There should have been something more to her voice, a sympathetic tone, a shared sense of loss and regret.
But instead, Shazia just sounded like herself: defiant and devil-may-care.
I had been crying for most of the thirty minutes that I had been on the phone with her, grateful at least that she had called me and not the other way around.
“Up until yesterday, I really thought that when I went back home, they would forgive me and take me back in,” I sobbed. “But this, what they have done, it is so final.” I envisioned my grandfather, his white kurta clinging to his lean frame, out in the street in front of our building, disposing of all the things they had chosen not to send me: my old schoolbooks, my hair barrettes, some bottles of nail polish I had bought right before leaving for Paris and had inadvertently left behind-all the things I had hoped, someday, to go back to.
But Shazia seemed to understand none of this, instead telling me that I was “better off without them,” that if they chose not to accept my choices, then they didn’t deserve to have me in the family. To me, she was talking nonsense. She kept wanting to change the subject, to ask me about what else I had been up to in Paris, and would no doubt have shrieked in delight had I told her about my foray on a fashion catwalk just a couple of weeks earlier. Family had been everything to me, and I was blaming Shazia.
“It’s easy for you to say it doesn’t matter,” I said, bitterness filling my voice. “You might only understand how I’m feeling if your mother had turned her back on you, telling you that you may as well be dead.”
There was a pause before Shazia quietly said: “She did.”
“What?”
“I never told you this, but once I left Paris to come to live in L.A., my mother eventually sent me everything I’d left behind, and a note telling me never to return home. It seems melodrama runs in the family,” she said, laughing weakly.
“So what happened?” I asked. “What made her change her mind?”
“Fear. She found out she was sick, and I was the first person she called. There’s nothing like death to make you long for someone you suddenly think you can’t live without. So you see, Tanaya, I do know what it’s like. Being disowned is not always an absolute. It may feel like the end of the world now. But believe me, when the time is right, you’ll be one big happy family again.”
It wasn’t until I was emptying out my handbag the next morning that I found his name card. Until I saw it again, lodged in the bottom of my bag and entangled in an empty cellophane sandwich wrapper, I had forgotten about the well-dressed gentleman who had approached me on the street that Sunday, who seemed to think that I had more to offer the world of modeling than a minute on a catwalk in a darkened nightclub, done under duress. I also pulled out from my bag the copy of the newspaper that had my photograph in it, the one that had Mathias all excited until he realized that nobody would ever see it. I glanced at Dimitri’s name card and realized that, for the first time in my life, I truly had nothing to lose.
Just to be sure I was in the right place, I looked up at the numbers atop the building in front of me and matched them to the address on the card. It didn’t seem to fit. The card was heavy and formal, the letters on it thick and embossed, like some of the wedding invitations that would arrive at Nana’s house when I was still living there, signaling occasions that were grand and regal.
I had expected the same from Dimitri’s offices based on the quality of his name card, so was surprised to find a very modest building in front of me-a narrow, dirty glass door the only thing separating it from the street, a rack of dark stairs leading to the upper floors. There was no indication outside that these were offices, or that a talent agency was one of them. I hadn’t called Dimitri before coming, which may have been my mistake. My shift had ended early, and I had simply decided on the spur of the moment to come and talk to him, assuming that he would be around and available. A sequence of events had convinced me to do so: The girls had told me that the landlord was raising the rent and we would all equally have to share the increased financial burden, and Mathias had informed me that a recently graduated cousin of his would be joining me in my cashier duties, taking some of my hours and, consequently, some of my pay.
“That’s OK,” I had said to Mathias when he told me. “I believe that there is enough for everyone.” He had looked relieved. Karla was taking on every freelance project thrown her way, convinced that she couldn’t afford to turn down assignments. Teresa had offered to find me extra work, most likely at night in one of the restaurants she worked in as a waitress.
It was at that point, when Teresa wanted me to wear an apron with her and serve aperitifs all night, that Juliette chimed in with her own solution.
“Modeling,” she had said. “You did it once, and it didn’t kill you. I think you should try it again. If you make enough money doing that, we can all quit our jobs,” she said, laughing. “Believe me, most girls become models because they have a burning desire to do so, or are terribly vain by nature. For you, it is just for the money. And it is much more fun than picking up somebody’s dirty dishes, yes?”
Encouraged by the other girls, I was standing in front of Dimitri’s building, wondering if I had made some awful mistake.
I pulled open the door and walked up the stairs, careful to hike up my scarf so it wouldn’t trail on the dirty floor. I climbed two flights before I saw a small sign outside a door on my right: MAROUNIS GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT. Underneath was written NEW YORK. PARIS. BEIJING. A man’s voice came through the door, a stream of shouted words broken with a laugh. I knocked quietly, uncertainly. I heard a pause, and then a grim “Entrez!” I jiggled the door-knob until it finally turned, opened the door, and found myself in Marounis Global Entertainment, a room no larger than my apartment, with one balding man (Dimitri) on the phone at a solitary desk. He was dressed in a faded blue T-shirt, a cigarette dangling from two fingers. Behind him, suspended from a hanger, was the suit he had worn the week before when I had first met him. It was, I realized, his “scouting suit,” the one that made him look like a real businessman with a real business.
As soon as he saw me, a look of astonished recognition came over his face. He whispered something hurriedly to the person on the other end of the phone and hung up.
“I think I have made a mistake,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to come here. Sorry if I’ve disturbed you.”
I turned around and reached for the door, but Dimitri yelled out to me.
“Wait!” he shouted. “I remember you-the girl from the hotel. I’m so glad you have come. You should have phoned. I could have met you somewhere else.”
He caught me looking around the room, and he suddenly appeared ashamed. “Please, sit,” he said, sweeping an empty pizza box off a chair and onto the floor. “You’ve come all this way. Please.”
I took a seat and looked up at him expectantly.
“I get this reaction often,” he said. “The name of my company sounds very impressive. Then people come here and see it is one person in an office. I have just started this business,” he explained.
“And do you really have offices in New York and Beijing?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “I have a cousin in each city, and they do the same thing there. OK, they have their offices in their bedrooms,” he said with a laugh. “But look,” he said, leaping out from behind his desk and reaching for a thick photo album that sat on a shelf above his head. He leafed through its pages, stopping at one and turning the book around to show me: It was a faraway shot of a dimly lit stage, atop which were a string of thin girls in brightly colored evening gowns.
“This was a fashion show in China, and we found all the models in Europe,” he said. “They wanted foreign girls, and we could provide them. And see, here,” he said, opening the book to another page, containing a large black-and-white photo of a beautiful girl lying in a field. “That’s Nadia. I spotted her, like I did with you. She was on the Metro. A student, so very pretty. Now she is doing some shows in Milan. Small ones, but she’s happy, and we are earning a little commission also.”
He shut the book, satisfied that he had vindicated himself. “I never asked you your name,” he said, offering me a cigarette.
“Tanaya. It’s Urdu. I’m Muslim,” I replied, feeling the need to immediately identify myself.
“Bravo!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “I don’t know of a single other Muslim model working in Paris, or in fact in all of Europe. You know, Muslims are hot right now.” He grinned.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean in movies, and music, and books-everything to do with Islam seems very popular, like people everywhere are craving an understanding of such a mysterious religion. I think when people find out that you are Muslim, they will love it. It will be in all the news. And that will make your job as a new fashion model so much easier.” He nodded sagely, as if his work was done.
He opened a drawer and pulled out two pieces of paper, stapled together at one corner.
“This is a standard contract,” he said. “It’s exactly what all the top agencies in Paris use. Only, because we are not so established, our commission is less. You pay me only ten percent of any modeling job you have, starting from the time you sign. Believe me, it is a good deal. Other agencies charge more than double that.”
I looked over the contract, which was bilingual, and realized I didn’t even understand the English part of it. It was something that my grandfather would have been able to help me with, or Shazia. But seeing as neither one of them was around, I settled on the next best option and told Dimitri that I would take the contract home.
The girls weren’t that much help. While Karla said that the terms of the contract were standard and that I would be protected, Juliette sniffed at the mention of a modeling agent she had never heard of before, and Teresa thought that I should leap at the opportunity.
“If you give me a few days, I’m sure I can find you a contact at one of the bigger and better modeling agencies in Paris,” Juliette advised. “I work in fashion,” she said of her receptionist job. “I know those people.”
She may have been right, but I felt a queer loyalty to the bald little Greek man who had followed me down the street one day and offered me the chance of a lifetime.
“This man is willing to take a chance on me,” I said to Juliette. “Maybe his office is small and nobody knows him, but he seemed kind. I think I will go ahead and do it.”