“What do you mean? What’s to see through?”
“I dunno, Anisa. They just … they won’t like me.”
By then, Adam had figured out some things about my background. I hadn’t gone into detail, but he’d learned that I had a wealthy and indulgent father and that I didn’t make much money at all. “Trustafarian,” he would sometimes call me, but only in private. In public, he didn’t acknowledge this large buffer of privilege that I rested upon. He understood my discretion, embarrassment even, and we diplomatically swept such things under the carpet.
“They’ll love you,” I said. “Just like I love you.”
I spoke these words with a stab of guilt, worrying that my own doubt and hesitancy were probably not helping with his sense of inadequacy but also feeling resentful for having to play the role of soothing caretaker. Anyway, he agreed to meet them. He said that he had a conference in Berlin at the end of the month and would be gone for two weeks, but afterward, we could go.
“We could book flights for September,” he suggested.
“September’s perfect. Karachi weather’s great in September.”
I instantly went back to single mode when Adam left for his trip. I have to say, ten days of watching Bollywood films in my pajamas with a cat snoozing by my side was heavenly bliss, especially since I knew this state wasn’t permanent. It made me paradoxically wish I could spend my whole life being single while also knowing that the singlehood was temporary.
The Bollywood films though … they’d fucked with my head. I was translating a romance that week, which nearly all of them were. I’m convinced that those films, along with Disney, had brainwashed me into thinking that love was some kind of being-swept-off-your-feet, long-dances-in-the-rain type thing. But love was not that. Love was what Adam and I had. Maybe one day, despite a lack of interest that bordered on dread, I’d even go camping with Adam. Yes, I decided while he was away. If my parents liked him, I would just marry him. Ticking clocks and all that.
I think Adam sensed that my parents’ opinion held quite a lot of weight. On his return, he bought some fancy chocolate for them and an ill-fitted shalwar kameez for himself from Bethnal Green Road. I was touched by the effort.
Then, one crisp September morning, having left Billee with Naima, we made our way to the airport. A car from Emirates came to pick us up as my father, much to Adam’s dismay, had insisted on booking first-class flights. At the airport, we sat in the lounge eating some tasty prawn biryani thing, and I started telling Adam of all the delicious food we would eat in Karachi: BBQ Tonight and Chatkharay, yakhni pulao and Bihari kababs.
“Even the KFC in Karachi is next level,” I said. “And the fruit! So much more flavor. Do you know custard apple?”
A kind of excitement started to bubble in me as I thought that maybe, after all these years, I was finally stitching together the two halves of my life. Of course, friends and family from Pakistan would come visit me all the time in London, but this, the other way around, had never happened. This was the first time I was bringing a part of my London life back home with me. I leaned across the table and squeezed Adam’s hand.
“I love you,” he said.
“Me too.”
We boarded the plane and made ourselves comfortable in our seats. Then, as I was flicking through the film options on the screen in front of me, Adam turned to the flight attendant and asked for a coffee. In perfect Urdu. And I mean, perfect Urdu. Like, the kind of Urdu my grandmother speaks.
“What the fuck?”
“Surprise.”
“Adam—”
“I can speak Urdu now! I learned in Berlin.”
He asked me, in Urdu, whether I was impressed.
“What is happening right now?”
“I was nervous. About meeting your parents. So I learned.”
The auntie sitting across the aisle from us had said, “Hai, suno” to her husband when Adam made his request for coffee. Now, ears pricked and beaming, she seemed on the verge of applauding my magnanimous boyfriend’s efforts while pinching her husband’s forearm in a gesture of reprobation for his own inadequacy.
In a whispered hiss I said, “Fuck off, Adam, nobody can learn to speak like that in two weeks.”
“I studied intensively. I told you that’s how I learn.”
“You’ve always spoken it. You’ve been pretending this whole time.”
“Why would I pretend?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Because you’re … a serial killer?”
“A serial killer?”
“A stalker then. One second, is this really happening right now?”
“I thought you’d be happy.”
“It isn’t humanly possible that you learned that quickly. You couldn’t string two words together in the six months that I’ve been trying to teach you, and now you speak better than I do?”
“Look,” he said. “Just forget it. I won’t speak it anymore.”
“How does that fix anything?”
“Not so loud, Anisa.”
I’d given the auntie a look by then, and she had ostentatiously put her headset on, but I could see that it was unplugged. Others, too, had turned their heads, enjoying the spectacle.
“You’re pulling some kind of fuckery here. It’s not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” Adam put his fingers to his temples. “Oh god, this is not the reaction I was expecting.”
“This is shady as fuck.”
“Why is it shady? I told you already, I have a unique way of learning.”
“It’s so shady! You’ve always been shady. I’ve been telling myself that it’s just me, but no, something has always felt off.”
“Okay, fine. I didn’t learn the whole language, okay? I only learned how to ask for coffee. That’s all.”
“Oh my god. You’re lying again. The way you just spoke, it’s obvious you’re fluent, fluenter than me, also—” my words were jumbling in my mouth.
“Okay, okay. That time I was lying. But I wasn’t before. I really did learn in two weeks.”
“But how? How is that possible? I grew up there, Adam. And ever since I left, I’ve made sure to read for at least an hour each week so I don’t lose my Urdu. That is a lifetime of effort. And you’re saying you learned overnight?”
“It’s … it’s different. This is my profession. I have a special way in which I learn. I’m sorry. I can see that I’ve shocked you.”
“You haven’t shocked me. You’ve unshocked me. You’ve just confirmed that there’s something you hide from me. And you know what? At this point, I don’t even want to know. I just want to be left alone.”
“Listen, Anisa …”
“I mean it, Adam. Don’t speak to me.”
We didn’t talk for the rest of the flight. Six and a half hours. Then, just as we were about to land, I said, “It might be better if we got you a hotel.”
He looked like he was going to cry. “If I tell you how I learned, will you forgive me for not telling you earlier?”
“No, I won’t. But tell me anyway.”