Why don’t I teach you how to drive?”
    It was the most thrilling thought for Anaar; to be able to drive a car! So she and Amir Uncle, with the quiet, half-absent Azim in the back of the car, went for driving lessons early in the morning after mosque. And after the holidays, it was the same trio who went to a movie, the Little Theatre, or somewhere else. Her guardians believed she went out with her friend Guli, and she didn’t tell them otherwise. Neither did her silent chaperone Azim. Anaar believed that he too liked the outings in the car, and the treats, and Amir Uncle. Sometimes she would receive a message through Guli, about a play or a dance performance, the office Christmas party, or even a tennis or cricket match. Twice there were presents, purportedly from her friend Guli—a bead necklace and a gold bangle—and her aunt and uncle despaired of how to repay the gifts.
    But one day Mrs. Daya, the gossip across the street, alerted her aunt, who interrogated Azim, and the fat was in the fire.
    In the next several weeks Anaar declined all invitations from Amir Uncle, which were brought of course by their messenger Guli: to attend the final of the Youth Drama Competition, for which tickets were so scarce; to attend the New Year’s party at Twentsche Overseas Motors; to go and hear a qawali recital by the famed Shakila Banu Bhopali and her troupe from India. Finally, one time Amir Uncle followed her in his car as she was returning from school on her bicycle; she stopped, at the Odeon; her bike went on the roof rack and she sat inthe car. And she told him, “It’s not