She got into the car, and he started the engine, leaned over and kissed her on the lips, then spoke again into the mobile against his ear. “Yeah, brother, I’ll be there. Twenty minutes max—you can depend on me, man.”
I hope I can too. The thought floated into her mind as they moved into the traffic, and would not leave until she had smoothed her eyebrows in the visor mirror.
Kareem sped down unknown side roads and up hidden back lanes on the way to Shilpi’s house. “It’ll be a busy night, Princess,” he said.
“Don’t forget to do it tonight, yaah.”
“Eh?”
“You’re going to speak to Auntie and Uncle. About us.”
“Princess, how could I forget, yeah?”
“You’ll text me tonight, when you’ve done it?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Kareem dropped her a block from Shilpi’s house, behind a parked van. She disembarked swiftly, anxious to avoid the sharp eyes of aunties or small children, and didn’t turn to look as Kareem accelerated past her. This couldn’t go on: they were going to be seen by someone soon. She unlooped the veil from around her neck, covered her head with it, crossed the front and threw the ends over her shoulders. Please God, don’t let getting caught be necessary to get him over the line.
The last thing she wanted was some hole-in-the-corner wedding, all over in five minutes, with no visits and everyone talking about the funchait that had to be called to make Kareem marry that slut Shunduri, his girlfriend. And everyone watching her stomach and counting the months since she’d married. Her pace quickened, and she pulled the veil further forward over her hairline. She hated being late.
A quick knock on the door of the little two-up, two-down council house, and then the smiles and inquisitive eyes of Shilpi’s mother and grandmother and some aunties. Devdas was on the TV; the scene where Madhuri Dixit, as the beautiful prostitute, acknowledges her love for the hero, whom she can never marry because of what she is. The sound was turned up so loud that it vibrated painfully in Shunduri’s ears, and the aunties were all chewing paan and talking over it about some local scandal, oblivious to the tragedy unfolding in front of them. They were all headscarved up as well now, except for the grandmother, Shilpi’s daddu, so it looked as if Shilpi’s newly acquired ninja style was having a bit of an effect all round.
They waved her upstairs, and she gave her respects and left the room, but as she turned back into the hallway, she heard the name Guri. She stopped with one hand on the banister, her ears straining. Were they talking about her and Kareem already? There was a burst of conversation, but she could make out nothing further. Were they already discovered?
But then one woman’s voice rose above the rest, speaking with the authority of an auntie who felt she had seen everything, as they always did. “Well, of course, it is only natural, with Mrs. Guri doing so much matchmaking and Mr. Guri a businessman that has done so well, that his opinion be asked about the marriage and the dowries.”
Shunduri crept down a few steps to listen better, a sudden hope rising in her breast.
Shilpi’s mother’s voice cut in then, triumphant. “Mrs. Guri was not needed for my girl. Shilpi, when her studies were finished, she came to me and told me she was ready. Twenty-two: just right.”
“Twenty-two,” Daddu’s voice rose querulously. “That is a very good age to be married. That is not too young. I was thirteen when I married, and fifteen when I had you.”
“Yes, Daddu. Would you like more paan?”
“Nah, nah. They should do as their parents did, marry who their parents find for them, none of this quarrelling and delaying.”
“But Daddu,” said a younger, more tentative voice, “you know that for these modern Desi boys and girls, marriage is different for them now, with living apart, and jobs. You cannot just say they are a good family, have a good reputation, and finish it there.”
“Love-match, is that what you say?”
“Nah, nah, nah, it is not just that. I don’t say for love-match, Daddu, I don’t. These girls that are brought over, they are not always looked after. We all know that. The family just wants the dowry, and a slave in the kitchen.”
There was a pause, then bossy auntie responded. “Or she is not brought over at all. What does that do to a family? Look at Kareem Guri, you know, the boy that Mr. Guri brought over years ago for his restaurant. I was telling you about this before. He married a girl in Bangladesh last year that the Guris betrothed him to long-time ago, and filled in all the forms for the visa like Mohammed Guri wanted but then his son-in-law Ahmed told me that Kareem had said to Immigration he had been forced into it, and they said to him, don’t worry, we will never grant her the visa and then in a few years, when your family has accepted the situation, you can divorce her, you know? And marry who you like.”
A quiet aaah came out of Shunduri’s throat, and she sank down to sit on the stairs, her hands flying up to cover her face, then dropping to make fists on the carpeted step where she sat. She could not bear to listen, or move.
“That Ahmed, always such a gossip. That should have stayed in the family. He could make much trouble, talking like that.”
“The Guris kept that very quiet.”
“I heard the Guris cancelled their trip home two months ago because they didn’t want to run into the girl’s family, in the marketplace.”
Daddu’s voice was audible then, rich with disapproval. “That is a bad, bad thing. That girl’s village, that girl’s family, will not forget. There will be a feud.”
There was tsking and chewing, and bossy auntie spoke again. “Ah, men, they cause us a world of sorrow. And those immigration-wallahs, they have no idea about why men do these things, for the dowry, and that poor girl is left in her village unable to marry, for who would want her, and her family shamed and in debt.”
Shilpi’s mother recommenced the story, as if hastening to finish. “They’re saying, yeah, that the dowry money all went to Kareem’s pocket, and the Guris, thinking they are so clever, saw none of it. And now they have been left with nothing but a bad reputation in Sylhet province for matchmaking. A good thing for them that both their daughters are already married.”
“Help me up. My shawl. My glasses. Children—they are all the same,” said Daddu.
Shunduri shot to her feet, trembling, then ran up the stairs. As she reached the landing, she looked down at the yellowish-white head of Shilpi’s daddu, an auntie on either side of her, being walked with every appearance of reluctance, along the hallway to the downstairs toilet. The two aunties were still talking, about how the girl in Bangladesh was only fifteen, sixteen, with her parents so in favor of the visa, not thinking of what could go wrong.
Shunduri banged the knuckles of her clenched fists together. All this time, Kareem a married man. No one had told her, no one had said a word. All his talk of love, and plans for the future.
How stupid she was to have fallen for his words. To have become the foolish girl that everyone else jokes about, that mothers hold up as a warning to their daughters. Be careful, or you could end up like Shunduri.
She pushed on the door to Shilpi’s bedroom, feeling lightheaded, as if she were floating between the two worlds: of the aunties and tradition and arranged marriages; and the Desi world of the girls she had come to visit here, with their talk of clothes and boys and jobs and Bollywood heroes.
Where did this leave her? She was lost somewhere in between, in that place that Aisha’s mother spoke about. Purgatory.
She pushed Shilpi’s bedroom door, and it swung open, onto a vision of pink. The walls and carpet were a matching pale pink and the bed, the curtains and the bottom part of her dresser were covered in white satin frills. Amina and Aisha were sitting with Shilpi on her bed, all three in pastel salwars, their hands covered with intricate henna designs and resting, palms upward, on their knees. There wasn’t enough room on the
bed for Shunduri, and despite the cries of welcome, no one seemed to be inclined to shift up for her. But that was alright because the last thing she felt like doing was lining up in a row with them and laughing and giggling when she had this painful lump in her throat, and her face could be showing anything, everything. She drifted toward the dresser, half tuned to their chat.
They were listening to Shilpi’s tale of her recent betrothal to Shareef, a Desi boy from Manchester who was just finishing his optometry studies and was a big man in the University of Manchester branch of Jamat-al-Islami. They’d met on a Muslim matchmaking website and then for real through a Young Muslims Organisation rally, and she’d managed to steer her mum and dad in the right direction to find him, and he’d done the same with his family.
Shunduri looked at herself in the dressing-table mirror. It was her mouth that would betray what she had heard on the stairs, hanging in a long O of shock and fear beneath the gloss of lipstick. She pressed her lips closed and looked down, Shilpi’s smug little voice going on and on behind her.
“As you know, I was all anti-marriage until I went on this particulaar Desi website, yaah. And saw dis particulaar bruvver. His bio data, I mean. But you know, it’s a Muslim woman’s duty, yaah . . .”
On Shilpi’s dresser, amongst all the stuffed animals, spilt make-up and untidy piles of bangles, was a neat pile of shiny DVDs. On Muslim Prayer, What It Means to Be a Muslim, The American Military-Industrial Hegemony, Jihad for Beginners. They were all still shrink-wrapped, except for two: Shakira and The 100 Best Songs of Rani Mukherjee.
Coiled on the white fluffy seat of Shilpi’s dresser stool was her discarded abaya, black as night and as full of presence in that room as a snake in a flower garden. Shunduri’s eyes were drawn to it. It seemed to be the only thing amongst the frills and fluff that made any sense. While the girls talked on, she touched the abaya with her fingertips, then lifted it up to shake it out and refold it. The mass of beaded microfiber weighed as heavy as her heart. There was a green label on the neckline with black writing: From Shukr’s Sakina Prayer Collection. For those Intimate Moments with the Divine.
“It’s a prayer robe, yeah,” she heard Shilpi’s voice from somewhere behind her. “I got it on the Internet. Go on, try it on.”
“Why not, yaah.” She heard her own casual tone, as if from far away. She slid her arms into the wide sleeves, pulled the shoulder seams forward so that it hung straight down at the front, found and fastened the hidden ties and buttons at the front and sides, then looked around for the headscarf.
“Here.” Shilpi tossed the smaller piece of black fabric toward her. “It’s a shayla hijab, so it just wraps around, yeah. Much better than the amira hijabs, you know, wiv dere elastic.”
“Oh that’s so true, yeah,” said Amina eagerly. “Those elasticated ones make you look like you’ve got no neck.”
Shunduri caught it, found the ends and started to wrap it over her head, but it was slipping on her short haircut. Her usual sureness of touch seemed to have deserted her. Everyone was quiet now, watching.
“Sit down,” said Shilpi, “and I’ll put it on you. It goes on better wiv the underscarf.”
She sat on the fluffy dresser stool, feeling as if their positions had been reversed, while Shilpi’s small hands, rough with dried mendhi, wrapped and packed away strands of Shunduri’s hair and smoothed the fabric across her forehead. “There!”
Shunduri stood, and Amina and Aisha slid off the bed, to examine and exclaim.
“Wow, Baby,” said Amina. “You look so tall, really elegant.” Shunduri took in her reflection in the mirror. She did look dignified, her eyes large and brilliant, and the hijab outlined the fine shape of her head. It shouldn’t spoil her bob too much if she wrapped it carefully. She would have to practice.
“And here,” said Shilpi, reluctant to abandon her creation, “you can just pull this bit across the face, and pin it, and now it’s a niqab. That’s how I wear it, anyway. Like in the Qur’an.”
Mysterious, fascinating. Modest. She could go the whole way, cover her face as well. The abaya’s fabric hung in sculptural folds from her shoulders, as if she were a Greek goddess. Some long gloves like Shilpi’s wouldn’t go astray, either.
“Wow,” said Aisha this time. “That looks so cool. Can I try it?”
She took the abaya off and passed it on with every appearance of nonchalance, but with possessiveness and reluctance in her heart. She could see herself so clearly, walking to the front row when takbir, spontaneous prayer, was called at college, the crowd at political rallies parting for her like the Red Sea.
And Kareem seeing her with new eyes, the eyes of a suitor and a husband. Aaah. Her eyes stung, and she turned her back on her friends, tugging fiercely at the hijab’s knot at the side of her neck. But she only seemed to be able to make it tighter, and as she tugged harder, the tears started to spill down her cheeks.
“Baby, are you all right? Baby!” First Aisha, then Amina were staring at her expression, her tears.
She tried to say of course she was fine, she was just trying to get this knot undone, but the words didn’t come out properly, and she started to cough on choked tears, had to sit down on the bed while her coughing turned to a kind of gasping crying, and Shilpi ran to the bathroom for a glass of water and Amina tried to give her tissues and Aisha squeezed her shoulders.
Still no words would come out, and eventually her friends seemed to decide that she was sick, there was some sort of bug going around, and they should head back to the college dorm and put her to bed. They phoned for a taxi.
Shilpi walked her downstairs to the cab, the knot in the niqab undone, but Shunduri was holding it over her head with one hand as if her life depended on it, her left forearm hard across her midriff as if she had stomach ache. There was little conversation in the taxi on the way home, and once they were back in the dorm, she told them no, she didn’t want any company, she didn’t need a doctor, just wanted to sleep. She shut her bedroom door on their faces, locked it and climbed into bed still fully dressed, averting her eyes from her bedroom clock, which kept flashing the time, as insistent as her calendar with its missed due date. The tears started again as she pulled off the niqab, clutched it to her chest and curled up under her duvet. On Friday morning Shunduri woke late with the alarm already on snooze, her mouth foul-tasting and a headache well entrenched at the base of her skull. Squinting at her phone screen, she checked for texts from Kareem sent last night. Nothing.
It was past nine so she telephoned the bank to call in sick, dragged on her dressing-gown over her clothes and wandered down the corridor to Neena Varios’s room to beg a couple of migraine tablets. Once in her own room, she washed them down with a cup of cold tea and climbed back into bed.
Only then did she text Kareem’s number: Don’t bother 2nite. Or anytime u casra bastard, turning off her phone straight after. The niqab was still there, crumpled up like a used handkerchief on her pillow, and she tucked it into her fist, lay down and waited for sleep.
Fourteen
“UNCLE RICHARD!” TWO small boys in superhero pajamas cannoned into him at what was becoming a dangerous height, and were immediately campaigning for a wrestling match on the back lawn.
“Absolutely not, monsters. That’s your father’s job.”
“Oh, but Daddy won’t—he gets all puffy,” said Jonathon, struggling to dislodge brother Andrew, who, hanging grimly on to Richard’s belt, and not to be outdone, cried, “Yeah! And red!”
A smiling Thea was not far behind. “It’s so good to see you, dearest Richard. Henry is, of course, just as pleased, simply a little caught up in some new primary sources we’ve just unearthed. He’s on his way back from the Abbey now. It’s all very exciting, but let’s get your things out of that townie car and you into a dry martini.”
“Nothing better, Thea. It’s good to be off that motorway. Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.
”
Richard kissed his sister-in-law on both cheeks, remembering her preferred continental style, before maneuvering gingerly, boys still attached, through the door of the Lodge and dumping them unceremoniously on the sitting-room carpet. “Remember the mixer, please: I’m not a QC yet.”
Thea, tilting her head, flicked at the tangle of gold at her neck. “Well, come and help me then. We can put your bag away later. Boys! Boys! This may be your last chance to play on the trampoline before bedtime.”
She turned, ignoring the stampede to the back door that passed her by inches, and Richard found himself following her sauntering walk down the passage with interest. Thea Kiriakis, former Chelsea fashionista, had lost her old angularity and was now affecting lady-of-the-manor cashmere and tweeds. Which actually suited her very well, perhaps because of the unexpected contrast with her dark coloring. The only jarring note in this new image was the familiar quantity of gold at neck and wrists.
And, of course, everything was a little too well cut for county. Images from their past assailed him suddenly, and he brought his train of thought up short. What else had he expected? Of course, they would be moving back into the Abbey any day now. She was the lady of the manor.
And he was a little too preoccupied with old times, perhaps? Those particular times in London nine or ten years ago, when he and Thea had played host and hostess, and Henry was the occasional visitor? Richard decided to take a kitchen stool this side of the breakfast bar, rather than go round and lean against the countertop and share the space with her. You could never be too careful. But of what? Surely not himself: he’d seen their break-up coming a mile off, in a sense had engineered it, and besides, it was ancient history, and he’d never been into that.
“I suppose Henry told you all about our ghost?” said Thea, as she moved toward the fridge. She took two martinis out, already garnished, and slid one across the counter, smiling. “And I suppose that’s why you made this lightning decision to visit? Not that I’m not glad to see you.”
A Matter of Marriage Page 17