The Centre(49)

“One of the things that’s come up in our sessions is, well, how lowly I must have thought of myself to put up with you.”

“Put up with me? Are you serious?”

“You never cared about me. You never took any interest in my life. All you wanted was a little lapdog. You know, I don’t think it’s a coincidence you broke up with me not long after you got Billee.”

“Are you serious? We got Billee together.”

“Did we? You’ve never been able to see beyond your own nose, Anisa. And me, I was just so insecure. About who I am. Where I come from. I let myself be your lapdog.”

“I loved you, Adam. You can’t … retrospectively turn things around like this.”

“And you can’t win every argument by trying to analyze my behavior. That’s your defense mechanism. You focus on my stuff to avoid your own.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing in this moment?”

“You just did it again! I won’t fall for these traps anymore.”

“Listen, Adam, I’m sorry that we caused each other pain … but I did love you.”

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t have treated me the way you did. Do you know how insecure you made me feel?”

“I felt insecure too, Adam. The … intimacy stuff was hard for me. I felt like you withheld your affection—”

“There you go again,” he said. “Everything bad you did was because of some deficiency in me.”

“Is this ’cause I didn’t want to go camping?”

Suddenly, Adam hurled his fork across the room as if it were this utensil that was responsible for all the problems between us. It smashed against the counter and clattered to the floor.

“I never asked to go fucking camping.”

“Adam!”

“You treated me like shit. In Pakistan. Do you know how shitty I felt then? Do you think I couldn’t tell how your parents were looking down their noses at me?”

“Don’t raise your voice at me.”

“Don’t talk to me like a bloody schoolteacher.”

“I’m not! What the fuck. What’s this really about?”

“You downloaded Tinder the day I brought up marriage!”

“And I told you that I did, and I deleted it straight after. You said it was okay.”

“You and your middle-class fuckery, Anisa. You’re passive-aggressive all the time. You’re hypercritical. You’re judgmental. Just ’cause you say it in this nice, polished, middle-class monotone, you think it’s all good. I just, I can’t believe I put up with all your shit.”

“Where is this even coming from?”

“Do you remember that time in Karachi when I took my own plate to the sink, and you stopped me and complained that I was being so white and judgmental, that I should let the cook do his job?”

“Kareem was more offended than anyone when you did that, by the way. The kitchen’s his domain.”

“Did you ever think that maybe I was thinking of my mum when I did that? Of her work in the service industry?”

“But would you ever do that in a restaurant, Adam, insist on taking your own plate to the kitchen?”

“It wasn’t a bloody restaurant, though, was it? It was your home. Surely, we’re capable of feeding ourselves in our own homes?”

“It’s the culture, Adam. It’s a legitimate job that Kareem has. Who are you to judge? It’s just the way things are there. Everyone has servants.”

“Yeah? Everyone? Does Kareem have servants?”

“Why are we even talking about this? I don’t understand.”

“I’m just saying you’re so quick to tear other people apart, but when it comes to you, it’s like you think you have a fucking halo around your head. And I got convinced too. I got dazzled by the halo. But now I can see that it isn’t there, it never was, no—”

He stopped himself, but I knew he wanted to say more, to tell me that not only was there no halo but there were, in fact, devil horns. I could tell this by the way he was looking at the spot where my halo had been, and also because I knew him so well. I wanted to be like, “Who are you to judge me? You know nothing about me,” and, to be honest, I also kind of wanted to cry. But we just sat there in silence. Adam stared at his plate. He was sort of … pulsating, as if trying to control a tightly wound spring that lay coiled at his core. Then, he stood up. For a second, I thought he was going to throw the plate across the room too. But instead, he walked over to his room without a word, and I heard the lock click behind him. I let myself out and went back home.

Adam sent me a text a few days later saying that he was sorry things got heated and hoped we could still be friends. This softened my heart a bit. I also thought that maybe his outburst was a good thing—something emerging in Adam that was allowing him to stand up for himself, demand more. Truth was, I didn’t know if he was being bitter and demanding or just and legitimate. I wondered whether I should do something to show that I hadn’t disregarded him. I thought I could, I don’t know, go over to his flat again, make the kinds of efforts he’d accused me of not making in the past. I resolved to return the following week, just for tea and a chat. I’d bring carrot cake this time. I was pretty sure that was what he liked.