Anarkali
Taj Apa calls out for Nadim and her voice comes down the hallway like a mist over a waterfall.
Nadim runs up the stairs two at a time. Ji Apa?
Come inside.
Nadim hears the smile on his cousin’s voice, there, he knows, because she finds it amusing the way he always waits outside the door, the way he calls her Apa. He stops to catch his breath and steps inside.
Taj Apa sits in front of her mirror in a pool of hazy wintry Dubai late-afternoon light dabbing at her long neck with a powder puff in a pale gold and white sari Nadim has never seen before. She takes a brush of subtle glitter to her chest and he sees little specks rise up into the light like the gold dust of fairies promised in those stories they heard as children. Beyond the large bay window the leaves of the date palm wave lazily in the breeze and as Taj Apa presses a Kleenex to her mouth he scans her slowly and looks at the details in the sari, the tiny flowers and petal motifs, then at the gold knotted cords which tie up the blouse at the back and hang between her shoulder blades. Almost as a reflex he seeks out the scar, the one on the small of her back, but it’s obscured behind the wrap of the sari. He remembers the fall, he was there. Down a flight of marble stairs wet with July rain back in Karachi when they were young. She’d come out of it with just the cut on her back. Their Nani had called it a miracle. You have secret protectors, she’d said to Taj Apa, and even then Nadim knew Nani was right, that Apa had angels on her shoulders.
Sit na!
Her stone gray eyes find his brown ones in the mirror. She gestures to a green velvet Ottoman without turning around, and Nadim sits and tries not to look at the emperor size bed she shares with Khalil Bhai.
His gaze moves swiftly up to the shelf where stand seven small black marble sculptures, all Anarkali dancing, each one encasing a different step of her kathak. His favorite is the one in the middle, both arms raised, pleats in her dress twirling, an expression of total abandon in her body and tiny face. He turns his eyes slowly to the dressing table where a polki set lays in an open velvet jewelry case next to a thick cuff of fresh jasmine. Taj Apa holds up an earring and turns her head to see the effect. Is Iqbal here? she asks.
Yes, he’s waiting in the car.
And my bag for the weekend?
Safya took it down.
Taj Apa’s fingers struggle with the fastening at the back of the polki necklace. This is tricky. She bites her lip. Can you do this for me?
Nadim stands behind her, takes the necklace into his hands and breathes in the cocktail of her perfume; smoky rose, bergamot, patchouli and though it isn’t a heady mix he feels giddy, slightly delirious even as he screws the fastening. Taj Apa pins an ornamental brooch to her shoulder, spins round and presents herself.
What do you think?
Where to begin?
He knows she is waiting for him to sum up the effect of the polki, the sari, the brooch, but there is little to say, the woman could wear a trash bag and still outpace the competition. It is her face with its paradox of equal parts mischief and innocence that trips him. The curve of her nose, the haughty chin, and under that, a long neck with that beauty spot on the throat. A picture fills his mind, the very first flicker of this flame, Juhi’s wedding, sixteen years ago, he’d been eighteen then, Taj Apa twenty-eight. Apa wore an orange sari at the valima and it was like a beacon to him, like a call from the other side of the cosmos. He’d walked in on her getting ready, when Khala was helping her with the pleats and there in that blizzard of orange silk he’d felt the pulse on the surface of his skin, like he was waking up for the very first time. He let her flick the rose water on his face later on the red carpet and laughed at her songs, but in secret, in front of a mirror in the bathroom, he pinched his own arm to stop the buzzing in his ears. A few days later Nani set up a party on the lawn to celebrate Taj Apa’s own engagement to Khalil Bhai and Nadim watched with burning eyes as Khalil Bhai placed a bite of pineapple cake into Apa’s glorious open mouth to seal the deal. There is a photo of the scene that Apa waves around now and again. Just look at your face, she says, howling with laughter. A blush prickles his ears. He is happy that they are such good friends, that Apa considers him a confidant, a comrade in arms, that she pulls him close to whisper jokes in his ears. He is grateful that there is a room in her home for him, relieved that Khalil Bhai doesn’t mind his coming and going as he enters the seventh year of his Columbia Anthropology PhD on pulp Urdu digests of the mid twentieth century. But he lives all this with a weight inside and a bath of ash and coals outside on his skin for he blushes easily and Apa, for one thing, does love to tease him.
So? Taj Apa raises an eyebrow.
Perfect, as always. It’s a little unfair though.
Unfair?
To the bride. Who’s going to look at her if you turn up like this?
Don’t be ridiculous! Taj Apa waves a hand in Nadim’s direction. If Sidra was here, she’d make me change the whole lot. Apa there’s too much going on! she mimics her younger sister’s voice. Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to come tonight?
A hundred percent. You remember what happened last time.
What happened last time?
Those aunties on the prowl.
They’re just doing their job. You’d make such a perfect son-in-law.
I can’t stand them.
I tried to help you, I tried to convince them that I had nabbed you for Sidra.
That wouldn’t have worked. Everyone there had already seen those photos of Sidra and Carl online.
Sidra is so careless, Taj Apa says, fixing her lipstick. Those two better get married or Amma is going to be really upset. She slips the jasmine cuff on her wrist, grabs her silk clutch and stands up. Nadim steps back and watches the fabric of the pale gold sari shift and settle as light falls on the cloth and new details come to shine. His eyes follow the border where there is more than just flowers and petals, there is a whole procession; elephants and peacocks, men on horseback, dancing girls––so intricate, almost invisible.
Wow.
Yes, it’s quite subtle. Taj Apa’s finger tracks the border. You have to really look to catch it. And you’ve always been such a keen observer. She winks at him and a blush rises up on his neck.
He follows her downstairs and out the French doors onto the terrace still wet from the first rain of the season. Safya, in her floral print lawn kameez, paan in her cheek, brings out a tray of coffee and Milano cookies where Taj Apa sits on a wrought iron chair and slips a Davidoff Light between her lips.
Sometimes I forget we live in the desert, says Nadim, taking a pull on his vape. He scoots down and runs his fingers through the grass.
Mohabbat Khan really keeps it all alive somehow. Taj Apa blows a puff of smoke. Remember that boy of his…. Gulsher, such a beautiful boy.
Is he ever coming back?
Taj Apa shakes her head, then bites into a cookie. He's all grown up now. In Muscat, a gardener for some municipal landscaping department, or something like that.
Nadim watches Taj Apa close her eyes and listen to the call of a mynah bird. I have to ask you something, she says, her eyes still closed.
Yes Apa?
Do you think Sidra is serious about Carl?
Who knows… she’s temperamental. I like Carl though.
I do too. Taj Apa takes a final puff, then puts out the cigarette in a green marble ashtray where Nadim watches it burn and crumble. I also like you, she adds, leaning back, crossing her legs.
Nadim coughs. We’ve had this conversation before.
So what? We can have it again.
Do we have to? Nadim sighs.
You find my sister too impulsive?
She’s just a little too out of control for me, I’m sorry. It would never work, says Nadim as he waves his vape in the air. He knows if Ammi was still around she would collude with Taj Apa and Khala to try and make the rishta happen. The three of them would sit side by side, plot the whole thing out over cups of chai. Sidra has Apa’s fine features but is reckless and restless by nature, and were Nadim to look into Sidra’s own gray eyes he would look straight through them in search of someone else, in search of Apa perhaps. Nadim glances across at his cousin, at her long fingers grasping the coffee cup as she looks straight at him. The mere concept of having her as a sister-in-law is monstrous, perverse even.
I see, says Taj Apa after a silence that feels too long.
The evening is cool but Nadim feels a warmth creep around him and he turns away from Apa to breathe deeply.
Why are you blushing so much?
I’m not. It’s just this… this subject––
Alright, I promise never to bring it up again. But you are looking?
I am, I promise I am.
It’s just that, there’s more to life than books, you know.
Apa, please.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop now. She gets up and presses Nadim’s shoulder gently. If Sidra was here I would ask her to not have any wild parties while I’m away but with you it seems quite unnecessary.
Completely unnecessary. I have a thesis to finish.
Anything but romance, she says with a laugh and goes inside the house.
Nadim hears Iqbal start the car and drive out. There is a loud clang as the gate closes and Safya comes round the corner, humming Munni Begum, and takes the tray inside.
Nadim picks up the half smoked Davidoff Light Taj Apa left in the ashtray, puts it between his lips and lights up. He thinks of the gardener Mohabbat Khan’s boy Gulsher as he remembers him, when Mohabbat Khan brought him to see the big city. The boy was fourteen then, not a child anymore, not yet a man. Nadim closes his eyes and sees the boy’s face, his brown hair bleached by the sun, his piercing green eyes, as sharp as a hawk’s. Those eyes had seen through Nadim, seen through what Nadim hoped to keep hidden at all costs. He shudders a little as the memory rushes back to him, a dusty day, with Shamal blowing, a dark orange sky, his first year here at Taj Apa and Khalil Bhai’s villa. He had darted across the grass to the back of the house where Mohabbat Khan has his humble lodgings to talk to Gulsher, to caution him about the naked pool dip he’d seen him take the night before. He knew if Khalil Bhai found out the boy would be sent packing straight away.
Gulsher listened quietly with his head bowed and when Nadim turned to leave he saw the boy was hiding a box of jumbo matches behind his back. Nadim took the box and found inside, among a dozen used and new matches, seven half finished cigarettes. Davidoff Lights. Taj Apa’s, all with red lipstick stains on them.
Gulsher slowly shook his head, said I don’t know to a question Nadim had not even asked.
You shouldn’t be smoking, you’re too young, Nadim said, and slipped the box in his pocket and left. But he came back a minute later. You can keep it, he said, handing Gulsher the box.
The boy slid it open and pressed one of the half smoked cigarettes to his lips and struck a light. I know you take them too, he said quietly, twin streams of white smoke shooting from his straight nose.
Take what?
Her cigarettes. I've seen you take them from the ashtrays.
Nadim searched into Gulsher’s emerald green eyes and the boy smiled, his lips pink and teeth white and straight. He had a girl’s smile, a Lolita smile, precocious, knowing. I’m no fool, it seemed to say. Cigarette tucked between his fingers, he began to twirl. And then to sing. Anarkali’s song.
Pyar kiya to darna kya
Jab pyar kiya to darna kya
Pyar kiya koi chori nahin ki
Ghut ghut aahein bharna kya
He stopped, leaned in and kissed Nadim on the lips. You can’t have her, I can’t have you, he said in a barely audible whisper. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled that coy smile again.
Nadim said nothing and left the room. That evening he headed to New York and when he returned a semester later Mohabbat Khan and Gulsher had gone to Peshawar for the summer. When Mohabbat Khan came back he came back alone.
Nadim thinks of the boy, the accidental custodian of his secret, of his impossible romance, tending to municipal gardens in Muscat. He imagines Gulsher as a young man now lighting a cigarette with the sun on his back, after a day spent hunched over, laying out the black snakes of irrigation pipes, gathering dried up fallen palm fronds, planting purple hearts and agave and aloe. Gulsher might be watching a thin wispy shoot of smoke unfurl in front of his face at this very moment, smiling to himself, singing Lata Mangeshkar songs under his breath. His smile no longer looks like a girl’s, and he won’t twirl ever, not even when he’s alone at night.
Nadim gets up and goes to Apa’s room where he picks up an ivory colored dupatta off a chair and holds it briefly to his face. He breathes in the smoky rose, the body cream and talc, Taj Apa’s scent. The sun is slipping away and the maghrib azaan calls out from the mosque down the street. He slides his favorite black marble Anarkali off the shelf, the one with her arms up high, and runs his thumb over the small body. He squeezes the little figure but she never turns to dust.
Raja’a Khalid is a Saudi-born, Dubai-raised (and based) artist and writer with an MFA in Art from Cornell University. She has been nominated for Best of the Net (2025) and The Pushcart Prizes (2025) and her stories appear or are forthcoming in Baffling Magazine, HAD, Jet Fuel Review, KHÔRA, Let’s Stab Caesar, Maudlin House, SAND Journal, Vestoj, and Yalobusha Review.