An American Brat by Bapsi Sidhwa Read Free Book Online Page B

gigantic, long-stemmed silver egg-cup with a turned-out lip. The embers of the larger logs gleamed through a latticework of freshly arranged sticks of sandalwood at the level of her eye. Someone had made an offering, Feroza thought; the priest must have left just before she came.
    Feroza whispered her prayers and gazed devoutly at the small flames licking the crisscross of sandalwood, and, suddenly, she felt the spiritual power of the fire reach out from its divine depths to encompass her with its pure energy. She was at once buoyant, fearless, secure in her humanity. And as the lucid flame of the holy vision illumed her mind and was absorbed into her heart, she felt herself being suffused with God’s presence. She felt He was speaking to her, acknowledging her prayers.
    Feroza’s spirits leapt with exultation. Bowing her head in gratitude, she moved to a side window and, pressing her radiant face to the polished brass bars, chanted the happy little Jasa-me-avanghe Mazda prayer. Although she recited it in the hallowed Avastan language of the Gathas, she knew its meaning from the English translation in her prayer book:

    Come to my help, O Ahura-Mazda!
    Give me victory, power, and the joy of life.

    ~

    Seven cars drove up the cemented drive to the welcoming portals of the Ginwalla residence at approximately eleven o’clock the following morning. Set deep in its carved frame, the door had been painstakingly transported a couple of years ago from the neglected haveli of bygone nawabs to grace the Ginwallas’ new residence. Zareen had hung her prized possession with strings of white roses and decorated the entrance with festive designs of fish and flowers pressed from small perforated tin trays containing powdered chalk.
    Since it was Friday, the Muslim sabbath, Cyrus was home. Debonair in an ivory raw silk shalwar-kamiz and matching woolenwaistcoat, Cyrus led the guests — mostly relatives, Parsee friends, and a sprinkling of close Muslim friends from their nightly round of parties — into the front lawn, boxed in by thick gardenia and rose hedges. The farewell was an almost ceremonial occasion and, as such, an essentially Parsee affair.
    Feroza sat amidst her well-wishers, too excited to touch the food on the plate on her lap. Behind her the white roses, their velvet petals still cradling dew, gleamed against the bottle-green hedges as if fashioned from mother-of-pearl. Her younger cousins, particularly the girls, gaped at her in awe — when they were not running around noisily — made bashful by her sudden importance.
    Feroza’s voluble aunts looked proud and exhilarated, as if they had a share in the adventure she was embarked upon. Their loud, cheerful voices drowned out the clamor of the scooter-rickshaws and minibuses and the cries of the hawkers and of men brawling on the street. The Ginwalla bungalow was just off the enormous roundabout of the Gulberg Main Market.
    A formation of parrots streaked overhead in a chutney-green flurry and disappeared in the thick foliage of a mango tree next door. A couple of crows hopped on the garden wall, alertly turning their heads this way and that, their beady eyes on the food table. They cawed raucously, and two other crows joined the party on the wall. Between them they set up such a racket, spreading news of the banquet to sundry other crows, that Cyrus, withdrawing from his pocket a large cambric handkerchief and waving it, loped to the wall shouting, “Shoo, shoo!”
    A few guests were gathered at the long buffet table covered with lace tablecloths. Armed with a duster, her stiletto heels sinking in the grass, Zareen kept the flies off one end of the table and her eye cocked on the kites wheeling high above like vigilantes of the enormous azure sky. She hoped the duster and the crowd would keep the kites, which up close were as big as chickens, from swooping down on the food.
    Zareen had wrapped the rich palu end of her yellow tanchoi