Aisha was glad they were visiting Morocco in March. Temperatures would be much milder than New York, where it was snowing even as the plane took off. During the day, the intestinal streets of the medina would provide cover from the sun. She wouldn't have to hound shaded corners or worry about her mother's reaction when she sent her photos on Whatsapp – her mother, who would undoubtedly scrunch up her nose if she saw any sign of Aisha's skin darkening.
"Have you been eating well, dear?" she would ask, because back home, darker skin signaled indigence, a body wasting away.
It had been more than a year since Aisha met James at a house party in New York. Her friends thought theirs was an odd pairing – James grew up in Long Island with middle-class Catholic parents who were high-school teachers, while Aisha had spent most of her childhood in Karachi, where her father worked in real estate and her mother, well, her mother read Western books and entertained. She knew they would never be together if they were from the same country – their circles would be disparate, even disdainful of one another. When Aisha described her childhood to James, he said she sounded like a Pakistani WASP.
But here they were, on their first trip alone. She had been looking forward to Morocco ever since they booked their flights in January. Before this, they had taken a trip to Vermont, where his college friends went on a yearly retreat to a lake house. In January, they travelled with James's parents to the Caribbean for a long weekend. Aisha spent most of her time there sitting under umbrellas and tugging at the edges of her one-piece swimsuit, self-conscious even on a beach full of bikinis. She had grown up near the sea, had even gone to private beaches with friends in high school. But they always wore T-shirts and skirts that reached their knees. They would wade in the water, running their fingertips on the grey surface and flicking them upwards to sprinkle saltwater over one another. Once, a classmate showed up wearing shorts and Aisha felt everyone, including herself, glance at her from the corners of their eyes, trying and failing to ignore the small shift in social order that had occurred.