She collects her documents and shuffles past him, surprised and relieved at how easy it was to get through customs. Papa had so often complained of hassles while traveling on an Indian passport. “Westerners are always suspicious of us,” he would say. It was one of the reasons she had never joined him on his business trips despite his urging. She had no desire to willingly invite that into her life when she lived so comfortably where she was.
She finds the baggage claim area and scans the belts for her suitcase. She’d quickly packed some photos of Papa, photos of Nita before she died, and her own personal effects.
Left, Sophie reminds herself. Photos from before Nita left them. She feels equal parts anger and anticipation at the thought of Nita having done that. How could she? Had Papa done something to drive her away? Could Sophie have done anything to make her stay?
Sophie shakes her head to break her spiraling thoughts and focus on finding her luggage. She knew it would be cold in Paris in late October, so she brought her heaviest jacket and thickest shawl, but looking at the warm wool coats on people around her, she knows she is not prepared for the weather outside of the airport doors. Her valuables are always with her, namely several lakhs of rupees she took from Papa’s safe-deposit box—the money that became hers after his death. Her fois now control those funds after Papa’s passing, but Sophie knew the bank teller well enough to be granted access. She keeps the money in a zipped sleeve strapped around her hips underneath her panjabi and tries to carry herself in a way such that it will not be noticed beneath the thin fabric. In Ahmedabad, all her shopping was done on the home accounts she and Papa had at every shop they frequented, so she typically carried very little cash, and no one in India used credit cards. Carrying this much money makes her very nervous, but she knew she’d need more money for this journey than she has ever kept before.
As she approaches the conveyor belt, she cannot believe how smoothly it flows around and how patient and orderly the passengers are, standing respectably apart from one another, each one fixated on their mobile phone, nonchalantly waiting for their bags to arrive. It has none of the chaos of the Ahmedabad airport, with people pushing ahead of each other and directing servants to retrieve their belongings. As a child, she’d gone to the airport to meet Papa after his business trips because she was so excited to see him after his time away and begged her fois to take her so she wouldn’t miss another second with him. As she got older, it had become their tradition right up until he passed away, and she had loved seeing his eyes light up when he would see her waiting for him after a long, weary flight.
She stands to the side, scanning the metal belt for her brown suitcase. It is easy to spot because she tied yellow synthetic rope around it to secure the contents, just like she’d seen Papa do before each of his trips. It surprises her that none of the other passengers took those same precautions to protect against theft.
The sea of faces around her is different from anything she has ever known. She has never been in a place with so few Indian people. In fact, she can probably count on her fingers and toes the number of non-Indian people she has seen in her entire life. Now, she sees many white faces, some so pale that thin blue veins can be seen through the skin. Then she sees a couple of Black men with trendy scarves tied around their necks and woolen jackets on their shoulders. Other than on American television shows and films she watched via their satellite, she has never seen a Black person before. These men look nothing like what she has seen portrayed on the screen and are instead dressed like the sophisticated businessmen in tailored suits she saw every day in India.
It is nerve racking for her as she tries to make sense of the signs and find where to exit. She is too self-conscious to ask any of these foreign-looking strangers for help and doubts they would understand her anyway. She worries about her half-baked idea to come to Paris and wonders if she should turn around and take a plane back home. It would look like she had been gone only a couple days. Her arranged marriage to Kiran could proceed as planned, and she would be back in a world she understood with people who understood her. As uncomfortable as she is, it’s the thought of her marriage that gives her strength to continue with her mission. If she finds Nita, Sophie could have a different path. Perhaps one that does not include marriage to a stranger. Learning Nita shunned her marriage forces Sophie to think about options that were previously not even in her realm of understanding. But even if marriage is her path, she needs to know what happened to Nita, because how could she ever become a parent without knowing that? Lineage is essential to consider when planning a family. What if whatever caused Nita to leave also lives inside of her? She is apprehensive about what she will find, but this is one instance in which cautious, pragmatic Sophie, who balances the pros and cons of all situations as she would a profit and loss statement, thinks uncovering the unknown weighs as the better option.
“Are you waiting for someone?” a voice says from behind her in accented English.
She turns to see an Indian couple who appear to be in their early sixties, and she breaks into a smile.
“Are you Gujarati?” the man asks.
She nods, feeling instantly relieved.
“First time in Paris?”
Again, she nods.
He smiles, a bright open smile. His eyes are kind, with laugh lines around the edges. His hair is an equal blend of salt and pepper. He wears simple khaki slacks and a white button-down shirt tucked tightly into the waist. Just like her papa did. At his side is a similarly aged woman in a blue panjabi.
“Are you meeting your family here?” the woman asks.
Sophie hesitates, not sure how to respond. She’d gotten away with not having to share “I’m looking for my mummy, who I thought was dead” with the customs agent and knows it is too much to share with strangers, especially ones who are Gujarati. She fears that within moments of them speaking, they will uncover the family friends or distant relatives they have in common, and after that, the whole of Ahmedabad will know her family’s gossip.
Instead, she says, “Yes, I’m meeting relatives in a few days’ time.”
“That’s good.” The woman nods her head from side to side in approval. “You are by yourself until then?”
Sophie pauses, again not sure how much to reveal to them. But she is no longer in Ahmedabad, where she knows people all over the city whom she could turn to. Here, she has no one. And this couple is the first who have even bothered to speak to her in this strange new world.
“What’s your name, beta?” the woman says in Gujarati.
Papa had called her beta more often than he ever said her given name, and Sophie feels a tug at her heart upon hearing the word.
“Sophie.”
The woman raises her eyebrows. “That’s not a very Indian name.”
“My mummy was”—she catches herself—“is very fond of French culture.”
The woman nods. “This is Saumil.” She gestures toward her husband. “And my name is Anjali.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Uncle and Auntie,” she says, using the Indian conventions for those who are not blood relations. “I did not expect to find people from Gujarat when I arrived here.”
Saumil Uncle laughs. “Sophie, you will see we Indians are everywhere. You only have to look.”