Mum starts going off on the wrong tangent and I let her, hoping that once I reveal the truth, she’ll be so relieved that the guy isn’t from a ‘low class’ family that she won’t care that Hamza’s Egyptian.
‘You know I don’t agree with any of that classism crap,’ I say, winding her up further. ‘It’s so antiquated. No one from my generation cares about all that.’
‘Oh, really? You don’t care? You don’t care if your mother-in-law has a village mentality and expects you to wait on her and the entire family all day and night?’
‘That’s a pretty big generalisation, Mum. Even so-called bala manush do stuff like that.’
My mother ignores me and carries on her rant, waving around her chopping knife so vehemently that I take a step back in case she accidentally lets go of it. I tune most of it out. I’ve heard all this before, a million times. Tariq was, supposedly, from a ‘top class’ family according to Mum. I rest my case.
‘He’s not Bengali,’ I cut in as soon as she pauses for breath.
‘What?’ She stops in her tracks, her relief obvious in the long breath she’s just exhaled. I do the same when she puts her knife down.
‘He’s Egyptian.’
‘Oh!’
My mum isn’t often rendered speechless. She comes over to where I’ve butchered a perfectly good Bengali river fish whose breed I have no intention of remembering and sighs again.
‘What have you done to this poor fish? The skin is supposed to remain intact. I guess it’s a good thing you’ve found a non-Bengali mother-in-law. A village hori would have sent you right back to your dad’s house.’
As Mum tries to salvage the bloody fish, I fill her in on Hamza and she is surprisingly cool about it all. Sort of.
‘You know I can’t agree to anything until I’ve met him and his parents,’ she says before I head back upstairs. ‘We can speak to your dad then, and not before. He’ll be on the phone to all his relatives in Desh and I don’t want anyone to know anything until it’s concrete.’
Mum’s relatively positive reaction comes as a surprise to me. I thought she would have at least a few negative things to say about him, but I think she was relieved that he isn’t a khom zaath. It’s quite mind-boggling how she would rather I marry a non-Bengali than one from the wrong side of town.
Later that evening, I realise that Samia hasn’t returned my call, so I send her a message asking her how she is and what she’s up to. Her reply comes back in the early hours of the morning, and it’s the first thing I see when I wake up:
All good, sorry been busy. Nothing interesting to report. Catch up soon!
I have no idea how Adam is going to act with me when I get into work the next day. I make sure I’m the first one in so I have a good half hour to myself to gather my thoughts before he and Francesca arrive.
By mid-morning it becomes apparent that I needn’t have worried because Adam has decided that the best course of action is to pretend I don’t exist.
He hasn’t uttered a single word to me all day or looked me in the eye. He grunted once, when I asked him a question about one of his designs, but that’s the closest we’ve got to conversation. I think Fran’s noticed the tension in the room, because she’s been giving me worried looks every so often. When I catch her eye for the umpteenth time, she mouths, ‘Are you OK?’ and I shrug and mouth ‘Headache’ in return.
By lunchtime, I think I’m going to go crazy. I can’t stop staring at him, willing him to look up from his screen and catch my eye. I want him to know that I don’t want us to ruin our friendship either, but we need to talk about what happened so we can both move on. But it’s like I’m invisible.
By three I can’t take it anymore and before rhyme or reason can talk sense into me, I text him.
Hey. Are you OK? You’re being weird.
I hit ‘send’ and hear his phone vibrate instantly. He picks it up and I watch him as he reads my message, aching for some sort of expression on his face. Speaking of his face, he looks pale, and his usually bright eyes look dull and tired. Something inside me stirs – and it’s not my loins. With a start, I realise that I’m actually worried about him. Maybe something happened to his aunt over the weekend?
ADAM:Yeah, fine.
ME:You don’t look fine.
ADAM:How am I supposed to look?
ME:Not like this. You look tired. And stressed. Is everything OK at home?
ADAM:I said I’m fine!
ME:Why are you ignoring me then?
ADAM:I’m not.