Even from up here, she could identify Ruksana by her thick hair Shabana’s was thin and lifeless.
Their teachers claimed that they couldn’t tell the girls apart, but Nusrat found that hard to believe. Hearing shrill voices below, Nusrat looked down into the courtyard and saw the dark heads of her daughters. What did earthly possessions matter? If it was important for Noor to live in a house, to throw lavish dinner parties, to send the girls to a school run by nuns, so be it. All she had left were her small gold earrings, shaped like flowers, but she quickly banished the thought from her mind. Just last week she had sold the last of her wedding jewelry-a necklace studded with emeralds and two bangles of eighteen-karat gold. Like many other young men in the 1940s, he had taken the Frontier Mail train to Bombay in search of stardom, and ended up, so many years later, as a badly paid extra for third-rate films.Īs the perfume filled her hair, Nusrat felt a sudden rush of sadness. Noor’s family was of noble lineage, and back in Peshawar his family still owned a large haveli, a palace. She knew that the musk of her hair would soothe his homesickness. Noor Mohammad would kiss her neck, bury his face in her hair, and say, “You smell like home to me.” When the coals became ashy, she added some drops of perfume from a small glass vial, bent her head, and fanned her long hair over the smoking brazier.Īs the smoky, musky scent impregnated her hair, Nusrat imagined her husband returning home that evening. To calm herself, Nusrat retrieved a small charcoal brazier from the corner of the roof and lit it. She still had to perfume her hair, and the girls’ late arrival was disturbing her ritual. As was traditional, she had never cut it, and today she had rubbed it with coconut oil, then washed it with well water. The hot afternoon sun shone down and Nusrat felt her wet, waist-length hair beginning to dry. She was dreamy and movie-obsessed, and often convinced Ruksana to take her to faraway cinemas to see old films. The girls had probably gone to the movies again at the instigation of Shabana, the younger girl. Her pretty, pale face turned hot with anger. Though she had lived in Bombay for half her life, she only ventured out with her husband she still obeyed the customs of her hometown, Peshawar, which now lay in Pakistan, on the wrong side of the border. Nusrat could go out into the dusty city and look for her daughters, but the thought frightened her. Agnes Convent uniforms, their neatly plaited hair tied into two loops with red ribbons. No sign of two twelve-year-olds in blue St. An auto-rickshaw went by, then a cluster of women returning from the bazaar. Nusrat peered into the winding lane leading to the house. Shabana and Ruksana should have arrived forty-five minutes ago, their shrill voices breaking the silence of the courtyard below. Nusrat Begum leaned against the rooftop balustrade of their small, crumbling house and squinted up at the sun: almost four o’clock. Women East Indian-Crimes against-Fiction. Motion picture actors and actresses-Crimes against-Fiction. East Indians-New York (State)-New York-Fiction. The last taxi ride: a Ranjit Singh novel / A.X.
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