A Matter of Marriage

by Lesley Jorgensen

  Rohimun limped over to the old bed and rested against it, then fished around and pulled her sleeping bag out from where it had hidden itself. The bed stood as high as her waist, so she hoicked herself awkwardly up over its side, taking the bag with her. She crawled across the velvet cover into the middle and, tracksuit top around her armpits, wormed into her sleeping bag in the soft sinking center of the mattress. The bed had probably last been slept in before central heating was installed. Rohimun sneezed, then yawned, her anger and her headache evaporating. She pulled her long rope of hair out from under her back, twisting it up above her head and throwing it over the top of the bolster. Then she moved further down, nestling in. Within minutes Rohimun had fallen asleep, dreaming only of swinging in a hammock under green trees.

  Fifteen

  NOTHING, THOUGHT DR. Choudhury, could be more pleasant on a late Saturday afternoon than a happy wife and the eye-burning hiss of roasting spices in the kitchen. Especially after a morning where everyone seemed to have gotten out of bed on the wrong side. The kitchen window’s curtains billowed, showing glimpses of green grass and sunshine. Tariq should be walking Rohimun over from the Abbey about now, and it would soon behoove Dr. Choudhury to prepare himself for this meeting.

  Mrs. Begum, sari-end tucked into her waistband, was shallow-frying fish cutlets coated in coriander and turmeric for mas biran, and the stove was full of metalware. Looking over his wife’s head he could see muki, taro, on a rolling boil in one pot, almost ready to be tipped into the rich brown sauce of bamaloh, what his damn stupid colleagues called Bombay duck. But this was set off in a way they would never see in a restaurant, by his wife’s specialty: emerald green floating clusters of lottha, water-lily shoots, national flower of Bangladesh and staple of the villages. At the rear of the stove was Mrs. Begum’s largest pot holding a whole chicken simmering in a turmeric-golden sauce, the glorious muruk murgh moshla, gubbing and bubbing in a slow bass-note to the scream of frying fish and his wife’s flying hands.

  He clasped his hands behind his back and considered the kitchen table. His favorite salad—green tomatoes, chilli, garlic, onion and coriander—already stood near to his placemat, and there was a bunch of rather raggedy pinkish flowers in a glass in the center of the table. Dr. Choudhury raised his eyebrows but refrained from comment. It had only ever been Rohimun who picked flowers for the house. Tables were for food.

  On the placemat for their eldest daughter was a small gold-rimmed glass of sherbet milk. He bent down disbelievingly to smell the distinctive mixture of pistachio and rosewater, then straightened. This welcome drink for honored guests, new brides, was utterly unsuitable for a disgraced, unmarriageable runaway. This could not be allowed.

  He turned to face Mrs. Begum’s plump back and cleared his throat loudly for her full attention, but she did not seem to hear him over the frying and gub-bubbing. He cleared his throat again, and his wife whirled around but sank below his line of sight to the floor behind the kitchen table.

  Was this an attempt to avoid him? It was not his place, as the husband and father, to chase his wife around the kitchen to get her attention, let alone to go onto hands and knees under a table to catch her eyes.

  He leaned forward a little, careful not to move his feet from their dignified, magisterial position, and knocked sharply on the tabletop. Mrs. Begum’s head bobbed up at the level of the table, and as she was now paying him the attention she should, he felt able to stroll to the sink, which brought him to her side of the table. Her eyes followed him silently.

  Having reached his target (for he had required a small glass of water), he could see that Mrs. Begum was squatting on the ground, yellow and black sari folds tucked through under her bottom, and the long and deadly dhaa blade upright on the floor between her thighs as she slowly sliced into the firm flesh of a papaya.

  She was still working as she watched him, and he could see her thigh muscles flex through the thin cotton as her right foot, placed firmly on the base of the dhaa, braced against the strain on that sharpest of edges. One gentle brush on the blade and deep gold gave way to a dark-seeded center, the fruit opening up again and again as she continued to work.

  Dr. Choudhury opened his mouth, then shut it again. His wife, despite her position on the kitchen lino, was staring at him in such a disconcertingly direct manner that he felt as if his back was pinned to the kitchen sink. Without shifting her gaze, she put the papaya segments down on a piece of newspaper and rested the fingers of her right hand, glistening with juice, on the flat of the large blade. He felt the need for a small sip of the refreshing water, nature’s champagne, and swallowed carefully.

  “You have made sherbet milk.”

  Mrs. Begum’s eyes narrowed. “Jiioi.”

  Yes. What could he do with yes? This was not how conversations were supposed to flow between husband and wife. And why did she have to be using the dhaa at such a time? She showed no inclination to move, to approach him in an appropriately supplicating manner, as would befit the anxious mother of an exiled daughter. The sound of the frying fish, covered now, droned in an off-key, and the muki buzzed frantically against one another in their pot. She continued to stare, and he felt his back slip against the counter’s edge.

  He hurrumphed loudly. “Be sure that all this mess is cleared up soon, Mrs. Begum.” He clicked his glass onto the draining board in a decisive manner, folded his hands behind his back and, still hurrumphing, retreated toward the sitting room. He would wait there for his children. At least he knew how to do things properly.

  —

  TARIQ WATCHED ROHIMUN fuss with her clothes. This meeting with Mum and Dad had come about sooner than he’d expected.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “Nothing fits.”

  He couldn’t believe Rohimun, of all people, was getting in a state about what to wear. She’d become plumper since he’d been away, and her old college salwarkameez, in fashionable-again pastels, strained across her chest and hips. Staring at the old cheval glass, she plucked vainly at the fabric, which had formed horizontal ripples over her breasts, and pulled down on the side seams.

  “You’ll rip it.”

  She glared at him through the cheval. “Who asked you? It’s fine, yeah?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Well, are we going or what?”

  “Alright, alright.” He picked up the matching scarf from the bed and handed it to her. “Don’t forget your chunna. I’ll go first,” he said, pretending not to see her roll her eyes, and led their cautious procession along corridors and down stairwells until they were outside.

  Halfway across the stretch of lawn that sloped from the Abbey’s front, he turned to face his sister. “It’s not going to be as bad as you’re thinking, yeah? Mum and Dad have changed too.”

  Rohimun, rushing behind, promptly ran into him. She dragged a length of the chunna back around her neck and pulled at her salwar. “It’s wrapping round me like a bloody bedspread.”

  “It must be a result of their moving here, out of the community,” he continued. “Or maybe all of us leaving home. It’s like they’ve gotten younger, more modern.” He took Rohimun’s hand to walk, automatically smoothing her wrist with his thumb to move non-existent bracelets out of the way. He felt it twitch with annoyance. “They’ve got new interests. New friends. Mum’s joined the Women’s Institute.”

  “I know. It is only a year since I was here. They’re not that different. Bai!” One end of the chunna had fallen again, then caught on a bush. She tugged at it. “Can you help me out here?”

  “You’re making it worse. Why’d you wear it if—”

  “You bloody gave it to me. And you know why,” she retorted, wrenching on it now.

  Since when did his own sister swear in front of him? Tariq started to speak, then reminded himself she was stressed, afraid, didn’t know what she was saying. Everything hinged on this meeting: her whole future.

/>   “Can you see me taking the beats in jeans?” Tiny silver beads sprayed onto the grass as she snapped threads and tore muslin to free herself.

  He winced at the damage, so unnecessary, and broke off the offending twigs to forestall further destruction. “Look, there won’t be any beats. All I’m saying is don’t expect the worst. Dad took it pretty well, considering. And you know Mum. She’s the one’s been putting all the soft bones in your meat curry.”

  In fact, the long uncomfortable talk they’d had early that first Saturday morning, about Rohimun and her past, his mother standing while he and his father sat at the kitchen table, had for him marked that seminal point that most of his friends had experienced in their last years of school, where they suddenly found themselves with more presence and authority within the family than before.

  He remembered Ali, whose father, like most of his friends’ fathers, had kept the family in line with beatings, arriving for class in what was to be his last year of school, with a black eye and bruised chin, and announcing that he was head of the family now. There would be no more beats from his father. Ali had told them how he’d blocked his father’s arm, preventing him from hitting his mother and sisters, and after a few blows, his father had suddenly folded, left the house for some hours and, on his return, asked him to pay the restaurant staff’s wages.

  Tariq’s own father, his friends always joked, had always been more like the stereotypical henpecked Hindu father, with his easygoing attitude, white-collar job and managing, ambitious wife. But then he was a Dhaka man, from the capital, not the villages. He had always been legal, had never cleaned toilets or driven taxis, and they had been one of the first Bengali families in Oxford to get their children through A-levels.

  So Tariq had stayed “the boy,” and when he had occasionally fixed something around the house, or deputized for his father at a wedding or a funeral, Dr. Choudhury would say with stagey wonder, “Who would have thought he’d become so useful!”

  He had resented this, but at the same time had been well aware that he did not want the situation to change anytime soon. That same year, Ali’s parents had entered into marriage negotiations with a Brick Lane family of good standing in the community, and two months after Ali left school and joined the restaurant full-time, he was betrothed. Head of the family brought with it many responsibilities, in the community as well as the family, and a responsible man was a married man.

  “I’ll just be glad when it’s over, you know,” Rohimun muttered suddenly.

  Tariq, startled, agreed without thinking, then swallowed a rising irritation. She must know herself that it was simply a matter of going through the motions. Kneel, touch Mum’s and Dad’s feet, a few slaps, a few tears, and it was all done. Wayward second-generation daughters weren’t exactly unknown in the community. All he had to do was babysit her, keep his mouth shut. Not every problem had a formula like that.

  With a breeze came a faint musical sound: some instrument being played. The notes rose, then faded. Tariq watched Rohimun stop to look around for their source, tugging down on her tunic again.

  The player came into view: as Tariq suspected, it was Denny, leaning against a pine tree, a tin whistle in his mouth.

  “Who’s that, then?”

  “Oh, no one,” said Tariq. “I think he works here.”

  Denny grinned and waved at them, and went back to his playing—only the most ragged semblance of a tune.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not really. We chat sometimes.”

  “He’d better not give up his day job, yeah. Whatever that is. He looks like a traveller.”

  “He’s Colin the gardener’s son. He helps out a bit, that’s all. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

  As they walked on, Tariq turned for a last glimpse of Denny. He’d slip out to meet him later, in their usual place near the river, after everyone was in bed.

  Through the trees ahead, Tariq could see his mother’s washing on the line: gold, purple, deep pink and turquoise. All madly flapping in the breeze, only a fence’s breadth from Mrs. Darby’s line, where a strict white-on-white policy seemed to be in operation. No wonder Mum never appreciated the washing-powder ads. “What’s that whitey-white?” she would say to the television. “Plenty of time for whitey-white when I’m a widow, till then, browny-brown, bluey-blue, greeny-green . . .” And Dad would give his newspaper a tiny expert flick and remark to no one in particular, and in Bangla for maximum sarcasm, that Mrs. Begum should be consoled by the fact that she could avoid the whitey-white of widowhood altogether if she was to meet with Allah before him.

  He felt a tug on his hand, and saw Rohimun’s face tensed in profile.

  “Look. There’s Mum.”

  Just visible in the garden was a tiny yellow-and-black figure that stood in an attitude of frozen concentration, before abandoning a laundry basket on the grass near the washing line and scuttling inside the cottage. The tinny slam of the back door was just audible.

  Rohimun groaned. “What does that mean? They’ve changed their minds?”

  “You know Mum. They want to do the big forgiveness scene through the front door, yeah?” Tariq tried to make it a joke, but his voice came out harsh with tension. “At least you’ll get to kneel on carpet, not lino.”

  She stared at the cottage, then tore off her chunna as if it was choking her, and dropped it. “Shit.”

  Disgusted, he let go of her hand and moved toward the trees. These were really old: oaks, probably planted by the monks of the original Abbey. Had they ever intervened in family quarrels, he wondered. Or had they kept to themselves, spiritual brotherhood being more important than blood. Or maybe they were only there because their families wanted nothing more to do with them.

  He remembered how one endless, lonely Friday, in his second year at university, living in college and away from home and community, he’d found himself wandering only a street away from the central mosque when the azan zuhur, the call to midday prayer, sounded out. He felt transparent, ghost-like, as he drifted with the crowd of men making their way to the front entrance of the mosque.

  When he’d reached the top of the first flight of steps, almost inside, he’d stopped. What was he doing there? He hadn’t been to the Jumma, the special Friday prayers, for almost five years, and he had nothing to cover his head. But he could not bring himself to turn around and walk back into all the curious and condemnatory stares that such an act would attract. He felt so delicately poised, on the very edge of existence, that it would only take one more act of coldness or misunderstanding to tip him into extinction.

  Then a warm hand had touched his shoulder and a friendly voice sounded in his ear. “Come, brother. Come on inside. Lost your topi?”

  He turned to see a man his own age in full beard and the flowing robes of a dishdasha, and tried to conjure a sensible reply over the hollowness inside. Words would not come.

  “I have some spare topis inside, brother. Come with me to wash.”

  Tariq tried again to speak. “I’m not . . .” but his throat had seized up. How long since he had spoken to a man like himself? He could not speak the words of denial.

  Tariq’s legs moved in spite of himself. Shame assailed him when he was led into the shoe room, and he stepped on his heels to remove his shoes like a boy unable to untie his laces. He felt a topi placed on his head from behind, and the words he should have uttered outside the mosque came to him unbidden. Allah aftah li abwaba rahmatika. O Allah, open Your gates of mercy for me.

  He was steered into the washroom, crowded with other men stooped and crouching over taps and troughs. He bent down to strip off his socks and roll up his trousers. The old routine that he used to follow with his father at Ramadan and Eid reasserted itself. He began to wash hands, mouth, nose, face, forearms, head, ears, nape, feet and toes, all in the marvellous comfort of prescribed order. He had come home.

 
No guiding hand was necessary now as he walked into the open hall of the masjid and took his place on the jigsaw puzzle of carpets, the hundreds of men standing shoulder to shoulder. The kutba had just finished and the imam was descending the minbar to lead the congregation. Tariq’s throat was still closed so he could not speak his niyyah, his intention, but he bowed his head in submission to the imam’s “Takbir!” As the slow ballet of the raka’ahts began, his breaths deepened, and the multitude of voices around him resonated through his body: Allahu Akbar. God is great.

  His throat opened and his voice flew out to join them. “Assalaamu ’alayna wa’ala ’ibaadillahi-s-saalihin.” May peace be upon us, the righteous servants of Allah.

  Seated on his left calf with the toes of his right foot flexed forward for the Tasha-hud, he gloried in the peculiar, familiar muscular tension of the position, and extended his right forefinger toward the mihrab and Mecca. This is my destiny. His eyes had followed the line of his finger toward the short, broad back of the man in front of him. This is where I belong.

  —

  JUST LOOK WHERE all that had gotten him. Tariq felt the breeze strengthen and caught an oak leaf as it tumbled. He turned to see where his sister was. Who was he to tell Munni where she belonged?

  “Hey,” he said to her. “It’s up to you, yeah?”

  She was silent.

  “I’m not going to make you do anything. We can go back to the Abbey, hide out in the stables till Henry’s gone if you want. Go visit Mum and Dad another day. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No.” She dug a toe into the ground. “Let’s get it over with.” He returned to her and picked up her chunna, draping the muslin across her shoulders so that it hung behind her. The sky was darkening from pale blue to violet, making the silver embroidery on her top shimmer. “Come on then.”

  They skirted the garden hedge, around to the front door of the cottage. Tariq knocked, with Rohimun standing behind him. The door swung open with no one visible, like some B-grade horror film, and he repressed a groan of his own at his family’s need to wring every drop of drama out of a situation, Asian-style.