The Centre, I thought. The Centre could be the stepping stone I needed to reach the life I really wanted. To find a sense of fulfillment and meaning. To become a real translator.
But I forgot, of course, about the Ayatul Kursi.
On one of our last days in Karachi, while eating halwa puri for breakfast at Boat Basin, I told Adam I wanted to go to the Centre.
“To learn German,” I said. “Now that’s a real translator’s language. Can you imagine if I had access to German novels in the original?”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“A hundred percent. It’s probably the biggest market outside of English. And anyway, it’s so complicated, that language. Learning it will probably make me smarter.”
“It’s an intense experience, you know.”
“Come on,” I said. “If you could do it, I can do it.”
He hesitated for a second. “There’s something else.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, it sort of changes you, learning a language that fast.”
“How?”
“Maybe I’ve just done it too many times, but it’s like, sometimes, you forget who you even are.”
“Forget how?”
“It’s hard to say. Maybe that would have happened anyway. I’m in such a different place now from where I started. Career-wise. Financially. Even you. It feels to me, constantly, like I was never meant to be here.”
“I think that’s an Adam thing, not a Centre thing.”
“It’s both,” he said.
“I know what it feels like, by the way, to not feel like you belong.”
“It’s not the same, Anisa. I’ve heard the way your parents talk to you. They’ve told you from the day you were born that you could be anyone you wanted. Me, every day I wonder. Sometimes I feel like I should keep a packed bag by the front door at all times, you know, in case I’m suddenly evicted from my life.”
He looked at me then, and I felt my heart soften. He touched the tip of his nose—our code for “I’m giving you a kiss right now” while we were out in Karachi. Then, when we got home, while the household was taking its afternoon nap, we locked my bedroom door and made love in a way that felt tender and true, but also like a goodbye. And once we got back to London, I asked Adam if we could take a break.
He seemed upset but didn’t protest. This made things worse; he acted as if my rejection were a justification for his own self-loathing.
“I understand,” he said. “I can be a bit intense, I know.”
“It’s not that. It’s just … I want to see where my head and my heart really are. I don’t know, Adam. Maybe I’m just meant to be alone.”
“You’re just trying to let me down easy.”
“It’s really not that.”
And so, Adam moved back into his own flat. He told me he’d given the Centre my details and that they would be in touch if I passed their background check. Completely unaware of the true nature of what I’d signed up for, I waited impatiently for their call.
THREE
After Adam left, I missed him badly and would ask him to come back from time to time, only to vacillate yet again. In the end, it was he who brought things to a close, saying that he’d had enough of this push and pull and that I should only get in touch with him if I really wanted to be together. But I was unable to give him the reassurance he needed. And anyway, I was mostly happy to nestle back into my solitude. Sometimes, though, my snug singledom would tip over into abject despair, and I’d feel entirely alone in the world and want nothing more than a warm body next to mine.
Sometimes, it felt like too much was being asked of me. Mine was the first generation in my family that was expected to find their own partner. My parents’ marriage had been arranged, and their parents’ before them. But now, here I was, being forced into a love marriage. Why did I have to be the one to pave a different path? It would be easier, I thought, if someone would just decide for me. I mean, take Billee. We found Billee at a shelter. We loved him at first sight and brought him home. And now he was this irreplaceable being. I had infused meaning into him because he was the one I’d come home with. It felt taken for granted that he was mine and I was his. The problem was, I thought as I swiped through Tinder, too much choice. I did not want to be accountable for a potentially bad decision. I did not want to be accountable, period. Luckily, about two weeks after my return from Karachi, I was distracted from my loneliness by the phone call I’d been waiting for.
“Is this Anisa Ellahi? We believe you’ve been referred to us to study German.”
“Oh my god, is this the Centre?” I asked. “I’ve been waiting for your call.”
“Before we proceed,” the voice cut me off. “I’m going to pass you on to our lawyers to make sure you understand the terms of our nondisclosure agreement. Are you happy with that?”
“Of course,” I replied and was transferred to a man who spoke to me at length in the most dry and legalistic language possible.
“Yep, yep, I understand,” I interjected periodically, pacing around my living room while prompting Billee to chase his little mouse thing. The gist of what the lawyer said was intellectual property blah-blah, privacy, secrecy, nondisclosure, the Centre not being held responsible, my own volition, strict agreement to their timetable, no phones, no communication with the outside world whatsoever, and so on. “Yes. Great. Sounds good. Adam already filled me in.”
Eventually, after receiving my “verbal consent,” the lawyer transferred me back to the earlier voice, who asked whether I was free for an interview later that week.
Yes, I said. Yes I was.
·
On the day of my interview, I stopped at Naima’s beforehand. Naima lived in a spacious two bedroom in Peckham that she shared with her friend Salma, a movement therapist who did intuitive massage and ran 5Rhythms dance courses. Both women often worked out of their living room, which they’d set up as a kind of yoga/dance studio and ceremonial space. The morning I arrived, I found Naima in the kitchen, cutting up apples for a large pot of porridge bubbling on the stove. She was preparing it for the four women asleep in her living room after the ceremony they’d done the night before.
“Can you believe it?” I said. “If what Adam says is true, then in less than two weeks, I’ll be able to read, like Freud, in the original.”
“Did Freud write in German?” she asked.
“I think so. But like, Goethe or whatever. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”
It’s not that I wasn’t conscious that both Adam and the lawyer had sworn me to secrecy, but Naima, well, telling Naima something was no different from telling it to myself in the bathroom mirror. Or telling Billee. To me, Naima was that ageless tree in the park into which you whispered your deepest secrets. And there was no safer space than her flat either. Partly because the ayahuasca ceremonies she ran weren’t, technically speaking, legal, and partly because she was Muslim, Naima was convinced that one way or the other, the government was listening in. She allowed no phones in her ceremonial spaces, only used Telegram, and hung around on social media sites in what she called “incognito mode.” And so, I spilled.