The World Unseen by Shamim Sarif

them to go up and play with their cousins. Alisha and Sam looked at her plaintively, as though willing her to reprieve them from this inevitable ritual, but she looked sternly at them and made them go. Then she went towards the kitchen to help her bhabhi with the food, but her brother-in-law stopped her, insisting that she sit. Omar ignored the chair that was offered to him, and paced up and down.
     
    “So, how’s business? How’s tricks?” asked Sadru, settling back into his armchair, from one arm of which tufts of stuffing protruded.
     
    Omar looked towards the stairs. The noise upstairs had suddenly ceased.
     
    “It’s fine. Everything’s fine, bhai ,” Miriam volunteered. Omar spun around.
     
    “Where is she?”
     
    “Who?”
     
    “Your sister.”
     
    Even Sadru had to smile at this.
     
    “She’s coming. She’s not here,” he added, following the impatient darting of Omar’s eyes. “Our sister went to meet her husband at his hotel.”
     
    “That’s a stupid thing to do,” Omar said. Miriam watched her husband. He looked angry and somehow helpless. “Are they trying to get caught? I can’t even believe they came back here together.”
     
    “His father is dying… ” said Sadru, unhappily.
     
    Omar turned away. “So what? He’ll be dead in a week, and they’ll be in jail. Do you think the police care who’s dying?”
     
    Miriam looked at Sadru in the silence that followed. She had learned from Farah some time ago that Rehmat’s husband was white, and that this was the root of her family’s displeasure, but the realisation that since the 1948 laws Rehmat’s marriage would also be illegal only occurred to her now.
     
    “Which hotel is her husband at?” she asked finally, to break the silence.
     
    “The Royal, if you can believe it.”
     
    This information came from Farah, who came out of the kitchen adjusting her dress.
     
    “Who do they think they are?” She looked directly, almost accusingly at Omar, and what surprised Miriam was the was the way that Omar looked back at her, holding her glance with a casual intimacy that she herself had rarely experienced with him. She looked back to Farah, but by this time her bhabhi was continuing the story of Rehmat’s arrival and her unrelenting tone of sarcasm had caused both men to look at the floor, as though not seeing her might somehow block out her voice as well.
     
    Fifteen minutes later there came a knock at the door, and they all looked at each other until Sadru got up at last to open it. Omar also rose suddenly and stood awkwardly, waiting. The couple that was revealed as the door opened stood smiling expectantly on the threshold. The woman wore a pale pink skirt suit that covered most of her long legs but only by emphasising them. Her hair was fashionably swept back from a high forehead before curling down over her ears, and she wore lipstick that was several shades too evident for it to be at all acceptable in the conservative and predominantly Muslim Asiatic Bazaar. Her husband stood behind her, little more than a silhouette at present, but an impossibly sophisticated one, smartly suited, his hat worn at a rakish angle, his hands in his pockets. Miriam could hear that the noise in the street had died down, as though people outside had stopped to watch. She saw the woman walk in, kissing first one of her brothers, then the other, and she saw the good-looking man with the neatly slicked hair follow her, shaking hands and smiling. She realised that the very sight of a man following a woman into a room rather than leading the way, was alien to her. Who were these people? Was it possible that this woman, who seemed to have walked straight off a movie set, was actually related to her in-laws? And to her? Rehmat was hugging Jehan now, and then she went to Farah, who accepted her kiss with as much deference as Miriam could have imagined her capable of, as though she too were swept away by this vision. And finally Rehmat stood