She laughs. And oh, she laughs so easily. ‘We should say all of this in the podcast. Go, now, leave. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
6.
Daksh Dey
The immigration officer at Dubai Airport looks at me, then at my passport and then back at me.
‘Used to be a resident, habibi?’ he asks me in his thick Arabic accent when he spots my old residence visa.
He has a warm smile and bright eyes and I know he wants to be welcoming, so I don’t tell him that the city broke me in ways I didn’t know one could be broken. I had just turned nineteen, and it was someone who looked like him, sharp lasered beard, broad-chested, in the uniform of a policeman, who visited me and a terrified four-year-old Rabbani in the cold hospital room we had been taken to after the accident and told us that Maa was in a critical condition and might not survive the week. It was another policeman accompanied by a doctor who informed me that the medical team had exhausted all conservative measures, there was just too much vascular damage, and they would have to amputate Baba’s leg to prevent the onset of necrosis. I had signed the paper, barely registering what was happening. Another policeman slipped a paper in front of me with the names of four men. These were the men in the other car that Maa had hit. All four of them had died on the spot. The car hadto be cut with electric saws to extract their mangled bodies. Another couple of policemen informed me that Maa would be charged with criminal proceedings. I had screamed back that she was in a medically induced coma. They had nodded as if they understood, and then after a long pause, said that she would be charged as and when she regained consciousness, unless, of course, we paid blood money. What’s blood money? I had asked them. We will have to get you to talk to a lawyer, they said. And then a lawyer explained to me that in accidental death, you could pay the families of the dead money and get the prison sentence removed. We paid the blood money with everything we had, every last rupee of our savings, to keep Maa out of jail. We waited for her to regain consciousness, to take her home, to start over.
She never came back. She died in her sleep.
Over the years, I have justified it was better this way. She didn’t have to live with the knowledge of having blood on herhands.
‘It took everything away from me,’ I respond to him with asmile.
‘Hope it’s better this time. Welcome to Dubai!’ he tells me and stamps my passport.
The dry air of Dubai at once feels familiar. It was home for ten years. I load Gaurav’s suitcases in the boot of the taxi.
‘Atlantis,’ I tell the driver. ‘I will come back to the airport so don’t stop the trip once I get there.’
The driver puts the car into gear and drives out of the airport parking. The roads of Dubai come sharply into view. The city that chased us away.
My phone beeps.
Amruta
Are you okay?
Me
The city has changed. Thank god for that.
Every city transforms in five years. New buildings obscure the older ones. Roads are widened. More cars spill on to the road. Dubai does that faster than any city. I pass by landmarks I recognize, but most of what I remember has been painted over, built over, broken and rebuilt. It’s a small kindness that this city no longer looks like the city that wrested everything away from me.
The closer I get to the Atlantis, the more my discomfort shifts from the city to her. The nearer I am to her, the faster the torrent of haunting memories surges forth—the ugly words, the echoes of past arguments—and anxiety begins to seep into my very marrow. The last thing I want is to bump into that over-smart, cold, heartless person I was once in love with. Until this very moment, I didn’t realize the visceral hate I still feel for Aanchal. It feels like yesterday.
I feel it rattling in my bones.
‘Don’t stop the trip,’ I repeat to the driver as I pull out the suitcases outside the Atlantis.
It’s 6 p.m. so there’s still plenty of time for the cocktails function to start. I make my way in. The front desk has a long serpentine queue with tourists lugging their carry-on bags and checking if they’ve lost their passports.
‘I’m here to drop off Gaurav Madan’s luggage,’ I tell the lady managing the check-ins.
‘Do you know the room number, sir?’ she asks.
I call Gaurav. And as usual, he doesn’t pick up the call.
‘Listen, the person’s not taking my call. Can you call their room and inform them?’
She looks at the line behind me and is about to protest.
‘They’re wedding clothes, or I wouldn’t waste your time,’ I inform her.
She checks the room number and makes the call. She shakes her head and puts the receiver down.
