Free Dead: A Ghost Story by Mina Khan Page A

belongings
into it and driven them all the way from New York.
    “ It’s going to be a new
opportunity, a new beginning,” he’d said. “We’re going to be hotel
owners!”
    She should’ve known
better, known that like all of Matin’s promises, this too would be
overblown and full of holes. Reality had been a motel, with peeling
gray paint and dead weeds dancing in the wind. A faded sign,
proclaiming “The Grande Motel,” squeaked to and fro above the front
office door. The sulfur smell of rotten eggs filled the air,
proclaimed it oil country. Bill’s Feed Store and the notary
public’s office flanking the motel had closed for the
day.
    Desolation pressed down on
Nasreen, hot and oppressive. She’d stood in her blue cotton sari
and flip-flops —her concession to summer—in the cracked asphalt
parking lot, empty except for their station wagon, and
cried.
    Until Matin shot a glob of
spit right at her feet. “Shut up and help me unload.”
    Nasreen had stared at him
as if he was a part of the strangeness around her. She drew in
long, sob-laced gulps of breath. Her slippers, her sari,
everything, felt wrong.
     
    Nasreen trembles gazing at
the land, so different from the land she’d known growing up. In
West Bengal, especially during the monsoon season, everything was
green. The trees, the grass, the vines --all came in so many
different shades of green. Greens that seemed to breathe, grow and
brighten with every beat of her heart. Once, she’d taken all that
life for granted. Now her eyes itch as the Texas heat sucks dry
every blade of grass, every clod of earth, every bit of
moisture.
    Footsteps echo on the
stairs and Nasreen drifts over to watch Matin and Maria descend.
They are holding hands. She wonders how long their affair has been
going on. They look comfortable with each other, familiar, no
self-conscious fumbling and stumbling. Nasreen shakes her head as
she remembers the awkwardness of her first encounters with Matin,
with sex and physical intimacy, with being a wife.
     
    The first time they met,
Nasreen had been nineteen and Matin thirty-six. On holiday from
America, he visited Nawabpur, his mother’s paternal village. His
mother’s grandfather, Alok Chowdhury, and his ancestors had owned
the entire village once upon a time. However, much of that
ancestral wealth had disappeared. Matin’s cousins turned to
business and trade to eke out a living. But the memory of the
family’s grandeur remained, shimmering like a fantastic mirage,
mesmerizing all.
    Nasreen’s father was the
mathematics professor at the local college. His government job
provided him a small house and an even smaller salary, adequate for
the widower and his only daughter. Then one evening, Sayeed
Chowdhury -- a comfortably middleclass businessman and direct
descendant of Alok -- brought his American cousin for a visit. They
claimed to have come for intellectual conversation. Nasreen served
them tea.
    Matin was immediately
taken by her. He’d told her later that her shyness had stirred his
loins. Her long hair, a silky black curtain down her back, fueled
his fantasies. He sent a proposal before the end of the
week.
    Nasreen remembered Matin’s
heavy jowls, his pockmarked skin and the potbelly stretching his
shirt and said no. Her father sighed.
    “ Ma, be reasonable,” he’d
said. “I’m growing older every day and I would never forgive myself
if I were to die without marrying you off. Your husband will take
care of you after I’m gone.”
    The professor said Matin’s
proposal was the best that she, a poor teacher’s daughter, could
expect. In fact, Matin was better than what could be expected -- a
successful businessman from America and of Chowdhury blood. Her
father borrowed a book of maps from the college library and pointed
out New York to Nasreen. It seemed so far away, so unreal -- a
small blotch of color on a page that could be turned and
forgotten.
    Matin visited almost
daily, carrying sweets and books. He told