Seventeen Things about My Friend Farzana

Neha Chaudhary-Kamdar

9. Farzana needs help in the Great Hunt for Aslam. We have hardly spoken in the week since she arrived; I am surprised to find her waiting outside my parents’ home when I return from work. I have had a long day and am exhausted, but I don’t tell her that.

“You know what Ammi is like,” she says, lowering herself to the portico floor. “She’s taken to bed and is thumping her chest like a madwoman. It’s funny actually; I don’t remember a single other instance in my whole life when I’ve seen this level of physical agility from her. I’m afraid she’ll break a rib, or something! As for Abbu—well, you know what he’s like. Ever since he got into the Ministry, he couldn’t be bothered about anyone but himself. And Aslam’s as good as dead to him, after all those hopeless business ventures he launched using Abbu’s money.” She looks up at me, the brown flecks in her irises gilded in the waning sunlight. “Do you want to help me search for Aslam?”

There are a million things I’d rather do. Yet, despite myself, I say, “Of course, Farzi. I’ll help you. Where do you want to start?”

“I’ve checked everywhere, yaar. It’s all I’ve done since I came back. I’ve called his friends, checked with relatives I didn’t even know we had. I have no idea where the bugger’s got himself to, this time.” She glances across the street, lowers her voice. “There’s this one possibility, but it seems too absurd. Even for Aslam. I met one of his friends yesterday, who told me there is some fortune-teller woman in Hayatpura that Aslam has become a fan of lately—”

“Fortune teller? Are you kidding me? He’s gone and shacked up with a fortune teller?”

“Not shacked up, Bela! I didn’t say that. He’s probably just a follower of some sort.” Behind her, the streetlights blink awake. “Look, just help me, okay? Ammi’s beside herself. You remember what she was like, all those other times he disappeared? God, I’m so angry at him for putting her through this all over again.”

10. Farzana’s mother unravels with characteristic drama each time her son goes missing. The first time he disappeared, we found her crumpled on the kitchen floor, fists balled up before her face as though she were a little girl crying from a playground injury. It was Farzana’s twelfth birthday; I had shown up at their place with a gift-wrapped copy of Anne of Green Gables, my mother’s idea of an appropriate gift. I wasn’t greatly distressed when I heard the news about Aslam; he was never my favorite person. Nonetheless, I helped Farzana look for her brother. We scanned every park in the vicinity and even checked the burger joint on the main road to see if he had turned up there. As we walked back dejected—Farzana, from the possibility that her mother might never recover from this loss, me at missing out on a promising birthday party—we saw Aslam trundle out of the A-1 Star Bakery and Sweet Shop, his mouth in congress with a syrupy fritter. “Ammi was shouting at me this morning because I wasn’t helping her with the ribbons for your party,” he said, the twang of a broken sitar in his voice. “So I decided to run away from home. Anyway, do you have some money? I need to pay the bakery man.”

His second attempt at running away, the year before I left for college, was more sophisticated. By then, things were irreparably damaged between Aslam and me. Still, I helped Farzana in the hope of regaining her mother’s favor. After leaving some water and a snack by the divan where the woman lay curled up in a ball, mumbling to herself like a patient delirious from heatstroke, Farzana and I scoured the neighborhood, knocking on every door and looking in every store. When we returned in the evening with no news of Aslam, Farzana’s father made a phone call to the police commissioner’s office. A couple of days passed and I began to entertain the idea that my times of having to deal with Aslam were over, that he may have choked on the egg sac of a herring in some disreputable restaurant in the old city. On the third day, the police called: Aslam had been found in Goa with some friends, passed out on the beach from a cocktail of ganja and alcohol. He was dazed, but he was going to be fine.

This time Aslam has been missing for thirty-seven days, a new record in the Log of Fraternal Disappearances.

Neha Chaudhary-Kamdar earned her MFA at Boston University, where she was awarded the William A. Holodnak Prize for Fiction. She often writes about the lives of women in India, where she grew up. Neha lives in Berkeley, California, and is working on her first novel.

Mastermind

Editor’s Note

Seventeen Things about My Friend Farzana

Salamander