Watched: Chapters 1–3

Hunching my shoulders, I hurry down Thirty-Seventh Avenue, the sweat warm against my sweatshirt hood—past the thin shed of a shop with glittery bangles and cheap plastic frogs swimming in plastic tubs, past Mr. Rahman’s table of beads hung on metal hooks, folded prayer rugs and little engraved Qurans.

Here her expression went sad, wistful.

She bustled to the back of the store, where she’d hung a shalwar kameez on a hook on the back of the door, then brought it to the front, spreading the rustling plastic across the counter.

The outfit was beautiful—sea green, with blue beads dangling from the yoke like ice drops.

The man consulted a tiny notebook. “You attend the same mosque? Al-Noor Masjid?”

Abba’s English, when he spoke to strangers, was halting, yet proper.

He’s too tired. Tired of his own years, first doing construction in Dubai, then in Brooklyn, long days up on the scaffolding scraping cement, a new wife and son, now the store, where every month he and my stepmother lean their heads together, write the rent check.

I turn the corner, heading into the thick of the neighborhood—Seventy-Fourth Street—where the big grocery stores and sari shops with decked-out models and jewelry places draped in shiny gold are.

Or sometimes when I’m late for school, I’ll see some kid not much older than me, with his hands splayed on the greasy subway tile, cops giving him a pat-down.

Always my mother was so tired and gaunt—she used to cough into the end of her sari—and I remember after a while she did not go for those walks.

I climbed up on the sill, stared out at the empty street, sure I would see her stepping off a bicycle rickshaw, her round face lifting to me.

Auntie’s feet were so dry they rasped like insects.

I noticed a hole in the seam of one, which made me flush, angry.

The blocks start to spread, stretching to all these other neighborhoods—Corona, Woodside, Flushing, Bayside. On and on the borough stretches.

As we loped through the gate, I saw the mothers tighten their hands on the stroller handles.

My elbows flinch as I spot a burly security guard near the entrance.

“You realize we can have you arrested?” she asked.
“For a pen?” I asked, incredulous.

They are mermaids, those girls, all spangle and glitter and haughty looks.

They are mermaids, those girls, all spangle and glitter and haughty looks.

It was a taxi, a bona fide medallion taxi.

It was a taxi, a bona fide medallion taxi.

’Cause everything to Ibrahim was a great, unfurling possibility: Gucci and Apple stores and pretty girls and sleek office buildings.

“You’re late,” he chides.

I shake him off. I don’t like how he looks. Sallow. His pupils thin as filaments.

I shake him off. I don’t like how he looks. Sallow. His pupils thin as filaments.

When I asked about it later, at a taxi driver joint in the city, he dipped his kathi roll in chutney, crinkled his brow, and said, “It wasn’t for me.”

He goes silent, steers us onto the wide swath of Queens Boulevard.

“His alma mater too. Columbia. His professors still remember him.”

With his ambiguous looks, Ibrahim can pretend he’s many things, testing people.

His accent has gotten super posh. Ibrahim knows how to do that too.

My friend, with the pimple-rash at his jaw, with the scooped-out chest, looks fine, spiffy as a rich man. No different from the ones he conjures up all the time.

By the time we’re back in the dressing room, Ibrahim has put on the whole ensemble—pale blue shirt, suit—and we hand him my favorite tie, the one with maroon diagonal stripes.

“Perfect. Can you hold this under my name? We’ll come right here, so he can see all this.” He smiles sheepishly. “I can’t really go ahead without his approval.”

As Ibrahim and I leave the men’s department, there’s a strange pressure in my ears, like when I was on the airplane, a giddy whoosh in my stomach.

It takes a few seconds for me to realize that the crazy bleating noise was triggered by me.