Tsunami

By Shivani Manghnani

/ Second Place, 2026 Plentitudes Prize in Fiction /

The date was February 27, Shahbaz’s birthday. I’d woken up early to slap together a card with red construction paper that must have been left over from the card Shabhaz had made for me on Valentine’s Day. To the front I glued an old photograph of us as kids squatting on the shores of at Hanauma Bay, half naked and browned, our hands buried in sand. The glue was still drying and the sky still dark when I composed my message. I carried the card to Shabhaz on a silver tray along with coffee and store-bought blueberry muffins. Being a man of restraint, he went for the card first. “You still have this?” he said, marveling at the photograph. “I love you for having this.” He complimented my prose; it was true, I expressed gratitude for his unwavering friendship and belief in me so beautifully. I planted a kiss on his forehead, withholding the fact that my mother had sent me the photo weeks before, suggesting I use it for this very purpose. 

As with everything there is a story behind this photo. As our parents told us years later, that day the Bay had been closed to the public due to a great white shark sighting. Shabhaz and I always say that our parents should have been suspicious of the beach’s uncharacteristic emptiness, the signs of closure: barren parking lot, lack of lifeguard. Instead they rejoiced in the open space. The two of us imagine the uncles spreading blankets under a prized cluster of palms; we see my mother and Roja Aunty unpacking the food and snorkels. Only when we returned home and heard the news on the radio did they realize how lucky we had all been. Shabhaz and I love this story of how we survived the day without tragedy as much as we love to recount it while vowing never to be so clueless.

It was while I grated carrots for Shabhaz’s birthday cake that news of the earthquake in Chile blared from the television, the details delivered through a bubbly CNN anchorwoman: magnitude of 7.1, death toll approaching 80. Two million homeless. Red dots clustered in one corner of the country’s map indicated the most devastated areas: Concepción, Valparaíso, Maule. Santiago--which is where (last I’d heard) Gil still lived. Before I imagined my old lover dead and buried by concrete, I saw him as I did in dreams: the lanky body drowning in a buttoned-up work shirt and oversized slacks, an outfit he would have insisted on wearing even if the temperature soared to 90. Perhaps he had been on his way to the café and smoking a hand rolled cigarette when the ground convulsed and broke open. Maybe like the innocent Sita, when Ram thought her unfaithful, Gil had nowhere to go but under. 

On the television flashed images which blurred when tears filled my eyes: homes piled up like matchsticks, trains thrown off tracks, colorful buildings and clock towers brought to their knees. Children wobbled through rubble, clutching one another. 

The anchorwoman called out the name of the colleague with whom she had lost contact. “Joseph, are you there?” she repeated three times, crackling snow filling the tiny square on the upper left corner of the screen where his face had been. Her blonde hair, styled stiffly in the shape of a bell concealed a corner of the map while her mouth moved furiously. At some point my knuckle caught the grater’s blade; it oozed a bit of blood. Gil hadn’t died in the quake. I was sure of it. Too often God spares the selfish ones. 

* * *

It had been three years since Gil and I met on a blazing December afternoon, in the house of Jorge Amado. The casa, now a museum cum library, was steps away from my pousada in the heart of the Pelourinho—the Portuguese word for whipping post; for centuries enslaved Africans were brutalized and sold in the area. In the 90s, 100 years after slavery was officially outlawed, thousands of the neighborhood’s disenfranchised Afro-Brazilians were driven out so that the government could “revitalize” the sites of torture with pastel paints, kiosks selling trinkets, creperies, and hostels like the one in which I stayed. Watching visitors point cameras like weapons at the colorfully dressed women selling acaraje, or the young boys playing capoeira in street rodas, I understood why locals called the Pelo “Salvador’s Disneyland.” I’d come to Bahia via Brasilia, where I’d spent a year teaching English, an opportunity I’d landed when the selected North American candidate had gotten pregnant and deterred by the fear of Zika. The school had contacted me, a very single and aimless high school remedial reading teacher who had failed out of her MFA program, through a national database of high school English teachers “willing to travel.” In 2008, with the collapsed economy, escaping the United States seemed my only option. 

Fortunately, my job at the posh international school in Brazil’s capital was relatively simple: to converse with students—sons and daughters of diplomats who made fun of my inexpensive and apparently unfashionable outfits—in English. While I gently corrected their grammar and pronunciation, the children asked me about India, where I hadn't been since I was five. On difficult days, when the rich kids sped past me in luxury cars while I waited at the bus stop and prepared for the hour-long ride home, I counted my blessings—after all, where had I been before? Living with slanted floors, ancient fixtures, and roommates who ate my food—a far cry from the luxurious apartment I inhabited in a desirable residential sector of Brasilia. And once my contract was up in December, I’d use my generous stipend to travel the country. 

I spent my first days in Salvador exploring the most renowned shorelines, returning my skin to its natural shade. I took a bus to the famous Praia do Forte, a lancha to Itaparica, where I stole fruit from Pitanga trees. I'd been terribly lonely in Brasilia, bemoaning the city’s unwalkable airplane grid, the glaring lack of nature, the heavy meals I endured at the rodizio, as if unlimited barbecue would cure creative paralysis. Eventually, a resurfacing ache for writing led me to the bookstore in the Pelo. I was ashamed that I hadn’t read a book in a year, hadn’t even stepped foot inside a library. At the casa I touched the stacks of polished and packaged words, opened up covers that caught my eye, flipped open stiff novels written in Portuguese and pretended to understand a few lines before closing them. I eventually picked up Dona Flor e sois dues maridos. That’s when Gil approached. In Portuguese he said something I translated to mean: “Are you married?” He pointed to the chunky wooden ring I wore on my ring finger. I replied too quickly that I was not. He smirked, perhaps a sign that he overlooked such commitments. “Until you opened your mouth, you could have passed as Bahian,” he said, his expression turning from teasing to genuine. I didn't believe him. His ambiguously wheat-colored skin and sandy hair made me wonder from where he hailed but I didn’t ask, satisfied to be in conversation with someone. I followed him through the tight rows to the poetry section.

The postcard I’d been holding slipped from my hands. According to its caption it depicted the Pelo’s most stunning examples of “Renaissance urban structuring.” I’d planned to send it to Shabhaz, who was obsessed with architecture and always regretted not pursuing his dream because, as he said: “Finance pays the bills.” Gil picked the postcard I'd selected for Shabhaz off the floor and returned it to the rack, cooing, “You don’t need this.”

In a trance-like state, I walked with Gil to the Mercado Modelo, “I know it all looks very pretty,” he said, opening his arms to the shops selling key chains, dolls, striking paintings. “But you’re literally quite standing in blood of Africans. Ask the guards, they hear things at night.” I said that this erasure of history, of torture, was criminal. After what he considered a sufficient amount of silence, Gil said that he was hungry. 

Over passion fruit caipirinhas and fried yucca, Gil dazzled me with images of “the locals,” as he referred to them, captured on his small digital camera. He was a photographer who split his time between Salvador and Chile, which he claimed was his birthplace. 

 “People trust you,” I said, fixated on one particular photograph of a boy—he couldn’t have been more than four—on horseback. The horse was up to its flanks in seawater. Later that night, dizzy with infatuation and the joy of being welcomed, I would craft an email to friends that would say something like “the drumbeats entered my bloodstream as we danced.” Gil clutched me on the dancefloor with the same intensity he listened to me detail my thesis project: Sita’s Revenge, a feminist superhero story. “There is no such thing as rejection,” he had said, upon hearing the fate of my failed of my book. “Only redirection.” I could tell by the way Gil moved on the dance floor, by the way he kissed me so boldly, asking nothing in return, that he was in the process of steering me towards transformation, into someone stronger and assured. Someone he could leave without guilt. 

* * *

I poured the cake batter into the blender, awaiting the sound of violently moving blades. I’d abandoned my original intention of making carrot halwa, Shabhaz’s favorite dessert, to finally put the bundt pan he bought me to use. Shabhaz had a habit of buying me horribly overpriced gifts, which were always upgrades of items I already owned: headphones, snowshoes, a watch. He'd forced me to part with my own rusty, square cake pan when I moved in with him. “Oh no no no,” he had said, shaking his head at the grease stains before tossing it, not knowing the real reason I’d clung to the shabby item. I caressed the grooves of this bundt pan’s superior metal, my fingers warming the hardened butter until it coated his shiny purchase evenly.

Gil had first prepared bolo de cenoura for me on a night I’d roused him from sleep. I’d destroyed three pages of writing. Naked in his kitchen in the dead of night Gil was frantic, keenly aware of my ravenous hunger and fearing my crankiness. He measured hastily, scattering flour so that weeks later we’d find traces of it on the soles of our feet. His vigorous carrot peeling set off a cascade of translucent skins. While the bolo baked, I cried in his arms about my lack of inspiration, of vision. “You will make art as you once did, when you were a child. With joyful abandon!” 

After it cooled, the cake stuck to the old, rusted pan, refusing to unmold. With two mismatched forks, we dug into the cake like hogs at the trough. Gil fed me with his hands, visibly pleased by my grateful moans. Crumbs fell across my lap, stuck themselves in the strands of my hair. “This is how you should be with your art!” he had shouted. “Wild! Messy!” Greedy, I thought.

I had never been much of a baker. But lately, the right pantry ingredients could transform me into Betty Crocker, especially on those nights I couldn’t sleep, which were becoming more and more frequent. Shahbaz says it’s because the apartment, with its high ceilings and bay windows that look out onto Prospect Park, is too quiet for me. Between two and four is when I tend to extract myself from his tight embrace. I read somewhere that these are the “witching hours,” when the soul delivers pressing messages, forcing the dreamer to examine her place in the universe. 

Shabhaz never wakes when I leave him to shuffle about the kitchen, but in the morning when he finds my smattering of sufficiently cooled offerings—scones, muffins, and once, a very sunken soufflé, he makes his coffee without a word. I whisper good morning but don’t dare touch him. Instead, I wash the dough-covered pans and sticky bowls while Shabhaz washes down his bitterness, still silent and groggy as he dunks my moist creations, those sweet pieces of proof that I deserted him in the night, into coffee as strong and black as death. 

* * *

The call came after the cake was in the oven. 

“Princesa?” said the voice. “Está bien, princesa?” The chocolate I'd been licking off the mixing spoon turned bitter on my tongue. It was Gil. “Please excuse me,” he said, then loose a stream of Spanish: la noticia…el terremoto…ola gigante…el pacífico en dirección a Hawai’i. I thought this the wrong time to ask him to please speak English, which he once compared to swallowing ground cinnamon. After all, his city had just been ravaged. And then I understood. A tsunami. On the television, a different newscaster announced that the quake in Chile had been followed by 76 aftershocks, a 6.1-magnitude quake in Argentina, tremors in Peru, and the birth of a tsunami heading straight for Hawai’i, where my mother lived alone. I imagined her tiny home on the southeast shore of O’ahu swept away. She would drown--dying without ever knowing the kind of love I shared with Gil or Shahbaz. I used the landline to call her, suddenly grateful that Shahbaz hadn’t relinquished it. Busy. I sunk into the plush couch. Gil’s faraway voice continued to sound through the speaker of my cell. I put him on hold to call home, unable to get through. The bubbly meteorologist flung her laser pointer over the simulated, undulating wall of electric blue and claimed that if the wave reached its full potential, it would “submerge” all eight Hawaiian Islands. I imagined the invisible wave traveling rapidly from Gil’s hemisphere to mine, gathering new purpose and shape the farther it was flung from home, like immigrants or memories, to wipe out everything good that preceded it. I clicked over to Gil, taking in a flurry of Spanish. 

We had never spoken of them: the wife, the child I discovered on a maniacal, late night Internet search when I returned to New York; the life he had hid from me those six months we feasted on childish indulgences. I had found the picture of Gil and his family posted on a blog for a film festival in Santiago. There was no caption, but I didn’t need one. Gil’s wife wore a red dress with a plunging neckline and held a baby wrapped in lacy cloth the way one does an expensive accessory. Her eyes were piercing, her fingers slender. Gil wore a suit and had shorn his curls. I tried to place Gil among the images that appeared now on the television: highways snapped in half, trees like scattered toothpicks in the streets. If he were still the man who’d left me, he would not have inserted himself among the brave, digging their countrymen out of the rubble. Gil would have been standing to the side, photographing it all. 

If only he could see me now, I thought—this apartment, this kitchen! Three of Gil’s dingy beachside studios could fit in this two and half bedroom pre-war that Shahbaz had owned by the time he was 31, with no help from his parents. There were none of Gil’s squawking roosters, no colorful leggy insects prancing around the bathroom, no sand trapped in the floorboards, no Gil pulling me out of bed on a full-moon night to skinny dip alongside some endangered species of turtle in Baía de todos os Santos. 

Gil asked now if I was married. “I always pictured you soltera," he said, when I didn't answer, unable to scream into the phone like those glamorous women in telenovelas that someone loved me. Deeply. Shahbaz had proposed two months ago while we were driving to a famed farm-to-table restaurant upstate. I’d teased him for his enthusiasm for posh, well-reviewed establishments. He said that despite my terrible attitude, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I was silent. Finally, he whispered, “Seriously. Let’s get hitched.” And then, after more silence: “You don’t have to answer now.” 

Gil cleared his throat. “You were so brava, Princesa,” he lamented, his voice distant now, like he was reading from the note cards he used to tack to his studio wall to arrange his video narratives in various ways, with different endings (Frame 1: Palm tree bending backward in a rainstorm. Frame 2: Giant mattress floating out to sea.). “Those stories you wrote! So free!"

Where was freedom those mornings in Salvador when I woke up alone, multiplying embryonic cells tumbling inside of me, wrought with guilt because deep down I wished the mass would shrivel and leave my body peacefully? Misery tangled within me that even the sun’s rays felt like a cold iron slap. How “free” could I be in those restaurants where I couldn’t swallow more than café, or in pousadas where I slept on bunk beds alongside Israeli girls with dreadlocks, sacrificing my limbs to mosquitoes I feared would warp the life inside of me? Wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed for days. Standing on the shores of Morro de Sao Paulo, refusing to dip a toe in the sapphire water, losing my wallet on a bustling street in Lencóis, where I was blind to the street children asking me to buy them caramel candies and peanuts, just as I was deaf to the waterfalls. It’s a miracle I didn’t fling myself from the top of Morro do Pai Ignácio after nearly fainting from lack of food on the treacherous climb up. “Free?” I spat, remembering when the two of us hopped an unmarked lancha at the dock outside the Mercado Modelo just to see where it went. Gil was the only one who was “free,” failing to notice or perhaps acknowledge how five minutes into the ride I began vomiting wispy arcs over the rail—the first indication that our carelessness had real consequences. While Gil chatted up a group of Argentinian tourists, a young woman gave me her handkerchief and a knowing look. We wound up in Baiacu, a fishing village. Gil would befriend the entire community, promising to come back soon to shoot a documentary about the town’s history, which he found so fascinating. Of course, he never did return.

I was exhausted, like I’d been swimming against the current for hours. My mother might be trying to call, and soon Shahbaz would be home, and there was still the icing to prepare. “I have to go,” I said, which were Gil’s last words to me, all those years ago. That, and an hasta luego! which catapulted like a stone out the window of the dusty taxi that disappeared him. 

“Princessa,” he said. I dropped the phone and turned to the cake. Around the edges, the bolo was singed, bubbling like a bad sunburn. 

* * *

Minutes later Shahbaz called from the office to say he heard about the tsunami, and to reassure me that these disasters were always hyped. I tried hard to agree, to believe that like love, or people’s potentials, the tsunami would never reach its full force. I began to cry. “Calm down,” Shahbaz whispered. “I’m in a meeting.”

“I’m okay. Don’t worry,” I managed, just as he hung up. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead. Why had I not insisted hard enough that my mother ignore my father’s wishes that she never learn to swim? Why had I not taught her? I dumped a stick of chilled butter into the mixing bowl and watched it break apart. I dropped squares of chocolate into a saucepan. The frosting would help cover whatever damage I’d wrought. I’d even bought a tube of green icing so that I could write Happy Birthday Shahbaz! across the top, along with a package of heart-shaped sprinkles which would scatter over the surface like rose petals on our marital bed. I watched more television. In Hawai’i, those who lived close to the shore were evacuating their homes, while tourists were pulling out lawn chairs and watching the horizon like it was the season finale of Lost.

* * *

Two years ago, when I returned from Salvador in the dead of winter, homeless and jobless, it was Shahbaz who offered me the spare room in his apartment, because he’d done the wise thing and become a banker after college. I still remember how he helped unpack my suitcases and arranged my flimsy Brazilian clothes next to his winter coats in sturdy, oak closets. How he made space for each little memento I insisted on saving: bus tickets, receipts, a small empty bottle of cachaça I’d shared with Gil on a full moon night. How he held my hands when I told him I’d failed out of my writing program, how he walked me to job interviews at publishing companies on 5th Avenue and said I could be whatever I wanted in life. “You could go to law school,” he once coaxed, escorting me to a temp agency. “Sky’s the limit.” I agreed with his sound suggestions, my feet pinching in the leather pumps that encased my tanned, toughened feet, somewhat convinced that I could learn and perhaps master Shabhaz’s kind of life.

Even today Shabhaz never asks if I feel the urge the write, believing it will open wounds. 

Across the cake now I’d written the last word, my soon-to-be fiancé’s name, and marked it with an exclamation point. The candied hearts fell like confetti at a parade for a new regime. I slid the cake into the fridge and when the shrill of the telephone shattered the silence, I leapt to answer it, but it was only my boyfriend, telling me he would be home soon.

* * *

Shahbaz found me slumped on the couch with my apron on, clutching the remote in a haze of weed smoke. Like a good boyfriend Shahbaz said nothing. He whipped out his Blackberry and speed-dialed my mother. “Must have been your crappy flip phone,” he said when she finally picked up. She was at Long’s, stocking up on propane and batteries while the rest of the neighborhood cleared the shelves of rice, beer, and spam. Her voice was playful as she scolded Shahbaz for worrying about her on his birthday, and serious when he handed the phone back to me. “You’re lucky you have someone,” she said. In a hushed voice she told me she’d just spotted my father and his new wife filling a basket with white wine and shortbread cookies. “Some people have no shame, treating disasters like holidays,” she joked. I pictured my father scrambling about his house, which was once our house, trying to save his fancy electronics from the rising murky water, all his expensive silk pillows and toupees drowning in mud. I asked if she had to evacuate; she claimed there was no need. Having lived through India’s partition and marriage to a man who punctuated his points by tossing heavy glass items at her, I suppose the ocean was no threat.

After we hung up, I wanted to have sex but Shabhaz said he had to shower. When he came out smelling like baby powder and Acqua di Gio, I brought out the bolo, lit with 35 candles, which he blew out in one, sure breath. Feeding him the first bite, like I would do on our wedding day, I studied his face for hints of disapproval. But my boyfriend made all the right sounds, licked chocolate frosting from my fingers and proclaimed that my bolo de cenoura was the best cake on the planet. Over and over, he stabbed the cake with a fork until he devoured half of it, right there while he was still in his bath towel, even though we had dinner reservations at Blue Ribbon Sushi.

At the restaurant I was so quiet that Shahbaz asked if I was ok three times. “I’m fine,” I insisted. By that time the tsunami warning for Hawai’i had been lifted. Yes, it had washed upon the shores of O’ahu, the Big Island, and Kaua’i at whopping heights of 1 foot, 1.5 feet, and 2 feet, respectively. We were all safe, but now the wave was headed for Japan. Who knew what it would do there. Some of the sushi chefs seemed nervous, observed Shahbaz. “They should be more like us Hawaiians,” he laughed, because right before we left for dinner we’d checked in on his parents, who were on their balcony, having beers, disappointed when they realized the tsunami, like a temperamental celebrity, would not be making an appearance.

“We’re not Hawaiian,” I said. “No one would even call us ‘local.’” 

“Whatever the hell that means,” Shahbaz said. “You spend too much time worrying about your right to be places.”

“You should talk,” I said, reminding Shahbaz that he wouldn’t even enter a place unless he’d done his research and figured out the dress code. Then I reminded myself what day it was and kept my mouth shut. I took a long swig of sake and gave him his present, two tickets to see Rush play at Jones Beach. Under the table he squeezed my hand because I’d lost my publishing job for stealing books and was dead broke again. "You really shouldn't have."

“Something’s wrong,” Shahbaz pressed when I wouldn’t touch my tuna tartar. “I wish you would tell me.” To show him I was fine I ate heartily and agreed to the green tea ice cream for dessert. When the waitress brought the check, Shahbaz paid. He left a 25% tip. The dinner crowd had dwindled. Each time the door swung open, a gust of chilly air swept over us. Across the smooth wood table, Shahbaz reached for my hand. He smiled. I think he said something about taking a trip to the Amazon. I couldn’t be sure because his voice was drowned out by the noise from the kitchen behind me, the clatter of plates, men shouting. Maybe it was all that sake, but suddenly I was too sad to meet his gaze, too heavy with guilt at how my heart raced when I’d spoken to Gil, in Shabhaz’s house, which was now our house. 

I stuck my head under the table as though searching for something I’d dropped—an earring, a knife—but there were only my feet, safe and warm in sturdy, sheepskin lined boots I’d protested against owning until Shahbaz, who’d spent more winters here than I had, brought them home for me one snowy evening and insisted I wear nothing else. He was right, of course. I could safely jump into icy puddles and feel nothing in these shoes. Jog on slick, frozen over pavements with a firm grip. In these shoes, I was a real-life superhero. In front of me was a good good man. I lifted my head to meet his and said that I was ready. “To be with you.” Shabhaz’s eyes widened. Jostling my hand in his like I was confirming an agreement, I said, “Let’s get hitched.” He leapt up and pulled out my chair. On crowded sidewalks we dodged strollers and lost ourselves among other pretty couples in pressed jeans and sturdy winter coats. It was thrilling. On my shoulder his hand felt warmer than any sea I’d bathed in. As soon as we walked through the door and donned our cashmere pajamas, Shahbaz found the ring in his dresser and slipped the cool metal onto my finger. Above the drying wound on my knuckle, the black Tahitian pearl shone. I led him to the kitchen where I fed him more cake, smearing frosting across his face again, just like I’d do on our wedding day. I think I experienced happiness. We called my mother and she burst into tears. Things were as they should be. 

* * *

I woke up just before midnight. The night was so still I could hear the snowflakes. It was so quiet I could hear the stoplights on 8th Avenue change. On my neck, Shahbaz’s breath stuck like a damp towel. I extracted myself from his embrace and crept to the living room. I pressed my palms into the cool kitchen counter, next to the cake’s remains. Orange crumbs were scattered across the granite; a smear of frosting resembled a child’s finger paint. Though I wasn't hungry, I cut myself a generous piece of cake. I managed only a few chews before I had to spit it out. It was disgusting, what I imagined wet charcoal tasted like. Remembering Shabhaz's enthusiasm for it, I began to flit around the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards and lifting utensils and ingredients out like a crane. 

This time, I was focused. I stirred lovingly, beat the eggs carefully, mixed until the batter was perfectly smooth. I took my time. The sun forced itself through the crack in our shade just as I applied the last stiff coat of frosting. And even though it wasn’t my fiancé’s birthday anymore, even though the tsunami had already reached Japan, the largest wave rising four feet tall, I wrote HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAHBAZ! again, in thick, green frosting. On our counter the cake sparkled like a jewel.

I tiptoed back to my bedroom and refolded myself in my fiancé’s embrace, as I would blueberries into batter. On his face he wore a soft smile. Tomorrow, I would empty my cedar-scented storage boxes of skimpy bikinis and ripped shorts and one shouldered blouses. 

I slept hard and deep and noiseless, a sleep as thick as molten lava. It swallowed everything in its path, blanketing memories, incinerating whole trees. I dreamt of a child we would have together. I prayed she would be a girl, so that my husband could love and protect her fiercely.