“Merveilleux! Croissants and cheese again!” I muttered, slamming my coffee mug on the lunch table.
“It’s a light, French lunch! It’s what we Parisians eat! Haven’t you ever wondered why we’re all stick thin?” my friend Katie asked me in a matter of fact tone.

“You’re from London, Katie!”
“Hun, we’ve both lived here for almost five years! That makes us Parisians for sure.”
I sighed, grabbed a croissant and violently chomped on with a sulky expression.
“Stale!” I announced. “It tasted pretty much like cardboard!”

“And how exactly do you know what cardboard tastes like?” Katie laughed. “But all jokes aside, that’s what we get for working at a cheap little, barely circulated, hardly known fashion magazine! And if that’s not enough, that pompous cow Jaffer roams around as if he owns the place since good old Claude left for Chantilly and put him charge! Snooty bastard! Won’t even give us twenty minutes for lunch!”

“Do you really want to repeat all that?” a deep, husky voice said from behind.
I froze in my seat; my mind had gone blank and my fingers, numb.
“Didn’t mean it like that ‘sir!’” Katie grumbled.
“You better hope not Miss Mills!”
I could smell his sweet, exotic cologne all the way from my chair. My knees began to weaken and my heart began to beat uncomfortably fast. I managed to sneak a peek at him. Sapphire blue shirt and brown pants. Ruffled up, raven black hair. Tantalizingly green eyes.
The most gorgeous man alive.
He whipped around and left.
“Snap out of it, Zoha! He’s revolting!” Katie ordered.
I didn’t reply. I just the stale croissant mechanically, my mind hazy from his sensuous scent.
“You’re sick,” she concluded with a sigh.

After I had finished with my pitiful lunch of cardboard croissants, sour cheese and washed it down with watery coffee, I went back to my cluttered desk to work on the next winter edition of the magazine I worked for, ‘Charme.’
“Mon cherie!” somebody at the door throatily said.
My legs began to wobble like jelly.
The same, alluring cologne wafted through the room. I felt as if I was in the middle of a field of daisies.
And in walked, Jaffer Shah, the beautiful creature I had been head over heels in love with for the past three years.
“Bonnn..jjour,” I stammered, upsetting the colored ink bottle all over the page ‘Winter Wonderland’ displaying feisty (now ink covered) models sporting fur coats in high profile igloos.
“Whoops!” he murmured sweetly, as he glided towards me.
His striking green eyes were extraordinarily intense today and his cheeks, rosier than ever.
“How about we go grab some ‘chicken tandoori’ after work, Zoha? I know a great little place right behind the Eiffel tower. It has the real Lahori flavour.”
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed deeply.
“Lahore ki baat hi wesse aur hi hai!” he said in jumbled up, stiff Urdu. “Non?”
“Oui oui!” I managed to say, almost croaking.
He inched a little closer. His eyes were bewitching-almost devilish.
“But could you please do me a favor first? Could you look at a bunch of paperwork for me? It’s not much. I’ve just been so overburdened with work since Claude left and this nasty flu is bugging the living daylight out of me.” He sniffled and gave a little harsh cough. He was such a beautiful liar.
“Anything for you!” I breathlessly said.
“Merci!? he winked. “Be back in a second. Oh and that peach blouse looks ‘tres chic’ on you!”
He swept out of the room, leaving me in a dazzle. I felt as if I had been spinning around in circles for a very long time.
Jaffer came back almost immediately with a gigantic stack of files, so high that I could hardly see below his nose. He slammed it on my desk, brushed off his hands and heaved a dramatic sigh. His exhaled breath smelled like strawberries and cream to me.
“Whew! Thanks again, darling! I owe you!”
He then marched away, whistling a tune.

So I cleaned up the inky mess, did my own work and was on the verge of finishing up on half the files Jaffer had given me when Katie bounced into my cubicle.
“Let’s go! It’s half past five!” she sang.
“Can’t. I have to do this for Jaffer,” I informed her, my face hardly an inch away from the paper, scribbling so fast that ink splattered my nose.
“What?” Katie screeched. “Zoha, he’s been asking you to do his work for three years bloody years now!”
I was silent.
“Can’t you see he’s only using you?” she then said in a gentler voice.
“He’s taking me out tonight. He said so himself!”
Katie screwed up her face in disgust.
“Jaffer left a while ago with that new girl, Monique-that rather scantily clad one. She told me he’s taking her out on a boat trip down the Grand Canal. I’m sorry.”
“It can’t be,” I whispered in denial. “He even said he liked my blouse.”
Katie rolled her button eyes.
“Let me guess. That blouse looks ‘tres chic’ on you? Good Lord, Zoha, I’ve heard him use that line on so many girls that it makes my ears ache now. He even practices it early morning on the pigeons outside the office!”
She gave me a little peck on the cheek, a tight squeeze and dragged me out.

It was chilly outside. The bare trees looked like wretched, ugly skeletons with crimson, yellow and golden leaves scattered around them wistfully. All around, busy Parisians hustled by, wrapped up warmly in their winter things, completely oblivious to the fact that my heart was slowly and painfully being impounded each time I thought of Jaffer and Monique in a cozy little boat down the canal. The looming sky seemed greyer than usual.

“Care for a butterscotch creme brulee? It’s on me,” Katie asked, stopping by at one of my favourite street side cafes. I nodded bitterly and sat down.
Dominique’s Cafe was a pretty sight. The tiny tables were covered with cream and minty green silk table cloths and the chairs, adorned with artificial grape vine. On each table was a mosaic vase with a single red rose in it. Dominique, a short pudgy man with fiery red hair and a temper to match, was one of my favourite people in Paris. I knew him since the day I moved here. He was the one who helped me out with directions to my new apartment, decipher the values of the coins and bills, and gave me a free frothy grapefruit mousse with a little French flag stuck in between as a ‘Welcome’ gift. That dessert was one of the sweetest desserts I had ever tasted. And when I started work, I hardly had any time to enjoy French cuisine. And after I met Jaffer (a week after my first day at ‘Charme’), all desserts seemed to taste the same-bland and insipid.

So we ate the creme brulees with minimal conversation (I wasn’t exactly a very amiable companion when heartbroken) and trudged back to our respective apartments when it started to get dark. The icy wind bit my face; my cheeks and nose became cherry red but I marched on defiantly. My auburn hair flew madly in the wind and I still didn’t wear my hat, which lay crushed to a pulp in my fist. I didn’t even wear the muffler squashed in my coat pocket. And I left all my entire coat buttons open on purpose, perhaps as punishment. But punishment for what? Loving a man who didn’t love me back? Allowing him to take advantage of me? Doing 90% of his office work, running his errands, picking up his relatives from the airport? I felt a huge pang of shame. But that was the way I was. I was a nice person.
“Too submissive, you are,” a little British voice (sounding remarkably like Katie) inside my head said.
I grimaced.
“In other words, you’re a doormat. You let people walk all over you.”
The voice inside my head had decided to put it as bluntly possible.
I jammed the key into the key hole, twisted it maliciously and flung open the apartment door.

The apartment was surgically clean as always but lacked a homely feel to it. The walls were pretty much bare with two framed pictures of Van Gogh’s work hanging dejectedly and an aged poster of the Moulin Rouge. The orange sofa in the lounge was hard and unwelcoming and the coffee table, chipped, with ugly wooden legs. The sad little glass vase on the window sill was empty.
I hadn’t brought fresh flowers in the apartment since the day Jaffer forgot my birthday two years ago. After all, I had gotten him an extremely expensive watch (worth four months of my earnings) and a bunch of yellow tulips for his birthday, which was incidentally a week before mine. I had reminded him of my special day and very courageously let it slip from my mouth that I loved daises. Apparently, daisies were too much to ask. The day after my birthday, Jaffer ran into me at work and smiled his charming smile-the smile that melted my heart as quickly as butter melts in a fry pan. I forgave him right there and then. The funny thing was that he hadn’t even apologized.

Claude came back in two weeks and everything went back to normal. He made sure the croissants were fresh and that we got at least half an hour for lunch. He even got the coffee machine repaired! As I sat quietly eating my lunch one afternoon, my hair tied up in crazy knot and my fingers inky, I got a call from my father back in Pakistan. He told me that Sumaira Ammi, my stepmother was suffering from a deadly brain tumor. As he wept noisily on the phone, I tried to console him, but in my heart, I didn’t feel the slightest bit of emotion for my dying stepmother. And why should I care for a woman who physically and emotionally abused me while my foolish, unsuspecting father was at work all those long days? Months of enduring hysterical scolding, sweeping the floors with a ‘jharu’, washing the clothes in the washbasin (apparently the washing machine used up too much electricity) while the servants dawdled around the mansion, dusting ornaments, was traumatically a bit too much to forget. My insanely rich yet imprudent father had married that crazy woman three months after my loving, artist mother died in a car accident, thinking that his only teenage daughter needed a mother substitute. However, my stepmother gradually shattered my personality and ruined my self esteem for good, leaving me a raving mess. So after taking a few short courses in French, I brushed up on my artistic abilities and migrated to France, determined to pursue a living of my own and get as far away from home as I could. After giving fake sympathies to my bawling father, I shut down the phone and drowned all my sorrows in a mug of coffee.

Christmas came to Paris-stony grey and snow less. I walked through the Champs Elysees, admiring the twinkling lights decorating the bare trees along the avenue, as stiletto heels clanked on the pavement and crisp, new shopping bags rustled all around me. The office Christmas party was tonight. I had specially brushed my flyway hair and applied generous amounts of hair serum. I even work burgundy lipstick to go with my chocolate brown party dress. The party started at nine. Champagne was flowing (the cheapest brand, mind you!) and Christmas carols in French were playing softly in the background. Jaffer was wearing a bright red silk shirt for the occasion, lots of shiny hair gel and was looking unusually pleased with himself. Monique was by his side, wearing a skimpy bottle green dress and clinging onto to his burly arm. She let out a howl of laughter at a feeble joke he had just cracked. I felt like a spy watching the two of them. Suddenly, a glint of diamond on the ring finger of her left hand caught my eye. I hadn’t seen her wear that ring before. Jaffer chose that very moment to put his arm around her and whisper something in her ear. And just then, Claude brushed past me, went up to Jaffer and gave him a resounding slap on the back.
“Felicitations!” He boomed heartily. “I haff jist heard!”
The following moment was indescribable. I felt as if someone had punched me in the face. Jaffer caught my eye and gave me a weak, pitiful smile. That did it! I ran outside, my eyes brimming with the tears I had been holding back for so long, and took deep gulps of the icy cold air. Without a coat, goose bumps prickling on my bare arms, I ran back to my apartment to get as far away from Jaffer as I possibly could. I reached the apartment building with funny looks from onlookers and rushed wildly up the dingy stairs. Putting both hands up against the door and leaning my burning face against the cool wood, I panted.
“Sacre bleu! I left my purse there. I don’t have the key!” I moaned. That proved to be the cherry on the cake.

Sitting on the grubby stairs encrusted with chewed up, grimy bubble gum, I felt something snap inside me. How could I stoop so low over somebody who didn’t care the slightest bit for me? How could I cry for somebody so seedy and cruel? I had to quit feeling sorry for myself. Three years being unhappy over him was a long time- three years gone right out of my life! All for a liar-a beautiful liar? I stood up as if I had gotten an electric shock.

Looking out the mullioned window facing the street, I realized that it had started to snow! Delicate snowflakes were gently floating down from the inky black sky, setting everything they touched, aglow. The streets of Paris looked like a Christmas card. Everything was covered in a layer of crisp, radiating snow and joyous holy wreaths hung on every shop’s door. I felt a kind of inner peace emerge inside me; I felt a flicker of hope. It was truly the oddest sensation. It didn’t hurt to think of Jaffer anymore.
“I think I can deal with that sleazeball now!” I told myself, gritting my teeth.
I mentally reminded myself to fill the glass vase on the window sill with fresh daisies the next morning and vowed to order half a dozen petit suisses tarts at ‘Dominique’s Cafe’ and get the full flavor out of them-out of life. Outside, the wind swirled and my world suddenly seemed to change in a flurry of snowflakes.