Peering at Zaina’s renderings over her glasses, Dr Tannen said, ‘This is good.’ She drew some circles around areas that needed more definition and wrote suggestions along the edge of the paper.

  Zaina took notes and nodded while Dr Tannen spoke. ‘Sometimes you don’t need light itself, you need the reflection of it to change an entire space. Think about it. And I want you to think about the different light in winter and summer, and how a writer’s haven would accommodate that.’

  Dr Tannen smiled as she surveyed Zaina’s painstakingly created balsawood models. ‘Yes! This makes it better to visualise …’ she said to herself, nodding as she peered through the doorway and windows. Then, swivelling around, she pulled a large grey book from the shelf behind her and handed it to Zaina with obvious care. ‘Zaina, this book is very dear to me. It’s full of my favourites – Hadid, Gehry, Wright. All big and beautiful and bold. But I want you to look at these and ask yourself: what’s the core of it all? And I’ve made some notes, some sketches, next to each design. I think you’ll find that simplicity, with one simple detail or flourish, makes something so much more interesting to look at.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Zaina replied, taking the book in her hands. It smelled like old paper and perfume.

  ‘Have fun with it, Zaina,’ Dr Tannen said warmly. ‘You can do this. But don’t do too much. Simple is beautiful.’

  The success of the meeting with her supervisor served to calm Zaina for the time being, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she walked down the stairs, slightly more encouraged than usual, with the heavy book and her sketches in her bag. The weight of the masonite board and the balsawood models had started to make her arms ache, so she stopped on the third floor, resting her luggage on the ground. Looking at the conference room off to the right, she remembered the first time she’d met Imraan, here, just six months before, on a blistering January evening.

  She hadn’t planned to stay long at the postgraduate welcome party hosted by the S4I – they were all so passionate about politics and freedom, and Zaina couldn’t seem to hold conversations with any of them. Besides, she felt out of place in her heels. Everyone else was casually dressed.

  Zaina had been on her way out when she saw him. She’d heard of Imraan, the engineering student who was always campaigning for something or protesting against someone, debating laws around immigration or collecting blankets for the homeless. He was a superstar in this world. No wonder swarms of girls seemed to follow him like bees. He was influential, not just on social media but in person as well.

  He was tall, with enquiring eyes, and walked as if he were teetering on the edge of a wild freedom. In the middle of the scorching summer, he seemed to coolly float through the room as if he had internal air-conditioning. His skin was the colour of honey.

  Zaina had reminded herself to stay away from the magnetic muse who was walking towards her, but she’d collapsed into herself the moment his curious eyes had met hers – and just like that, she was his. The self-assured, composed Zaina gave way to a nervous girl who wanted to impress him with a sarcastic quip about Marx or a reference to Rumi, but all she could muster was a breathless ‘hello’. She was sure her eyes also did something unnatural because he asked if she was feeling okay or if she was lost.

  Look at his big ears, Zaina had told herself; I’m sure he’s receiving some satellite channels as we speak. But his imperfection had served only to endear him to her.

  He’d asked her about her Master’s, which she’d managed to sum up in a few stuttered sentences. He’d smiled at her mockingly. ‘So let me get this straight … you design imaginary homes?’ It was clear that this kind of a thesis seemed laughable to him. He grinned at her as if she was a child who’d tied her shoelaces for the first time. She’d felt silly.

  She’d watched him stride back across the room and bask in the sparkly attention of the girls from the history department, standing with his hands in his pockets and smiling effortlessly under his shock of dark hair. Feeling a tad sorry for herself, she’d reached for the nearest item of food – a chicken pie – on the table near the exit, and stuffed it into her mouth, not noticing the flecks of pastry that clung to her lips and settled on her blouse.

  Suddenly, he’d turned around and looked at her, grinning.

  She’d died in those few seconds. And that was just the beginning.

  For the next few weeks, he’d seemed to make it his life’s business to catch her in embarrassing moments. When they ran into each other at S4I meetings or outside the prayer room, he always asked her about her designs and resorted to provoking her if she tried to act cool and didn’t respond. It infuriated her, and she tried to convince him that her study was important. It forced her to become confident in her conviction and work harder, as if to prove to him, and herself, that design had a purpose.

  He was unpredictable, lighting a fire within her that made her feel more alive, more reckless … more vulnerable. And soon enough she found him in between the names in her Gmail inbox and on WhatsApp.

  Zaina wasn’t sure if she could call what they had a relationship. She met him on the beach whenever he wanted, holding hands, lying next to him, risking her reputation. Yet she liked the risks he presented her with. He challenged her mentally and academically, and, without realising it, she’d imagined him as her own. The electricity she felt when he held her hand she attributed to the spark between them. Yet she now wondered if it was due to the danger of getting caught or the tiny fireworks under her skin caused by infatuation.

  ‘A relationship,’ she said to herself. ‘I’m in a relationship with Imraan Patel.’ No, it didn’t sound right, somehow.

  Feeling rejuvenated, Zaina picked up her models and her bag. As she turned from the conference room to walk down the next flight of stairs, she stumbled on an old uneven step. In that moment, she realised just how unstable their ‘relationship’ was. It was as if he was two people at times: the cool, unflinching Imraan at university; and another, more sensitive version of himself, on the bench near the cliffs, or when he texted her at 2 a.m. Those texts came from a more truthful, silent place in the quiet hours of the night.

  She couldn’t reconcile the two sides of Imraan – the one Imraan with the promise of commitment, and the other, flippant one who was unpredictable and frightening. Maybe she was a little silly reading between the few lines of a text message when he’d called her pretty or thinking that she was the only one who understood him.

  But it was that message, My Zayyana, that had allowed her to imagine a more concrete future with him.

  The trouble with loving someone who was so unpredictable was that turbulence was a certainty for the entire journey. At first it felt exciting, as if tiny, colourful bubbles were whizzing around on slides that sloped down from her heart, and then exploding in her stomach. But after a while it made her sick to her gut. The excitement turned to nervousness, with every text from Imraan or invitation to the beach keeping her on edge.

  It made her feel sick to lie to her mom too.

  Putting down her belongings again, she typed Where r u? on her phone. She wanted to see him. Seeing him, the realness of him, would make her feel slightly more confident about what was between them.

  She walked around the deserted corridors of the Tower Building while she waited for his reply. He was probably in the science block or at the cafeteria hanging up posters for the upcoming Ramadaan rural retreat.

  When she’d first started at the university, she’d often found herself lost in its labyrinth of stairs and winding corridors. Sometimes she’d had to phone Billy to come find her. But now she could find her way around with her eyes closed.

  Then she saw something that made her eyes open wide.

  There, in the leafy sparklies’ hangout, the Coffee Shot, in the middle of the courtyard on the ground floor, sat Imraan, sipping his usual cappuccino, his laptop open on the table in front of him. Surprised to see him at this end of campus, Zaina lifted her hand to attract his attention. She froze mid-wave.

  He wasn’t alone. Sitting across from him, in the glow of his famously flirtatious smile, was a girl.

  From where she was standing on the first-floor balcony, the leaves obstructed Zaina’s view of the girl. But she knew who it was. From the girl’s laugh, and her confident posture, and her ponytailed, golden hair, she knew.

  Driving home, she looked at her hands on the steering wheel. The fingers he’d caressed, the ring finger he’d playfully tied a piece of dried kelp around that day at the beach.

  But that was Imraan. Playful. He was never serious with his romantic gestures. It was like they were all part of one of the Bollywood parodies he joked about so often.

  Zaina wished now that she’d walked over to the cosy couple in the Coffee Shot and said something horrid to them, something so white hot that it would sear her words into their skin, and they would be ashamed of themselves every time they looked at each other. Instead, she’d gathered up her bag and models, and raced down the stairs on silent feet, hoping she hadn’t been spotted, a stone in the pit of her belly.

  Weaving through the traffic, hooting furiously at slower drivers and screaming at the radio, Zaina now thought about what she might have said, how she should have handled it. She parked beside the park, facing a far-too-happy-looking Summer Terrace, leaving her models in the car. She stomped through the garden, not caring that she was crushing the budding flowers, and wishing she could hurl something at the cheerful sparrows that seemed to watch her performance from their perches up on the gutters. She would park the car properly later.

  She passed Robert on the way into the building, collecting the mail from him in one angry sweep. His ‘hello’ hung unrequited in the air.

  Mr Bhoola was making a roster of all the maids, assigning them numbers for some reason.

  Her phone beeped. She wondered for a second if it was a message from Imraan. But it was from Billy.

  Oh shit! She’d forgotten about Billy!

  Zai, I’m done. Good class. Meet at the car?

  OMG, Billy, I totally forgot, I’m so so so sorry! I had terrible meeting and cried all the way home.

  Wow. Okay.

  I’m so sorry. I can come back for u.

  No, don’t worry. Dad can fetch me. Sorry about the meeting. Some days ur the pigeon and some days ur the statue.

  Across the doughnut hole, Zaina could hear the women asking each other what they’d made for supper. They chirped ‘salaam’ to her.

  Her phoned beeped again. Finally, a message from Imraan: Sorry, was in a meeting.

  She couldn’t believe he’d lied to her so blatantly. She shoved the phone angrily into her bag.

  She’d take the lift to the roof, she decided, so she could think. She pulled opened the heavy lift door just as it was about to close behind someone. She was surprised to see Joyce, standing in the corner against the mirror, with bags full of groceries. Her anger towards Imraan seemed to inject her with a kind of reckless courage. ‘Aunty Joyce,’ Zaina started confidently, ‘how are you? We haven’t spoken in a while. Must be hectic with the wedding preparations.’

  Zaina couldn’t read Joyce’s expression, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was somehow judging her.

  As the lift juddered to a halt on the second floor, and Joyce effortlessly lifted the bags and moved to push open the door with her elbow, she turned to Zaina. Speaking in Zulu, slowly and intensely, as if imparting ancient secrets, she said, ‘My girl, do you think I’m a stupid? You might not see us, but me, I see you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ngikubonile. I saw you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You, my girl, are stirring the pot.’

  BILLY’S FLYING SAUCERS

  6 slices brown bread, buttered

  6 cherry tomatoes, halved

  3 mutton dhania sausages, sliced into 4 pieces each (Star Meats has the best ones)

  12 small cubes Gouda cheese

  ½ green pepper, sliced into 12 strips

  • To make the flying-saucer base, cut two circles out of each slice of bread, using a cookie-cutter or the rim of a glass.

  • Put half a cherry tomato in the centre of each circle. Place a piece of sausage on top of the tomato. Top with a cube of cheese.

  • Finish off with a strip of green pepper for the antennae.

  • Pierce through the centre with a toothpick to hold it all together.

  • Serve on paper plates covered with foil. I know it’s un-Islamic to play with your food, but kids love pretending to sail them through the air and into their mouths.

  Makes 12 flying saucers

  15

  ZAINA EMERGED FROM THE LIFT, shaking. She couldn’t tell where her anger ended and her shock began. Everyone had lost their minds and Joyce was acting like a crazy lady. She couldn’t have seen! She couldn’t know, right? And even if she did, why would she care? She was just a maid.

  Zaina made her way to the side of the roof where Mrs Hassim had attempted to grow some dhania and mint. There was a makeshift bench there that looked towards the harbour.

  She sat down in the middle of it, her hair breaking free of its loose plait in the breeze. Her face contorted in worry. She breathed in deeply, then out. She fiddled with the silver bracelet, angrily twisting it around her wrist.

  She hadn’t noticed Precious, behind the sheets and shirts on the windy winter day. But Precious had noticed Zaina, sitting lost in a place so detached from that very moment that even if the earth had shaken, she was sure Zaina wouldn’t have noticed.

  Precious was hanging washing on one of the lines that framed the forehead of Summer Terrace. In the mornings, after two taxi rides from Mayville, as Precious walked towards the building, her eyes were always drawn to the washing clinging to the line on top of the building, often thrashing around in the wind. Precious thought it looked like a multicoloured fringe. Today she would paint the fringe grey, white and black.

  This was her space; she felt comfortable here. She felt free. Working in someone’s home was always so claustrophobic. When Precious worked for Rabia and Zaina, the tension of being so visible sat like a dark cloud above them, scenting the air with impatience. She couldn’t wait to leave. The space was small. Precious felt heavy, burdened with secrets she didn’t wish to know.

  Precious, like the other maids, was used to being invisible. They would disappear into billows of clean washing or foamy soap suds in the sink, and their madams wouldn’t see them. Sometimes, this was better than those madams who were constantly overly aware of their maids, who tiptoed around them, not wanting to cook, sleep or eat in front of them for fear of being robbed, or their food being coveted as they cooked.

  Joyce had told Precious not to look into madams’ pots or compliment their jewellery, or they would think their maid was ‘putting eyes’, casting a jealous gaze. It would bring bad luck.

  If you are invisible, Precious thought, it is better. Being invisible meant madams forgot you were there, and you would hear all sorts of scandalous comments they said about each other or about their maids.

  In the madams’ homes, she didn’t mind having lunch made for her, or being given the option of juice or tea, but then she didn’t know where to eat it. She couldn’t just make herself at home at the dining table or in the lounge, so she usually went and sat outside on the balcony. She liked the airiness of the balcony and its detachment from the rest of the flat. She chose to eat there. Many people said maids didn’t have choices in life but choosing where to eat was a choice Precious valued greatly.

  And when Zaina went out on Saturdays, Precious had the entire flat to choose from. Sometimes she chose to eat in the lounge. This was what she enjoyed about Zaina leaving her alone – the luxury of eating lunch in the lounge, rather than on the balcony.

  Overall, Rabia was a good madam. Even though she only saw her before and after work once a week, Rabia paid her more than she had to, and she genuinely enquired about her children. Now and then she even gave her old clothes or bought her basic groceries like bread and oil.

  Often, Precious would arrive an hour early for work and visit the other maids in the maids’ quarters on the ground floor of the building. They would grumble about all the cleaning they had to do, and about naughty children who undid all their work, and about vicious madams who watched over them like wardens. In the last two years, Precious had got to know the maids, and from all the intimate intricacies revealed about their employers, had summed up their madams fairly well.

  She thought about this while she hung another pair of grey pants on the line. There were five pairs. They seemed to either be dancing out of sync or kicking at her, she couldn’t decide. They were the school-uniform pants of Mrs Hassim’s lanky son, Rahim.

  For the last two years, Precious had worked three days a week for Mrs Hassim, who lived in flat 13 next to Aunty Julie. When Precious had been looking for more employment, Rabia had asked on the building WhatsApp group if there was any work available for a hard-working, obedient maid, and Mrs Hassim had snapped up the offer. Mrs Hassim’s flat was immaculate, as if it was permanently on show. Often, Precious didn’t know what more could be done to make it sparkle, so she shone the already gleaming taps, swept the emerald carpet that looked like cropped grass, and wiped the crystal-clear windows from the inside. She was employed to do the bigger jobs of washing and ironing, too, but she tried to keep herself busy, especially these days, when Aunty Julie would gather up anyone in her path who seemed like they had a solitary moment to spare in the run-up to Zara’s wedding.

  Remembering this, Precious slowed down her hanging up of the washing. There were only two shirts left to hang and it was still a bit early to leave. She knew if she left now, Mrs Hassim would make her sit down and listen to stories from the Qur’aan and preach to her about how similar they were to those in the Bible.

  At first she hadn’t minded this. She’d actually liked the fact that Mrs Hassim was a religious and extremely charitable woman. It had also reminded her that, despite the visible differences between them, inside they upheld the same values. But this preaching would go on while she was ironing or washing dishes. It was beginning to infuriate her that she was never asked whether she would like to learn about Islam; it was just thrust on her like an unfamiliar baby. She didn’t really know what to do with it, and it wasn’t as if she could give it back to its mother.