Chapter 1
The fan turned. The air stayed exactly where it was.
Zayan watched a bead of sweat track down the neck of the girl in front of him and calculated how many words he could write before the seminar ended—forty-seven minutes left. He could finish the blog post about supply chain logistics and maybe start the product descriptions for that furniture company. The furniture company’s timely payment was more important than his concern for ergonomic office chairs. He didn’t.
Professor Ansari kept droning on about something on student submissions, a prestigious publication, and an exceptional opportunity. Zayan had heard this speech before from various professors, all of whom thought prestige was the price of admission. It didn’t. Two hundred taka are paid for every hundred words. Prestige was what people who didn’t need money called success.
He lit a cigarette in his mind; the phantom smoke he allowed himself during class because actual smoking would require going outside, losing fifteen minutes, and fifteen minutes was three hundred words at his going rate. Three hundred words were sixty taka. Sixty taka was the difference between riding the bus and walking home in the heat. Small calculations added up, determining whether the month ended in black or red.
His mother called them “Zayan’s numbers.” The constant mental accounting had started the day after his father’s funeral seven years ago, when he’d opened the red notebook above the gas burner and understood that the world was divided into two types of people: those who could afford not to count and everyone else.
“I’d like to open this project to volunteers,” Ansari said, his voice carrying that academic enthusiasm that always sounded to Zayan like someone trying to sell you something. The room stayed quiet. Twenty-three people with various degrees of interest; nobody was stupid enough to volunteer for extra work. Zayan approved. At least his classmates understood basic economics.
A hand shot up from the corner of his eye. Mira Hossain’s hand had gone up.
Zayan’s pen stopped mid-word. She sat two rows diagonal, her hand raised with the kind of certainty that irritated him on principle. Everything about Mira Hossain irritated him on principle. She spoke in seminars as if she were grading everyone else’s contributions, her voice resonating with the tone of someone who had never had to choose between buying textbooks and eating dinner. The silver rings she wore, shimmering in the light when she gestured, were genuine silver, not the cheap alloy that turned your fingers green after a week. The fact that she’d gotten a higher score than him on the last essay and he’d been writing professionally for six years while she was probably still workshopping feelings in a journal somewhere, probably a leather-bound journal, probably imported, boiled his blood.
He’d noticed her the first week of the semester. It was difficult not to, considering she’d corrected Professor Ansari on a citation, politely, with that smile. The professor had checked, found she was right, and thanked her. She nodded as if being wrong was the natural order of things, and she was right. Zayan had disliked her immediately. It was a clean dislike. Uncomplicated. She represented everything he’d learned to resent: the assumption that education was about intellectual growth rather than economic survival, the luxury of having opinions on theory while he was calculating whether he could afford the photocopying fee for the required readings, and the way she inhabited the university as if it were designed for people exactly like her. Which it was. This was precisely the issue at hand.
“Wonderful,” Ansari beamed at Mira. “I’ll pair you with someone for the technical submission process. You’ll hold the authorization code.”
Zayan’s hand was up before the thought finished forming.He didn’t know why he’d done it. The movement had bypassed his usual cost-benefit analysis entirely. His brain was still back on the product descriptions. At the same time, his hand had apparently decided to volunteer him for unpaid labor with the one person in the seminar who made his jaw tight just by existing in his peripheral vision.
Mira turned around. Two hazel eyes stared back at him and looked at him the way you’d look at an unexpected elaichi in your biryani: not quite disgust, more like resigned annoyance that now you’d have to deal with it. Her eyebrows rose slightly. One of her rings caught the light, throwing a small bright spot onto his notebook.
“Perfect,” Ansari said. “Mira will hold the authorization code. Zayan, you’ll assist with the technical submission. I’ll email you both the details. "
The seminar room door was three inches open and permanently broken, and through it, Dhaka conducted its usual business: the rickshaw bells, the azaan from three different mosques arriving at slightly different intervals, and the bus conductors yelling destinations in that particular Dhaka rhythm that sounded like music if you stopped listening to the words. Zayan had stopped listening to the words a long time ago. He just let Dhaka be Dhaka while he moved through it with the efficiency of someone who couldn’t afford to be charmed by his city. He went back to his product descriptions.
He typed another 140 words about the lumbar support and the breathable mesh backing. Behind him, someone whispered something. Laughter rippled through the back row. He didn’t turn around. Other people’s amusement wasn’t billable.When class ended, Mira left without looking at him.
Good. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her anyway.
He packed his laptop, his notebook, and his pen. The same pen he’d been using for two years because it still worked, and buying a new one would be three hundred words of unnecessary spending. Outside in the corridor, students clustered in groups, talking about weekend plans, dinner parties, and some concert happening. Zayan walked past them to the stairwell, took the stairs two at a time, and pushed through the exit into the November heat.
His phone buzzed.
A text from his sister, Riya: Ammu is asking when you’re coming home.
You haven’t visited in two weeks.
He typed back: Soon. Have to finish work first.
You’re always finishing work.
That’s how rent gets paid.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Riya knew better than to push.
Zayan walked to the library steps, on the side entrance, facing away from the main gate, and lit his second cigarette of the day. Gold Leaf. Cheaper than Benson, better than the local brands. Four cigarettes budgeted per day. Forty taka total. He inhaled and tried not to think about the fact that he’d just volunteered for extra work with Mira Hossain, who probably thought cigarettes were a character flaw rather than one of the few small pleasures he allowed himself in a life that had become almost entirely work.
The evening call to prayer started. He checked his phone: six forty-seven. The furniture deadline was nine. Two thousand words left. If he focused, he could be done by eight-thirty, which gave him time to proofread, which meant he’d submit on time, which meant he’d get paid on Friday, which meant his mother wouldn’t have to cover his share of the electric bill this month.
Numbers. Always numbers.
Someone sat down next to him. He didn’t look. The steps were public property. He took a whiff of that floral shampoo and knew without looking who’d decided to invade his smoking spot.
“You smoke a lot,” Mira said.
He took a drag before answering. “Four cigarettes a day. That’s not a lot.”
“It’s four more than zero.”
“Congratulations on your math skills.”
He caught a glimpse of her sitting upright, a thick book with a green cover resting on her lap. She was wearing a white kurta today, simple but well-made, costing more than the obviously embroidered ones. He’d learned to read clothes the way other people read faces. You had to consider whether someone understood what two hundred taka meant or whether it was just pocket change to them.
“I’m surprised you volunteered,” she said, not looking at him.
“For the anthology.”
“I’m surprised you care.”
“I don’t. I’m just making conversation.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to have to work together, and I’d prefer it not be completely miserable.”
Zayan took another drag. The smoke tasted like evening and bus exhaust. He felt it, the particular kind of tiredness that came from spending your whole day turning language into money.
“If you wanted someone easy to work with, you should have waited to see who else volunteered.”
“Nobody else was going to volunteer.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve been in class with these people for four months, and I know exactly what they’re willing to do for free.” She finally looked at him. Her eyes were darker than he’d expected, more brown than black, with that direct way of looking that made him feel like he was being assessed for something.
“Why did you volunteer?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
“It doesn’t.”
A rickshaw went past, its bell ringing in that two-note pattern that meant the driver was annoyed at someone. The CNG auto had probably cut him off. The same argument that had been going on in Dhaka since before they were born would continue after they died. The city didn’t care about their small dramas.
Mira closed her book. She stood up, brushing invisible dust off her jeans.
“The code arrives tomorrow. We need to decide how we’re splitting the work.”
“You write, I submit. That’s the split.”
“I meant the technical coordination. The formatting, the file preparation, making sure everything meets the submission requirements.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Have you read the requirements?”
“I’ll read them when I need to.”
“They’re twelve pages long.”
“Then I’ll read twelve pages.” He looked up at her, squinting against the sun that was setting behind her head, turning her into a dark silhouette.
“Is there a point to this conversation, or are you just checking whether I’m competent?”
“I’m checking whether you’re going to be difficult.” “I’m always difficult. It’s one of my better qualities.”
Something shifted in her expression. Was that a smile? No, not a smile exactly, more like the recognition that she’d been right about something she’d suspected.
“Great. Looking forward to working with you.” “The feeling is mutual.”
“That’s sarcasm.”
“That’s honesty.”
She studied him for another second, and he had the uncomfortable feeling of being read in return, of being assessed and categorized and filed away in whatever system she used to organize the world. Then she turned and walked back toward the library entrance, her shoulders back, her head up, like someone who’d never had to negotiate a rickshaw fare down from sixty taka to forty because forty was all you had in your pocket and walking would take an hour, and you had a deadline in two. He finished his cigarette.
Checked his phone: six fifty-three. Seven minutes over budget. The small failures added up the same way the small calculations did. He went inside to finish the furniture descriptions and tried not to think about why he’d volunteered. Tried not to examine the impulse that had moved his hand before his brain could veto it. Tried not to acknowledge that watching Mira Hossain raise her hand in that seminar had triggered something in him, not attraction, nothing that clean, more like recognition. He typed two thousand words about office chairs and pushed the thought away.
