Hot Pink in the City (9 page)

"I'd like to watch TV," I say. Nasreen pokes
me in the ribs and I yelp. "I mean, I can't wait to watch TV in the
morning, because when we get home it'll be bedtime."

"Yes, we'll all be tired tonight, but before
I sleep I'd like to listen to some Umm Kulthum. I only have one
complete tape of her beautiful voice. Her voice brings peace."

I close my eyes, the sinking feeling in my
heart deepening, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Uncle Javed has a stack of music, and we'll be mining through that
collection tonight.

Leaving the last subway station makes me
breathe a sigh of relief. From basement apartment to the subway,
I've been feeling like a mole person lately. I want sunlight and
fresh air. The sun is still out in the late evening, and I bask in
the glory of a full moon I spot between clouds and buildings. We
walk up some porch steps, where Uncle Javed lives in a narrow
townhouse. There's the pulsating sound of music from inside the
house. When someone opens the door, tabla drums of old-fashioned
music reach my ears. I'm not into my parents' music, but I admit
some of it makes me want to dance.

Javed welcomes us in. He's tall, tan, and
clean-shaven. He's at least ten years younger than Uncle Farhad. He
smells of something strange and pungent. Nasreen whispers, "He's
been drinking."

He's known to do that. He's into arak and
American women. His home is a bachelor pad, which is why I never
stay with him when I'm in New York. My parents don't want me and my
siblings to see the seedy way he lives, even though I think his
lifestyle is cool and normal.

"Is that my little Asma?" he asks.

I hug him, getting a whiff of cologne and
whatever he's been drinking. "Yes, it's me."

"
Ma'shallah
, you've grown. Come
in!"

"We won't stay long," Uncle says.

"Nonsense. The party has just started."

My parents have unfairly warned me about
Uncle Javed. "Seedy" is many friends, laughter, booze, and
paintings of half-naked women. Javed is a painter, and on his walls
are mermaids, women draped in towels, and ladies in other states of
undress. Inside the living room are other aunts and uncles, artist
friends, and pretty lady friends. Javed puts his arms around many
people, particularly the women. Cigarette smoke drifts around me. I
count at least a dozen smokers in the crowded space. I'm sort of
used to it since many of my relatives smoke, but back home nobody
smokes. I just left the subway, but now I feel like I'm underground
again. I desire fresh air.

Uncle glares at Javed with disapproval, yet
Javed's licentious ways won't stop him from talking about what he
loves the most: current events. "What has happened to Iran?" Uncle
asks. "Are you watching the news?"

"And what are you going to do about it?"
Javed asks. "All you do is talk. You either go there or do
something, or stay here and build a life for your family. It's one
or the other."

"You can't ignore what goes on there! The
land is in shambles. There's no freedom, just torture and
imprisonment."

Some people are mumbling, and others are
yelling pro- and anti-Khomeini speech, either supporting or bashing
the regime of Iran. Javed doesn't want any part of the political
talk, walking away from Uncle and slinging his arm around a woman.
"Who wants wine?"

Many of my relatives shake their heads. No
alky-hol for them. Nasreen eyes the liquor cabinet. I've never seen
anything like it; it's an entire piece of furniture dedicated to
alcohol, with bottles of amber liquid behind the glass. "Do you
think we can score some?" my cousin asks.

"Stay focused," I say. "Let's go find some
Umm."

It's a sea of bodies. I thought Uncle's
basement apartment was bad, but the fact is most New York homes are
small. As I move, random uncles, aunts, and cousins hug and kiss
me. Their cigarette smoke clings to me. I smell nicotine-stained
skin and lips. I'm afraid of lung cancer and emphysema, not that
they're contagious, but the smoky air is ominous. "Someone open a
window!" one of the partygoers demands.

As I circulate, my relatives all notice I've
grown.

"Such pretty eyes," an aunt says.

"Wow, you're a stunner," an older female
cousin named Mahla says. "We'll be looking for a husband for you in
no time."

This husband talk makes me more nervous. I
grab Nasreen by the arm and pull her through the living room. On
our way to Javed's painting room, she grabs something off a
table.

"What is that?" I ask.

"A bottle of I don't know what," she
says.

"We're not drinking anything."

"To the left," Nasreen directs in the narrow
hallway, the bottle still in her hand.

There's a front and back stairwell in Javed's
home. The back stairwell will lead us to Javed's painting space,
where his music also happens to be. There are cassettes in the
living room, but while relatives were grabbing and kissing me,
Nasreen looked through them and didn't find any Umm. "Most of his
music is up here," she says.

"I hope you're right," I say.

We're on the second floor. There are two
bedrooms and Javed converted one of them to his painting space. I
turn on a light and I'm confronted by easels, canvas boards, and
paints... also, more flesh. There are even nudes propped up against
walls.

"Whoa, nice paintings," Nasreen says.

"He's very talented," I say. "But I can see
why he keeps this here." Nude paintings are the results of nude
models, and I don't want to think about any of my relatives in that
light. Nasreen puts the pilfered bottle of wine on a table, and we
start looking.

I open a closet and it's full of paint
supplies, but we hit it big with the other closet. There's a whole
entire shelf dedicated to cassettes. We pull out the boxes, sit on
the floor, and look. We don't want to sit on the chairs or sofa
because who knows how many naked booties have been on those
things.

It looks like the other collections I've
seen. Many bootleg cassettes, a few real inserts featuring pictures
of the singers, and foreign script I can't read. I put the ones
with Arabic and Persian writing to the side since Nasreen is better
at reading them than me. We're looking for Umm's name or picture.
At least I know how she looks... like a queen with her big hair,
stately profile, and luxurious dresses. So far, I haven't seen her
image.

"Hey, this may be it," I say, finding a
cassette with a picture of an older woman with hair in a large bun,
red lipstick, and sunglasses.

"That does look like her!" Nasreen
screeches.

"Shhh, keep quiet," I say. There's a bathroom
downstairs, as well as one upstairs, but we don't know who may pop
in and for what reason. We were going to ask Javed if we could come
up here and we were sure he would say yes, but he was too busy
arguing with Uncle and following the trail of single women. We
don't have his permission to be here but assume he'd be cool about
it if he catches us.

Nasreen takes the cassette from my hands. She
inspects the outside and then looks inside. "It looks like her,"
she says. "Oooh, it says 'Umm Kulthum' on the side. This is
it."

"This is it," I echo with a sigh. "This is
the answer to our problem. We don't have to tell Uncle what really
happened, we won't get into trouble, and we won't have to go back
to those skeevy men in Brooklyn to fork over one hundred dollars.
I'm so relieved."

Nasreen turns around. She's looking at a
cassette player next to a can of brushes. "Let's take a listen,"
she says.

"You're right," I say. "Our initial plan was
to dub, not to steal."

"That's right. We're not stealing from Javed.
If anyone interrupts us or if Dad says we need to leave soon, then
we'll ask Javed if we can borrow this tape, but we must do that
secretly or Dad will ask questions. First, I want to be positive
this is the tape before we copy it or bring it home. Also, I pretty
much memorized the songs on the original tape's insert, and we need
to make sure this is a good match."

There she is with her gloomy, skeptical self.
I'm positive this is the tape and our search is over. "Okay, but
with the party going on downstairs, let's keep the volume low at
first before we dub..."

Chapter Eleven

Music shakes the floor. Someone downstairs
has turned it up. Drumbeats and a man wailing about romance fill
the entire house. I'm in a new world. I'm far from Florida, out of
Uncle's house and in another uncle's house, surrounded by strange
sights and smells. I've been in New York for a few days, and I've
managed to get myself into trouble and all sorts of situations.
This isn't me, although I've daydreamed of intrigue and
adventure.

I imagine myself back in Miami, in my room
listening to pop stars, at the mall with my friends, at school
where people know me as the "quiet, athletic girl," and at
relatives' houses where I daintily eat pastries and talk about
neutral things like soccer, school, and studying. I visit Misty and
Tamara's houses to help them pick outfits. We braid each other's
hair and paint our nails during weekends of innocent fun. I discuss
my grades and what I want to do with my life. Now I find myself
doing all sorts of odd things, in various boroughs, during all
times of the day, and even in Nasreen's closet. Life isn't about
gazing at the TV set wishing I were the characters. There's more to
me than my beloved scrapbook.

Javed has a large stereo with two cassette
players for dubbing, and Nasreen fumbles with the buttons. "Will
you help me with this?" she asks.

"Your eyeliner is running down your face," I
gasp.

She puts a hand to her cheek, and black
traces of powder stain her fingers. I didn't realize we were both
sweating so heavily. I'm used to central air in Miami, but many
buildings in New York don't have it. There are air-conditioning
units hanging out of windows, or some people go without, relying on
open windows in the summer and radiators in the winter. Javed's
windows are open, but that's not doing anything to cool me. My
bangs, which I had carefully hair-sprayed before I left, are
sticking to my forehead, and Nasreen's eyes are a blotchy mess.
Instead of the smoky-eye look, it looks like she's sporting two
shiners.

"Let's just do our business and get some
fresh air," I say. "Javed has a backyard, right?"

"Yes," Nasreen says. "I'm dying for some air.
We'll do this and then talk my dad into leaving soon."

I find the On switch and Nasreen hits Play.
We wait for the first few seconds of blankness, the part where the
tape is white and then it turns into the black strip holding sound.
I always itch to hit Fast Forward on that strip, but then I end up
going too far ahead.

There's a dramatic beginning with guitars. It
almost sounds electronic and modern. This is strange, but Umm made
music for years. I'm sure she experimented with different sounds.
She died in the seventies. Maybe she even dabbled in disco.

Nasreen rubs at her eyes some more, so now
there's black stuff all across her cheeks and forehead. She wipes
her hands across her pants. "I can't wait to copy this," she
says.

"Shhh," I say. I imagine I'm the Bionic Woman
with powerful hearing. I recall the show's sound effects, that
eerie echo sound whenever Lindsay Wagner does something
extraordinary. My ears are powerful as they listen on, and they
hear something dreadful...

A man's voice comes on. He's speaking
English, not Arabic.

"Hey, I know this song," Nasreen says.

"Is this Bon Jovi?" I ask.

Nasreen presses Fast Forward. Someone accuses
me of giving love a bad name.

"This is Bon Jovi!" my cousin shrieks in
surprise.

"Fast Forward some more. There must be some
Umm Kulthum songs on this thing."

Nasreen sings along to the next Bon Jovi
song. She closes her eyes, the black marks looking ridiculous on
her face. "Who-ah..."

"Stop it!" I say. I push Stop and flip the
cassette over, but all it has is guitars and male voices. Side B
sounds like Van Halen.

"I didn't know Javed was into rock," Nasreen
says. "How cool is that?"

"And how much does it suck that this isn't
Umm Kulthum?"

"I'm sorry, Asma. Let's keep looking."

As we return to the boxes of cassettes, I
make a big stink about our raised, then dashed, hopes. "How could
Javed tape over Umm?" I ask.

"Who are we to judge?" Nasreen says. "We did
the same."

"That was an accident. We thought it was a
blank tape, and we only ruined a few minutes of it. Javed, on the
other hand, used the whole thing. That was on purpose. You don't
accidentally tape over an entire cassette. Her name is on the
cassette and everything."

"If everyone starts taping over Umm, there
will be no replacement cassettes for us to find."

"Don't say that. Some people have respect.
Even I know she's a great singer." The Madonna of Arabia.

We've exhausted ourselves looking through the
boxes. We go through them a second and third time. "Let's just go
already," Nasreen says. "My eyes hurt reading the script and fine
print."

"What a bummer. I don't want to think about
it, but maybe those brothers in Brooklyn are really our only shot
at getting these songs."

"I hate thinking about it too, but you're
right."

My legs are stiff from sitting for what seems
like forever on the floor, and my clothes are sticking to my skin.
We get up like old people, our bones creaking, and Nasreen takes
the bottle from the table.

"You're putting that back?" I ask.

"Nope," she says.

We go down the back stairwell and into the
kitchen. There's a door leading to a garden with a metal security
door over it. We also have that in Miami, but not every house has
bars over windows and doors. In New York, everything is hard to get
into. There are bars, grates, doormen... barriers because the city
is big and dangerous. All I want is an Umm Kulthum tape, and a city
that's supposed to have everything doesn't have that for me.
There's a barrier across that too.