“Well, it should. Younger men, Anisa, they’re more evolved. I’m tired of these mama’s boys who can’t even fry an egg. Azeem is different. He even knows how to make that chocolate cake with the melty thing in the middle.”
So yeah, he seemed nice enough. But he wasn’t very smart, I have to say. His contributions to our conversations never went beyond the banal. Azeem didn’t think about life the way Naima and I did, not about the underside of life. He only talked about food and cars and trendy new bars. He was into techy things like drones and fancy gadgets and was teaching himself how to make cocktails with dubious-sounding names. But Naima didn’t seem to mind the lack of depth.
“Intellectuals,” she would say, “are all head, no heart. And they’re so competitive. And they’re mansplainers. I like it better with Azeem. We both contribute different things to the relationship. And whatever, I have my friends for intellectual conversation.”
When Naima spoke of something she was passionate about, a film they’d just seen, for instance, and Azeem contributed something inane or problematic, something she would have cringed at had it come from someone else, I watched her ignore, indulge, and overlook his stupidity. And when he proved himself not to be the “conscious man” she’d described, making a joke about women belonging in the kitchen or saying, in all seriousness, phrases like “civilized nations versus third-world countries,” she would, it’s true, occasionally challenge him, but nine times out of ten she’d just make excuses.
“It’s because of our privilege that we’re clued in, Anisa. It’s learned behavior. To be judgmental of such things in others … well, I think that can be classist.”
Sometimes I felt like Naima would just make up theories to support her vision of Azeem as perfect. If he wasn’t intelligent, it meant he was unpretentious and down to earth; if he didn’t make money, it signified that he wasn’t a slave to capitalism; if he was younger, he was of a more enlightened age. Naima hadn’t “manifested” Azeem, she’d manufactured him. She’d created an image in her head and found someone to project it on, someone who, a bit of a blank, a bit of a people pleaser, happily accommodated her fantasies. It was annoying, and it made me worry about all that he could get away with. I don’t mean anything really bad, just a general letting down, a taking up of space that a more worthy partner could fill. I don’t know. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just jealous. Or sad about losing my friend. Or maybe this was just what relationships looked like and I was alone because I didn’t know how to compromise. I would never find love.
I tried to contain myself, out of fear that this was my anti-maleness or my self-sabotaging thinking taking over. But although I can’t be sure where my feelings were coming from, there is one thing I’m certain of: there was a roaring fire in Naima that slowly started to peter once she got together with Azeem. She started caring less about her work. She talked mostly about him and his interests and spent much of her time trying to support him, to help him with his interpersonal dramas and push forward his fledgling career. He became the focus of her life in such an alarming way that it made me wonder whether it pointed to some insecurities within her. I don’t know. It could be that any brilliant woman who settles down with a less-brilliant man dulls herself to compensate and console. Maybe my friend, so kind and thoughtful, was putting out her fire so her man would not feel inadequate. Or it could be that so much of her emotional labor was being diverted in his direction that there was just less left for herself.
A part of me feels bad even saying these things. I worry whether, in doing so, I’m falling into the trap of blaming women for their own oppression. But it’s just, I felt like I saw complicity, like I saw willful blindness. And I felt, if I’m honest, like Naima was compromising her feminist ideals by being with this guy, and it was making me lose respect for her. It was painful and confusing, especially in the wake of discovering that my Great Translator dream hadn’t come with the feelings of fulfillment and contentment that I’d imagined. But I felt all the more grateful, given these circumstances, that Shiba was still in my life.
·
I had texted Shiba shortly after my return from the Centre. First, I’d waited three days, playing it cool, and then, on the day Adam dropped Billee off, I’d sent a message.
I know I was dying to get back home by the end, but I have to say, all I can think about right now are those yummy samosas. How’ve you been?
To my relief, she responded straightaway, with a GIF of a dancing samosa.
Not the same without you, but all well. Samosas juicy as ever. What you up to?
We continued texting this way. At first, I’d labor over my responses, trying to make them sound witty and charming, but we soon settled into a more casual, free-flowing rhythm, exchanging messages sporadically in the beginning, then several times a day. I screenshotted her a passage from To the Lighthouse that I thought she’d like, and she recommended an obscure and wonderful podcast about the psyche of an octopus. Then we both started watching the same series on Netflix, deconstructing every episode together. Soon, we were exchanging voice notes as well, long rambles about this and that, just riffing off each other, going deeper and deeper into random tangents. Sometimes we’d trade voice notes so frequently that it felt like we’d been chatting all day long. It was the kind of nourishing and collaborative discourse that opens up new ways of seeing, and I felt lucky to have her in my life.
A few months later, around the time I started working on Songbird, we arranged a Skype call and ended up speaking for nearly three hours. I introduced her to Billee and made a sandwich while we spoke, while she sipped from a mug of coffee and told me about the new cohort of Learners she was hosting. After that, we spoke on the phone nearly every night, and Shiba finally started sharing details about her personal life. I learned that she lived at the Centre full-time, in a studio flat in the staff quarters.
“Did I mention my dad owns the place?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied casually. She totally knew she hadn’t mentioned this before, but the tentativeness with which she shared made me feel that if I showed any excitement at being initiated into this new level of confidence, she might flee.
“He’s one of the founders.”
“Oh, so that’s how you got the gig,” I teased. “That makes me feel better about myself. Less inadequate.”
“You feel inadequate?”
“Of course! Here I am, working out of my living room, and you’re singlehandedly running a whole five-star, secret service, Men in Black operation out of a mansion in Sussex.”
She laughed. “You should never feel inadequate. I told you, remember? Perfect as you are.”
“Like I said, more perfection’s never a bad thing.”
Shiba shared that her father, who was based in Delhi, had founded the company many years ago with three friends from university. Her emotional investment in the Centre made more sense to me after learning about this personal connection. I was hungry for more details but knew that she’d share at her own pace. And I didn’t really mind Shiba’s reservedness. I saw it as part of her deep sensitivity, which I was captivated by. Shiba had a gentle, profound way of moving in the world, and through her gaze, everything became a kind of metaphor. For instance, once, while we were Skyping, I admired the thriving plants behind her, and she told me that every month, she’d pour her menstrual cups into a jug of water, and then at the end of the week, she would water her plants with that mixture.