Hijabistan

by Sabyn Javeri

  I sense the shopkeeper’s gaze on me and I’m reminded that there are also those of us who have forgotten their roots and committed the unforgivable sin of assimilation. For them, they have only contempt.

  In this old man’s eyes, I glimpse that unabashed pride in prejudice. I break away from his vacant gaze and cross the street. He will always be a stranger at home.

  ‘Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I’ll come up; if not, I’ll stay down here till I’m somebody else.’

  My biryani is giving off a strong smell and I brace myself for the wrinkling of noses and shirking away that would follow me on the journey home. People would vacate the seat next to me on the Tube, move away from me at the bus stop, and glance suspiciously at the bag in my hand when I emerge from the underground. But before I leave the smells and colours of my childhood behind for the odourless grey landscape of my present, there is one more thing I have to do.

  Mangoes. The reason I keep coming back to Tooting.

  And here is a whole stage of mangoes, delicately placed at right angles to make a giant pyramid. ‘Produce of Pakistan’, declares a sign proudly placed on top. For a second, I feel a sliver of pride for belonging to a land that produces a thing of such joy. But before I can ponder more, a bony man pushes past me to ask the shopkeeper something. It is late September and, from his thin attire and Peshawari sandals, I can tell he is a new arrival: probably on a visit visa that will be stretched to three years in hiding. Or maybe he’ll claim asylum, I think, looking at his needy eyes and pinched face. The papers have been full of him and his kind.

  I take in his salty grey features, unaware as yet of the dark bitterness of the rat-infested basements that await him at the takeaway kitchens, once his money runs out.

  In my mind, I map out his future. ‘Three years,’ I say to myself. It wouldn’t take him more than three years to realize the streets here are not paved with gold. And then what will he do? There is no going back empty handed from this land.

  As I wait for them to finish swapping scores, I think about how, when the bitterness sets in, the man will become vulnerable to the Brotherhood. Religion will be the only solace. The eventual fundamentalist, I think. Aloud, I say, ‘A box of ten, and please hurry.’

  The man, noticing me behind him, moves to one side.

  ‘Ahh!’ says the shopkeeper, weighing the mangoes on his ancient scale. ‘Mangoes and cricket are two things that bring everybody together.’

  ‘Only money brings people together,’ says the hungry- looking man. His eyes cut across to me and he mumbles, ‘You can get away with whatever you want when you’ve got money.’

  ‘That is true,’ agrees the owner. Like an oversized Buddha, he sits cross-legged on a stool. Surrounded by flies and fruit, he looks as if he belongs in some tropical jungle instead of this forgotten SW17 ghetto that doesn’t even have the novelty value of a China Town or the East End.

  His stubby fingers deftly pack the mangoes with straw and strips of paper inside a cardboard box while he talks without once looking up. ‘When you have pounds in your pocket, a flat in Knightsbridge, no one will call you a Paki. No, jee, no! They will call you “sir”. Good to have you with us, sir!’

  His large belly jiggles as he laughs. Alone.

  Slapping down a ten-pound note, I take the packet and make my way back to the Tube station. I’ve had enough of Tooting for one day.

  The box of mangoes tucked firmly under one arm and clutching the bag of biryani, my paperback and a large glossy magazine in the other, I step into the Tube heading north. Tooting disappears into a haze of darkness.

  In the train, I gaze at the rainbow of faces around me. A shade darker here. A shade lighter there. Here in London, where it seems that every person is half-white, half-black, half-Indian, half-Southall and half-Chelsea, colour seems only skin deep.

  Yet, we wear our pasts close to our skin.

  The Tube rushes through the darkness. I lean back in my seat and flip through the magazine. Glancing back at me from the glossy pages are sleek, honey-skinned women with poker-straight black hair. They wear Asian clothes tailored to resemble western attire. One model wears a sari with a halter-neck top, while the other has on a tight-fitted blouse and straight pants. A scarf is loosely draped around her head. The caption says, ‘Hybrid’.

  I smile and think: Mongrel.

  The Tube grinds to a stop and I step out of the sliding doors. But on the escalator going up towards the light, I can still feel Tooting on my skin. And it’s not just the mangoes and biryani that make me feel this way.

  Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her.

  I’m being jostled along with the rush-hour crowd towards the ticket ends. The jabs are sharp, the cries of ‘excuse me’, loud and impatient. I feel unwanted.

  Was I longing for home?

  ‘I am home,’ I remind myself, but a voice persists: Then why do you go looking for the smells and tastes you left behind?

  I step out into the cool night air and join the sea of commuters walking down Kings Road. The air here is different, almost scented. But still bleak. Prejudice, albeit of a different kind, still hangs in the air. I look around me and then at me in the glass of the million-dollar designer shop windows I pass.

  I stop walking and look up. The sky is the same as back home, but something feels different.

  London is not my city and never will be.

  Alone in the crowd, I watch faces, perfectly still and expressionless, hands carrying Blackberries and Burberry, restless fingers typing away.

  Because London is not even a city.

  As people drift past me, I think, like a patchwork quilt, it is a series of countries within a city, bursting at the seams and held together by the sheer will of its people. Almost as if Tooting were a country with its invisible boundaries that contain the immigrant breeds, Chelsea is another such realm. It is a tight circle with limited access to those who could afford it. To live here, you have to be born into it or work very hard to get in. And even then, you can only look and not touch. You will always be the outsider.

  By you, I mean me.

  Later, as I board the Number 22 bus, a man in blue glances suspiciously at the packet in my hand and then at the cardboard box containing mangoes which takes up half the space on my seat. Ignoring the distrust in his light eyes, I focus instead on my book. He sniffs the air and pinches his nose.

  I smell foreign and unfamiliar, even to myself.

  Hunching my shoulders, I slouch deeper into my seat. The little booklet in my breast pocket is tight on my heart, but even its smooth caress is unable to soothe the unease I feel in that moment.

  A boy boards the bus and sits down next to me in the tight space. He is dark enough to be black but light enough to be something else. He wears a white T-shirt with a black logo: Alien Nation.

  ‘Alienation,’ I read quickly.

  Suddenly, I feel as if everything is illuminated. I find myself laughing. ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ I say to the boy, who moves away to another seat.

  I belong at neither end of this razor-edged city, yet I linger on like the stubborn smell of drying water after a storm. I think back to the icy cool faces of the boys in Tooting. ‘Sister,’ the boy had said to me. He saw me as one of them. I wonder if the police car that was parked opposite the road, silently witnessing the boys’ petition, saw me as one of them too. I think back to the shopkeeper who thought I was a shameless imposter and then I see the man on the bus sniffing the air.

  I close my eyes and think this is where I’ll be when I open them again. At this very same spot from which there is no going back, but no way forward either. I no longer belong in a world wrecked by the fury of those who feel persecuted, nor do I fit in this n
ew world, which has opened its doors to me but is indifferent to my existence.

  What have I become?

  ‘I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’

  The bus moves slowly in the gathering darkness, steady and serene, like the eye of a storm in the middle of great chaos. The lights dim at the High Street and I look out at the fishmonger who’s just closing shop. I wonder how far the fish have travelled to be sold here. The fish stare back, their eyes cold, their mouths frozen in a surprised ‘O’.

  The bus halts at World’s End estate and people at the back of the bus get off. There is a smattering of ‘Oyes’ and ‘Innits’, and boys with hoods and girls with tightly pulled-back hair and silver loops for earrings board the bus. A hooded figure with sallow skin and hollow eyes runs past me and up the stairs.

  The driver hollers, ‘You, boy!’

  Nobody moves. He shouts again in a heavy Nigerian accent, ‘Da bus not moving till I see yor teecket.’

  We wait patiently till the boy comes down and mouthing a Fuck off, Paki at the driver, jumps off. A young Bangladeshi mother huddles close to her three children. A Chinese man closes his eyes. He reminds me of a cat.

  The bus moves.

  I look at the people around me. They remind me of the tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that come together but never form a picture. People paused in a frame, as if waiting for someone to unclick them.

  Hybrids or freaks?

  The bus driver brakes roughly and a dog barks at me through the frosty glass pane.

  ‘We come and go,’ I whisper to myself and to the dog outside. Somewhere in the dark, a busker is strumming a guitar and a woman is singing.

  ‘I’m like a bird … I don’t know where my home is…’

  ‘Where my home is …’ I hum along.

  I look out and notice the sky is lit up with stars, though it is not yet night. Amidst the twinkling of stars, a wane sun peers out from layers of thick white clouds.

  Only in London can the sun and moon shine together.

  I close my eyes and listen.

  Only in London.

  So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality.

  (Excerpts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland)

  * * *

  First published in London Magazine, 2008.

  The Good Wife

  The girl decides to wear the hijab against the will of her husband. She believes the hijab represents modesty, peace and submission to Allah. It keeps her grounded. It protects her, defines her. She cannot understand why he would not want her to. But he is no longer there to resist it. And these days she is free to do as she pleases. No one to stop her, no one to question her. Remind her. And no one to love her. But the good woman is brave. Courageous. These days, she has trained herself to wake up to precise images of normality. She wakes up, has breakfast, cleans the house, then spends the rest of the day on a prayer mat in her front room. She does not step out any more. To do so would be to give space to the horror outside.

  Now, as the grey clouds gather on this heavy and pregnant London day, she sits all alone. Cloaked in midnight black, she browses through the leaves of an old journal and rummages through snapshots of the past, trying to find the answers to questions she doesn’t understand. Each time, the sensation of his presence softens, but for now, she does not let him out of her head. She remembers him in seasons.

  WINTER

  That day, snow covered the city like a giant white blanket…

  He came home to find her sitting on her prayer mat, chanting rhythmically, rocking back and forth, her eyes half closed and half open, as if in ecstasy. Her lips parted, releasing a few soundless syllables and then, running her palms over her face, she opened her eyes as if awakening from a deep dream. He sat down in front of her.

  ‘When did you get back home?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve been here for ages,’ he said, lying down on her prayer mat. Her hand rose to her mouth as she said, ‘Don’t lie down here.’ But he just smiled.

  ‘It’s so cold outside,’ he said as he traced patterns on her cheek.

  ‘Don’t,’ she whispered again, as if admonishing a naughty child. ‘Get up,’ she said.

  And he got up, only to hug her tight.

  ‘I haven’t completed my prayers yet,’ she protested.

  ‘Your prayers can wait.’

  ‘But the Almighty can’t,’ she replied.

  ‘He doesn’t have a choice,’ he said and kissed her mouth.

  STILL WINTER

  A grey, watery, wintry day cascading gently into visions of Venus and Aramis measuring the price of hubris. ‘Love,’ says Venus, ‘begins through discovery…’

  The girl pours in the milk and then follows it with tea.

  ‘The sign of an optimist,’ muses the husband, who likes to prepare tea the other way around. Very lovingly, she stirs in the sugar, then hands it to him with such tenderness that a sigh escapes from the sparrow outside their window. The smell of buttered toast fills the air along with the inimitable aroma of home brew. Following her around the kitchen with his eyes, he says, ‘I was thinking we should go out this weekend. See London proper.’

  She smiles and he feels his heart contracting.

  ‘You’ve been here, what, three months now? And

  I haven’t really taken you out anywhere. Let me make it up to you today.’

  ‘I’m ready when you are,’ she says, and begins to reach for her headscarf.

  He stiffens. ‘You don’t have to wear that if you don’t want to,’ he tries to sound casual but his voice is strained.

  Her brow furrows in confusion. ‘But I like wearing my hijab.’

  ‘Yes, but I mean there is no obligation. This is London, you know. No one even has the time to look at one another.’

  She looks up at him, her eyes puzzled. ‘But,’ she says, ‘I don’t wear this for anyone. I’m not hiding from anyone or anything.’

  ‘Really? You mean that?’ He is incredulous, for the man has spent a lifetime trying to blend in with his surroundings, his brown skin and Muslim name never allowing him the freedom to do so.

  He pauses before he says, ‘You … you don’t feel odd walking through the streets of London with people looking at you suspiciously? Like you’re carrying a ton of explosives under your clothes?’

  The woman laughs. Then realizing that he is not joking, she puts her teacup down and looks him in the eye.

  ‘Look, husband, it’s very simple, really. If people are going to measure all five fingers as equal, then that’s their short-sightedness. I wear the hijab for myself, for my Allah. And I would not feel complete without it. It is second skin to me.’

  There is a finality to her words and he decides not to say anything more for the moment. She too is silent, but her eyes speak. They are both on tender ground. It is one of those moments in a marriage when intimacy reaches unmanned peaks and couples are forced to confront the amount of their inner selves they wish to reveal to the other. The struggle begins between ego and desire. As their emotions fight it out in between the breakfast things, empty cups and half-eaten toasts, the husband reaches out and touches her chin. Desire enjoys a rare victory.

  She fiddles with the lace edges of her scarf, tugging it further down her forehead.

  He traces a finger around her cheekbones and says, ‘All I’m saying, beautiful, is that you don’t have to. I am not a typical Pakistani husband. I grew up here, in south London. I don’t care if you bare your head or your legs or your belly. I’m not one of those men who get jealous every time another man looks at their wife.’

  Again, she tugs the hijab back into place and says softly, ‘But I care.’

  He looks unconvinced
. She presses further. ‘Listen to me, husband. Please. My hijab is my identity. My calling card. I know who I am, where I come from and where my place is in the world. I know that sometimes it may make you feel uncomfortable with the way people view me suspiciously. No, no, don’t deny it. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that people move away from me at the bus stop or change their seat when I sit down next to them. And I know you don’t like women who wear the full veil. I’ve heard you call them blackbirds and crows and ninjas and all sorts.’

  The woman looks so earnest that he has no choice but to listen as she says, ’Look, the only reason I socialize with them is because hardly anyone else in this neighbourhood talks to me. They either pity me as the poor repressed woman or fear me as a terrorist.’

  The husband looks down at his feet, a surge of colour deepening the back of his neck. He seems unsettled by her sudden, unexpected outburst.

  The woman stops speaking. She comes closer. Cupping his face in her palms, she tries to appeal to something deep inside him that she hopes is dormant and not dead. ‘Listen, all this only strengthens my belief in my faith. You know that no one forced me. I chose

  to veil.’

  He takes her hand in his own and draws her close. Pressing her hips into his body, he whispers, ‘And I want to know why someone so beautiful wants to hide herself from the rest of the world.’

  ‘Because Allah told me to.’ She pushes his hand away and reaches out for a copy of the Quran. ‘See here, it says so in Surah Nur, “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty … that they should draw their veils and not display

  their beauty.”’

  He shakes his head, ‘Oh, come on.’ He begins to walk away, but she grabs his hand.

  ‘Don’t walk away from me.’

  He stops.

  She walks around him and turns his face towards her own. ‘Please try to understand,’ she pleads. ‘All through our wedding, my move to this new country, it is religion that has been my anchor. My faith keeps me grounded.’