Page 2 of The Love Match

The many-ringed lady emits a theatrical gasp audible over theclink clinkof forks. Regardless of whether they’ve been to Sunamganj or Moulvibazar, Amma has name-dropped plenty. Zamindars, Khans, Rajas—all are titles associated with the people who ruled princely estates and kingdoms in Bangladesh, making us the descendants ofroyalty.

Or… well… close enough.

Never mind that my parents’ families fell onto hard times after the Partition and the Liberation War. Never mind that we can barely pay our rent in New Jersey. Never mind thatIhave to take a year off before college to save while the rest of my friends move on. Amma reclines in her chair with an imperious smirk, a queen among her fawning subjects.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes, shoving another bite of beef and potato into my mouth. Debt collectors don’t care about our family lineage, so why should we? But she has had so few pleasures since Baba’s death that I can’t take this from her. Better she tells these aunties about our vaunted bongsho than me or my brother and sister, at least.

The many-ringed lady parts her very red lips to answer when, suddenly, “Leelabali” fades from the speakers. Aside from hushed murmurs, the banquet hall falls into silence as everyone’s wonder-struck eyes rise to the stage. There, under an archway lush with marigolds and roses, on a gilded bench that looks like a throne, the groom sits, attired in a scarlet sherwani with gold buttons down to the knees, feathers in the ornate pagri crowning his head.

He can’t take his eyes off the bride, who enters from an adjoining hallway. Her mother, sisters, and other female relatives hold a fluttering scarlet urna above her head as she sashays slowly over to the stage, a vision of beauty in her matching shari and the floral mehndi that weaves like vines through her dozen bangles. When she reaches the stage, thegroom springs off his bench to offer her a hand. Their fingers intertwine and linger.

My heart stutters in my ribs as I watch.

This—

“Must be a love marriage,” Amma exclaims, in an awed whisper of her own.

The women at our table begin to chatter anew. Someone says, “Kids these days, so reckless andromantic.” She spits the word like a curse. “Love marriages never last. Children should trust their elders to arrange suitable matches.”

“The divorce rate is so high now,” another laments. “Nearlyfiftypercent.”

I swallow the urge to inform them that’s only because women of older generations were blamed if they couldn’t make marriages work, and were looked down on with pity, no matter how young they were, if they became widowed like Amma. As if their lives began and ended with their husbands’. The rebuke burns down my throat, hotter than the not-particularly-spicy vindaloo, but if I unleash it, it’d be about as unseemly as throwing up.

Despite my best efforts to tune them out, I sense someone contemplating me and turn to find the bejeweled woman. She introduced herself to Amma earlier as Pushpita Emon, but like most other aunties I meet through my mother, I simply call her Khala. Her lips quirk upon catching my gaze, her eyes as glittering and sharp as the knife near my plate.

“Your daughter is such a shundori, Zaynab,” she declaresin Bengali. “How tall is she? Surely five-four, five-five? And what a sweet complexion! Even that dress is the most stylish thing I’ve seen this entire evening. You must beat the boys away with a broom.”

My cheeks flush beneath the shade-too-pale foundation Amma caked on them earlier. It’s not the first time an auntie has called me pretty. If you’re paper-bag fair, thin, and taller than the Bangladeshi national average of four feet eleven, you’re practically pageant queen Manushi Chhillar in their eyes. I try not to let their gross Eurocentric beauty standards give me a big head, but gift her a pleasant smile for my mother’s sake.

“Goodness, no,” Amma says, to my great relief, though she’s preening at the compliments to both of her creations: meandthe lehenga she designed for the occasion. While I love that she’s taken an I’ll-do-it-myself approach to our wardrobe situation after learning how expensive it could be for a single mother to dress three kids, I feel like a walking advertisement for her seamstress service tonight. Better than making me stand up and twirl, I suppose. “My Zahra worries about me and the little ones too much to think about a husband yet. But what mother doesn’t dream of her child’s wedding day?”

“Oh, I know a thing or two about weddings,” Pushpita Khala replies. “Gitanjali is my restaurant, you see. We host many receptions here.”

Amma chokes on a swig of mango lassi. “Y-yourrestaurant?”

“Technically, the restaurant is attached. This banquet hall is where we host events.” Pushpita Khala grants us aself-effacing smile, then sighs. “We’re set to open a second in Paterson by the end of the summer, but I worry…. With our son preparing to study engineering at Columbia, what will Mansif and I do with the Emon family business when it’s time to retire?”

My gut clenches at the mention of college.

And why does it have to be Columbia of all places?

Amma’s eyes, meanwhile, dart all around us, as if expecting a perfect specimen of a brown boy to materialize out of thin air. “Is he here? Your—”

“Harun,” replies Pushpita Khala, reciting her son’s name like a prayer. In her plump hand is an iPhone, and Harun’s photo must be her wallpaper, because she slides it across the table for Amma’s perusal, beaming at my mother’s awed, “Mashallah.”

I frown between the two women, but my mother has all but forgotten my existence, as if I’m no more than a spectator at a chess match. She leans forward, the brown eyes we share bright as polished mahogany, while Pushpita Khala sizes me up. I can’t fathom which queen is about to checkmate the other’s king, but I know one thing with 100 percent certainty.

Harun and I have just become their pawns.

Chapter2

Life in the Khan houseis far from glamorous.

When we lost Baba, we had no choice but to move into an apartment so tiny, my mother, brother, sister, grandmother, and I are packed inside it like a family of squabbling djinn in a particularly cramped lamp.

Amma sleeps next to my five-year-old sister, Resna, while Nanu and I share a room that used to be a walk-in closet. My fourteen-year-old brother, Arif, got the shortest end of the stick. He sleeps on a pullout couch in the living room, and his “bedroom” doubles as Amma’s work space and our hangout spot.

Worlds away from the grand estates of the stories my mother told at the wedding a couple of days ago.

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