“It’s the stem cells. That’s why these babies are so lush, you see. In fact,” she continued, “they say if you feed your stem cells to the fruit and veg you’re growing, the food will actually change composition, tailoring its nutrients especially for you. Isn’t that amazing?”
I didn’t know if this was true. I didn’t look into it. And, honestly, even if it were real, there probably wouldn’t have been many studies—such matters were not important, after all, in the masculine world of science. I do know, however, that menstrual blood is an important material in stem cell research. But the point is, everything Shiba said to me was true, in some sense beyond numbers and charts and the seen universe. Shiba felt to me like a channeler of truth. And I’m not just saying this because I was a little besotted. No, it’s the other way around. I was besotted because I saw the truth channeling. Shiba, you see, was a poem.
Oh my god. She was a poem? As soon as I say the words, I want to take them back. I sound like the sleazy male poets who compare their beloveds to the stars, the moon, the flame, the rosebud—men who place their women on such lofty and sacred pedestals that even normal bodily functions become an embarrassment, who, without ever asking, place beneath their women’s feet whole blankets into which they’ve woven their fragile and all-important dreams, forcing them to forever walk on eggshells. No, I’m not this way. I’m not interested in turning people into deities, fixing them into positions from which they’re unable to stray. I’m a woman myself. I’d had it all done to me. And so I hope my feelings for Shiba, even though they contained a kind of adoration, did not resemble the love with which men smother and contain women, pinning them down like butterflies on a board, with their names underneath in elegant calligraphy. We had one of those in our home in Karachi. Beautiful butterflies in a frame, wings spread, their man-made names etched underneath. I think I felt concern for those butterflies when I was younger, even though I knew they were essentially—gone. And yet, the shimmering blue of their wings is still so vivid in my mind that I can’t help but acknowledge the power of that beauty preserved.
It is hard to know how to love someone well.
I told Shiba that I, too, would try pouring my menstrual blood into the plants on my balcony.
“You know what they say?” she said. “They say that if all the women started giving their blood back to the land, there would be no more need for war.”
The months passed, and our relationship deepened. We even started exchanging gifts. On her birthday, I sent Shiba a truck art–inspired bag that I’d bought in Karachi. On mine, she sent me a book of essays by Audre Lorde. I loved it and told her afterward that I’d annotated it heavily, writing my comments in the margins.
“Send it back to me,” she said. “And then I’ll reread it and write in my comments and post it to you.”
And so I did, and we found ourselves conversing within the pages of the book. It was a beautiful experience. And I think there was something about this exchange that moved our relationship from the virtual back to the physical and finally led to our deciding to meet in person. It had been over two years since my time at the Centre. But finally, about six months after Songbird came out and a handful since Naima and Azeem got together, we decided it was time. Brighton, we thought, would be a good spot. Two weeks later, we met there, just by the station.
I wore my favorite turquoise tank top with fitted stripy trousers, and Shiba had on a moss-green velvet dress, her hair in a fishtail braid. Just below her collarbones, hanging from a silver chain around her neck, was a single peacock feather.
“That’s beautiful,” I commented after we hugged hello.
“Thank you. I found it in a park near my house in Delhi last summer.”
“The necklace?”
“The feather.”
It turned out Shiba had made the necklace herself.
“It’s just some beadwork at the top and metal wire. I’ll make you one sometime.”
When Shiba and I had last been together, it had been as supervisor and Learner, but that dynamic had dissolved over the course of our texts and phone calls so that by the time we saw each other at the station, it felt like we were old friends. I suppose, in actual fact, we still knew little of each other. It sometimes felt, though, at least to me, as if everything was known between us and always had been.
We had a coffee near the station before heading off to explore, walking along the cobbled streets of the city’s center, dipping in and out of vintage shops along the way. From one, I bought a mushroom-shaped candle, and she bought a ring with a tiny silver turtle on it. We strolled and browsed and talked, and Shiba told me more about how the Centre had come into being.
She told me her father had met the other founders while he was studying at Oxford—David, a historian from Israel, George, an English biochemist, and Eric, an anthropologist from the States. They’d met at the university chess club. Each of them, she said, was exceptionally clever and hugely ambitious, and it didn’t take long for them to become close. It was the anthropologist, apparently, who first uncovered the heart of the process, and they all developed the idea together from there. Soon after graduation, they’d set up a small institution, at first teaching only Hindi.
“Why Hindi?” I asked.
“They wanted to start with one language, to see if it worked. I guess Hindi was the most convenient at the time. Anyway, it was a very controlled experiment, just a handful of people. Then, slowly, they started expanding into other languages and eventually built the place I manage now.”
The founders had since moved back to their respective home cities. They continued receiving income from the Centre but were, apparently, mostly researching other areas for expansion while leaving the day-to-day operations in Shiba’s hands.
“It can’t be easy doing it on your own,” I said.
“I enjoy it,” she said. “And the truth is, I feel like this is only the beginning. There’s so much more we can do with this knowledge.”
“Yeah?”
“It gives me a profound sense of purpose, this work. What I’m moving toward feels … collective, you know? And crucial.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s what I’m searching for too. Purpose. That’s why I went there in the first place.”
“You think that’s why you were there,” she said. “But you don’t know for sure. Sometimes, our true purpose only becomes apparent later.”
“That’s true,” I replied. “But seriously, it’s impressive that your dad gave you that much responsibility.”
She shook her head.
“He didn’t give me the responsibility. I took it. They would work in total secrecy, those four. Didn’t want the families involved at all. It was always him and the three uncles switching off laptops and lowering their voices when my mom or I entered the room. Honestly, at some point I wondered if they were CIA.”
“Maybe they were.”
“Nah, but it pissed me off, these men in their man cave, working on this supersecret thing. So I started snooping. I put the pieces together that way. Figured it all out.”