I Can't Think Straight by Shamim Sarif Page A

excuse, she felt the acid taste of regret in her mouth, regret that she had resorted to lying, that she had lacked the strength to deal with her parents openly; but it was too late. The simple mention of his name smoothed the dismay on her mother’s face, only to pave the way for a new hurdle.
    ‘Bring him home for lunch,’ Maya said. ‘Then he can meet everybody.’
    The idea of exposing Ali to the voracious gaze of her cousins horrified her. They were all racing each other towards marriage as if it were some sort of Olympic sport for which they had been in training since puberty. Equally disquieting was the idea of her grandmother’s questions, which would doubtless be focused around the number of children they might be planning to have, and whether red saris or white were best for modern weddings. So appalled was she by this vision that it took her a moment to remember that she had just lied about Ali, and that he would be safely watching the rugby in his own flat all afternoon.
    ‘I can’t bring him here. He has an important business lunch,’ she added, desperately.
    ‘On a Sunday?’ her father asked. He was always sharper than her mother, but luckily Maya’s ecstatic response drowned out the question.
    ‘And he wants you to be there? That’s a good sign!’ Maya opened the oven, letting out a blast of eyebrow-singeing heat that made her start cursing her husband for the brand new kitchen appliances he had forced on her.
    ‘They’re too hot! Too efficient!’ she complained. ‘Everything cooks in half the time, I don’t know where I am any more.’
    ‘If everything’s cooking so quickly, you should be reading the newspapers with me,’ Sam replied, but she gave him only her silent, sulking back and so he went through to the living room. Leyla remained in the kitchen, her immediate distress at her mother’s mood and her own lies preventing her from taking any useful action. She glanced around. The salad was half prepared, the rice was waiting to be rinsed, and the table had still to be laid. She picked up the dull-edged knife (her mother had never used the finely honed set of Japanese knives that her Yasmin had given her the year before) and tried to slice tomatoes. It was not easy, because you had to know, from years of familiarity, exactly which tiny section of the old blade was still sharp, in order to press it down correctly and achieve a clean cut. In her anxiety, Leyla succeeded only in flattening the top of the overripe tomato and squashing out a pile of wet seeds onto the chopping board.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Maya asked before answering her own question. ‘Ruining good tomatoes.’
    ‘These tomatoes haven’t been good since last week,’ Leyla told her. ‘They’re overripe.’
    ‘They’re full of flavour,’ corrected her mother. ‘Nobody likes a sour, hard tomato.’
    Leyla knew from experience that such a discussion could continue indefinitely if she allowed it to. Incongruously, an image flashed into her mind of a real discussion, of an important debate. Perhaps she could ask Maya how exactly she knew that she followed the correct religion. If she had been born Catholic, would she not be predisposed and educated to believe that Catholicism was the best way?‘What is it?’ Maya asked. ‘Why are you standing there like that?’
    ‘I was just thinking.’
    ‘Think about the guests,’ her mother replied. ‘And set the table.’
    Leyla did so, quickly, and then retreated silently into the living room, where her father was reading the business section of the newspaper while listening to a political debate on television.
    ‘Can you be back early?’ he asked her. ‘It would be nice if you could see your grandmother for a few minutes.’
    ‘I’ll try,’ she said.
    ‘And bring Ali with you, if you can.’
    ‘I’ll see if I can.’
    She shifted slightly, and he looked at her over the top of his newspaper, and his eyes were clear and knowing, she thought. She felt exposed, and