Abdul was twenty-three-years old, five
years older than her, and was originally from a small town outside Lahore. He
had moved to Durban two years ago to take up the kitchen position in his
cousin Karim’s takeaway. Apart from being extremely handsome, he was very
funny, and Kavitha found herself instantly attracted to him.
They flirted almost daily for three
months before Abdul finally asked her out for a milkshake at Milky Lane at the
Chatsworth Centre. Their dating since then had been restricted to daytime
excursions around Chatsworth, or driving around in Karim’s Toyota Corolla,
which Abdul would borrow.
Abdul was constantly asking her to go
out with him to Cape to Cairo, a night club in the city, and Kavitha kept
turning him down. Of course, she wanted to accept his offers, but she knew that
her father would only allow her to go out in the evenings if he could meet the
boy first. It was tough enough getting approval for a Chatsworth Tamil boy. A
Pakistani Muslim would have been completely out of the question.
The gift of the tinned-fish samoosas had
been Adbul’s idea. “Maybe if he can taste my cooking he won’t hate Pakistan so
much,” he had joked, before he handed the half-dozen samoosas to her.
Abdul seemed to take her father’s
attitude in his stride. “Fathers in Lahore are even more protective of their
daughters,” he would say. “Anyway, who wouldn’t be protective of a girl like
you?”
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