Page 63 of The Love Match

Pink petals dust my ponytail as I sit with the box of treats, holding them out to the aunties like their personal waitress. Flakes of shonpapri fly from their mouths as they volley questions at me about work and school, and then at last, calculatedly, one maneuvers the topic to Harun. “I heard Zahra has been seeing the Emon boy. Is it serious?”

The others titter, heads bobbing between Amma and me.

“Well,” my mother says demurely, wrists folded in her lap, “there isn’t much to say anymore. Zahra and Harun are very young, after all. They only saw each other for a handful of chaperoned dates before we decided they weren’t ready for an engagement.”

A harmonized string ofohhhhsrings out.

“That’s a shame,” another auntie muses. “I met Harun at a wedding once. The Emons don’t have the same family statureas you Khans, but what a good-looking, well-mannered boy!”

Her friend snorts. “I say it’s for the best. Hismotheris so obnoxious. You’d never be able to stand her if she were Zahra’s shashuri.”

The first auntie gives her a playful smack on the knee but doesn’t refute this. “Could you imagine if she were here? Her son may be the strong, silent type, but she’d boast our ears off about what she made him for breakfast if she could.”

“More like, what theircookmade him,” scoffs her friend.

Picking uncomfortably at a loose thread on her shalwar, Amma tries to come to Pushpita Khala’s defense. “She can be quite sweet once you get to know her….”

“To think she’s from a Gulam family, though,” tuts yet another woman, blowing right past my mother’s comment. “Who knows? Perhaps her great-grandfather served yours, back in the day. But I suppose family bongsho is less important these days than the groom’s potential.” Her gua-stained lips curve in wicked amusement. “And that boy certainly has potential.”

“Handsome, rich,andeducated,” Meera Khala agrees with a milder smile. “He would have been a perfect match for our lovely Zahra. It’s too bad it didn’t work out.”

None of them spare a second to wonder how I might feel about them discussing my love life right in front of me, but I’m used to their “children are meant to be seen and bragged about, not heard unless we’re interrogating them” mentality. I almost wish Mr. Tahir had dragged me off to work, especially whenthe topic shifts away from the Emons to laser-focus on me.

“Zahra has grown into a beauty,” a grandmotherly woman in a gray-and-white shari says. “I still remember when her knees used to knock against each other whenever she ran the relays at the picnic. Never did want to participate, that one.”

“She used to bring a book to bury her nose in,” laughs her daughter, as my ears turn pink, recalling how they’d joke,Boys don’t want girls who are smarter than them, so why do you read so much?“Those books were bigger than she was.”

Yet another auntie scans me from head to toe. This one I recognize from work, though she’s dolled up in a heavily embroidered shalwar kameez today that must be hell in the sweltering summer heat, even beneath the shade of the dogwood trees. “At least her beauty means the Emon boy is only the first of many.” She lowers her voice into something sneering. “But I’d be careful if I were you, Zaynab Afa. Ulubone mukto chorano. If you aren’t careful who you give precious, pretty things to, they’ll be damaged and lose their value.”

I stiffen.

It’s a backhanded compliment, calling me a pearl to be taken and lost, like I have no say in the matter. It throws me back to what my mother told me after that fateful dinner with Nayim, except it’s Harun they’re insulting now.

In a clipped tone, Amma says, “You don’t need to worry about that. Zahra’s a smart girl. Even if she weren’t, she has me looking out for her.”

Just then, a rousing cheer erupts as Resna and the otherchildren in her age group bolt down the hill toward a finish line set up for the picnic’s first relay race. My baby sister elbows aside the two boys closest to her and throws herself over the ribbon, shrieking a battle cry.

Arif, on the sandy pitch not far from the race, becomes a recognizable speck when he stops his soccer game to whoop, “Woo, yeah, that’s my sister!”

I grin and clap, until I notice the auntie from earlier evaluating the exchange with her nose scrunched like she’s been sucking on a lemon. “Charming. I saw your littlest one making the boys cry while playing kabaddi, too, Zaynab. Respectable in-laws will come in handy when it comes time to marrythatone off.”

“She’s already darker than Zahra and burning worse in this sun,” laments her friend.

The first auntie lifts her chin, vindicated. “I hope she never becomes as tomboyish as the one Tahir girl. I don’t know how their parents will ever find matches for those sisters when one dresses like a boy and the other is so fat. My sons wouldn’t spare them a second glance.”

Annnnnnd that’s about as much as I can take.

Ignoring my mother’s warning look, I bare my teeth in a Good Bangladeshi Daughter smile so sweet, it would rot your gums. “It’ssokind of you to worry about the rest of us, Khala, but isn’t that your youngest son in the baseball jersey pulling worms out of the ground? You might want to stop him before he eats them….”

The auntie gasps and leaps to her feet, shouting, “Shubie, not again!”

Meera Khala slaps her knee and guffaws. When Amma frowns between the two of us, she says, “What, can you blame the girl? Zoba had it coming, running her mouth like that. I find those who judge other people’s children always end up weeping over their own one day.”

Her words censure the rest of the group. Soon they focus on less scandalous subjects, like the Bangla Mela, and whether they want to see the equestrian center, Barbour Pond, or Lambert Castle today.

“I heard the castle is closed,” one of the surviving aunties points out.

Only mildly thwarted, they decide to take a stroll around the pond first, giving me a window to escape at last. I should be happy to be free of their rumors and snooping, but though I managed to embarrass Zoba Khala with Shubie’s help, I can’t get her words out of my mind.

---