Princess Bari

by Sok-yong Hwang

  Ali and I ate lunch in London before taking an afternoon train. He said no one would be home until dinnertime anyway. When we arrived, his mother was waiting for us. She wore a hijab with a loose tunic covering her ample figure. She was warm and serene; as I stepped through the door, she gave me a big hug. I mumbled the greeting that Ali had taught me – as-salamu alaikum – and she looked me in the eye and said it back. I followed her into the kitchen to try to help her prepare dinner, but she was so adamant that I go sit in the living room with Ali that I turned back. Their home was filled with the distinctive scent of coriander.

  Ali’s younger sisters returned from school. They giggled the entire time as Ali introduced me, and we shook hands. His younger brother Usman, who worked, didn’t return home until it was growing dark. He shook Ali’s hand and then shook mine; his grip was so strong that my hand throbbed for a while afterward. Finally, Ali’s father came home. His closely cropped hair was speckled with grey, and he had a nice moustache. I could tell at a glance that Ali would look like him when he grew older. Ali’s father went into the bedroom and changed into a comfortable traditional outfit. I sat next to Ali without saying a word while his entire family crowded around us and stared at me. Each time his sisters met my eye, they giggled. Ali’s father had a kind face, and he didn’t say much. When we were seated around the dinner table, his father prayed briefly in their language. When his mother brought out the food, I got up to help her. Everyone seemed warm and loving.

  “Where do your parents live?” Ali’s father asked.

  When I hesitated, Ali answered for me: “Her parents have both passed away.”

  “Oh no,” his mother said. “I’m so sorry!”

  His father said: “God takes the good ones first,” and then quickly changed the subject.

  Ali told them that I’d dreamed about his great-grandfather, his grandmother and two aunts who died in Srinagar. His father kept eating and didn’t say a word, but his mother gently admonished Ali.

  “Let’s save that story for later.”

  When dessert came out, his sisters each grabbed a cookie and ran off to sit in front of the TV, and his mother went back into the kitchen, leaving the rest of us alone at the table with his father.

  Ali’s father sipped his chai and said, “Your grandfather told us you two plan to marry. While we’re on the subject, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to rush it a little. You don’t want to hold the wedding too close to Ramadan.”

  “Yes, Father. That’s why we want to get married next month.”

  “Next month?” his mother exclaimed. She came running out of the kitchen when she heard that. “That’s too fast. You should give yourselves at least half a year to date and get to know each other.”

  Ali’s father laughed.

  “I’ve already discussed it with your grandfather,” he said. “We’re thinking of buying you a car as a wedding gift. You’ll make better money through your minicab business that way, don’t you think?”

  “Really? Then I won’t have to borrow someone else’s car and work by the hour.”

  “You won’t owe me anything, but you will have to repay your grandfather. Yes, now you’ll be able to start a new life, raising kids of your own and attending mosque regularly for a change.”

  A couple of days after we returned from Leeds, Luna and I were heading home from work after a day at Tongking. A bright light was shining out of the window next door. Curious to know who it was, I knocked on the door. The Nigerian woman answered it, dressed in an apron and a headscarf. She looked like she’d been packing, and waved me inside. Her belongings were all bundled up.

  “I’m moving out tomorrow,” she said. “The furniture was here when I moved in, but the bed is new. Abdul paid for half of it, so that worked out well for me. He says you’re moving in?”

  I told her I was, and she clasped my hand.

  “Congratulations! Abdul told me you’re marrying his grandson.”

  She told me what happened to her husband before I had a chance to ask.

  “He’s definitely being deported. But I can’t bear to go back with him. He and I are children of the Biafran civil war.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “Countless children died in that war. What I mean is that he and I survived by the skin of our teeth. He’ll do whatever he has to do to make it back.”

  Later, Ali explained to me how African refugees would cross the Strait of Gibraltar, travel overland through Europe and then cross the Strait of Dover into England. The journey to Morocco and across the strait in a tiny boat was incomparably more dangerous than my crossing of the Tumen River. After that, they still had to travel over rugged mountains on foot or stow away on trains, and make it over several national borders before finding a way to get across yet another strait. Refugees trying to make it to London couldn’t do it without a lifeline of some kind, at least one person here who could help them get settled.

  A minicab driver from Ghana that Ali knew had frittered away three years of his life trying to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. He was caught twice while trying to cross the Strait of Dover from Calais, and finally made it into England by clinging to the roof of the Eurostar. On the approach to the Channel Tunnel, the high-speed train passed through a pair of steep embankments that were built for forty or fifty kilometres on either side of the tracks to protect crops in the surrounding fields. The train had to slow down as it got closer to the tunnel, so refuge-seekers waiting at the top of the embankment would jump onto the roof of the train as it passed. They would cling there for the twenty-minute ride, enduring the high speed and brutal wind. If they made it to the other side, they had to jump off the train before it started to pick up speed again. Railway workers on both the French and British sides sometimes collected the bodies of stowaways who had fallen to their deaths inside the tunnel.

  Ali’s friend had been inspired to attempt the crossing by a friend’s uncle, who was famous back home for making it across that way. But when he got to London and asked around, he learned that his friend’s uncle had been dead for years. The man’s name alone had served as a symbol of hope, and had kept him going on his journey. We stopped telling our stories in detail, but whenever the subject of our home countries came up, it always seemed to end in fighting and starvation and disease and brutal, fearful generals seizing power. There were still so many people dying in every corner of the world, and people crossing endless borders in search of food, just so they could live without the constant threat of death.

  After the Nigerian woman moved out, Ali and I found a little time each evening to work on repainting the walls, fixing the sink and scrubbing the flat clean from top to bottom. As the layout was the same as the flat I’d shared with Luna, I felt right at home.

  The whole process of getting married was called shadi, but if I remember correctly, mayoun and mehndi were the names for the parts of the ceremony where the friends of the bride and groom were invited to eat and exchange gifts the day before the wedding. We held the mayoun and mehndi in our new flat, but the baraat and valima, in which we were actually wed, took place at Ali’s parents’ home in Leeds.

  I had no close friends, let alone any of my own flesh and blood in this city, so it was an opportunity to confirm the few, precious relationships I did have with those who had helped me along the way. As Uncle Lou and Uncle Tan were as good as legal guardians to me, I asked if one of them would be willing to be my chaperone. They both said yes and argued over which of them should get to do it, but in the end I assigned the task to Uncle Tan. Though Luna was born in Britain, she was also Bangladeshi, and knew the traditions more or less; she agreed to be my bridesmaid.

  Luna and I went to a Muslim butcher shop in the marketplace. The meat was halal, which meant that the lamb and chicken had been drained of their blood and blessed. We also bought fish. Ali went to a Pakistani restaurant and ordered all kinds of foods: chapattis, chaanp, haleem, fried dumplings, barfi and so on. But I wanted to make a few dishes myself to se
rve to our wedding guests. Luna and I made lamb and vegetable tikka kebabs and a spicy chicken curry with lots of green chillies.

  Ali invited his co-workers from the minicab company. Nearly half were Pakistani, while the rest were young Muslims from around Shepherd’s Bush. Grandfather Abdul invited a few of his friends from the neighbouring mosque. Ali’s two younger sisters skipped school and came down to London to help me. We placed two tables in the courtyard and set them with food and drink and stacks of plates and cups so that the guests could help themselves to as much as they wanted. No one showed up until it started to grow dark. We played a tape of Pakistani music, which had a fast rhythm and a singer with a warbling voice.

  Luna told me it wasn’t time yet, so we went into her flat and waited. I put on the yellow dress that Grandfather Abdul had bought for me, and wrapped the yellow veil around my head. Luna explained that I had to keep my face covered when I was out there in front of everyone. Then Luna applied a mehndi design to my fingers and the backs of my hands using henna paste. She was supposed to draw it on my legs as well, but I told her not to. Vines, leaves and flowers wound along my skin. Luna was used to giving henna tattoos at the salon; it took her no time at all to recreate the designs. Ali’s little sisters opened the door and gestured to us.

  “It’s time!”

  “Hold on!” Luna yelled, a tube of mascara in her hand. “I need to do her eye makeup.”

  She applied black eyeliner and mascara to my eyes. When I glanced in the mirror, the deep-set eyes of a Pakistani woman looked back at me from beneath the yellow veil. Ali’s sisters exclaimed at how pretty I was. I went out to the courtyard and sat in a chair. I had my face covered with the veil, but the light was so bright that I could see everything clearly. The sisters searched for a song, then turned up the volume and sang along. Ali appeared, wearing a white tunic. Luna and his sisters ran to him and sprinkled red rose petals at his feet. When he entered the courtyard, they held a shawl above his head to symbolically shield him from the sky. Ali walked up to a stool set in the middle of the courtyard, and seated himself on it. The guests each came up to him, took out some cash, circled it over his head and gave it to him. His sisters, who were standing next to him, collected the money. Grandfather Abdul and his friends from the mosque danced to the music with their arms raised, while the younger Pakistanis, including Ali’s sisters (as well as Luna), danced around in circles.

  “The groom is as handsome as a peacock, and the bride is prettier than a flower. God, receive and bless these two.”

  Everyone sang, danced and placed sweets in my mouth. When I turned my head to try to refuse more, they stuffed them in anyway. As it was an informal ceremony, there was only one round of singing and dancing, and then everyone gathered around the tables to eat. Everyone kept calling for me to join them, so Ali lifted my veil and I rewrapped it around my hair as a hijab.

  As the non-Muslim guests would have been disappointed if there was no alcohol, beer had been provided as well. Uncle Tan gave a short speech, and then Uncle Lou stood up and started to give a toast – but he suddenly choked up and had to turn around to wipe his tears. I knew without his having to say anything that he was thinking of the daughter he’d left behind.

  The actual wedding ceremony was being held the very next day in Leeds, so we left early the next morning in a van borrowed from Ali’s workplace, accompanied by Uncle Tan, Luna, Ali’s sisters and Grandfather Abdul.

  When we arrived, the front yard was already crowded with people. Ali’s siblings were there along with his parents, relatives, friends, neighbours and people from the mosque. There were close to a hundred guests altogether. Ali’s parents had obtained permission from their neighbours to put up an awning in their yard in order to accommodate the overflow of guests, and seats were prepared for friends and relatives up on the roof.

  I went up first and sat down to wait for my groom. Ali was downstairs in the yard, greeting all the guests. His sisters and friends placed flower garlands around the necks of Ali’s parents and Grandfather Abdul. They placed another one around Ali’s neck as he was coming up the stairs. When he was finally next to me, we greeted the guests, who gave me gifts of money. We signed the marriage contract, which was officiated by an imam. Luna and a friend of Ali’s sister who lived in Bradford served as my witnesses. Two of Ali’s friends who’d gone to school with him in Leeds were his witnesses. Then we took dozens of photos, went downstairs to greet the guests from the neighbourhood as bride and groom and were given more wedding gifts of cash. We spent the next day resting in the comfort of close family. Then Grandfather Abdul, Luna, Ali and I returned to London. I was in a daze for the next few days from all that sensory overload.

  Ali used the money that his father and grandfather had given him to purchase a used Volkswagen estate car that wasn’t too old. He signed a contract with the minicab company as an official driver and car owner. Now he only had to pay call fees to the company, but was his own boss otherwise.

  Uncle Lou and Uncle Tan had spent a lot of money on our wedding. Uncle Tan not only gave us three hundred pounds as a wedding gift, he’d also given me a thousand-pound advance on my wages. Uncle Lou had gifted us two hundred pounds.

  But he gave me an even bigger gift besides that.

  A few days after the wedding, he came to the store and told me that my smuggling debt was nearly paid in full, and as I was now married to a British citizen, wouldn’t I like to apply for a real passport and obtain a residence visa? The passport I’d been given when I was smuggled into the country had been bought by the snakeheads from a forger, and would be detected immediately by immigration officials. Uncle Lou said he could get me the passport of a recently deceased Chinese woman who’d had a legal residency visa. He’d joked with me once that no matter how many people in Europe’s Chinatowns get sick and die or pass away of old age, the populations never get any smaller. When I thought about being able to register my marriage officially and receive a work permit, I decided it didn’t matter how much it would take to purchase the dead woman’s passport. It would probably cost me at least five thousand pounds, but Ali and I could find a way to earn money and pay down the debt.

  I thought about the deal Princess Bari made with the totem pole in my grandmother’s stories: three by three is nine – nine years spent giving him a son and caring for his home in exchange for passage, firewood and water.

  I realized that life means waiting, enduring the passage of time. Nothing ever quite meets our expectations, yet as long as we are alive, time flows on, and everything eventually comes to pass.

  Ten

  Ali and I moved into the flat the Nigerian couple had lived in, but we decided to use his grandfather’s kitchen upstairs to cook. That way, the three of us could eat together as a family. As soon as I got home from work in the evenings, I cooked dinner using whatever Grandfather Abdul had picked up at the market that afternoon based on the note that we’d left for him, but it was often just Grandfather Abdul and me. As the weekends kept Ali busy, he usually took a couple of days in the middle of the week to rest during the day and work the late shift after dinner.

  With so much time for just the two of us, Grandfather Abdul and I talked much more often than we used to. He told me all about his family and his ancestors, about the One and Only God, Allah, and stories of the Prophet Muhammad. I couldn’t read the Qur’an, but I ended up memorizing the first verse of the Islamic creed: “La ilaha illallah, Muhammad rasulullah” (“There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God”). But this wasn’t surprising to me: ever since I was little, Grandmother used to say there was a Lord in Heaven who presided over all of Creation. Whenever my father caught her talking that way, he would browbeat her and say it was just superstition. To me there wasn’t much difference between the being my grandmother had talked about and the being Grandfather Abdul described. I guess you could say it was like the difference between them eating naan and chapatti, and us eating rice.

  Sometimes I talked about
my grandmother. Grandfather Abdul said that because she was a good person, she would now be an angel in a Paradise filled with flowing rivers and flowers in full bloom. I pictured her mingling with the other good people somewhere in a field of flowers beyond the rainbow bridge that I saw in my visions.

  I also told him about the other people in my life: Uncle Tan was a Buddhist, and Uncle Lou used his breaks from filling orders in the kitchen to recite endless prayers that sounded like magic spells. Many of the people who lived in Chinatown went to a Taoist temple to burn incense and pray. Luna was Bangladeshi and Auntie Sarah Sri Lankan, but as they were both born in Britain, they went to church and believed in Jesus. Nevertheless, they each skilfully balanced the etiquette and rules of their religion with their own cultural heritage. Grandfather Abdul smiled with satisfaction at my descriptions of everyone.

  “Child, just as our clothes and food are a little different from each other’s, our lifestyles are also different. But that’s all. Providence converges into one.”

  Though I knew nearly nothing about Islam, Ali’s family’s customs were not all that difficult for me. Later, Ramadan was a little tough to get through, but once the period of fasting was over, I realized anew the preciousness of family and daily meals. When I told Grandfather Abdul the story of Princess Bari and how I got my name, he smiled brightly and nodded.