16. When we return from the fortune teller’s place, Farzana asks if she can stay with me for the remainder of her time in Hyderabad. Her home feels like a madhouse, she says. The night before her flight back to England, we go up to the roof of my parents’ house with a half-empty bottle of brandy I’ve taken from my father’s closet.
I shrug. “You and Doctor always do things the fancy way?”
She takes a swig from the bottle. “It’s fine like this.”
I roll out a straw mat for us to sit on. She walks to the parapet and looks across the street.
“Wow,” she says. “I—I never realized that’s how it looks.”
I settle down on the mat. “How what looks?”
“Our house. It’s the first time I’ve thought about how it looks to other people.”
“Tower of matchboxes.”
She looks at me, confused.
“My mother used to call it that.”
Farzana laughs. “Of course she did.” She bobs her head from side to side and repeats the phrase, her diction clipped, her voice raised a couple of registers to match my mother’s. I marvel at how she gets it right each time.
Pulling a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket, Farzana sits down next to me.
“Since when do you smoke?”
“Since always.” She lights up and takes a slow drag. “No, it’s recent, actually. A few years ago. Soon after I married.”
“Doctor doesn’t mind?”
“Why? Because it would ruin my perfect new teeth?” She grins. “Go on. I know you’ve been wondering about them.”
“Well, I just—”